Chapter 10: The Worm
Morning came slowly. It didn’t feel like morning.
Snow covered everything. The forest was dead white, silent. The trees stood like pale skeletons beneath a white sky, their branches bending, carrying thick layers of frost that never melted.
Danny sat inside the cage-like caravan with his knees pressed hard against his chest. His wrists were still bound, the rope frozen to his skin.
His body felt weak. Lighter than yesterday, like he was hollow inside. But his mind was awake. Too awake.
He hadn’t forgotten what happened the night before.
The Awakened man’s words continued to repeat inside his head, over and over.
So it’s true.
Danny didn’t know what the man had seen in his markings. What truth did he see in black lines?
He didn’t know why the DoD clan frightened people so much, why grown men spat when they heard the name.
But he knew one thing now with absolute certainty. He couldn’t stay with these people. Not two more days. Not one more night. If they reached the city, he would be sold, or killed because he was cursed.
He needed an opportunity. Any opportunity. Even a terrible one.
Outside the cage, the mercenaries were preparing to continue their journey. They kicked snow off the wheels, checked the horses’ legs, tightened straps with numb hands.
The grey-haired man stood beside the horses, speaking with one of the traders, his breath fogging.
"How much farther to Karst?" his voice was hoarse.
"Another two days if the weather doesn’t get worse," the trader said, looking nervous. "If it holds."
The grey-haired man looked toward the sky. It was low and heavy, promising more snow.
"At this rate, it will get worse."
One of the traders cursed and spat.
Danny lowered his head. His ears caught that.
Two days.
He might have two days to escape. Maybe less. After that, city walls. Guards. Cages he couldn’t break.
A few minutes later, the caravan began moving again with a painful groan.
The wheels slowly crushed the fresh snow beneath them.
Creak... creak... creak...
Each turn sounded like the wood was about to snap. Danny watched through the gaps in the wooden cage, his eyes fixed.
The forest seemed endless. No houses. No smoke. No roads. No people. Only trees and snow and the same white trail going on forever. It felt like the world had ended and only this caravan was left moving through it.
For several hours, nothing happened. Just cold and walking.
The traders occasionally stopped to check the horses, who were shivering hard. The mercenaries kept watch, crossbows ready. The prisoners remained silent inside the cage, huddled together, too tired to even complain.
Danny noticed something. Something that made his heart beat faster.
The Awakened man was gone.
He wasn’t walking beside the caravan anymore, where he usually walked with no sound.
Danny looked around quickly, through every gap. Left. Right. Behind.
Where did he go? Did he leave?
Then he saw him. Far ahead.
The man was walking maybe thirty meters ahead of everyone, alone in the snow. His coat didn’t move in the wind. His eyes were scanning the forest, not looking at trees, but at the _ground_. At the snow itself.
Danny couldn’t explain it, but something about the man’s behavior made him nervous. The man wasn’t walking like a guard. He was walking like someone tracking something. Or like something was tracking _them_.
Suddenly — the man stopped. Completely. One foot in the air, frozen mid-step.
Danny narrowed his eyes, holding his breath.
The forest became completely silent. Too silent. The kind of silence that happens before lightning.
Even the horses stopped making noise. Their ears went flat.
The Awakened man slowly turned his head. Very slowly. He was staring directly at the white ground in front of him. At nothing.
Then his eyes went wide.
"DOWN!" he screamed.
BOOM!
The earth exploded.
"WHAT?!"
A massive shape burst from beneath the snow right under the lead trader, sending snow, dirt, and frozen roots ten meters into the air.
A trader standing beside the caravan barely had time to turn his head.
A gigantic worm erupted from the ground. It was bigger than the caravan itself.
Its body was pale, almost white, covered in thick, overlapping scales that leaked slime. Its mouth opened wide — not a mouth, a hole — rows and rows of jagged, inward-pointing teeth filling its entire circular jaw, spinning.
The trader who had been walking there screamed for half a second.
"HELP—!"
The worm swallowed him whole, from head to boots, in one snap.
CRUNCH! A wet, bone-shattering sound.
Blood sprayed across the pristine snow in a red fan.
