You Are the Keeper of the Keys

Vladimir Markov found the boar carcass half-eaten in the snow. Still steaming. Still warm. He was hungry, had been hunting with nothing to show for it. So he took the meat. Big mistake.

When the tiger came back and found its kill gone, it circled the empty snow where the boar had lain. Its massive head dropped low, nostrils flaring. Its breathing deepened, its pupils dilated. It recognized the scent. A human. A hunter that would become the hunted.

The tiger tracked Markov back to his cabin. It waited. It watched. It learned his routines. Then it struck with surgical precision, killing him but not eating him. The locals said Markov had been "marked by the tiger." They knew what this was. Pure revenge. No one steals food from the king of the Siberian forest.

The scales demanded balancing. This was personal. In the tiger’s mind, no higher reasoning interfered. No spiritual voice whispered restraint. The tiger had acted on pure instinct.

But you carry something the tiger does not.