It became a stampede within seconds.
Eight thousand souls transformed into a panicked mob, their grey gowns streaming behind them like tattered banners as they fled across the frozen wasteland.
The snow was deeper than it had appeared from a distance. Thick, treacherous drifts that caught at ankles and sent the desperate tumbling face-first into the ice.
Damon pushed forward through the chaos, his poor eyesight making every step a gamble.
The world was a blur of grey fabric and white snow, punctuated by the dark shapes of those who had already fallen.
He could hear them all around him, the wet gasps of exertion, the sharp cries as people lost their footing, the growing chorus of wolf howls that seemed to echo from every direction.
Someone went down directly in front of him, their legs tangling as they hit a hidden patch of ice.
Damon tried to dodge around the fallen figure, but the crowd pressed him forward with relentless momentum. His foot came down hard on something soft that gave way with a sickening crunch.
A scream of agony rose from beneath him, a man's voice, high and desperate. "My hand! Oh God, my hand!"
Damon's stomach lurched as he felt bones grinding under his weight, but he couldn't stop.
The crowd behind him was a living thing, pushing him forward whether he wanted to go or not.
He caught a glimpse of the man he'd stepped on; middle-aged, clutching a mangled hand to his chest, fingers bent at impossible angles.
Their eyes met for a split second, and Damon saw accusation there, pain, and the terrible understanding that help wasn't coming.
Then the mob swept him past, and the injured man disappeared behind a wall of fleeing bodies.
Keep your eyes on the gate,Damon told himself, forcing his gaze forward.
The massive structure still seemed impossibly far away, its black ice walls rising like a mountain from the white landscape.
Don't look back. Don't think about it. Just run.
But the screaming behind him was getting worse. Not just cries of fear or pain from falls, these were different sounds. Wet, tearing noises accompanied by shrieks that spoke of violence beyond imagination.
The wolves had caught up to the slowest members of the group.
They're hunting us for sport, Damon realized with growing horror. This isn't about food or territory. They're going to keep killing until we're all dead.
Something heavy hit the snow beside him with a wet thud.
Damon glanced down and nearly lost his footing at what he saw.
A human torso, complete with arms but ending in a ragged mess where the waist should have been. The face was frozen in an expression of terminal shock, eyes wide and mouth open in a silent scream.
The sight sent him stumbling sideways, his balance shot and his mind reeling from the casual brutality of it.
He windmilled his arms desperately, fighting to stay upright on the treacherous ice. After several terrifying seconds, he managed to regain his footing and forced himself to keep moving.
That's when he noticed the silence of movement around him.
Not the absence of sound; the screaming and howling continued unabated behind him, but the absence of other runners.
Somehow, in his struggle to stay upright, he'd moved away from the main group. There was no one beside him, no one in front of him. He was alone on the ice field, isolated between the approaching wolves and the distant gate.
For a moment, his curiosity overcame his survival instincts. He had to know what was happening back there. Against every rational thought in his head, Damon turned around.
The scene that greeted him was pure carnage.
Bodies littered the snow like broken dolls, their grey gowns torn and stained with spreading patches of crimson.
The wolves moved through the chaos with methodical efficiency, their massive forms dark against the white landscape.
They weren't killing randomly, there was a terrible intelligence to their actions, a calculated cruelty that spoke of minds capable of enjoying suffering.
Adrian Hands was maybe fifty yards away, wielding a piece of splintered wood like a club as he faced down one of the beasts.
Even from this distance, Damon could see the desperation in the man's stance, the futile bravery of someone who knew he was about to die but refused to go quietly.
"Come on!" Adrian shouted, his voice barely audible over the wind and screaming. "Come on, you bastard!"
The wolf regarded him with something that looked disturbingly like amusement.
Then it moved.
The creature was a blur of dark fur and gleaming teeth, covering the distance between them in a heartbeat. Adrian managed to get his improvised weapon up, but it was like trying to stop a freight train with a toothpick.
The wolf's jaws clamped down on his chest with a sound like breaking timber.
Adrian's scream was cut short as the beast shook him like a rag doll, tearing away a chunk of flesh and ribs with casual brutality.
The man stared down at his exposed organs, his heart still beating wildly, his lungs trying to inflate despite the massive hole in his chest.
His face was a mask of horror and disbelief, unable to process what he was seeing.
Then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, consciousness fleeing from a reality too terrible to endure.
The wolf finished him with a single bite that separated his head from his shoulders.
Nearby, another soul had somehow managed to leap onto the back of a different wolf, wrapping his arms around its neck in a desperate attempt to strangle it.
The absurdity of the gesture. Trying to choke a creature the size of an elephant would have been comical if not for the man's obvious terror.
The wolf barely seemed to notice its passenger. With a casual shrug of its massive shoulders, it sent the man flying through the air.
He landed thirty feet away with a sound like a bag of wet cement hitting concrete, his body twisted into disgusting shapes.
What happened next that made Damon's blood freeze in his veins.
One of the wolves, a creature that had been savaging a group of souls near the back of the crowd suddenly arched its back and let out a howl of pain that was different from the others.
This wasn't the hunting cry of a predator. This was agony, raw and desperate.
The transformation began at the spine, rippling outward like a wave of liquid flesh.
The wolf's massive frame convulsed as bones cracked and reformed, shortening and reshaping with wet, grinding sounds that made Damon's teeth ache.
Dark fur receded into pale skin, revealing the form beneath, a young woman, naked and bloodied, her face contorted with the same pain that had twisted her wolf shape.
Even as her human form solidified, her feeding continued. She fell upon a man whose lower half was simply gone, torn away by another wolf and began to devour what remained with teeth that were still too sharp, too pointed to be entirely human.
Werewolves,Damon realized, the word echoing in his mind like a death sentence. They're all werewolves.
The revelation hit him like a physical blow. This wasn't just a hunt.
It was a game, a twisted entertainment for creatures that could shift between human and beast at will.
They were being slaughtered by beings that had once been human themselves, monsters that understood exactly what they were taking away with each kill.
Lost in horrified fascination, Damon let his guard down for a crucial moment. He didn't hear the approaching paws on snow, didn't sense the predator closing in behind him.
The first sign of danger came when a shadow fell across the ice at his feet.
He spun around just as the werewolf pounced.
This one was different from the others, pure white fur that seemed to glow against the grey sky, and eyes that burned with an intelligence that was disturbingly human.
More than that, they held an expression Damon recognized with sickening clarity: joy.
The creature was enjoying this, reveling in the hunt and the fear it inspired.
Damon tried to throw himself sideways, but his poor eyesight betrayed him.
He misjudged the distance, the timing, everything. The werewolf's massive form slammed into him with the force of a runaway truck, driving him backward onto the unforgiving ice.
The impact drove all the air from his lungs and sent lightning bolts of agony through his ribcage. He felt something give way inside his chest, ribs cracking, maybe breaking entirely.
The taste of copper flooded his mouth as blood ran freely from his lips.
Above him, the white werewolf's eyes gleamed with predatory satisfaction, its massive jaws opening to reveal rows of teeth like ivory daggers.
This close, Damon could smell its breath, hot and metallic. It reeked of blood and torn flesh.
The last thing he saw before those jaws descended was his own reflection in the creature's eyes, distorted and terrified and utterly helpless.
He spat blood.