DAUNTLESS: SHATTERED LEGACIES

The forest swallowed them in silence.

Ash drifted like snow through the canopy, settling on hunched shoulders and trembling hands. The survivors moved in staggered steps, half-crouched, half-camouflaged, their breath shallow and eyes wide. To their right, the remnants of their village burned in grotesque stillness—flames licking at collapsed rooftops, smoke curling around shattered bones. The air reeked of scorched flesh and blood boiled in the dirt.

Some had tried to fight. Brave, foolish souls who stood beneath the shadow of the beast and roared with all they had. But it hadn’t mattered. One flick of its wings—just one—and they were cleaved in two, their bodies tossed like broken tools.

At the heart of the carnage, the Behemoth fed.

Umbral aether pulsed around it, thick and oily, merging with the smoke in a haze that warped the air. It crouched low, feasting on livestock and siphoning raw aether from the ground, its form barely visible through the distortion. The beast didn’t just consume—it desecrated.

Thrain Vardelkin led the survivors with quiet precision, his steps deliberate, his gaze sharp. The weight of five generations pressed against his spine. His family had endured the Shattered Isles longer than most, not through strength, but through ritual—throughThe Roar.A tradition mocked by outsiders, misunderstood by allies. But it had worked.

Until tonight.

Now, the ritual lay in ruins, just like the village.

A voice hissed from behind him, brittle with fear. “I told you the Roar was useless. We sent our own to die for a chant and a myth.”

Thrain didn’t turn. His voice was low, steady, like stone resisting erosion. “They didn’t die for a myth. They died so you could speak that sentence with breath still in your lungs.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and final.

Kael, the clan’s observant, stepped forward, his face pale and drawn. He had seen the beast first—days ago, a flicker in the mist, a shadow that didn’t belong. He’d warned them. He’d begged.

“Enough,” Kael muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “You want to argue, do it when we’re not being hunted. That thing hears everything. Even your cowardice.”

He turned to Thrain, voice tight. “Sir, how far to the mountains? These people are breaking. I can see it in their eyes.”

Thrain paused, scanning the line of survivors. Children clung to parents. Warriors limped, bloodied and silent. The forest groaned around them, leaves bending under the weight of ash.

“Patience,” he said, his tone unshaken. “We’ll reach the ridge before the beast even realizes we’re gone.”

He didn’t believe it. Not fully. But his calm was a shield, and right now, it was the only thing keeping the chain from snapping.

Thrain moved through the forest like a man dragging the weight of a tombstone. Each step away from the smoldering wreckage of his village felt like betrayal—like abandoning a promise carved into blood and stone. The trees around him whispered with ash, their leaves trembling under the weight of smoke. Behind him, the flames still danced, casting flickering shadows that mimicked the dead.

He turned once more, just enough to glimpse the silhouette of the Behemoth through the haze. It stood amidst the ruin, feeding not just on aether, but on memory itself. The air around it pulsed with Umbral energy, thick and suffocating, as if the forest itself recoiled from its presence.

“Nature will remember,” Thrain murmured, voice barely audible beneath the crackle of distant fire. “And it will have its vengeance.”

Then louder, but still hushed: “Keep moving. No sudden sounds. That thing listens better than it sees.”

The survivors obeyed in silence, their movements stiff and deliberate. They carried what little they could—tools, heirlooms, fragments of a life that no longer existed. The woods offered no comfort, only concealment.

In the center of the group, Eira held her daughter’s hand with quiet strength. Her grip was firm, her steps graceful despite the chaos. She didn’t look back. Her focus was forward—on survival, on Astrid. A small 9 year old.

“Don’t worry, my dear Astrid,” she whispered, her voice like silk stretched over steel. “Just keep holding my hand.”

Astrid’s fingers clung to her mother’s with desperate tension. Her small face was pale, eyes wide and unblinking. She hadn’t seen the massacre—not fully. But she felt it. The air was wrong. The silence was wrong. Her father’s voice, once thunderous and proud, had cracked. That was wrong too.

She had mastered the Roar Ritual weeks ago. She remembered the pride in Thrain’s eyes, the way the villagers had cheered. But tonight, the ritual had failed at the hands of the most experienced. It hadn’t even slowed the monster. And Thrain—her unshakable father—had ordered retreat.

