High atop Mount Medved, but with a clear view of the ritual below, three chairs stood aligned, facing the event that was about to begin.
Made of polished marble, serene and white, they seemed to endure the cold of ice and snow with stoic indifference.
Before them, an open space carved directly into the rock revealed that this was an ancient place — one of rare and restricted use. Only the central chair bore the weight of true age, as if it had always belonged there. The other two, positioned symmetrically at its sides, had been built later, carefully crafted to imitate its appearance.
To an untrained eye, the illusion was flawless.
To a sharper, more intelligent gaze, however, the truth was evident.
Those two did not belong.
They had been placed there much later.
"So we'll finally see the end of our problems."
Seated upon the three chairs, three severe figures observed the ritual with the same stillness as the stone around them. To witness even one of them together was rare — all three was almost unheard of.
In truth, they governed everything the North possessed.
Not with mercy.
But with iron resolve.
The North was one of the few known realms where power did not rest in a single sovereign — but in three.
At that moment, two of them seemed restless, their attention fixed on the movements far below. The one seated at the center, however, remained calm. After a brief pause, he spoke again.
"In fact, I spoke to Yelena myself. The boy won't survive today."
A smile — cold, ambiguous, and deeply unsettling — curved across his lips as his eyes remained locked on the ritual unfolding hundreds of meters beneath them.
"Brother… how did you manage to convince that witch to help us?"
The woman seated to his right spoke softly. Among the three, she was the one who showed the most concern.
The man at the center turned slightly toward her.
"Dear sister, there's no need to worry. I have something she needs. And what we're asking for is nothing more than a small favor."
The man seated to the left scoffed, his expression hardening as if the words themselves had offended him.
The eldest continued, unfazed.
"I understand your distrust, brother. But you must trust your older brother. There are things that woman would kill to keep hidden. Besides… what we're asking isn't much."
"How can you say that? We're asking to corrupt the ritual!"
The woman intervened before the tension could grow.
"It's not corruption. The boy doesn't even have one of his legs anymore. We're just making sure. That's all."
The dissenting brother fell silent.
He knew this plan had been set in motion long ago — and that stopping it now would be impossible.
Still, the weight of interfering with a ritual that had never once been touched pressed heavily against his chest. The thought that this could stain his legacy disturbed him deeply.
But it was the eldest brother who had brought them this far.
And if he believed this had to be done, then he would not be the one to stand in his way.
In the end, there was only one thing he needed to make clear — if only to himself.
He did not like what was about to happen.
Nikolai, like everyone bound to the ritual, remained unaware of what was unfolding above.
Still searching for the twentieth bear, he failed to notice when the nineteen judges aligned, shoulder to shoulder, in solemn silence, awaiting the Gatekeeper's blessing.
Their gazes fell upon the youths like invisible blades.
The Whites and the Browns, proud and distant, made their disdain for most of the candidates unmistakably clear.
The Silver-Blues, by contrast, maintained stoic expressions, their eyes scanning every detail — attentive to the smallest nuance of those who might be chosen.
The Blacks — so often described as kind, almost gentle — seemed to deliver their judgments with a strange eagerness, nearly fraternal, even within the brutality of the moment.
Nikolai could not move.
His body was frozen, yet his mind absorbed everything.
The silent dance of the judges.
The crossing of gazes.
The subtle shifts in posture and position.
It was like witnessing something ancient — a rite older than words, where beasts and men chose one another.
And then…
Order was established.
Almost mythically, the bears were released by the giant, moving forward to take their places before those they had chosen.
"The White chose Irina. No surprise there. She was smart, fast, sharp."
Nikolai was not surprised when Oleg received a Brown — nor when Zoya was granted the other.
But the last Brown caused a ripple of tension.
It hesitated.
At first, its gaze drifted toward Irina… but the White drove it away with a single gesture of absolute supremacy.
The Brown recoiled, though its eyes lingered on her for a few heartbeats longer. Then, almost against expectation, it turned.
Toward Nikolai.
The beast took two heavy steps in his direction.
For an instant, Nikolai's heart thundered.
Then—
The dry crack of the Druid's staff echoed through the cavern.
The Brown froze.
It lifted its head, watching the masked woman in silence. Its eyes returned to Nikolai once more — unreadable — and then it retreated into the darkness.
The scene burned itself into Nikolai's mind like a branding iron.
Confusion.
Anger.
He knew his disability better than anyone. He lived with it every day — in every stumble, every fall. But he had never accepted it as a prison. He had never surrendered. He had risen through strength, never through weakness.
And now, before everyone, he had been marked as unworthy by his own kind.
