Darkest Days (The Wild Hunt) - 1. There's Something in the Wind

The mountains loomed over the valley, their jagged peaks slicing into the slate-gray sky. Snow had fallen steadily for days, burying the forests and paths beneath thick drifts. Even at midday, the sun struggled to rise above the jagged peak and the dim light barely reached the valley floor before vanishing into the long, bitter night.

The few houses nestling in the shadow of the mountains were quiet, smoke curling from chimneys as people huddled indoors against the cold. Farther up the slope, far out of sight and hidden by the trees, Elias’s cabin stood alone, its roof blanketed in snow and its windows rimed with frost.

In his cabin, Elias sat by the dying fire, staring into its flickering heart. No warmth touched him. Shadows painted the walls in darkness, as only occasional sparks from the fire chased each other up the chimney, quickly escaping from the gloom. The cabin was too small, too quiet. Too empty.

He had spent the day trying to find some small measure of solace. Last evening, he’d braved the icy paths and cutting wind to walk down into the village for the Christmas Eve service. The climb back up would have been treacherous if not for the familiarity of the trail. The snow was deep, the air sharp in his lungs, and the heavy clouds above made the early afternoon feel like the wrong side of dusk.

Elias hadn’t gone to the church for the sermon or the carols. He’d barely noticed the preacher’s words, the murmurs of the small congregation, or the thin voices raised in song. It was the candle that had drawn him there—the quiet ritual of lighting it, the brief solace it might bring.

There, he knelt, in the shadowed corner of the church, near the votive stand dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, patron of nature, wilderness, and manual labor. The rough stone walls around him were cold and silent, broken only by the faint murmur of a hymn from the main altar behind him. His hands trembled as he struck the match, his breath catching when the flame flickered to life. He pressed it to the wick of a candle, and the tiny light began to glow, soft and steady.

“For Adrien,” he whispered. His voice cracked as he spoke the name, his throat tightening with grief. But the tears they never came. He mustn’t.

He bowed his head, his fingers clasped together as he murmured prayers for Adrien’s soul. Adrien was never particularly religious, but Elias had always found solace in the quiet rituals of the church. Yet as he prayed, the weight of memory pressed down on him, and the burned out match slipped from his fingers, falling to the cold stone floor. He knew the preacher saw him there, screaming silently in his grief, and yet he would not never approach Elias about Adrien.

“Please,” Elias whispered, his voice breaking. “Let him find peace. Let him… Let him be safe.”

***

The memories surged, sharp and relentless. Adrien’s smile, bold and teasing, as he worked on carvings by the fire. His confident stride as he led the way through the snow-covered trails. And then that terrible day in the woods.

The child’s scream had pierced the air, shrill and desperate, drawing them both from their work. A pack of wolves, gaunt with hunger, had cornered the boy near the edge of the forest. Without hesitation, Adrien had taken up his axe and charged into the fray, shouting for the weaponless Elias to get help.

By the time Elias returned with others, it was over. The wolves were dead or gone, scattered into the trees, and the boy was alive—but Adrien lay motionless in the dark-red snow, his axe still clutched in his hand.

Adrien’s heroism, how he had fought with unmatched ferocity to save the child, was the talk of everyone for weeks. They had called his death an honorable one, a sacrifice worthy of song. But the words had done nothing to ease the hollow ache in Elias’s chest. The villagers had walked with him, as he alone carried Adrien’s lifeless body back to the cabin, their faces somber and silent. They hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t made comments about the life Elias and Adrien had shared. They had known, of course. It was no secret in the village. It was just never spoken about. People had seen the way Adrien and Elias lived and worked together, their quiet affection, the way they looked at each other. However, no one had ever said it out loud.

Even in death, the silence persisted. Elias didn’t want to bury Adrien in the village graveyard. He had dug the grave himself, in the harsh, frozen ground, beneath the tall pines near the cabin, where Adrien had loved to sit and carve in the summer light.

Now, almost a year later, the grief hadn’t faded. If anything, it felt sharper, heavier, as though time had only carved the loss deeper into Elias’s heart. He had left the church after lighting the candle, silently, and trudged back up the mountain trail with the wind biting at his face.

And now he was here, alone, staring into the muted red glow of the ash covered embers, praying. Praying that anyone out there was listening to prayers.

Adrien’s beliefs had been different—more rooted in the stories of the old gods and the wild forces of nature—but he had loved Christmas with unrestrained joy. He’d hum carols while stringing garlands of holly and pine around the cabin, his bright energy filling every corner of their small home. Adrien’s touch had turned the coldest winters warm.

Elias had tried, once, to hang a wreath this year. It hung lopsided on the door, a pale imitation of the life Adrien had brought to the cabin. He couldn’t bear to do more. The silence pressed too heavily. The shadows stretched too long.

The fire cracked, sending a spray of sparks into the air. The wind outside rose, rattling the shutters. Elias frowned, glancing toward the window. The shadows of the trees outside twisted wildly, their branches slashing against the snow.

