Ice bolts through his veins, consuming him in a heartbeat with a frost that goes as deep as his soul. 

He is on his feet again, a puppet yanked upright by the strings. 

It is something that goes deeper than instinct that orchestrates his actions, that same force that drags his gaze across the shadows of the treeline. 

He searches the darkness, but finds only the trees staring back. 

Charlie feels the trespass in the depths of him. 

Something even deeper surges, desperate to meet the challenge. 

Fury like a blaze within him, the fire of which is quick to thaw away the initial ice. 

Darkness and red again, lurching at the edges of his vision. Keeping a grip on his thoughts is an immense task, one that pulls his muscles taut with the effort of it. 

The first attempt at speech in Gods only know how long. It is a medley of growling, a bloody attempt, maybe even a mockery at a language. 

The part of him that cares not for merriment, not for small-talk, and by the Gods not for second chances. 

This intrusion was a crime for which punishment must be delivered. 

"Who's there?" He is amazed by how human the second attempt manages to sound. 

Though there leaves little room for doubt exactly who is speaking. 

But despite his snarling demand for answers - nothing comes. 

Only silence, the trees and the shadows staring back at him, as answerless as he. 

The breath hitches at the back of his throat, a desperate, sinking fear. 

Had it been a hallucination, his maddened mind trying to piece together answers when there was no puzzle to be solved. 

That he had finally, given in quite fully to the beast. 

His world of dreaming had become reality, and there was no way out.

Fear blossoms again, he stumbles back a pace or two. 

Boots kicking the carcass of the deer, the inadvertent power snapping one of its ribs. 

He will not let himself believe it until it is the only answer available to him. 

"Please," his voice echoes louder, pleading now. He can't be sure how he manages to keep the tremble from his tone of voice. "You don't know what you're doing."

By the Gods, some wretched, barely surviving part of his humanity pleads within him. The part who had seen this play out more times than he cared to count. Run while you still can. 

Nothing. 

Perhaps he was wrong, and this madness was in fact a kindness.

Relief. 

Release.

Both might have been misconstrued as mercy. 

He wants to give way to the belief. 

Accept it as truth, there was evidence enough that it might be the case. 

But Charlie sucks in a long, cold breath. Tasting it in his lungs. 

He smells only the pine trees, only the forests, the deer and the morning breeze. A medley that dances across his tongue, alongside the stench of blood. 

Something is wrong. 

He knows that the same way he knows where his fingertips end. 

He ducks, fingering the blade a second time, and hurls it with all of the power he can muster. 

Archery had never been among his talents, but the blade aims true. 

The throw sends it flying into the treeline. 

But it does not bounce off bark, or fall naturally to the earth as the momentum fails it. 

Instead, it pings off an invisible wall. 

Falling to earth with a soft thud. 

Charlie holds its breath, and the forest watches in silence.

The world shimmers, and a wall of deep, burning golden. Translucent, but the light is so blinding the world behind is blurred. 

Automatically, Charlie lifts his head to shield himself from the brightness. His eyes narrowing to squint at the world before him. 

As he grows accustomed to the blinding light, he blinks his eyes open again. The wall is inches thick, and it towers up, up up until it disappears into the canopy of the trees metres overhead. 

The only sound in those moments are the thunder of his own heart.

Then, it shatters quite unceremoniously. 

It lets off a soft hum of electricity, a buzz that works its way through Charlie's veins and bones. 

Rattling him. 

But he doesn't have the chance to admire the magnitude of this, the magnitude of this magic, before it crumbles before him. 

It starts as a river of a fracture close to the centre.

And byt the time his eyes have caught sight of that, there's a hundred more, then a thousand, more and more. 

Until there is barely a square inch of it not marred by the latticework of shattering glass. 

His knife hadn't been the cause, maybe the catalyst but the small blade couldn't have caused such destruction. 

No. 

Its like merely glimpsing it had destroyed the pretence. 

Soon it has shattered, fragments of it hitting earth with the soft twinkle of broken glass hitting earth. 

Fae glamour. 

It had been nearly two decades since he had seen magic this close, but he recognises it all the same. 

Even after all these years he recognises the smell. 

A mix of rich citrus and the untouched wild, the taste of the woodlands, the shifting winds and restless waters. 

It fades as the last of the glamour hits earth, revealing the world behind. The last fragments are gone before they even hit the earth, what remains of the wall already gone. 

Revealing the truth of the forests beyond, what had been hidden from sight, from smell. 

A mountain of a man, even the forests seem to sway away from him. The shadows retreating away from the tips of his feet. 

He is clad in blues the shade of midnight, the greys of freshly polished gunmetal. 

Military uniform- who's, his memory doesn't assist him in knowing. But he nows this with dthe deepest of certainties. 

He recognises the self-righteous posturing like he knows the earth beneath his foot. Knows this man as a soldier even from a hundred miles away. 

