The first thing I noticed wasn't the pain.
It was the smell.
Blood. Burnt fur. Rot.
It sat thick in the back of my throat, so heavy I nearly gagged the moment I dragged in a breath. My eyes cracked open to a world of white snow and black-red filth, and for one stupid second I just lay there, blinking up at the trees like maybe if I stayed still long enough, I'd wake up somewhere else.
Didn't happen.
Pain arrived a heartbeat later.
It rushed through me all at once, sharp and deep and wrong, like my body had been smashed apart and then hastily stapled back together by someone who hated me personally. My ribs ached. My arms felt torn to pieces. My legs felt hollow and heavy at the same time. Even breathing hurt.
"Cool," I whispered hoarsely. "That's… encouraging."
My voice sounded like shit.
I swallowed and immediately regretted it. My mouth tasted like iron and ash. My face felt tight with dried blood, some of it mine, a lot of it probably not. When I tried to sit up, every muscle in my body locked in protest so violently that black spots burst across my vision.
I froze, teeth clenched, and waited for the worst of it to pass.
Slowly, carefully, I pushed myself up again.
This time I made it.
I sat there hunched in the snow, breathing like an eighty-year-old smoker, and finally looked around properly.
The clearing was ruined.
Snow that should've been clean and untouched had been churned into black slush and crimson muck. Trees nearby were splintered, bark ripped apart, branches hanging half-broken overhead. Patches of frost hissed where the corrupted blood had touched the ground, the white around them stained wrong, like even the winter didn't want anything to do with this mess.
And there, half-buried in a trench of torn earth, was the dire wolf.
Dead.
Actually dead.
Its skull had been split open so badly I could see the ruined centre of it from where I sat. Dark ichor still leaked from the crack, sluggish and thick, and every now and then the corpse gave some tiny movement when the wind caught it.
Just empty, as I'd assumed, whatever had been inside it was long gone.
I stared at it for a while.
Then I looked down at myself.
My cloak was shredded. My bracer was blackened and cracked, faint smoke still curling from parts of the metal. My arms were a disaster. Bruises, torn skin, swelling. My hands shook when I lifted them, the fingers twitching from strain.
I laughed once.
It came out weak and ugly.
"Still alive," I muttered. "That's nice."
I pulled up my inventory with more effort than it should've taken and fumbled for the health potion I'd rolled earlier. The bottle spun into my hand, almost slipping straight from my grip because my fingers were trembling so badly. I managed to get the thing uncorked with my teeth, then tipped it back.
It tasted foul. Bitter, metallic, vaguely medicinal in the way that made you instantly suspicious of whether it was actually helping or just dissolving your organs in a different direction.
Still, warmth spread through me a few seconds later. Not enough to fix everything, but enough to dull the edge and the pain, so that I could move without feeling like my skeleton was trying to burst outta me.
I dragged myself upright.
That was somehow worse.
My knees nearly folded the second I put weight on them, and I had to brace against a nearby tree, forehead pressed to the bark while I waited for the world to stop spinning. My boots sank into wet snow. Somewhere nearby, something dripped steadily into the ruined clearing.
No sound except my breathing and the faint creak of branches overhead.
My eyes moved across the bodies again.
I could remember flashes, unfortunately not in a nice orderly sequence where I could point to one moment and say, yes, that was exactly when everything went to shit. Just fragments at this point; I could remember the wolf moving and lots and lots of blood.
I'd been all over the clearing during that fight.
Everywhere.
And I hadn't exactly been aiming with care.
I looked down at my hands again, raw and red and still shaking.
Had I killed them?
Maybe that made me a bad person, and the shock was doing me a favour. Maybe part of me had already made peace with the answer the second Drave and Lira decided to use me as bait.
I swallowed against the nausea in my throat.
"I don't know," I said quietly, though there was nobody around to hear me. "And I don't think I care enough to feel worse about it right now."
The wind shifted, carrying the stink of blood and scorched fur through the trees again.
I stood there for another moment, half-swaying, trying very hard not to fall over like a dying idiot in front of a wolf I'd already killed.
Then I checked my status out of habit.
