The scream came from the far end of the chain.

  Aleph and the gaunt man stopped talking immediately.

  "Seize him!"

  The words tore through the cold night.

  The prisoners gathered around the fire began to move — not toward it, but inward, pressing closer, away from something in the dark.

  The dull red-armored soldiers abandoned their idle stances and began forming ranks around something Aleph couldn't see. Their voices rose — sharp, urgent, that same foreign language snapping through the wind.

  The gaunt man opened his mouth to speak—

  The chain jerked violently.

  Both of them were dragged forward.

  Aleph hit the frozen ground hard, his shoulder scraping against stone. The men attached to him stumbled, fell, were pulled along with him. Iron links screamed against rock.

  He twisted, trying to see what was happening.

  He looked up.

  It was raining again.

  But not water.

  Thin, pale things fell from the sky — writhing strips of flesh. Worms. Caterpillars. Something in between. They struck his face, his arms, his chest, clinging on impact.

  For a moment he didn't understand.

  Then the screaming started.

  Not just human.

  Something else.

  High. Wet. Wrong.

  "Get to the fire, you fools!"

  The voice cut through the chaos — familiar. The old soldier. The one who had whipped him.

  Aleph looked down.

  The men chained to him were convulsing.

  The worms were burrowing.

  "Oh—"

  One slid beneath the skin of the man beside him. The flesh rippled as it moved.

  "Oh shit."

  Aleph scrambled up, or tried to. His legs tangled with the others. He fell again. He clawed at the iron around his ankle, looking for a weakness, a stone, anything—

  A hand seized his shoulder.

  He flinched violently.

  A sharp clang split the air.

  The chain around his leg shattered.

  He looked back.

  The old soldier stood there, blade in hand.

  "Go, you wretched rat."

  Aleph's jaw tightened.

  He ran.

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  Or something close to running.

  He staggered toward the fire as dozens of prisoners crowded around it, throwing the pale worms into the flames. They hit the fire with soft, hissing pops. He tore at his own skin as he moved. Some had already burrowed shallowly into him. He watched one squirm beneath the surface of his forearm and ripped it out with shaking fingers.

  It came free wet.

  Around them, soldiers began putting down the convulsing prisoners. Efficient. Controlled. Clipped bursts of that foreign tongue.

  The rain of pale things slowed.

  Then stopped.

  Just weather. Just a moment that passed, indifferent to what it had done.

  Steel flashed.

  A soldier lifted his sword over a screaming man—

  Something punched through his chest from behind.

  The blade fell from his hand. Blood foamed from his mouth as he looked down in confusion. Then he was lifted. And thrown.

  His armored corpse hurtled through the chaos and vanished into the dark.

  More screams followed.

  Aleph looked up.

  Four meters tall.

  It stood beyond the firelight — a shape first, then detail as flame caught it. It looked like a corpse that had been buried too shallow. Fresh rot clung to it. Its arms ended in bone — not hands, but sharpened splintered structures like mandibles. Six eyes glistened across its skull, reflecting firelight in cold points. Its jaw hung too low, unhinged into something that wasn't built for speech anymore. Bone protruded from its shoulders, ribs exposed in places where flesh had torn away.

  Around it, smaller shapes moved.

  Twisted. Human once, maybe.

  The red soldiers engaged it without hesitation.

  Steel met bone.

  Men screamed.

  Aleph looked for somewhere to go.

  Along the cliff's edge, carriages sat half-forgotten in the chaos — dark shapes against darker sky, torches burning at intervals between them, warning lights marking the sheer drop below. Prisoners had clustered near the closest one, backs to the wood, faces toward the fighting. Away from the edge. Away from everything.

  Aleph ran toward it.

  He was still several strides away when he saw their faces.

  They saw him coming.

  A man near the front — broad, grey-bearded, both hands gripping the carriage wheel behind him — met his eyes and didn't look away. Didn't move. Just watched him come with an expression that said everything without saying anything at all. Beside him a woman pulled a younger prisoner closer, angling her body, making herself wider. Others shifted. Tightened. The gap between them and the carriage narrowed without anyone visibly moving.

  No room.

  Not for him.

  Not one of them spoke. They didn't need to.

  Aleph kept running anyway.

  Something sharp raked across his back.

  Pain exploded. He stumbled forward, blood spilling warm down his spine, and before he could catch himself a clawed hand seized him from behind and lifted him as if he weighed nothing.

  He was thrown.

  The world spun. He hit the ground hard and rolled, scraping across frozen stone, and came to rest against the wheel of a different carriage further along the cliff. Further from the fire. Closer to the drop.

  He lay there for a moment, ears ringing.

  Then he looked up.

  Recognition hit before fear.