Why?

Why did the ritual fail?

Why did the mountain bow?

“Watch your step, honey,” Eira said gently, offering a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Astrid nodded, her voice a whisper. “Yes, mama.”

But her thoughts were louder than her words. She needed to understand. She needed to know what kind of creature could tear through the Vardelkin legacy like parchment. What kind of monster could silence the Roar.

As they crept through the trees, Astrid glanced behind her. The scent of burnt wood and charred flesh clung to the air. Through the branches, she saw glimpses of her home—collapsed beams, scorched stone, and something else.

A shape.

A shadow.

Still feeding.

A massive silhouette hunched over the scorched earth, its beak carving into the soil with slow, deliberate motions. The ground trembled beneath its weight. Then—like a wound torn open—an eerie cyan mist seeped from the gash in the earth, swirling upward in tendrils before being inhaled by the creature in a single, greedy breath.

Aether.

She recognized it instantly. The lifeblood of the Shattered Isles. The pulse of the Behemoths. The energy that made monsters gods.

Astrid looked at the behemoth.

Her first thought: It looks like a crow.

A huge, crow-like beast.

But it didn’t move like a beast.

It moved like something thinking.

Astrid watched as it reached for a goat—its talons gentle, almost curious. It sniffed the carcass, tilted its head, then dropped it with disinterest. Not hunger. Not rage. Just... judgment.

There was something disturbingly human in that gesture. Something that made her chest tighten and her breath catch.

She stared, transfixed, her young mind spiraling through questions too large for her to hold. What was it? Why did it look at the goat like that? Why did it feel like it was choosing?

Everything went silent for a second.

And then—

Snap.

A dry, brittle crack beneath her boot.

The sound sliced through the silence like a scream.

Three things happened in perfect, merciless succession.

First, the sharp intake of breath from the survivors around her—dozens of gasps sucked into trembling lungs, as if the forest itself had flinched.

Second, her mother’s hand clenched around hers, fingers digging into her skin with sudden panic.

And third—

The creature’s head twisted.

Not slowly. Not cautiously.

It snapped toward Astrid with surgical precision, all three eyes locking onto her face as if it had known her name before she was born.

Then it moved.

Not with the lumbering gait of a beast, but with the terrifying grace of something that had hunted for centuries. It didn’t run—it glided, claws tearing through the underbrush, wings unfurling like blades.

Astrid didn’t scream.

She couldn’t. It was too late to react.

The world fractured around her—shouts, chaos, fire, Thrain’s voice rising in command, in desperation. Soldiers scrambled to form a line. Some fled. Some stood. None were ready. The behemoth arrived so fast that it dragged the fire from the village to the woods, turning the battlefield into a chaotic whirlwind of hell.

And then the sound.

Claws through flesh.

Like silk being torn.

Like history being rewritten.

The rest blurred—flashes of firelight, the scent of blood, the echo of her mother’s grip slipping from her hand.

Astrid lay sprawled in the mud, her small hands sinking into the damp earth as if the ground itself wanted to claim her. The soil was cold, wet, and clinging—like fingers pulling her down. Her body trembled uncontrollably, not from the chill, but from something deeper. Something that had cracked inside her forever.

The moon hung overhead, pale and indifferent, casting a silver glow across the carnage of fire. In its light, the world was reduced to ashes, silhouettes and shadows—none more horrifying than the one slumped against the base of a tree.

Thrain. Her father.

His throat was torn open, blood spilling in rhythmic pulses that slowed with each breathless second. His eyes were half-lidded, his mouth slack. Around him, the remnants of the clan lay scattered—limbs twisted, faces frozen in agony or emptied of expression altogether.

The ritual had failed. The Roar had died. And so had they.

Astrid’s gaze drifted forward, drawn by a presence too large to ignore.

The Behemoth stood in the center of the devastation, its form towering like a monument to ruin. Now that it was close, she recognized it—not from memory, but from the pages of old books, from the whispered warnings of elders.

ABloodshot Shrowd.

She had seen its likeness etched in ink—described as elusive, mythic, a phantom of the Isles. But this was no legend. This was real. And it had torn her world apart.