[Current PP Total: 3042]
I stared at the number.
That was the System for you. Your entire party was wiped out, and your body was ruined beyond belief.
But hey. Points.
Good to know something was having fun.
I let out a breath through my nose and looked around the clearing one last time. I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious. The moon was still out above the canopy, pale through the branches, but everything felt wrong enough that it could've been an hour or half the night.
Didn't matter.
Standing here wasn't going to fix anything.
I needed water. Food. Shelter. A bed. A doctor. Maybe several doctors. I needed to get back before I dropped dead in the middle of the forest and became some future adventurer's tragic environmental storytelling.
So I started walking.
One step.
Then another.
After a few steps, I stopped.
Turned.
Looked back toward the corpse of the dire wolf.
Right. Proof.
Because apparently, surviving a nightmare monster and dragging myself home covered in blood still wouldn't be enough for some people unless I brought back a souvenir.
"Fantastic," I muttered.
Then, with all the joy of a man volunteering to punch himself in the ribs, I started limping back toward the body.
…
The walk back to the village was miserable.
By the time the trees started thinning, I caught sight of the first crooked fence posts through the dark. My legs were working in the technical sense, but that was about the nicest thing I could say about them. Every step jarred something bruised, cracked, or torn, and I'd long since stopped trying to work out which pain belonged to which injury.
The cold air bit at the blood dried across my face and clothes. My cloak hung in ribbons. One sleeve was half-stiff with frozen gore. My right shoulder throbbed in time with my pulse. Every now and then, my vision blurred at the edges, and I had to stop for a second, breathe through it, and keep going before my body got any bright ideas about collapsing permanently.
When I finally crossed into the village proper, nobody noticed me at first.
Then someone did.
The conversation died almost instantly.
A woman near the well dropped her bucket. Two men carrying firewood stopped dead in the middle of the street. The little patch of evening village noise just seemed to fold in on itself as heads turned one by one toward me.
I must've looked fantastic.
Vinley was the first to reach me. He came hurrying over with that strained, hopeful expression people wore when they already knew the answer was bad but were stupid enough to ask anyway.
His eyes flicked over me once, then past me, searching for the others.
"Where is the rest of your party?"
I didn't have the energy for tact.
"Dead," I said.
I reached into my inventory, dropping the dire wolf's claw, and let it fall into the dirt between us with a wet, heavy thud. Black ichor still clung to its base, and even in the dim light, it looked wrong.
A few people recoiled.
"The monster's dead too," I said, voice rough. "So your problem's solved."
Vinley stared at the claw, then at me, then back at the claw. His face had gone pale.
Behind him, someone made a broken little sound that might've been a sob. Another villager muttered a prayer under their breath. I could feel all of them looking at me, not like I was a person exactly, but like I'd dragged something terrible back with me, and they weren't yet sure whether to thank me or fear me.
Fair enough, I guess.
Vinley opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. "You… killed it?"
"Eventually."
That was when my knees nearly gave out.
I caught myself badly, one hand slamming against the nearest post. Pain shot all the way up my arm so hard it made my teeth grind together. A few people started toward me, then hesitated, unsure if touching the blood-soaked child covered in monster remains was wise.
Honestly, I respected the caution.
"I need the reward," I said, before anyone could start offering pity. "Now."
Vinley blinked. "Of course. Yes. Yes, of course."
He moved fast after that.
A few minutes later, I was sitting inside the village tavern, wrapped in a blanket that smelled faintly of smoke and old beer, while the entire room tried very hard not to stare at me and failed spectacularly. Someone had put a cup of water in front of me. Someone else had tried to offer soup. I ignored both.
Vinley returned with a small leather pouch clutched tightly in both hands.
His expression was strange. Grief, shock, guilt. Maybe a bit of fear, too.
"This was for the party," he said quietly.
I looked at the pouch.
Then at him.
He understood immediately and placed it in my hand without another word.
Good man.
I weighed it once, judged it acceptable, then pushed myself back to my feet with all the grace of a haunted corpse. A few people flinched when I moved. That felt a little rude, considering I'd just solved their wolf problem, but whatever.