  The broad-shouldered man from the chain gang stood towering above him — but swollen beyond himself. Expanded. His flesh convulsed in uneven ripples, as if something beneath the skin was still rearranging him. Bone forced its way outward in jagged protrusions, tearing through rotting meat. Strips of himself sloughed off even as new growths swelled beneath. His arms had thickened grotesquely, what had once been hands now curved frameworks of bone and tendon.

  Six milky white eyes stared from a skull stretched too wide.

  Unblinking. Wet.

  They didn't focus like human eyes. They tracked like something that hunted.

  Around them, the battlefield was thinning. Soldiers fell. Prisoners fell. The other creature moved through what remained with patient efficiency — not rage, just reduction. One by one the sounds of fighting dropped away until the only steel still ringing was somewhere distant, someone else's problem.

  This one turned to Aleph.

  Not because he was special.

  Because he was what was left.

  Aleph's stomach dropped.

  He grabbed the nearest rock and hurled it with everything he had. It struck the creature's face. It didn't stop. But its head twitched, momentarily thrown.

  He surged forward and drove his fist into its jaw.

  There was a crack.

  Not from the creature.

  From his hand.

  Pain shot up his arm as his knuckles split and bone ground against bone. The creature barely moved. It lowered its head and looked at him.

  Not angry.

  Almost amused.

  Its jaw twitched. A wet, grinding sound that might have been a laugh.

  Then it moved.

  The blow landed before Aleph could react. His ribs cracked. The impact sent him airborne — the world spun — and he hit the side of the carriage. The breath left him in a broken wheeze. His ears rang. Sound collapsed into a dull roar as he rolled onto his side, vision blurring. He tasted iron.

  Move.

  He forced his head up.

  One of the torches had fallen from its post. It burned in the snow a few feet away, flame guttering but alive.

  The giant was already walking toward him.

  Slow. Certain.

  Aleph crawled. Each movement was a knife in his ribs. He reached the torch and grabbed it with his uninjured hand, forcing himself upright as the creature loomed.

  The smaller abominations shrieked and recoiled.

  The giant flinched.

  Its six eyes narrowed, reflecting firelight in fractured gold. It screamed — a raw, tearing sound — and staggered back a step.

  Aleph held the torch out, arm shaking.

  "I'll burn you," he rasped.

  The flame wavered.

  His injured hand spasmed.

  The torch slipped. It fell into the snow with a hiss.

  The fire died.

  Silence.

  For half a heartbeat they simply stared at one another.

  Then the creature closed the distance in two strides and seized him by the throat.

  It lifted him off the ground.

  Aleph's feet kicked uselessly in the air. Up close, the stench of rot filled his lungs. Its jaw unhinged further, breath wet and hot against his face. He clawed at its wrist. His hands were still bound together by chain. The iron links scraped against the creature's lower jaw as it lifted him higher, snagging briefly against one of the jagged bones along its neck.

  Its grip tightened.

  Black crept into his vision.

  Then — thunder.

  Not above them. Not aimed. Just weather. A distant, indifferent crack that vibrated through wood and bone alike.

  The creature shifted its footing on the wet ground.

  Its grip loosened.

  Just enough.

  Aleph grabbed the jagged rib protruding from its side with both hands — chain and all — and pulled himself up. Bone sliced into his palms. He didn't stop. Hand over hand, using the creature's own broken architecture as a ladder, hauling his weight upward as it thrashed and reached for him with its free hand.

  He got one foot onto its shoulder.

  Then the other.

  He was standing on it now.

  The creature roared and twisted, trying to shake him loose. He rode the movement, legs bent, balancing on shifting meat and bone. Its hand swiped at him — he ducked, felt the displaced air rake past his ear.

  The chain was still looped under its chin.

  He seized both ends.

  And jumped.

  Straight back — off its shoulders, dropping behind it, throwing his full weight downward as he fell. The chain snapped taut. Slid from its jaw. Caught against the back of its neck.

  He hit the ground and pulled.

  The iron bit into rotten flesh. The giant roared and thrashed. Its bone protrusions tore into Aleph's arms and chest as he clung on, skin splitting open. He screamed through clenched teeth and pulled harder.

  Harder.

  Until his wrists went numb.

  Until his vision blurred.

  Until the thrashing slowed.

  The creature stumbled forward.

  Then down.

  Its weight crushed into the snow. Aleph kept pulling long after it stopped moving. Only when the body went fully slack did his hands finally loosen.

  He rolled off and fell face-first into the snow.

  Cold swallowed the heat of blood. He lay there, gasping, chest barely expanding.

  Thunder rumbled again overhead.

  Then—

  Not sound. Not thunder.

  Words that did not pass through his ears. They arrived fully formed inside his skull.

  The voice was sweet in the way a requiem is sweet. Measured. Mournful.

  As if it pitied him.

  As if it knew better.

  You have slain an insignificant beast.