Its body shimmered with Umbral aether, wings as sharp as knives made of blood. Its head was elongated, smooth and alien, and from its face glowed three eyes—two on either side, and one centered like a crown. They pulsed with a dull, orange light, scanning the wreckage with eerie calm.

But Astrid wasn’t looking at its eyes.

She was looking at its beak.

And what hung from it.

Eira.

Her mother’s body dangled lifelessly, limbs limp, head tilted back toward the stars. Her abdomen had been torn open, viscera spilling out in grotesque loops that draped across her neck like a necklace of flesh. Her skin was pale, her eyes glassy—still open, still staring.

Astrid didn’t scream.

She didn’t cry.

She simply stopped.

Stopped thinking. Stopped breathing.

Stopped being.

Her mind, fragile and young, couldn’t hold the weight of what she saw. It wasn’t just fear—it was surrender. A quiet collapse. A belief that this was the end, and maybe it was better that way.

But the Shrowd didn’t strike.

It didn’t move.

It watched her.

Its head tilted slightly, the right eye narrowing—not in curiosity, not in hunger, but in something colder.

Something quieter.

Underestimation.

Astrid felt it. Not in words, but in sensation. The way the creature’s gaze passed over her, not as prey, but as something beneath notice. A flicker of disdain. A dismissal.

And in that moment, three images etched themselves into her soul:

Her mother’s lifeless eyes, still open.

The diagonal scar across the Shrowd’s right eye—deep, healed, and unmistakable.

And that subtle gesture. The narrowing of the eyelid.

The silent verdict, as if saying:

‘You are not worth killing.’

Astrid didn’t move.

She couldn’t.

But something inside her did.

Something that would never forget.

—

The nightmare came again—fractured, looping, relentless.

Astrid’s mind clawed through the same memory, glitching like a broken reel: the snap of the branch, the tilt of the Shrowd’s head, her mother’s lifeless body swinging from its beak. It played over and over, each repetition more vivid than the last. Seven years had passed, but every morning felt like the day after. Every breath carried the weight of that moment.

She woke with a gasp that never reached her throat.

Her body screamed before her mind caught up. Her right eye throbbed violently, vision blurred by a searing pain that felt like acid had been poured into the socket. Her ribs protested with every shallow breath, each movement sending jagged pulses through her chest. The ground beneath her was jagged and damp—slick with something she didn’t want to identify. Her fingers brushed against stone, then something softer. Something fibrous.

Bone.

She wasn’t in a bed. She wasn’t in a shelter. She was in a grave masquerading as a den.

Then the scent hit her.

Rot. Wet fur.

Astrid’s stomach clenched.

“Shit,” she muttered inwardly, her voice too weak to reach her lips.

She remembered now.

The Ragetail Gnasher

Not just any Gnasher. A Ragetail—larger, faster, angrier, hence the name. A creature born of fury and bred for destruction. Its territory was a furnace of violence, and she had stumbled into it like a wounded animal.

Alone.

Bleeding.

Broken.

Her axe was gone. Her gear broken and weak. Her body barely holding together. She could feel the blood drying on her skin, crusting over wounds that hadn’t been cleaned. Her breathing was shallow, calculated—any louder and she risked drawing attention.

This was how Slayers died when no one was watching.

But Astrid wasn’t a Slayer.

She was a survivor.

She had no clan. No allies. No rituals. What she had was instinct—honed through solitude, sharpened by betrayal, and tempered in the fire of her own grief. She had crawled through worse. She had bled in silence. She had learned to move without sound, to kill without hesitation.

And now, she had to remember all of it.

Because if the Ragetail was near—and she could feel it was—then she had minutes. Maybe less.

She closed her good eye, inhaled slowly through her nose, and began to listen.

Not for footsteps.

Not for growls.

But for the rhythm of survival.

First came the smell.

It clung to her nostrils like rot in a sealed tomb—flesh, decay, and the sour tang of spent aether. Astrid forced herself to ignore it. She’d smelled worse. She’d bled in worse. But the scent still curled in her lungs, reminding her that she was not in a place meant for the living.

Then came the sound.

Low. Guttural. Rhythmic.

Snoring.

Somewhere deeper in the den, the Ragetail Gnasher slept. Its breath rumbled through the cavern like distant thunder, steady and slow. That was good. That was very good.