"Is there a merchant available?" I asked.
Vinley nodded quickly. "At the end of the square. Old Mara's shop."
I turned and limped out before anyone could try talking to me about the dead.
Mara's shop was still lit. She took one look at me as I stepped through the door and nearly dropped the bottle she was holding.
"Sweet gods," she breathed.
"Health potion," I said.
She stared another second, then scrambled to produce one from beneath the counter. It was cloudy. The cork looked old. The liquid inside had the exact sort of colour that suggested poor life choices.
"How much?"
She named a price that was absolutely higher than it should've been.
Under normal circumstances, I would have argued.
Under current circumstances, I put the coins down, took the bottle, uncorked it with my teeth, and drank the whole thing on the spot.
It tasted horrific.
I nearly spat it back out.
Didn't, though, because I had dignity.
Also, it was expensive.
The potion hit a few seconds later in a rush of heat that spread from my chest out through the rest of me. I leaned against the counter and swallowed hard.
Mara was still watching me with a look halfway between concern and alarm.
"Still alive," I muttered.
"That's one way to put it," she said.
I left before she could ask questions.
The walk back to the house Helga had rented felt shorter, though I was pretty sure that was only because I had less awareness left to measure it with. By the time I reached the door, I was running almost entirely on the knowledge that a bed existed on the other side of it.
I got inside. Shut the door behind me. Stared blankly at the room for a second.
Mostly, it just felt far away.
I made it to the bedroom by instinct more than thought. My boots thudded against the floorboards. My shoulder clipped the doorframe on the way in, and I hissed through my teeth but kept going. The bed looked like the greatest thing I had ever seen in either life.
I collapsed onto it face-first.
Didn't take my boots off.
Didn't undo the bracer nor pull the blanket over myself.
I just landed there hard, one arm trapped beneath me, cheek pressed into the pillow, breathing slow and shallow into the dark fabric.
Now that I was still, the numbness started settling in properly.
I shut my eyes and, at some point, I fell asleep.
…
Helga returned just before dawn.
The sky outside was still dark blue, the city only beginning to pale at the edges where morning would soon push through. Yartar was quieter at that hour. Not silent, never silent, but hushed enough that the creak of the front door sounded louder than it should have.
She stepped inside, closing it gently behind her.
She caught the iron tang underneath it.
Blood.
She went still.
Not panicked. Not yet. Just instantly alert.
Her hand dropped to the hilt at her side as she listened.
No sign of forced entry. No movement in the main room. No overturned furniture. No struggle. Just the quiet breathing of a house that should have been empty except for one sleeping boy.
Helga moved forward soundlessly, each step deliberate.
The first thing she noticed was the dirt tracked across the floorboards. Melted snow. Mud. Dark reddish smears drying in thin, uneven streaks.
Her expression changed.
She followed them to the bedroom.
The door stood slightly ajar. She nudged it open with two fingers and looked inside.
Fin was sprawled across the bed exactly as he'd fallen, face half-buried in the pillow, boots still on, one arm hanging uselessly off the side. His cloak was torn. His clothes were stiff with dried blood. Not just a little. Not the sort of mess a scrape or tavern scuffle left behind. Enough that for one sharp instant, her chest tightened hard enough to hurt.
She crossed the room at once.
Up close, it was worse.
There was dried blood along his cheek and jaw, streaked down his neck and worked into the collar of his shirt. Bruising shadowed one temple. The skin on his hands was split and raw, the knuckles swollen. Even in sleep, there was tension in him, in the set of his shoulders, in the way his breathing came just a little too shallow.
Helga stared.
Her hand hovered over him for a moment before finally coming down, slow and careful, to brush a strand of hair back from his face.
Warm and breathing.
The relief that moved through her then was so fierce it almost made her angry.
"What did you do?" she whispered, though there was no answer to be had from a sleeping child.
Her fingers shifted lightly along his cheek, wiping away a flake of dried blood with her thumb. Fin stirred faintly but didn't wake. Just frowned a little in his sleep, like even unconscious, he was still annoyed.
That, more than anything, nearly made her smile.
Nearly.
