The world was a muffled, green blur.

Ruì Xuě’s lungs burned as he gasped for air, his small chest heaving against the damp earth. The last thing he remembered was the terrifying sensation of the ice slide, his father’s masterpiece, shattering beneath him like sugar glass. He had felt the stomach-turning lurch of a free-fall, the flapping of his own small arms, and then... a collision with a dense canopy that felt more like hitting a brick wall.

He had tumbled through layers of emerald leaves and thick, rope-like vines that whipped his face, until finally, the ground had rushed up to claim him.

"Papa?" Ruì Xuě whispered.

He groaned, pushing himself up. His head throbbed with a rhythmic, dull ache. He checked his limbs, everything moved, though his ribs felt like they’d been squeezed by a giant. But as he looked down, his heart sank.

His beautiful, pristine white fur, the pride of a Snow Leopard, was gone. In its place was a thick, sticky coating of black swamp mud and rotting leaf mold. He looked less like a noble cub of the North and more like a disgruntled lump of wet charcoal.

"Mama’s going to be so mad about the laundry," he muttered, his lower lip trembling.

He stood up and realized the gravity of his situation. He wasn’t in a clearing. He wasn’t near a log. He had landed in the center of what looked like a forgotten nightmare.

Towering stone structures, cracked and leaning at impossible angles, rose out of the mud. They were draped in "strangler figs" that looked like skeletal fingers gripping the rock. In the center of the courtyard sat a massive stone altar, carved in the likeness of a roaring jaguar.

The Sunken Ruins.

Tao Zi had told stories of this place, the ancestral home of the Jaguar Clan, now a cursed graveyard.

"Okay, Ruì Xuě. Think," he told himself, trying to channel his father’s icy calm. "Step one: Orient. Step two: Camouflage. Step three: Find the Alphas."

He looked at his muddy fur. Step two was already done, albeit accidentally. He looked like a piece of the scenery. But step one and three were proving difficult. The jungle here didn’t have the clean, sharp scent of the North. It smelled of decay, sweet jasmine, and something sharp... like musk.

A heavy thud echoed from the other side of the stone altar.

Ruì Xuě froze. His long, thick tail, currently looking like a muddy rope, pressed tight against his leg. He ducked behind a fallen pillar, peering through a crack in the stone.

Emerging from the treeline weren’t the sleek, colorful Jaguar scouts he expected.

They were massive.

Three Beastmen, easily seven feet tall, lumbered into the courtyard. They weren’t cats, they were bears. These were Sun Bears, their fur short and black, with distinctive orange crescents on their chests that looked like bloody smiles. They wore heavy leather harnesses bristling with iron spikes.

"I’m telling you, I saw something fall over the ruins," one of the bears grumbled, his voice like grinding stones. He sniffed the air, his black nose twitching. "Smells like... frost? And wet fur."

"The King wants the perimeter secure," the second bear growled, leaning a massive, serrated greataxe against his shoulder. "If any of those Northern interlopers survived the drop, they’ll head for the altar. It’s the highest point."

Ruì Xuě’s blood ran cold. The Usurper has Bear mercenaries? He knew he couldn’t fight them. He was nine. He was small. He was currently a mud-ball. He needed to move, silently, back into the thick ferns.

He began to crawl, belly to the mud, imitating the way Mo Xiao had taught him to stalk prey. He moved an inch. Then another. He was nearly to the safety of a massive fern leaf when his tail betrayed him.

A nervous, involuntary twitch sent the tip of his tail slapping against a dry, hollow seed pod.

CRACK.

The three bears spun around.

"There!" the leader roared, pointing a massive clawed finger toward the pillar.

Ruì Xuě didn’t wait. He bolted.

"GET HIM!"

Ruì Xuě’s small paws pounded against the slick mud. Behind him, the heavy, rhythmic crashing of the Sun Bears sounded like a landslide. They were surprisingly fast for their size, their heavy boots shattering the stone tiles of the courtyard.

"I’m a leopard! I’m fast! I’m a leopard!" Ruì Xuě chanted in his head, his lungs screaming.

He dived under a fallen archway, skidded through a patch of stinging nettles, and scrambled up a tilted stone wall. But as he reached the top, he skidded to a halt.

The wall didn’t lead to the jungle. It ended in a sheer drop into a stagnant, green-scummed moat.

He turned around, his back to the ledge.

The three bears lumbered up the incline, surrounding him. The leader let out a low, rumbling chuckle, tossing his greataxe into the dirt and reaching out with his massive, meaty hands.

"Well, look at this," the bear sneered, his orange crescent glowing in the dim light. "A little snowy cub, all the way from the mountains. You’re a long way from home, little frost-bite."

"Stay back!" Ruì Xuě hissed, baring his tiny, needle-sharp fangs. He tried to summon his father’s ice, but his core felt cold and sluggish from the fall. Only a few pathetic flakes of frost flickered around his paws. "My Papa is Han Shān! If you touch me, he’ll turn you into an ice cube!"

The bears laughed. A deep, mocking sound that vibrated in Ruì Xuě’s bones.

"Your Papa is a mile away." the leader said, stepping closer. "The Usurper King has a special cage for Northern royalties. He wants to know exactly how the Thousand Fang Tribe found the Prince."

"I won’t tell you anything!"

"Oh, you won’t have to talk to us," the bear grinned, lunging forward.

Ruì Xuě tried to leap to the side, but the mud made his footing treacherous. A massive hand closed around his middle, squeezing the air from his lungs. He was hoisted into the air, dangling like a wet rag.

"Let me go! You big, smelly rug!" Ruì Xuě kicked and bit, but the bear’s leather harness was too thick.

"Tie him up," the leader ordered. "Throw him in the transport crate. The King is waiting at the Sunken Temple, and he hates to be kept waiting."

Ruì Xuě was roughly shoved into a heavy wooden crate reinforced with iron bars. The door slammed shut with a finality that made his heart shatter. Through the narrow slats of the wood, he watched as the bears hoisted the crate onto a long pole, carrying him away from the ruins, away from the path back to his family.

As they moved deeper into the dark, suffocating heart of the jungle, Ruì Xuě curled into a ball in the corner of the crate. The mud was drying on his fur, making it stiff and itchy.

He was alone. He was captured. And for the first time in his life, he didn’t know if his Papa could find him.

"Mama..." he whispered, his voice breaking.

~

[Somewhere in the shadows of the ruins...]

A pair of glowing purple eyes watched the bears carry the crate away. The figure shifted, a long, scaled tail flicking silently behind them.

"The little prince’s friend has been taken," a voice hissed, soft as a snake in the grass. "Should we tell the Master?"

"No," another voice replied, dripping with malice. "Let the Bears deliver him. It makes the game much more interesting."