Astrid blinked, her vision swimming in the dim light. The exit lay ahead—just beyond the jagged stone arch where the wind whispered through cracks in the rock. She could hear the insects outside, the rustle of leaves, the distant hum of nature still breathing. The air was cold. Afternoon, maybe. Night would fall soon. She had to move.

Her neck turned slowly, painfully. “Where’s my axe?” she thought, scanning the shadows. Nothing. No glint of metal. No comfort.

She gritted her teeth and began to sit up, inch by inch. Her body screamed in protest. Every joint felt splintered, every muscle bruised and raw. A low grunt escaped her lips, barely audible. She settled against the wall, breathing through the pain.

Her hands moved over her body, checking for damage. Her survival gear made mostly of rock was falling apart, barely holding on. But still, no fatal wounds. Just cuts, scrapes, and a constellation of bruises—each one a memory of the Gnasher’s tail, which had struck her like a meteor, detonating with aetheric force. Her ribs still pulsed with heat.

She couldn’t believe it. Outmaneuvered by a Ragetail.

It had come out of nowhere—silent, fast, precise. She’d been drinking from the river, relaxed for a moment, and it had punished her for it. She fought back, of course. She always did. But this one was different. It didn’t just attack—it calculated. One mistake, and she’d taken the full force of its tail to the gut.

She knew it wouldn’t eat her. Behemoths didn’t consume flesh. They fed on aether, not meat. If one swallowed a human, it was only to kill them, crush them, and discard the remains like waste. She’d studied their patterns. She understood their cruelty.

So why drag her here? Simple.

Bones made good nests.

Astrid leaned to her side, suppressing another groan. Her breath came in short bursts. She scanned the den—stone walls slick with moisture, bones scattered like forgotten prayers. And there, curled in the gloom, the Gnasher slept. Its tail glowed faintly, pulsing with residual energy.

She moved to one knee, pressing her palm against the wall for balance. Her fingers trembled. Sweat dripped from her brow, stinging her eyes.

“Okay...” she whispered, voice hoarse. “One... Two...”

She pushed herself upright, biting down on the pain. Her body shook, but she held. The Gnasher stirred slightly, a grunt rumbling from its chest—but it didn’t wake.

Astrid scanned the ground. No utility belt. No gear.

Then she saw it—just outside the den’s mouth. Her axe. Her belt. Her lifeline.

She had to reach it.

She took a step.

Her ankle buckled.

She slammed into the wall, catching herself with a hiss. Her leg throbbed, swollen and stiff. She looked down. The joint was discolored, puffed with trauma.

“Probably broke something,” she thought, jaw clenched.

But she’d crawled through worse.

She’d survived worse.

And she wasn’t dying in a nest. Not like this.

Astrid moved like a shadow stitched to the stone—slow, deliberate, silent. The scent of rot clung to her skin, thick and sour, mingling with that strange undertone she’d come to associate with Behemoths. It was metallic, primal, almost electric. Every creature had it. A signature. A warning.

She placed each foot with surgical care, avoiding brittle bones and loose shale. One snap, one echo, and she’d be back in the jaws of something that didn’t need to eat her to end her. She’d learned that lesson once. She wouldn’t repeat it.

The den’s mouth opened before her like a wound in the mountain. Beyond it, the sky bled orange into purple, the sun sinking behind the clouds that drifted beneath the floating isle. Snow blanketed the ground in a deceptive hush—cold, clean, and indifferent.

She limped forward, dropped to one knee, and snatched her utility belt from the frostbitten earth. Her fingers moved quickly, pulling a bundle of crushed herbs from a stitched pouch. The scent was sharp, earthy. She pressed the mixture against her swollen ankle, biting down on the pain as the salve began to burn and numb in equal measure.

Her hand reached for the axe.

Then she froze.

A sound—soft, deliberate—rustled through the snow-covered brush.

Not wind.

Not human.

She turned her head slowly, eyes narrowing.

Another rustle. Then another.

She knew that rhythm.

Styxians.

Pack hunters. Small, fast, vicious. Blue-skinned quadrupeds with claws like razors and tails tipped with glowing scythe-like blades. Their backs bristled with orange spikes, their paws stained with frost and blood. They didn’t kill for aether. They killed for dominance.