It might have sparked nostalgia, fondness. 

Instead it burns a fear through his veins.  

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you Charles." 

There is no insincerity to the voice, rather a genuine joy. 

The stranger makes the sense of attempting a step closer, and Charlie's reaction is immediate. 

Stepping back, back back, until the brooks waters lap at his boots. 

Cornered. 

Forward was the politest word Charlie could put to this bizarre intrusion. 

As the moments pass, he is lit with regret that he had so carelessly discarded the blade. The only weapon available to him.

The only real option available to him, the mental correction comes. 

"Please there is no need to be afraid," the man's voice is an echoing boom, the crack of thunder from far overhead. Forewarned by the lightning, yet still it is enough to make him jump. 

Charlie might have laughed. 

"My name is Kallan, and I sincerely hope over the coming months we can become good friends." 

Of course all good friendships begin with trespass.

Charlie cannot smell the lie, but that doesn't mean he trusts the stranger. 

A growl pools from his lips, one of few times Charlie beckons it from the depths of him.

His gaze flickers across the man, and then to the shadows of the treeline behind the stranger. 

To human eyes they wouldn't have been visible, but Charlie can pick out figures in the distance. 

Dozens of strangers littered across the shadows of the horizon.

A sea of that same dark blues and greys. Shifting in the shadows, like the fronds of long-grass around them.

Sunlight reflects off them. 

Off the rifles clasped in fingers. 

Each and ever muzzle pointed in the single, same direction. 

At the point between Charlie's eyes.

Even the wind doesn't seem to touch them, unerringly still. 

No real attempt had been made to hide this from him.

All good friendships began with a threat. 

Kallan seems to notice where his gaze has tracked to, and the stranger only shrugs his broad shoulders in response. Pre-empting a concern. 

"We're only here for a chat," the tone is meant to be reassuring. 

There is a familiarity to the booming voice that is sickeningly sweet. Charlie's heart is a hammer in his chest, trying to break through his rib-cage. 

Even that wants to set off at a run.

His gaze drags back across the strangers in the distance, his eyebrow raising towards his hairline. 

"You bring a small army to every little chat?" His voice is hoarse, his muscles tense. 

Ready and willing to lunge at the first opportunity that presented itself to set off at a run.

For that was an excuse he'd heard plenty enough, knew every reiteration of the phrase. 

He'd learned quickly enough to ask and then what? 

The fact they are armed to the teeth does nothing to endear Charlie to these strangers. 

This man, Kallan's, hands are empty. But it takes little more than a cursory, grazing gaze to spot half a dozen possible hiding spots for weapons. 

And Charlie doubted they'd come this far without thinking to load those weapons with silver of some sort. 

"Your family dinner's must be awfully awkward."

Something very close to a smile warps the stranger's face. It might have been genuine, but all Charlie can see is the baring of pearly white fangs.

Entirely human teeth, almost hilariously so.

But there is something distinctly feline about the gesture. 

Kallan turns his head back toward the treeline, as though he'd forgotten he'd brought a small village with him for this chat. 

He turns back, unflinching as he replies. "A precaution, that's all," the man's tone might have been mistaken for sheepish on another's lips, perhaps genuine concern.

On this stranger's lips, Charlie can hear the venom that few others would have picked up on. 

Charlie's eyes narrow, his heart still racing in his chest. 

"Whatever you're here for, whatever you think there is to gain from this," Charlie's warning is heavy on his lips. "I promise you, it is not worth it." 

A sane man would have turned and run at this. Though he isn't sure a sane man would even thing to traipse through these forests. 

This stranger is anything but.

"Just a chat Charlie boy," that soft mockery at reassurance is back, near a purr. Like how a mother would reassure their child that they're not in trouble. "There's no harm in that, surely?" 

The laughter that pulls from him is something that curdles in the pit of his gut. The sound is half choked, bloodied and raw.

"Go east about four and a half miles," he juts his jaw in the appropriate direction, the place in question etched onto the back of his skull. The babbling brook nearly drowns out his quiet words as he continues, but there isn't a doubt in his mind that this stranger is listening. 

"Go east four and a half miles," he repeats. "And you'll find the gravesites of the last poor soul who thought that same thing was a good idea." 

It had been very barely  half a decade ago. 

Half a dozen poor idiots, little more than teenagers, desperate to prove... prove something, prove anything of themselves. 

They'd entered the forests hearing of the myths, the legends of the beast they sheltered.

Maybe hoping to find glory, find wealth, find safety for those they'd left behind. 

Charlie couldn't be sure. 

For it hadn't been Charlie that met them in the forests that day. 

Yet it was Charlie left with the scorching, bruising memory. So fresh that it might as well have been only yesterday.

Remembered the hunt, remembered the kill. 

Practically could still taste the blood on his lips, and self consciously he wipes away at the corner of his lips. 