Instead, she stood there in silence, looking at him properly.
He seemed smaller asleep. Younger. Easier to remember as a boy and not the strange, sharp little creature who watched too much, noticed too much, and carried himself sometimes as if he'd already lived half a life before she found him.
But this was still her son.
Bloodied or not. Strange or not. The thought came with such simple certainty that Helga did not bother arguing with it.
Her jaw tightened.
Someone had done this. Or something had. Whatever explanation waited behind the blood, she knew one thing already. If it had touched him, then she would find it. And when she found it, she would make sure it regretted ever drawing breath.
Carefully, so carefully, he barely shifted, and she pulled the blanket up over him.
Her hand lingered for a second at the side of his head, rough fingers gentling briefly against his hair.
Then she straightened and looked over him one last time.
"Sleep," she murmured. "We'll deal with the rest later."
She turned toward the door, quieter than before, and stepped back into the dim house with something heavier settled behind her eyes than when she'd arrived.
Now the work could begin.
…
The Hand Hall was open, as it always was, though quieter at that hour. The late-night drinkers had thinned out. The morning crowd had not yet settled in. It left the place suspended in that brief in-between state, all low firelight and stale ale and tired pretending they were not avoiding home.
Reina was already there.
She sat in the back booth with one leg stretched out beneath the table, a tankard in hand, looking far too comfortable for someone who had spent half the night chasing whispers through Yartar. When Helga approached, Reina took one look at her face and lost whatever smart remark had been forming.
"You look terrible," Reina said.
Helga slid into the seat opposite her. "And you look like a woman whose best years were spent robbing graves."
Reina snorted and pushed a fresh drink across the table. "That's better. Means you're still functional."
Helga wrapped a hand around the mug but did not drink yet. "Talk."
Reina watched her for a second. "No warm greeting? No fond reunion? No 'Reina, you radiant disaster, how have you survived this long?'"
"Talk."
"Charming as ever."
Reina leaned back a little, though the humour in her face softened when she saw Helga was not in the mood to play. Her eyes sharpened instead.
"What happened?"
Helga looked into the drink's dark surface. "I got home. Fin was asleep."
Reina waited.
"He was covered in blood."
That got her full attention.
Reina's fingers stopped moving against the tankard. "His?"
"Some of it." Helga's jaw tightened.
"And he said nothing?"
"He was unconscious."
Reina let out a low breath through her nose. "I assume this is the part where you tell me you're calm about it."
Helga finally took a drink. It burned down her throat and settled warm in her stomach. It did nothing for the cold behind her ribs.
"I'm calm enough."
"That's concerning."
Helga set the mug down. "You said you had chatter. Start there."
Reina nodded once, expression settling into something more serious. "Word came in quickly from the eastern villages last night. Small contract to handle a wolf problem. Routine work with an established adventuring party."
Helga said nothing.
"They didn't come back," Reina continued. "Not as a party, anyway. Most of them died and there was one survivor reported."
Helga's hand stilled on the mug.
Reina noticed.
"What?"
Helga's eyes lifted slowly. "Go on."
Reina frowned, thinking. "The details are muddy since the villagers were rattled. Said it wasn't just wolves. One of the descriptions sounded wrong. There was alsi mention of black blood."
Helga's face hardened by degrees.
Reina saw it happen and leaned forward slightly. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I'm thinking," Helga said evenly, "that I came home to find my son looking like he'd been used to beat a forest to death."
For once, Reina did not joke.
Helga continued before she could speak. "And I'm thinking that if those reports line up with what was on him, then whatever happened in that village involved him"
Reina sat back. "Well. That narrows the morning."
Silence settled for a moment.
The fire cracked softly nearby. Somewhere across the hall, a chair scraped against the floor. A serving girl laughed too loudly at something a customer said, the sort of brittle laugh people used when they were tired and wanted tips anyway.
It all felt far away.
Reina lowered her voice. "There's more."
Helga looked up.
"I kept digging into the academy rumours," Reina said. "Not the usual noble-child nonsense. The real ones. Missing texts. Restricted vaults being opened without records. A professor in the lower arcane wing disappears, and the matter is buried by sunrise. Students dabbling in things they should not even have vocabulary for."
