Heads. Human heads, faces still recognizable. Hunters. Hunters who had entered the Selection alongside them that very morning.
Aurelia clamped both hands over her mouth and stumbled back a step. "No..."
"Those are-" Zayd couldn’t finish the sentence.
Cassian stared, unable to look away. He remembered seeing some of these people before the Selection began laughing, trading nervous jokes, waiting for the bell the same as everyone else. Now their heads lay beneath the yellow tree, a few meters from where he stood, and the smell of blood finally reached him on the still air.
His stomach turned over. "Who did this?"
The man finally turned to face them fully, his expression perfectly calm, as if the ground at his feet held nothing more remarkable than fallen fruit. He looked at the three of them, then down at the heads, then back.
"Not a pleasant sight, is it?"
Aurelia’s voice shook badly. "What happened to them?"
He didn’t answer right away. Instead his gaze dropped to the small clock still hanging from Cassian’s belt. "You made it here with time to spare."
Zayd stepped forward, jaw tight. "I’m talking about them."
The man looked at him, a faint smile touching the corner of his mouth. "You’re more concerned about them than about yourself."
"Answer me."
He held Zayd’s stare for several long seconds. "They didn’t make it."
"You killed them?" Aurelia’s voice cracked on the question.
He tilted his head slightly, as if the phrasing amused him. "Does it matter who did?"
Zayd’s fists clenched at his sides. "It matters to me."
"Interesting," the man said, stepping past the heads on the ground as though they were nothing more than stones in his path. "I’ve been watching the Selection since it began. Every group that entered these woods." His eyes moved slowly over the three of them. "Some of them were disappointing." His gaze flicked, briefly, toward the ground. "I didn’t expect much from children, if I’m honest. I assumed most of you would give up the moment things got difficult." A faint smile. "But you three..." A pause, longer this time. "You made it further than I expected."
"And them?" Aurelia asked, her voice barely holding together.
His eyes drifted back to the heads. "They were part of the test."
"What test?" Cassian demanded.
The man’s gaze settled on him directly. "The same one the three of you are taking."
Cassian’s expression shifted. "This isn’t your Hunter Selection."
"No." A faint, humorless smile. "It isn’t."
Zayd stepped forward again. "Then why are you here?"
"Curiosity."
"That’s not an answer."
"It wasn’t meant to be."
Zayd’s eyes narrowed to slits. The man turned his gaze back toward the deeper forest, unbothered.
"There was something I wanted to see."
"What?" Cassian pressed.
No answer. Instead the man’s eyes moved slowly to the blood soaking Zayd’s bandaged sleeve, then to Aurelia’s pale, tear-streaked face, and finally settling back on Cassian.
"You three survived."
"Survived what?"
His smile returned, sharper now. "The boar."
Cassian went rigid. "How do you know about that?"
"I know a great deal more than you’d think."
"Was that-" Aurelia started.
"I put it there," he said, cutting her off without raising his voice at all.
Silence dropped over the clearing. Cassian’s eyes went wide.
"That creature wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near this part of the forest."
Zayd took a step back, understanding landing on him all at once. "You brought it here. On purpose."
The man’s eyes shifted to him. "Now you’re catching on."
Zayd’s face went dark with anger. Cassian’s fists curled tight at his sides. "You call that a test?"
"I never claimed it was a fair one."
Cassian stared at him, and for reasons he couldn’t quite name, that answer unsettled him more than anything else the man had said so far.
The stranger stepped closer, his gaze dropping to the scorched patch still visible on Cassian’s leg. "That final attack. It surprised me, I’ll admit."
"Why?"
He didn’t answer right away. "You were unconscious when it happened."
"I don’t remember any of it."
"I know."
"How would you know that?"
He only smiled. "You ask too many questions."
Cassian opened his mouth to push back and found nothing useful to say.
The man’s eyes drifted toward the yellow tree above them. "You reached it. The first stage." He looked at each of them in turn, unhurried. "The rules were simple enough. Reach the tree within the time limit." His gaze flicked once more to the ground. "And don’t kill another candidate along the way."
"You broke that rule yourself," Zayd said.
"I was never a candidate."
Silence again, heavier this time.
"Then what are you?" Aurelia asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
He didn’t answer that either. Instead he stepped past all three of them without another word. Cassian turned to track him with his eyes, unable to help himself.
The stranger paused a few steps beyond them. "Well." He glanced back over one shoulder. "Congratulations on becoming Hunters."
Cassian blinked. The man’s expression stayed unreadable the entire time. "You survived the forest." His eyes flicked briefly toward the dead boar somewhere behind them in the trees. "You survived my test." Then, looking at all three of them together: "Together."
Cassian didn’t know what to say to that.
The man turned fully away. "If that means anything to you going forward..." A pause. "...I hope you remember this day."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
He kept walking, unhurried, unbothered. "Who are you?" Cassian called after him.
No answer came. He stopped once more, glanced back over his shoulder, and for a brief moment their eyes met across the clearing. Then he smiled.
"You’ll find out eventually."
And he walked on into the trees. Cassian watched until the shadows swallowed him completely. When he finally looked down at the ground where the man had been standing, there wasn’t a single footprint left behind.
"What... was that?"
Zayd didn’t answer. Aurelia was still staring at the heads beneath the yellow tree, her face bloodless.
None of them noticed the distant rumble at first.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The whole forest shook. Cassian’s whole body went rigid. Aurelia’s eyes went wide with something new, something worse. Zayd spun hard toward the direction of the village.
A massive column of black smoke tore up above the treeline in the distance, thick and rising fast, feeding on itself as it climbed.
"What...?"
Another explosion followed the first.
BOOM!
The ground trembled under their feet. Then came the screams dozens of them, faint but unmistakable, carried on the wind straight toward the yellow tree.
Cassian’s face drained of all color. "The village..."
"No..." Aurelia whispered.
"That’s not part of the Selection," Zayd said, his whole expression having changed completely in the space of a breath.
Cassian spun back toward the trees where the stranger had disappeared. Gone. No footprints. No trace that he had ever stood there at all.
Another explosion rocked the forest floor beneath them.
BOOOOOOM!
Cassian turned toward the village and stared at the rising black smoke, thicker now with every second that passed.
Aurelia grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise. "We have to go back. Now."
He couldn’t answer her. He could only stare at the smoke climbing higher against the sky.
The Hunter Selection was over. None of them cared about it anymore.
Their village was under attack.