Veilthorn smelled of smoke, wet stone, and unspoken threats.
Corvin walked its streets with calm purpose, blending effortlessly among mercenaries, hunters, rogue mages, and drifters. Here, anonymity was a shield and a weapon.
The Mercenary Guild squatted near the center of the town, a brutalist building of blackwood and dark iron. Some simple banners were the only indicator of the building.
He pushed the heavy doors open.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of sweat, ale, blood, and old parchment. Rough warriors lounged at battered tables, studying job boards or brokering contracts over whispered deals.
No one looked up.
He approached the front desk, a slab of obsidian etched with old contract glyphs. Behind it sat a bored scribe, an elf with silver hair tied back in a harsh braid, ink stains blotting his hands.
Corvin spoke first, his voice low and cold.
"I'm here to register."
The scribe looked up, studying him, the way a butcher studies new stock.
Name?"
Corvin considered for half a heartbeat.
It was better in long term to establish a real identity. No lies that would collapse under inspection.
"Corvin Blackmoor."
The scribe scratched it down without a blink.
"Previous Guild affiliations?"
"None," Corvin said sharply.
The scribe nodded. It wasn't unusual. Many lone wolves found their way here after burning bridges elsewhere.
"Skills?"
Corvin allowed a slight smile to touch his lips.
"Blades. Fieldcraft. Lightning Affinity. Subtle work."He left it deliberately vague.
Better to be underestimated.
The scribe marked something on a secondary sheet.
"Standard registration fee is ten silver crowns," he said. "Paid now. No refunds if you die tomorrow." He added with a smirk.
Corvin placed the coins without hesitation.
The scribe pushed forward a thick leather bound ledger.
"Mark it with a drop of your blood here," he said, sliding a slender ritual knife across the table. "Standard oath. You work for coin. You take no missions against the Guild or its interests. You understand?"
Corvin nodded.
He drew the knife lightly across his palm, a shallow line of crimson welling up, and pressed it against the ledger's open page.The magic embedded in the book flared once, a faint violet color.
Contract sealed.
The scribe took the ledger back with a grunt and handed Corvin a plain iron badge engraved with a simple mercenary rune.
"Welcome to the Guild, Blackmoor," he said without enthusiasm. "Jobs are posted every morning."
Corvin took the badge, slipping it into his belt.
As he turned to leave, the scribe called after him.
"You want to live long in Veilthorn, merc? Pick your contracts wisely. This place chews up idiots."
Corvin smiled thinly without looking back.
He had no intention of being anyone's meal.
--
The air inside the Nexus Bastion shimmered faintly, as if reality itself hesitated to exist within its walls.
Here, suspended between planar boundaries, the Circle of Arbiters gathered in secret. Unseen, untouchable by mortal politics.
The chamber was vast and dimly lit. 6 seats of obsidian and starlight curved around a pulsing sigil inscribed into the polished stone floor.
One for each major power.
One seat each for Humans, Elves, Aetherborn, Demons and Feralis. Another Seat was the the leader of this council. Each representing ancient oaths and agreements made after the Sundering.
They did not gather lightly.
Today, their faces, veiled in illusion, shadows, or polished masks all turned toward the center where a single artifact floated: The fossil sketches. The spectral recordings of the Verdant Shroud disturbance and the Rector's encoded warning.
The first to speak was Arbiter Solen Vaen'thal, representing the Elves. An ageless figure of white hair and sharp silver eyes.
"Confirmed reports of magical instability. Fossil remains inconsistent with known racial morphology. Strange soul residue detected in residual scans. Fossils resembling the Old Enemy."
His voice was calm, clinical.
Yet under the polished words, unease crept like a splinter.
Another voice spoke, guttural and oily. From the Demon Seat.
"It must be a beast," rumbled Arbiter Malzarek, a horned silhouette flickering with embers of brimstone."Merely some remnant of the old wars. A creature, and nothing more. Your delicate senses are overreacting Elf!"
"You assume much," said Arbiter Ysirael of the Aetherborn, an Air elemental. Her voice like the hum of distant stars. "If it were merely a beast, why does it evade detection even now?"
Soft murmurs filled the chamber.
The Human Arbiter, a stoic man known only as Gareth of the Iron Mantle, leaned forward.