He wanted to look into the Druid's eyes and understand why.
But he couldn't.
A void rose before him.
No bear dared remain at his side.
First the Brown.
Then the Silver-Blue.
Finally, the Black.
Each advance was interrupted by the same dry sound of the staff. Each creature hesitated, confused — and withdrew into Vybor's darkness, as if an unseen decree had declared him unfit for any bond.
No one understood what was happening.
But the outcome was undeniable.
An empty space before Nikolai.
A void heavier than any spoken sentence.
The silence was broken only by muffled groans — others, like Nikolai, trapped before their own emptiness. Paralyzed in their bodies, they could not scream, could not flee, could not even weep.
They could only groan.
Like animals awaiting slaughter.
"So this is what Marina meant when she said we wouldn't be able to move."
Nikolai's thoughts boiled.
"What kind of magic is this… that turns men into prisoners of themselves?"
The groans grew louder.
The first stage was over.
And the true horror — the part no one ever described — began.
The Gatekeeper stepped forward.
Its gaze settled upon a girl with dark hair and green eyes. There was still something childlike in her expression — something untouched.
It vanished in seconds.
A warm stream ran down her legs, pooling foully on the frozen stone.
Nikolai watched from the corner of his eye.
He felt no pity.
Only anger.
Anger, because the Gatekeeper revelled in it — like an executioner who not only delivers the sentence, but savors every breath of terror before the end.
The bear opened its jaws.
Slowly.
Inevitably.
They closed over the girl's head.
Many turned away.
Nikolai did not.
He stared.
He wanted to see it.
In her final breath, her voice broke the spell of silence.
"Mother…"
Then—
Nothing.
A wet crack split the air as her skull collapsed, blood and fragments spraying like an overturned chalice. The Gatekeeper drank the crimson liquid with obscene pleasure, as if it were the finest wine ever poured.
After a few seconds, it seized what remained of her body and flung it without ceremony into a pit near the cave's entrance.
Nikolai knew that place.
The Drip Hole.
They called it that because rainwater seeped through the stone above, slowly dripping into the abyss below. But water was not the only offering.
The dead were thrown there too.
In Medved, there were no cemeteries. The earth never received bodies. Death did not become a grave — it became a tribute.
All corpses — animal, warrior, or rejected — ended up there, in Vybor, offered to the depths.
They were given to the so-called Rulers.
Bears that never surfaced. Bears said to rule even over the Gatekeeper himself.
It was said they were different — closer to nobility than beasts — and that only the remains of the weakest were ever offered to them. The strongest, the most capable, would never lower themselves to accept the flesh of mere humans.
No one in Medved reinforced this idea openly.
Speaking of it aloud was often considered blasphemy.
After all, the pact was ancient. Powerful. And neither side could afford to deny it.
Yet when one looked at the Gatekeeper — at his sheer size — the idea felt disturbingly plausible.
Would the Rulers truly offer their best in a ritual of submission?
Nikolai found that impossible to believe.
The truth was simpler.
No one had ever returned after daring to enter that hole.
It was sacred. Untouched.
Those who crossed its threshold never came back.
An abyss of secrets and echoes, where bones and memories piled upon one another like forgotten offerings.
That day, the Drip Hole would be fed again.
With the blood and carrion of youths who would never become citizens.
One by one, torn and lifeless bodies were dragged across the stone and cast into the void.
The sound was low.
Yet unbearably clear.
The crack of bones.
Flesh tearing apart.
The muffled delight of an underground feast.
Even without being able to move a single muscle, Nikolai felt every fiber of his body tremble.
Eight corpses.
Seven men.
One woman.
Thrown into the abyss with the same careless indifference — headless, honorless, as if they had never existed.
Soon, silence swallowed the valley.
A strange silence.
An uncomfortable one.
The Gatekeeper lifted his snout, confused.
He was accustomed to screams. To panic. To wide eyes and trembling limbs.
Where was the despair?
Where was the terror that sweetened the flesh?
His gaze settled on the last one.
A frail body.
A visible defect.
A sentence, in the eyes of all.
Disdain flickered across the beast's expression.
Perhaps it would be enough to approach slowly.
Perhaps a sliver of false hope would coax that familiar dread — fear flooding the body, making the meat sweeter.
But as he drew closer…
Something was wrong.
The small one raised his head.
And looked him in the eye.
Not with fear.
With rage.
Raw.
Living.
Palpable.
So intense it seemed to burn the air between them.
"How… how is he resisting my magic?"
That was when the Gatekeeper noticed the blood.
Dripping from the boy's mouth.
And he understood.
He had bitten his own tongue.
