Fuck… how can someone massacre a child like this?

Instinctively, I covered my mouth with my hand, feeling my stomach lurch.

The body lay on its back, discarded like a used doll. No… worse than discarded. Broken in a way that seemed almost deliberate. As if someone wanted us to see it in this exact position.

Its skin was slashed with long, irregular cuts. Some were shallow, barely breaking the surface, as if someone had played with the blade, prolonging the agony. Others were deep, almost to the bone. The boy's fingernails were broken, as if he had fought, clawed, tried to grasp something in a final, desperate attempt.

But what stood out the most was carved into his chest.

"Find me"

The words were etched deep into his flesh, uneven, as if the perpetrator had taken their time. The lines were jagged, irregular, some so deep that the blood had congealed into dark, crusted scabs. It must have hurt.

The boy's face…

Whatever they had done to him had left it barely recognizable. It was swollen, marred with dark patches of decay, one eyelid torn as if something had tried to rip his eye out. His lips were slightly parted, filled with wriggling larvae slowly crawling out from within.

He had screamed at the moment of his death.

I was sure of it.

A familiar pressure settled deep in my lungs.

It was just a child.

I felt my throat tighten.

— How… how could someone…? — I whispered, but the words stuck in my mouth.

—The clothes match. The height, the hair color too… — Alice spoke as if she didn't see it. Cold. Detached. She crouched next to the body, her silver eyes scanning it with almost scientific precision.

No.

No, damn it!

— It's just a child! — I spat out, feeling something hot and wild rise inside me. My fists clenched so tightly my knuckles turned white.

— Someone used him! Someone treated him like… a bargaining chip! Like a fucking object and then threw him away when he was no longer needed!

I was breathing hard, my heart pounding in my chest.

— Maybe he even thought we would save him. That if he held on just a little longer… that if he endured just one more day… — I trailed off, my voice breaking.

Alice turned her head towards me.

— Raphael.

I wasn't listening.

— Maybe he begged. Maybe he asked why this was happening. Maybe he called for his mother before that bastard… — I took a sharp breath.

— Raphael!

Her voice hit me like a slap. Firm. Commanding.

I looked at her, and in her eyes, there was no anger. There was something else.

Understanding?

— I know you're furious — she said calmly. — I am too. But if you fall apart now, we won't find the son of a bitch who did this.

I breathed heavily, clenching my hands on my thighs.

I couldn't let this take over.

Not now.

Not here.

I took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

Alice nodded and looked back at the body.

— Now we can start thinking.

She narrowed her eyes and inhaled through her nose.

— Something's off here…

I swallowed hard, still feeling my pulse pounding in my temples.

— What do you mean?

Alice crouched, running her fingers over the ground.

— The forest is full of animals. Wolves, foxes, even boars… If this body had been here since yesterday, there should be signs. Torn flesh, bitten limbs… something.

She looked at me.

— But he's untouched.

I bit my lip.

— As if something kept the animals away — she said quietly. — As if… they were afraid.

And then I felt it.

Something… different.

It wasn't just the usual stench of a decomposing body. Death had a smell—metallic, sickly sweet, sticky like dried blood.

But this was something else.

Something metallic, like blood mixed with ash, like smoke from burned wood and damp earth. A scent that scraped the throat and left a strange bitterness on the tongue, as if something old and forgotten was stirring beneath the surface.

Alice paled.

— This air… I've smelled it before.

— Where?

She swallowed hard and looked at me.

— The ruins in the far north. When we found them, the air smelled the same. The same… heaviness. Back then, the animals wouldn't go near, and the air tasted like ash.

I didn't like this.

— And what was there?

Her eyes glinted in the firelight.

A ritual.

We set up camp nearby, far enough that the fire's glow wouldn't fall on the corpse.

Alice sat across from me, leaning against a fallen log. Her gloves lay beside her, and she turned them over in her fingers as if trying to remember something.

— You've been making quite the noise throughout the kingdom lately — she said.

I looked up.

— What exactly have you heard?

— Different things. Some quite… intriguing.

She raised a flask to her lips and took a long swig of amber-colored ale.

— I'm curious if they're true.

—What?

She met my gaze, her silver eyes unreadable.

— Did you really rape that girl?

I froze.

— Do you think I would?