For a single moment, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The world stopped.
Then the horses began screaming, a terrible high-pitched sound.
"MONSTER!"
"ICE WORM! IT’S AN ICE WORM!"
"RUN! GET THE WEAPONS!"
The worm twisted its enormous body, moving impossibly fast for its size. Its tail, thick as a tree trunk, slammed into the side of the caravan.
BOOM!
The wooden cage shook violently, wood cracking. Danny was thrown against the wall, his head hitting hard. He saw stars.
"Ah!"
One of the prisoners screamed, an old woman. The cage tilted, one wheel lifting off the ground.
Chains rattled violently, cutting into wrists.
The worm opened its horrible circular mouth again. It didn’t care about people. It lunged toward the nearest horse, which was trying to bolt.
CRUNCH! The horse — animal, harness, everything — disappeared between its jaws. The second horse shrieked and tried to escape, dragging the broken caravan with it.
The worm followed, its enormous body ripping through the snow as if the snow was water, chasing.
The grey-haired man didn’t run. He drew his long sword, the steel ringing loud.
"Everyone! Spread out! Don’t bunch up! It hunts vibration!"
The mercenaries grabbed their weapons, hands shaking, but they obeyed him.
One big mercenary rushed forward with a roar and swung his heavy axe with both hands at the worm’s side.
CLANG! A sound like hitting a bell.
The axe struck the worm’s thick hide and bounced off. The blade had barely scratched the slime-covered scales. A thin white line.
The man froze, staring at his useless axe.
The worm turned toward him, slowly, feeling his footsteps.
"Wait... wait no..."
Its mouth opened, that endless circle of teeth.
The man screamed.
"GAAAAAH!"
He disappeared inside. The axe dropped into the snow.
Danny stared through the bars, his whole body trembling so hard the chains sang. He had seen monsters before. The creatures that destroyed his village that night, with claws and black eyes.
But this was different. This thing was not just a monster. It was a force of nature. It wasn’t simply hunting. It was slaughtering everything in its path because it could.
Another trader, the one with the keys at his belt, remembered the prisoners. He ran toward the cage, fumbling.
"Get the key! I have to get them out or they’ll die in there!"
He reached for his belt, fingers slipping on frozen iron.
The worm suddenly struck again, not even looking, its tail whipping like a giant’s arm.
BOOM!
The man was thrown across the clearing, hitting a tree with a sickening thud. He didn’t get up.
The ring of keys flew from his hand, spinning in the air, glinting.
It landed several feet away, in the open snow, halfway between the dying fire pit and the thrashing worm. Steaming with the man’s blood heat.
Danny stared at it. His heart stopped, then hammered louder than the worm.
The key.
His eyes widened. His breath caught.
An opportunity. The only one he would ever get. The key to the chains, to the cage.
But before he could even think of how to move, how to get out, the Awakened man appeared.
He stepped between the worm and the remaining mercenaries, alone in the open. Snow falling on his shoulders.
His expression had completely changed. No fear. No hesitation. No cold.
Only absolute focus, like a wolf seeing another wolf.
The grey-haired man saw him and shouted, hope and fear in his voice.
"Use your Echo! Now! Before it dives again!"
The Awakened man slowly raised one hand toward the monster. The air around him began to tremble, to warp like heat over fire.
Something dark, almost black mist, appeared around his arm, coiling. It wasn’t smoke. It moved on its own.
A strange sound filled the forest, rising over the horses’ screams. Like thousands of whispers coming from far away, from under the snow, all speaking at once.
Danny’s eyes widened. His marks suddenly felt hot, burning cold.
An Echo.
The man’s power began to take shape, forming into something.
The worm roared, a deep earth-shaking gurgle, and turned its massive head toward this new challenger, sensing a real threat for the first time.
The two forces faced each other — ancient monster and Awakened human.
For the first time since the attack began... the monster stopped attacking and watched.
Danny stared through the broken bars, his hand unconsciously reaching toward where the key lay in the blood-stained snow.
The battle had only just begun.
And Danny still had no idea that this monster was about to give him the only chance to become free.