Helga's mouth flattened. "Soul magic."
Reina gave a single nod.
"They are dressing it up, of course. New terms. Cleaner language. Same rot underneath. Essence transfer. Resonant binding. Convergence theory. You know the type."
"I know cowards too frightened to name filth for what it is."
"That as well."
Helga drank again, slower this time. "How bad?"
"Bad enough that I stopped treating it like rumour." Reina's gaze flicked toward the room, then back to Helga. "There's a bathhouse near the old aqueduct. Condemned years ago, so it's normally empty by day, but doesn't stay empty at night. People have been meeting there, with talks of 'Hooded couriers'."
"A listening post."
"Or a feeder cell," Reina said. "Something small that reports upward."
Helga thought of the book hidden in her cloak. Of ritual circles cut with elegant academic hands. Of old horrors made fashionable for young idiots who mistook danger for sophistication. Then she thought of Fin, asleep under her roof with blood on his face.
"When?"
Reina's eyes narrowed slightly. "You mean when do we investigate?"
"I mean, when do we leave?"
That brought the faintest ghost of a grin to Reina's mouth. "Knew I kept you around for a reason."
"You kept me around because I stab better than your other friends."
"That too."
Reina drained the rest of her drink and rose. "I already sent word to someone who knows the place."
Helga stood with her. "Who?"
Reina hesitated just long enough for Helga to dislike the answer.
"Astele."
Helga stared.
Reina lifted a hand. "Before you say anything, she's good."
"She's fifteen."
"She's alive, which in her line of work usually means she's very good."
"She is a child."
Reina tilted her head. "That would carry more weight if you were not currently marching toward a hidden cult cell because something may have reached your son."
Helga's expression did not change.
Reina sighed. "Fair."
They left the Hand Hall together.
The streets down toward the aqueduct district grew meaner the farther east they walked. The paving stones cracked. Drain water ran dark in the gutters. The buildings leaned too close overhead, as if listening. What little light existed came from weak lamps and shuttered windows, all of it sickly and insufficient.
Helga moved through it as she had never left this kind of life. Her hand rested near her sword, not on it, just close enough to matter. Reina walked beside her with the easy balance of someone who could turn from banter to bloodshed without needing to announce the change.
They found Astele waiting beneath a broken arch where ivy had swallowed half the masonry. She was slight, sharp-faced, and wrapped in a dark cloak too plain to notice unless you were already looking for her. One narrow braid fell over her shoulder. Her hands rested near the daggers at her belt in the relaxed way of someone who had long ago mistaken readiness for comfort.
"Late," Astele said.
Reina snorted. "Good to see you too."
Astele's gaze moved to Helga and stayed there. "You're taller than I expected."
Helga looked her over once. "You're smaller than I expected."
Astele smiled faintly, though it was more edge than warmth. "Usually, how that works."
Reina stepped between the start of an argument before it could properly bloom. "Can we save the mutual disapproval for after the cult business?"
Astele shrugged. "This way."
The bathhouse stood a short distance beyond the arch, hunched between older stonework like something ashamed of being caught. Whatever elegance it might once have had was long gone. The tiled exterior was cracked. The shutters had rotted. Moss crawled up the walls. From the outside, it looked abandoned.
From outside.
Astele led them through a ruined steam chamber, past broken benches and a collapsed basin, then into a maintenance tunnel half-choked by age. There she stopped at a section of wall that looked no different from the rest and tapped one brick twice, paused, then pressed a lower stone with her thumb.
Something clicked.
A seam opened in the wall with a low grind of hidden weight.
Helga said nothing, but the look she gave Reina was sharp.
Reina lifted both hands slightly. "I never said the girl wasn't useful."
The passage beyond sloped downward into older stone, rougher than the bathhouse above it. Candlelight flickered somewhere ahead. So did voices.
Astele extinguished the small lantern at her belt. "Five, maybe six," she whispered. "Usually fewer on weekdays."
Helga drew her sword.
Reina's hand touched her wrist for the briefest moment. "Listen first."