But there was something else, faint sounds.

***

Was it the wind, he thought—as a low, rising wail seemed to roll down the mountainside. But as he listened closer, a strange rhythm emerged: a rumble like distant thunder, echoing through the valleys. Rising from it, all too soon, came the sounds of hooves pounding the frozen ground, steady and unyielding, like a heartbeat in the earth. Far off shouting, wild, monstrous.

Elias stiffened, his breath catching in his throat. It could not be. The stories Adrien used to tell flickered to life in his mind—of ghostly riders sweeping through the woods and mid-winter skies, their hunts relentless, their passage bringing storms and shadows.

The fire dimmed even more, and the room drew colder. The sound grew louder, more distinct, as if whatever was out there was drawing nearer with every breath.

Elias rose to his feet, his gaze locked on the window. Frost began to shimmer and crackle on the glass as if under the weight of an unseen force.

And then came the horn.

Deep, primordial, it pierced through his chest, rattles his teeth, turns his marrow to ice—a blast from some ancient instrument, carrying with it the weight of centuries. The horn called again, closer now, and with it came a keening that sent needles of ice down his spine. Not wolf, not human, but something in between that spoke of loss and longing and wild things better left unnamed. The wind rose, rattling the windows with ghost-fingers of frost, whispering words in languages long dead. Somewhere in that whisper, he swears he heard laughter—but wrong, hollow, like a sound echoing through a frozen cave.

Again, the horn. It called to him.

With trembling hands, Elias reached for the door and pushed it open, inch by fearful inch. The night beyond pulsed with something ancient and terrible and beautiful. Snow crystals danced past his windows, catching moonlight like scattered diamonds, but their patterns were wrong—too deliberate, too alive. Above the cabin, the very air seemed to thrum with the thunder of phantom hooves, a sound that bypassed his ears and drummed against his ribs, matching the frantic beating of his heart. It beckoned him, that impossible thunder, pulling at something deep in his soul. His legs moved without conscious thought, boots crunching on scattered wood shavings. The door latch burned cold against his palm.

They welled from the forest, riders like the dark itself, and when he looked up, through gaps in the canopy, a nightmare poured from the storm clouds. Elias’s breath caught in his throat, clouding white in the bitter air as he stumbled onto the porch. The wooden boards creaked beneath his feet, but the sound drowned in the cacophony above.

The stories rushed back to him—tales whispered by the hearth on winter nights like that one. To witness this procession meant death, or madness, or both. Yet he couldn’t look away from the horror and majesty unfolding above him. Ethereal riders emerged from the maelstrom, their forms wavering between solid and mist. Their steeds’ hooves struck sparks from the very air, leaving trails of frost in their wake. Among them bounded massive hounds, larger than wolves, their fur dark as peat and glistening wet. Their eyes glowed green as marsh-light, their paws silent even on the air itself. Each panting breath released the stench of decay, and their howls—those awful, keening howls—sounded like the wails of the dying.

Suddenly, his heart stopped.

There, among the phantoms, rode Adrien. The sight of him hit Elias like a physical blow. His lover was beautiful still, but beautiful like a frozen lake—still and deadly. Frost traced delicate patterns across his bloodless skin, and his lips had turned the deep blue of someone too long in the cold. His dark hair, rimed with ice, streamed behind him like ink in water. He sat astride a pale horse, wearing the green coat Elias had buried him in, now crackling with frost, the fabric shimmering with a rime of tiny ice crystals that caught the moonlight like stars. In his right hand, he gripped the axe they’d found him with, its blade now gleaming with an otherworldly sheen, ice crystals climbing up the wooden handle like tiny vines with thorns. The sight of it made Elias’s stomach lurch—he had tried to pry it from Adrien’s frozen fingers that day, but death had locked his grip too tight. Yet Adrien’s wish would have been for the weapon to be buried alongside him.

Elias reached out instinctively, his fingers grasping at empty air. Adrien’s gaze, once so warm and intimate, now held the vast emptiness of winter skies—eyes like chips of glacier ice, vacant and ancient. Elias screamed his lover’s name, but before his frozen lips could form the sound, the ghostly procession swirled away like snow flakes caught in a gale. But just before he vanished, Adrien turned for one heart-stopping moment and their eyes met across the impossible distance—a flicker of recognition, perhaps, or memory.

The silence that followed crashed over Elias like an avalanche. He remained kneeling in the snow on the porch, Adrien’s warnings echoed in his mind—those who glimpsed the eternal hunt were marked. They either joined the hunt themselves before the year was out, or wasted away, haunted by what they had seen. Above him, the stars wheeled indifferently in a now calm, clear winter sky, but somewhere in the distance, he swore he could still hear the sound of otherworldly howling, laughter, calling him to follow.

He knew, with terrible certainty, which fate awaited him.