One emerged from the brush, low to the ground, growling through bared teeth. Its eyes locked onto hers, calculating. Others followed—silent, patient, circling.

Astrid’s grip tightened around the axe handle. Her body screamed for rest, but her instincts screamed louder.

She could kill them. She’d done it before. Styxians are easy to get rid of if you know what you’re doing.

But she can’t beat them like this. Not with a broken ankle and half her vision blurred by pain.

She met the gaze of the lead Styxian. It crouched lower, muscles coiled. She knew what came next. The pounce. The full-body slam. The bite to the throat.

She reached for a rock, fingers closing around its jagged edge. With a sharp breath, she hurled it.

The stone struck the Styxian square in the snout. It yelped, recoiling, blood dripping from its nose. The others paused, watching. Waiting.

Astrid stood slowly, her breath ragged, her body trembling. Axe in one hand. The other fumbling through her belt for anything—flare powder, smoke vial, even a shard of radiant crystal.

She couldn’t run.

They knew it.

She knew it.

So they prepared to pounce.

And she prepared to kill.

Astrid hurled the smoke vial with practiced precision. It shattered against the frozen ground, releasing a thick, choking cloud that engulfed the nearest Styxians. Their growls turned to startled yelps as the haze blinded them, staggering their advance.

She didn’t wait.

Her body surged forward, axe in hand, pain trailing behind her like a shadow. Each swing was brutal—wide arcs of steel slicing through the snow-laced air. Her strikes were fast, deliberate, honed by years of solitude and survival. But the Styxians were born for this terrain. They ducked, twisted, leapt—blue blurs against the white.

One landed on her back.

Its jaws clamped down on her shoulder, teeth sinking deep. The pain was white-hot, a spike through her nerves. She screamed—not in fear, but fury—and reached back, fingers clawing at the beast’s skull. With a savage twist, she snapped its neck, the crack echoing like a gunshot. She flung the corpse into the others, buying herself seconds.

Seconds she didn’t have.

A tremor rolled through the ground.

Heavy footsteps.

She turned, heart sinking.

The Ragetail Gnasher emerged from the den, its body coiled with fury, eyes glowing with residual aether. It leapt into the air, spinning mid-flight, and slammed its tail into the earth. The impact detonated like a bomb—shockwaves rippling outward, snow and stone erupting in a violent burst.

Astrid raised her axe, bracing for the blast. The weapon absorbed some of the energy, but not enough. She was thrown like a ragdoll, crashing into a jagged rock with a sickening thud. Her ribs screamed. Her vision blurred. She coughed blood. The Styxians were scattered too, but none turned on the Gnasher.

Of course not.

They never did.

That was the part she hated most. The Styxians weren’t just scavengers—they were collaborators. They hunted humans, not behemoths. They knew their place in the food chain, and it wasn’t above the monsters. It was beside them.

The Gnasher turned toward her, slow and deliberate. Its gaze was cold, its breath steaming in the frigid air. It didn’t roar. It didn’t charge. It simply walked.

Astrid gritted her teeth, fingers closing around her axe. Her ankle throbbed, the joint swollen and cracking beneath her weight. She could feel it giving way, splintering with each movement.

How could she fight like this?

She couldn’t run.

She couldn’t call for help.

She could only fight dirty—and hope it was enough.

“I can’t die here,” she whispered, voice trembling with rage. “Not yet. Not before I find the Shrowd.”

The Gnasher dipped low, legs coiling like springs. She recognized the stance instantly.

The Nose Dive.

A brutal slide across the ground, designed to crush everything in its path.

Astrid roared, lifting her axe high, ready to meet it head-on.

But then—

A flash.

Blinding, radiant, and sudden.

It struck the Gnasher’s face, sending the beast hurtling sideways in a blur of limbs and fury. The Styxians barked, snarled, turned toward something unseen.

Astrid’s knees buckled.

The adrenaline drained from her body like water from a cracked vessel. Her vision dimmed. Voices echoed around her—shouts, orders, movement—but they were distant, muffled, like sound underwater.

She collapsed, the snow rising to meet her.

And then—

Darkness.

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Author’s msg:First chapter! I hope you have liked this, it’s one of my proudest works I’ve done so far. More to come soon! If you like monster-hunting, this book is for you :)