He'd always supposed remembering was the very least he could offer. 

Charlie still wondered if their families had ever figured out why their boys had never made it home. 

No one had dared coming looking for them to find out. 

"Believe me it is not worth the risk," his voice is hoarse. His gaze fixed to the floor. 

Here he is, pleading for the lives of strangers. 

Not doubting for a second they wouldn't have offered him the same mercy were the roles reversed. 

But he didn't ponder that a moment longer. 

A hoarse barking rips through him, a sound it takes Charlie a moment to recognise as something near laughter. 

A mockery of the sound. 

"So sweet of you to be so concerned for us, Child," there is a confidence that might have been hilarious under different circumstances. 

The mouse strutting bravely before the lion. 

"But the past eight months have gone into our journey here today." 

Kallan is moving again, closing the distance between himself and Charlie until there is only a matter of metres left separating them. 

Sunlight catches on Kallan's features, turning tanned skin a rich, golden. Such beauty that Charlie might have believed the sun shone only for this man. 

His footsteps on the jagged earth are near perfect silence.

Charlie's gaze is unmoving from where they are fixed to the mountain of a man as he draws closer. 

The human part of him desperate to turn and run, disappear into the shadows. 

The beast refusing to give so much as an inch of ground. 

The emotions are a war within his chest.

Fight or, more pertinently, flight, was an instinct Charlie had had to drag back, bloody and screaming through years of practice. 

Now, however, for the first time in years.

The desperate call to run is a thing that grips him like iron. 

Boredom flickers across Kallan's expression, or perhaps rather the stranger had sensed that war within Charlie, sought to intervene. A child growing bored of his toys. 

"Fine, here are your options." There is disappointment to the man's tone.

"Give us what we want to know here," he gestures around the forest, his face screwing up slightly. "And we'll let you be on your way." 

He steps an inch closer, any façade at friendliness wiped away in that moment. 

Revealing the closest thing to another predator as Charlie had ever known in his years. 

"Or we will make you come with us... and others will be sure to get the answers we need from you." 

It was a cruel mimicry of choice. 

Charlie opts for the third, unspoken option. 

His legs are moving before he's even realised he's given his body the order to move. 

His feet slamming against earth as he dodges right, viper-quick as he makes a mad dash for it. 

He devours the distance, momentum carrying him with such force it feels closer to flying than it does running. 

The explosion rocks the world. 

Hot, white pain burns through his shoulder. 

He does not scream, does not give these strangers the pleasure of hearing his pain. 

He rocks back with the blow, his pace slowed only somewhat. 

It wasn't silver. 

That is clear as his body expels the bullet, it thudding gently on the ground beneath his feet. 

The minor wound stitching itself back together before Charlie can even turn his gaze to look at the mark it had left. 

Only a slightly bloody mark in his shirt, a hole where it had hit him. 

It wouldn't have deterred him, and he is half way through stepping again, trying again. 

When a voice carves through the air again. 

"The next bullet will be silver," the warning is a guttural thing. 

Charlie's gaze narrows, willing to risk an attempt at outrunning these guns. 

But his attention is drawn right, where yet more soldiers are appearing in the distance. 

Left too. 

He knows all too well the feeling of the jaws of a trap closing shut. 

He might have risked it anyway, would have done, had Kallan not begun speaking again. 

"And it might be worth your wait to see who else we have with us... collateral."

That warning pierces through him, as cleanly as any blade. 

The gravity Kallan gives it enough for Charlie to pay him his full attention. 

Kallan shakes his head, maybe mournful, maybe amused. 

But Charlie reads the gesture as something else, catches sight of that very subtle, cat-like grin that flashes only briefly. 

The stranger had always known it would end this way. 

"Please remember this could have been so much easier," Kallan's voice is a mockery of mourning. 

Then he turns, whip-quick toward the shadows at the treeline. A shouted order that Charlie doesn't catch hold of. 

His eyes are fixed to the six figures that peel from the shadows. Moving toward them in an arrow-head formation. 

Five of them move in perfect harmony, synchronized to the point its unerring. 

They move as one beast, one tide. 

The only exception is the figure at the heart of their formation. 

A hessian bag covers the newcomer's head, tied at the throat with a length of rope that one of the strangers use to drag him forward, using it as a leash. 

The newcomer's gait is stumbling, the scent of blood pulling from this newcomer a visceral thing. 

They just short of where Kallan stands, and with another barked order, the bag is yanked away from the newcomer's head. 

And Charlie's heart stops in his chest.

Despite the bruising that warps and contorts the stranger's face, it is still familiar.

Even then, the ten years of aging that had separated the last time they'd laid eyes on one another does not hinder the flicker of recognition that bolts through Charlie. 

Accompanied by a flame of fear, of horror. 

An expression Charlie finds reflected back at him, as the newcomer lifts his head and makes eye contact with the young man.

The eyes of his elder brother.