"Containment is key. If this creature... threatens planar stability, the Sundering could repeat itself."
Silence fell like a guillotine.
No one wanted to say it aloud. But everyone remembered.
One breach had nearly ended all existence. Another would not simply reshape Valtheris. It would consume it.
At last, the presiding Arbiter, a figure whose seat remained deliberately veiled even from the others spoke.
"Deploy the Inquisition," the veiled Arbiter commanded. "Quietly. No grand banners. No public warnings. Find the anomaly. Erase it before it festers."
Six sigils flared in agreement, though some flared slower than others. Dissent masked by ceremony.
The veiled Arbiter continued.
"Begin at the Verdant Shroud. Fort Vael'Zareth is already under surveillance. Search for... irregularities, strange monsters, unusual shapes and huntings."
A pause.
"And remember," the voice lowered to a whisper that seemed to tremble the very air.
"If it is not merely a beast..."
"If it thinks..."
"If it evolves..."
"Destroy it at all costs."
The sigil in the floor pulsed once, sealing the orders into planar law.
The gathering dissolved into mist and silence.
And across Valtheris, the hunters began to move.
--
The Inquisition moved with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.
No banners. No grand proclamations. Only silent detachments of specialists slipping through the mist choked forests, shadowing the crumbling ruins and broken paths around Fort Vael'Zareth.
They moved in teams of five: one Arcanist specializing in detection, two battle-hardened Inquisitors trained in psychic nullification, a Spellwright to maintain containment glyphs, and a Keeper to record all findings.
Their orders were simple.
"Seek irregularities."
"Isolate mutations."
"Eradicate deviations."
They believed they hunted a beast. A monstrous anomaly birthed from ancient magic gone feral.
A twisted stag whose antlers burned with unnatural fire. A serpent coiled with shifting scales that shimmered like broken mirrors. A hawk whose shadow stretched for leagues, blotting out the sun.
These were the shapes painted in their minds.
None among them considered the possibility that the anomaly had taken a thinking form.
None dared imagine that it walked on two legs, spoke in perfect cadence, and slipped between them unnoticed.
They found signs quickly.
In the deep wilds of the Verdant Shroud, hunters whispered of beasts behaving strangely, packs of dire wolves driven mad with bloodlust, trees blackened where no fire had touched, streams that ran sluggish and heavy with the scent of iron. Any superstition or a local folk's legend became their targets.
The Inquisition culled them without mercy.
A mutated boar the size of a carriage, its tusks crackling faintly with wild aether? Slain and incinerated.
A clutch of luminous serpents nesting near a leyline fracture? Trapped in binding fields and dissected.
Every deviation was recorded. Every corpse burned. Every trace wiped clean from the ledger of existence.
But none of them, not one matched the spectral signature hidden in the Verdant Shroud's disturbed ruins.
The Inquisitors grew restless.
Their Spellwrights crafted new, wider sweeps. Detection runes were layered across dozens of miles. Scrying pools shimmered under moonlight, searching for patterns. Wards were reinforced, designed to trigger on beats anomalies, should any beast cross their thresholds.
Still nothing.
Unspoken doubt began to seep into the ranks.
Was the creature burrowing deeper into the wilds? Had it fled into the planar cracks that riddled Valtheris' unseen veins? Or had it simply… changed?
The senior Inquisitors dismissed such thoughts harshly. "The creature is a beast," they insisted. "Unthinking. Instinctual."
But as days stretched into weeks, even they could not deny the feeling gnawing at the edges of their minds.
This was no mindless horror. Something intelligent and clearly more patient compared to them.
Yet still, they searched for twisted claws and sharpened fangs, never realizing the real monster wore an elven face.
The Inquisition swept wider. Their focus intensified.
But the true predator had already slipped and it was growing stronger every day.
--
What began as consensus in the Nexus Bastion soon unraveled into quiet betrayal.
Days after the Inquisition's deployment, cracks formed behind the veils of diplomacy. Though the official directive was to find and destroy the anomaly, not every Arbiter believed that was the wisest path.
What if the anomaly truly was the Old Enemy, the Evolving Nightmare. It was still a single unit. Not a swarm. Not an invasion force.
A single evolving entity. An entity that could be captured. directed and used.
If it could be bound, it could be weaponized.
