Chapter 12: The Hunt

Chapter 12: The Hunt

Hope was a dangerous, foreign currency in Solenvol, and Tamara felt sickeningly rich with it as they crept through the pre-dawn gloom toward Ivan Ivanov’s small, neat house. Rory was a shadow of doubt beside her, his every movement radiating a deep, ingrained pessimism.

“This is a mistake,” he hissed, pulling them into the deep shadow of an overgrown hedge. “You saw his face in the square. He’s a hollow man. He’ll choose the monster he knows over the freedom he can’t imagine.”

“He was holding his daughter so tight he was shaking,” Tamara countered, her whisper fierce. “That’s not a hollow man. That’s a man with one thing left to lose. That makes him the most dangerous man in town, and we need him.”

They reached the back door. It was unlatched. A sign of trust, Tamara thought. A sign of a trap, Rory’s tense posture screamed. They slipped inside. The house was silent, steeped in the familiar scent of woodsmoke and fear. A single candle burned on the kitchen table.

Ivan Ivanov sat there, his face as pale and still as a death mask. His daughter, Katya, was nowhere to be seen.

“I knew you would come,” Ivan said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. He didn't look at them. He stared at the flickering flame.

“We need your help,” Tamara began, stepping forward. “We found the source. The heart of it all, beneath the Town Hall. We can destroy it, Ivan. We can end this.” She spoke with the conviction of a revolutionary, laying out the plan in urgent, hushed tones—the fuel depot, the distraction, the final assault.

Ivan listened without moving a muscle. When she finished, a long, terrible silence stretched between them. The candle flame wavered, casting his shadow, long and distorted, against the wall.

“End it?” he finally whispered, a sound like dry leaves skittering across pavement. “You want to start the Long Winter again? You want to unleash chaos on us for your… your idea of freedom?” His words were an eerie echo of Marta’s sermon.

A cold dread washed over Tamara. “Marta has been here.”

Ivan finally lifted his head, and his eyes were pits of despair. Tears traced clean paths through the grime on his cheeks. “She came after the summons. She said you were a disease. She said you would unravel everything. She told me what they did to my Anya was a mercy compared to what the Merry Man would do if it was woken.” He gestured with a trembling hand toward a small, locked door. “Katya is in the pantry. Marta promised me… she promised if I did what was right, Katya would receive a beautiful gift tomorrow. A doll. With real hair.”

The betrayal was not a stab but a slow, cold poisoning. He wasn't a monster. He was a father, trading their lives for the sliver of a chance that his daughter might know a moment of joy in this hell.

“Ivan, no,” Tamara pleaded, but it was too late.

From outside, Marta’s voice rang out, imbued with an unnatural, resonant power. “The heretics are found! The Merry Man’s gift is at hand!”

The back door burst open. It wasn’t a mob that poured in, but a hunting party. Marta stood at the forefront, her eyes glowing with a faint, internal crimson light. Behind her was the blacksmith, his heavy frame moving with an uncanny speed, and Lena the watcher, her stooped form scuttling forward like an insect. They were not just believers; they were conduits. The Merry Man was riding them, lending them its power. The air around them crackled with the static hum of its presence.

“Run!” Rory yelled, grabbing Tamara’s arm and spinning her away from the hunters. He kicked over the kitchen table, sending the candle skittering into darkness. In the confusion, he shoved her toward the fireplace. “The flue! Go!”

He wrenched a loose stone from the hearth, revealing a dark, soot-choked opening. Tamara scrambled in without a second thought, Rory right behind her, pulling the stone back into place just as the blacksmith’s hammer smashed the kitchen table to splinters.

They were in the veins of the town now, the network of secret passages that was Rory’s birthright. They ran through claustrophobic, brick-lined tunnels, the air thick with the smell of damp earth and a century of fear. Behind them, they could hear the hunt. It was not just the sound of footsteps, but a low, unified chant, Marta’s voice leading the litany of gratitude, a prayer that echoed through the passages like a death sentence.

“How do they know the way?” Tamara gasped, her lungs burning.

“It’s showing them!” Rory grunted, pulling her around a sharp corner. “The town is its body, and these tunnels are its nerves! It knows we’re here!”

The pursuit was relentless. The Believers, fueled by the entity’s power, were faster and more tireless than they had any right to be. A heavy scraping sound echoed from behind them—the blacksmith, dragging his hammer along the stone wall, the sound a rhythmic, metallic heartbeat of their impending doom.

They came to a junction of three tunnels. Rory hesitated for a split second, trying to decide their path. In that moment, Tamara knew they couldn’t just outrun them. They had to outthink the monster itself. Her mind raced, sifting through the rules, the twisted logic of the ritual. A gift for a gift. Lying is a sin. Gratitude must be absolute.

“Here,” she said, her voice sharp with a desperate, sudden clarity. She reached into her jacket and pulled out the one thing she cherished above all else: the faded photograph of her young grandmother, Elena, smiling in a world before Solenvol had stolen her sister and her future. It was her reason for being here. Her own personal, human gift.

“What are you doing?” Rory demanded as she carefully placed the small, worn photograph on a protruding brick at the junction’s center.

“Creating a paradox,” she breathed, her heart pounding. She pulled Rory into the left-hand tunnel, pressing them both flat against the cold brick wall, just out of sight.

The scraping grew louder. The blacksmith was the first to reach the junction. He saw the photograph, a strange, foreign object in the subterranean gloom. He paused, his head cocked. To him, it was merely something dropped, an artifact of the outsider. He reached out with his massive hand and snatched it up.

The moment his fingers closed around it, Tamara took a deep breath and shouted into the echoing darkness, her voice mimicking the pious chant of the townsfolk. “Thank you for the wonderful gift, Merry Man! A beautiful picture!”

The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.

A wave of psychic dissonance ripped through the tunnels. Tamara had performed the ritual correctly—she had shown gratitude for a gift. But the blacksmith was the one holding it. And it wasn't a gift from the Merry Man. It was a lie woven into the fabric of the sacred ritual.

The crimson glow in the blacksmith’s eyes flared violently. The Merry Man’s power, which had been flowing through him, suddenly turned on him. He screamed, a high, agonized sound of tearing metal and flesh. His body convulsed as if struck by lightning. For a horrifying second, his arm distorted, ribbons of glossy red and splinters of bone erupting from his skin before he collapsed in a heap, smoke rising from his woolen socks.

Marta and Lena skidded to a halt, their faces masks of confusion and horror at the sight of their fallen comrade. The link was broken. The hunt was in disarray.

“Now!” Rory yelled, grabbing Tamara’s hand and pulling her deeper into the maze. They ran, leaving the chaos and the screams behind them. They didn't stop until their legs gave out, finally collapsing in a small, dead-end cellar deep beneath a forgotten corner of the town.

They were safe, for the moment. But they were trapped. Their one potential ally had betrayed them. The entire town was now a supernaturally empowered lynch mob. And the photograph, Tamara’s last link to the world of reason and love, was lost in the dark, a sacrifice to the monster’s own twisted rules. They were out of allies, out of time, and out of options. All that was left was one, final, desperate sunrise.