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The forest breathes in frost.
Ashfang moves through it like a thought too sharp to speak.
Snow rests in a thin veil across the underbrush, silvered by a patient moon. His paws press down without sound, weight distributed with practiced precision. Every muscle in his broad shoulders rolls slow and deliberate beneath charcoal fur. The air tastes of pine sap and distant stone.
And there.
Rabbit.
Not seen. Felt.
A tremor beneath roots. The faint, rapid percussion of a heart drumming panic into the soil. Ashfang lowers his head slightly, amber eyes narrowing, not in cruelty but in focus. Hunger is not rage. Hunger is arithmetic.
The wind favors him. It slips from prey to predator, carrying with it the scent of warm fur and crushed clover. His tail stills. Even the scar over his eye seems to sharpen.
One step.
Pause.
Another.
The rabbit bursts from brush in a white blur, snow scattering like shattered glass. For a heartbeat, it thinks it has won. Its legs pump, frantic and desperate, carving erratic lines across the clearing.
Ashfang lunges.
He does not sprint wildly. He calculates. He angles. He cuts left before the rabbit does, intercepting instinct with experience. Snow erupts beneath his paws as he drives forward, powerful and silent until the final bound.
Impact.
The forest flinches.
His jaws close swift and clean at the base of the rabbit’s neck. No prolonged struggle. No unnecessary suffering. The frantic heartbeat stutters, then stills against his tongue.
Ashfang stands over his catch, chest rising slow, breath curling white into the cold night. He does not celebrate. He does not gloat.
He bows his head once, brief and reverent.
Survival secured.
Then he lifts the rabbit gently between his teeth and turns toward the deeper woods, where unseen eyes wait and hunger sleeps curled in dens of woven pine.
The moon watches him go.
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