Echoes with Teeth
1230 Words
The forest behind them receded like breath held too long—cool, damp, and aching. Kael moved quietly beside her, eyes scanning every shadow, every movement in the trees. Aria’s thoughts, however, were louder than the silence between them.
She kept seeing the boy's face. Not his wounds—those she was used to. It was his eyes that haunted her. That strange flicker, like two lights trying to exist in one body. Like something else had stared out from behind his gaze.
“They wear our faces.” The words repeated in her mind like a drumbeat.
They’d fought monsters before—Alphas corrupted by greed, spirits awoken by blood, even the Hollow itself. But this was something different. Something deeper.
Something that could hide.
By nightfall, they reached a narrow ravine. The stream below shimmered under moonlight, the stones around it glistening with old lichen. Aria crouched by the edge, filling her flask, then ran damp fingers over her temples.
Kael crouched nearby, tossing a pebble into the water. “You’re thinking too loud.”
She didn’t look at him. “You ever seen a mimic?”
He nodded once. “When I was younger. In the southern lowlands. They took the form of deer at first. Then wolves. One even mimicked my mother.”
Aria finally looked at him, sharply.
“I knew it wasn’t her,” he added. “She never smiled like that. Not when she bled.”
Her jaw tensed. “And what did you do?”
“I buried the real her. Then I burned the thing that wore her bones.”
No humor. No bravado. Just fact.
She exhaled slowly. “We’re not just tracking shapeshifters. We’re hunting liars born in magic.”
“Which is why I came,” he said, eyes meeting hers. “This isn’t your war anymore, Aria. It’s everyone’s. And most won’t even see it coming.”
She rose and shouldered her pack. “Then we make them see.”
---
They followed the ravine eastward. Tracks appeared—small, almost deliberate. Paws that were almost wolf, but the toes were too long. The claws didn’t retract. And worse, the scent they left behind was...wrong.
Like rotting pine and blood that had never been warm.
Kael knelt, sniffing the dirt. “Fresh. They’re close.”
“How many?”
“Three. Maybe four. Traveling together.”
Aria stared down the path. “What do you bet they’re not all pretending to be strangers?”
Kael smirked. “You always this suspicious?”
“When I stop being suspicious,” she said, “someone dies.”
They moved quickly after that, senses sharp. The wind picked up, bringing with it a scent Aria knew too well—smoke. Burnt fur. And beneath it, the sour-sweet stink of mimic magic.
They reached the source by midnight.
A small settlement—six huts clustered near a collapsed well—burned in silence. No screams. No chaos. Just destruction, methodical and precise. The kind of fire set to erase, not destroy.
Aria motioned for Kael to fan left. She circled right.
In the glow of the flames, three figures moved among the ruins. At first glance, they looked like wolves. Broad shoulders. Familiar gaits.
Then one of them turned—and its face shimmered.
Just for a heartbeat.
Its eyes turned inside out. Its jaw lengthened. And its voice—when it called to the others—rattled with too many harmonics.
Not a wolf.
Not even close.
Kael appeared behind her, barely a whisper. “They’re feeding off the memory of the place.”
Aria’s voice was tight. “Then let’s make sure this place remembers us instead.”
She drew her blade.
And the hunt began.
The first mimic didn’t see her coming.
Aria moved like silence wrapped in muscle and fury, her blade flashing silver under moonlight. It turned—too slow, too human—and she drove the dagger clean beneath its ribs. There was no blood. Just a shudder, a flash of its true shape beneath the false skin: long limbs, pale membrane stretched over a skeleton too fluid to be bone.
It hissed, mouth opening sideways, but Aria yanked the blade free and spun, slicing across its throat. The creature crumpled—not dead, but unraveling, like smoke caught in moonlight.
Kael was already on the second, a blur of leather and steel. His sword wasn’t meant to m**m—it was made to end. He severed the thing’s spine in one smooth strike, and it let out a sound like a hundred whispers trying to scream.
The third mimic ran.
It didn’t shift. Didn’t try to fight.
It just bolted—south, toward the treeline.
Aria gave chase without a word.
She ran with her head low, knees cutting high through the brush. The mimic was fast—unnaturally so—but it stumbled once as its form began to falter. The illusion flickered. A paw turned into a hand, then back. Its legs stretched too far.
It was breaking.
Not from injury.
From exposure.
The truth didn’t want to stay hidden anymore.
Aria tackled it just past the ridge, both of them crashing into a patch of brambles. The mimic thrashed under her, snarling in three voices. Its eyes rolled in its skull, and its skin—wolf one moment, fleshy gray the next—shimmered with panic.
“You shouldn’t be here,” it rasped. “Not yet.”
Aria pressed the blade to its throat. “Who sent you?”
It laughed. A wet, rattling sound. “We come through cracks. You sealed one. There are others.”
“Where?”
It leaned close—closer than a dying thing should. “In dreams. In names. In the mouths of those who want power without blood.”
She didn’t wait for more.
The blade sank deep.
The mimic convulsed once, then melted—literally—into the soil. No corpse. No trace. Just a stain on the air.
Kael caught up moments later, breathing hard, sword slick.
“Three for three,” he said, scanning the treeline. “But that last one ran like it knew you.”
Aria wiped her blade clean. “It knew we were close.”
Kael knelt near the damp earth. “You think it lied about the other cracks?”
“No,” Aria said. “I think it told the truth. Because it didn’t care anymore.”
He looked up. “You’re saying they want us to chase them.”
She nodded grimly. “Because the further we chase… the more cracks we’ll find.”
They walked back to the village.
The flames had eaten the homes down to glowing bones. But beneath the ashes, the earth still hummed—as if remembering what had happened here.
Aria knelt, palm pressed to the scorched ground.
“I swear,” she whispered, “we won’t let this spread.”
Kael stood guard, one eye on the sky, the other on the shadows between trees.
“You really plan to chase them into the dark?”
Aria rose slowly, her hand still warm with the earth’s pulse.
“I plan to drag them into the light.”
They stayed there until the fires died out.
Then walked on.
The hunt wasn’t over.
It had barely begun.
- Writer