Not merely bitten — shredded it. Torn it apart until it became dead flesh inside his mouth.
The pain should have been unbearable. Enough to induce shock. Enough to make him collapse.
But he hadn't fallen.
He was still standing.
Still staring.
Decades.
Decades without seeing someone break his chains.
Decades without meeting a gaze that did not beg — but defied.
The Gatekeeper stirred.
His colossal expression shifted.
Hatred.
Then curiosity.
Then a sick, almost childlike joy.
And finally…
Hatred again.
The paralyzed youths did not dare breathe.
Irina's heart pounded wildly as she strained to see past the silhouettes.
She wasn't sure.
But deep in her chest, she feared the truth.
"How… dare you."
The voice thundered through the mountain like the awakening of a forgotten god.
It wasn't merely sound.
It was a blow against reality itself.
The air quaked.
The ground shuddered.
Even hearts seemed to falter.
Confusion spread everywhere.
The Druid froze.
For nearly a century, she had never lost her composure.
Never.
But beneath the ritual mask, her eyes widened.
She had never known the Gatekeeper could speak human words.
Not the ancient records.
Not the oldest legends.
None of them mentioned this.
None of this had ever happened.
Until now.
The year had already proven unusual.
But this…
This crossed every boundary.
She had never interfered with the ritual.
Not once.
Not twice.
Three times.
And still, she did not understand the reason.
What could be so dangerous about a boy missing one of his legs? What within him demanded such a rupture of order?
The Gatekeeper, for his part, seemed indifferent to her interruptions.
Or perhaps… not.
Perhaps he accepted them. Perhaps he, too, was searching for something within that boy — something no one else could see.
"What do I do…?"
The Druid's whisper trembled, doubt corroding her certainty for the first time in decades.
No one answered.
No one even breathed.
The officers sensed that something was wrong, yet none dared interfere. Marina stood rigid, fury boiling beneath her silence — not directed at the boy, but at the forces twisting the sacred ritual from the shadows.
Something — or someone — wanted that boy dead.
At any cost.
The great Bear appeared indifferent to the turmoil among humans. In truth, his emotions tangled between surprise, outrage, and disbelief — but none could grasp what truly stirred within him.
And that ignorance made the silence unbearable.
Then—
A low growl reverberated through the darkness.
Faint.
Yet heavy.
The White Bear lifted its head.
Not in arrogance.
But in confusion.
In fear.
Something so subtle that no one noticed — and if they had, they would never have believed it possible in such a colossal creature.
The Druid froze.
Not at the sound.
But at what followed.
Another presence.
Another bear.
And Nikolai—
Collapsed to his knees.
His body shook violently. His skin was pale as snow, blood trailing from his mouth in thin crimson threads. Pain devoured him whole, yet he refused to surrender.
He refused to faint.
He refused to die.
His gaze fell to the ground, where a thin layer of snow from the night before still clung to the stone. But his mind drifted — pulled into a memory long buried.
"Come catch me!"
"Mom… stop… I can't reach you… Mom!"
The woman bent down, gathering him into her arms — that small being with mismatched eyes.
"Your mother will always be here. I'll never leave you."
The tears dried.
A smile appeared.
And now, almost a decade later, those who looked upon Nikolai — kneeling, bloodied, exhausted — also saw that same smile.
Delirious.
Out of place.
The darkness of the cave shifted.
From the void, a bear emerged — one no one had ever seen before.
It was no larger than a common black bear, yet its presence weighed heavily upon the air.
A massive scar carved its way across its body — beginning at the lost left eye, running down the face, across the shoulder, and trailing along the ribs.
And still, it walked forward with pride.
Unbowed.
Indifferent to its wounds.
Like a wounded king.
The Gatekeeper did not challenge it.
Did not growl.
Did not move.
He stepped back.
And gave it space.
No dispute.
No dominance.
Only acceptance.
The gray bear stopped before Nikolai.
A beast marked by loss.
A boy marked by fate.
Neither whole.
Neither broken.
No one laughed.
No one dared.
Only silence remained.
The Druid lifted her staff, instinct urging her to intervene — but the Gatekeeper's gaze struck her like thunder.
A warning.
A judgment.
She understood.
She had gone too far.
Nikolai, drowning in pain and memory, raised his clouded eyes. Through blurred vision, he saw the creature before him — magnificent and scarred.
And in that instant…
The bond was born.
Not learned.
Not spoken.
Not sanctioned by ritual or law.
It was recognition.
Essence.
Truth.
A gray bear.
"I did it, Mom."
The words followed him as his body finally gave in.
Nikolai fell to the side.
And at last—
He fainted.