The forest was too quiet.
No insects. No wind.
It felt as if the whole woods were holding their breath.
Chun's fingers tightened around the corner of Wei's shirt without her noticing. The ground ahead began to slope downward. Thick roots pushed out of the soil, twisting across the path like traps set on purpose.
Suddenly Wei grabbed her and pulled her down.
They dropped together into the tall grass.
Not far ahead, near the edge of the cliff, a narrow suspension bridge stretched across the darkness. It swayed gently in the night air.
The bridge was still there.
But at the bottom of the slope before it, a small fire burned.
The flames flickered, quick and uneven, like a frightened heart.
Beside the fire, a man in a black robe crouched with his back to them. He was slowly turning something over the flames, unhurried, almost relaxed.
The burnt smell came from there. Thick. Bitter. So heavy it felt as if it would never fade.
On the other side of the fire sat a little girl with a bow in her hair.
She was sitting on the ground with her knees pulled to her chest.
She did not move.
It was Little Butterfly.
She was not crying. Not calling for help.
She did not even blink.
She just stared at the flames, empty and silent, like a porcelain doll forgotten in the dark.
Wei's breath caught sharply in his throat.
It felt as if something had slammed into his chest.
Chun's nails dug into his arm. Her voice shook so badly it barely sounded human.
"Wei… that's Little Butterfly…"
Her voice was so thin it seemed ready to break apart.
She was only five years old, one of the youngest girls in the village. Everyone called her Little Butterfly because she was small and shy and always wore bright ribbons in her hair.
But now her arms were tied behind her back with rough rope.
Moonlight slipped through a gap in the clouds and fell across her small body. She looked like a butterfly with rain-soaked wings, pressed against the trunk of a tree, too weak to move, too fragile to survive another storm.
That kind of control did not belong to a child who had just been caught.
It belonged to someone who had already been beaten, already been terrified again and again, until silence became instinct.
Ten steps away, a body still lay facedown in the grass.
Chun's eyes filled with tears. "She's the most timid one in the village," she whispered. "She cries over everything. She can't even talk to strangers. How could she endure this…"
Wei's stomach twisted violently, because he saw more than Chun did.
The corpse's neck was bent at an unnatural angle, the face buried deep in the mud, like a torn sack tossed aside without care. There was no possibility now of it ever turning over again.
A wide patch of grass had been crushed flat beneath the body. Yet there were no signs of struggle. No clawed earth. No scattered footprints. Nothing disturbed beyond that single impact.
It was too clean.
That meant the attacker had moved with terrifying speed and absolute control. It meant the man had not even been given a moment to cry out for help.
One of the corpse's legs lay exposed. The fabric had been pushed up, revealing the thigh.
The flesh on it had been shaved away.
Not torn. Not bitten.
Cut clean.
Like a bone at a butcher's stall, stripped neatly of meat and left bare.
The sight made Wei's throat tighten. This had not been done in frenzy. It had been done with patience. With intention.
The man by the fire was not just killing.
He was preparing food.
Wei stared at the body for a long time. His gaze was dark and heavy, like still water at midnight. He understood exactly what had happened.
That man must have gambled on luck. Thought he could cross the bridge quietly in the night. Slip away from this place of death without being seen.
He had not even been given the chance to raise a hand.
Wei's right hand tightened around a fistful of grass. The sharp stems pierced into his palm, biting deep enough to hurt. Cold mud seeped between his fingers, damp and sticky, the chill crawling slowly up toward his wrist.
The pain helped.
It cleared his mind.
"Wei…" Chun whispered through clenched teeth, her voice so low it nearly vanished into the night breeze. "If we don't save Little Butterfly… she will… she will die."
She spoke slowly, as if each word had to be dragged out of her throat.
She had not once considered whether she herself could survive. Whether they could cross the bridge. Whether they could defeat the terrifying people from the other village.
In her eyes, there was only that tree. That rope. That small, unmoving figure.
Wei did not move.
He crouched low in the grass, knees pressed into the damp earth. Dew had already soaked through his clothes. He forced his breathing to slow until it blended with the rhythm of the wind.
The wind drifted through the forest, carrying with it the greasy scent of roasting meat from the fire. It slid into his nose little by little, thick and nauseating.
His eyes never left the scene ahead.
By the fire sat the black-clothed man, not tall, sitting there calmly.
The flames leaped and shifted, shadows sliding over his body, but his face remained hidden. He faced away from them. His posture was loose, but not careless.
His movements were steady.
With a sharpened wooden stick, he turned two large slabs of meat over the fire. Fat dripped into the flames with soft sizzling sounds. Now and then, sparks snapped and jumped.
There was not a single unnecessary motion.
He did not look like a man on guard.
He did not look like a man waiting.
He looked as if this clearing already belonged to him.
As if it were nothing more than his own backyard.
Chun pressed close beside Wei. Her fingers unconsciously clutched at his sleeve. Her gaze slid again and again toward the small figure tied to the tree, then snapped back, as if she feared that one more look would make her lose control and run forward.
Little Butterfly's head trembled slightly, dipping again and again. The silence around her did not feel like unconsciousness.
It felt like something was pressing the sound out of her.
Wei stared hard at the black-robed man's back and whispered to Chun.
"We can't wait until morning."
"If the sun comes up, none of the three of us will leave."
The man in black continued turning the meat.
Then his movement stopped.
For two full breaths.
The air seemed to tighten.
Everything felt suspended.
Then the man gave a soft cough, light and casual, as if nothing at all had happened.
And he resumed tending the fire.