Helga did not like it.
She allowed it anyway.
They moved down the corridor in silence until the tunnel widened near a low archway. Beyond it lay a round chamber with sewer runes carved into the floor and a makeshift table at its centre, piled with papers, old tomes, and inkstones. Five cloaked figures stood around it. Another leaned against the far wall.
One of them was speaking.
"…retrieve the artifact first. Without it, the witch cannot proceed to the next stage."
Another shook his head. "The forge remains unstable. We should not move until the vessel is secured."
Helga went very still.
A third voice, thinner and more nervous, said, "And the child?"
The room seemed to sharpen around her.
A pause.
Then, "Still alive. Confirmed in the outer villages. The artifact remains bound to him."
Reina's breathing changed beside her. Astele's eyes flicked once toward Helga, quick and measuring.
The speaker continued. "Then retrieve both. The project cannot advance otherwise."
Helga's grip on her sword became absolute.
Another cultist leaned over the table, rifling through a page. "If Fin is still moving freely, then-"
That was as far as he got.
Helga moved.
She crossed the distance between one heartbeat. Her first strike took the speaker across the throat before he had even finished the name. Blood hit the table in a hot arc. She drove her shoulder into the next man hard enough to crush him against the stone wall, then rammed her blade into his chest and ripped it free sideways.
The chamber erupted.
Reina was already in motion. She slipped under a wild, panicked swing, cut one man behind the knee, then planted her dagger cleanly through his ribs before he finished falling.
Astele came in from the dark at the chamber's edge. One dagger was plunged into a cultist's throat. The second opened another from hip to spine when he turned too slowly.
Helga barely saw any of it.
There was only the man near the far side reaching for a scroll case. There was another one stumbling backward with Fin's name still fresh in the air. He turned and fled.
Helga could have cut him down before he reached the corridor.
She did not.
Reina noticed and glanced at her once, understanding immediately.
"Let him go?"
"Let him carry the fear," Helga said.
The last man still living in the chamber was the one she had slammed into the wall. He had collapsed badly and was trying to breathe through blood. Helga seized the front of his robes and dragged him half upright.
"Who leads you?"
The man coughed red across his own chin and smiled through it with the awful devotion of someone already half in love with dying. "The vessel lives," he rasped. "Then the master will rise."
Helga pressed the edge of the blade beneath his collarbone until he shuddered. "Names."
He whimpered.
Reina crouched nearby, eyes on the papers scattered across the table. "Helga."
"Not now."
Astele had already begun gathering what she could without smearing the ink. Her face had gone pale, but her hands stayed steady.
The cultist's gaze darted wildly between them. "The boy was meant to die in the rite," he gasped. "His soul to the chain. The rest to the forge."
Helga's hand tightened in his robes. "Who bound it to him?"
But the man had already gone slack. Whatever life remained in him fled on the last rattling breath, leaving his head lolling uselessly to one side.
Helga let the corpse drop.
Reina stood slowly with a page in hand. "This was not just a meeting point."
"No," Helga said.
Astele looked up from the table. "There are route marks here. Names. Partial shipments. References to the academy."
Helga looked around the chamber once, taking in the books, the circles, the notes, the cheap secrecy of people certain they were building toward something grand. Then she thought of Fin in bed, bruised and breathing shallow, with dried blood on his cheek and some hidden piece of this nightmare already wrapped around his arm.
When she spoke, her voice was calm.
Too calm.
"We take everything useful," she said. "Then we burn the rest."
Reina nodded at once.
Astele hesitated only a second before doing the same.
Helga stepped toward the blackened circle cut into the floor and looked down at it, jaw set so hard it ached. She had known, once, what it meant to watch evil gather itself and wait too long to cut it out. She would not make that mistake again. Not when it had already brushed against her home. Not when it had already reached for her son.
Behind her, Reina began stacking papers into a satchel. Astele collected the smaller books and sealed vials. Somewhere above them, hidden by layers of stone and rotting tile, Yartar went on breathing as though nothing beneath it had shifted.
But Helga knew better now.
It was now after someone.
Fin.
…
End Of Chapter!