And if one faction claimed that power, the balance would shift.
In Valtheris, influence over planar activity was granted by contribution: manpower, magic, victories. The more a faction offered, the more they gained.
If the other races remained bogged down fighting a threat one group secretly controlled?
That group could rise above them all.
The calculus was ruthless.
Within days, covert orders were issued.
Elves sent a team of shadowbinders and Dark Elven assassins to east of Fort Vael'Zareth to trail the Inquisition without revealing themselves.
The Humans dispatched an Iron Mantle scouts team, trained in mental fortification and magic suppression, to triangulate the disturbance.
Even the Demons, disunified as they were, unleashed a cabal of bloodmarked assassins into the western edge of the Shroud, their goal whispered from Sin Lords with clashing agendas.
Only the Feralis and Aetherborn did not intervene. For Feralis this creature was just another predator. If it can be killed it'll be hunt therefore it was not better, smarter, stronger or more dangerous compared to their animalistic minds. To Aetherborn however, it was different. The elementals considered organic beings of the planet at best chaotic, at worst destructive. Until this destruction was targeting the planet itself they will not care. They always considered themselves as the patience guardians of the planet and watchers of the chaotic races, not actors.
Each faction moved or watched in silence.
Each hoped to locate the anomaly first, either to destroy or to subvert the Inquisition's progress just enough to delay and capture it themselves.
Just long enough to isolate and own it.
What they did not realize was that the anomaly had already slipped their nets.
It did not sleep in a beast's den.
It did not hide in the shadow of ruins.
It was establishing himself with an elven body.
--
Days passed as Corvin slipped deeper into the heartbeat of Veilthorn.
At first, he was stingy with his spores. Counting each and every one of them looking for better targets every day. His approach changed on the end of the first week. He was siphoning anyone who was not higher than an Arcanist.
The memory of the orc encampment still burned clear. The moment a Battlemage had sensed his spore the moment it tried to latch and almost blown his cover with a shouted alarm. That single brush with danger had taught him caution sharper than any knife.
Thus, during his first week in Veilthorn, Corvin rationed his siphoning carefully:no more than two spores per individual per day.Never targeting anyone stronger than an average Arcanist.Never drawing attention to himself.
Veilthorn buzzed with too many shifting faces for anyone to notice a lone mercenary growing stronger.
Each thread of stolen magic and memory layered new weapons into his growing arsenal.
Still, discipline ruled his every move. Never aggressive absorption. Never patterns that could be traced. Always patience, stealth and cold calculation.
Power built inside him, slow and methodical.
He siphoned every resident of the town to the limit. Veilthorn would continue to feed him, but only until he was ready for the next phase.
Close to his second week, Corvin returned to the Mercenary Guild.
The air inside was thick with the stink of blood, sweat, and ambition.
He approached the job board casually, scanning the postings with careful detachment.
Most jobs were petty work: bounties on drunk mercs, escorting supplies, local brawls.
Mostly useless to him, then he spotted it:
"Reconnaissance Assignment - High Risk, High Pay"
Sparse details: suspected smuggler activity near the southern disputed borders. No direct confrontation required unless attacked.
Isolated. Dangerous enough to cull the foolish. Subtle enough for a shadow to slip in unnoticed.
Corvin tore the posting free and approached the assignment clerk.
The clerk, a hawk eyed woman glanced up briefly.
"First real job?" she asked, voice dry as old parchment.
"First here," Corvin replied smoothly.
She snorted, unimpressed, and tapped the job sheet with a thin metal stamp, searing a minor contract rune into the paper.
"Minimal engagement. Observe, report. Payment on safe return. Don't get clever, merc."
He offered a thin smile as he pocketed the stamped contract.
He had no intention of fighting fair. Only feeding smart.
That night, while Veilthorn slumbered under a thin misting rain, Corvin prepared.
Blades checked, armor tightened, spare supplies hidden within his storage ring.
Before the first light of dawn kissed the mist shrouded roads, he slipped out of Veilthorn's crumbling gates.
Southward.
Toward the waiting caravan.
Toward new prey.
And toward the first real thread in the web he was quietly spinning across this broken continent.
Corvin moved like a phantom through the dying mist.
The Dark Elf caravan snaked its way across the broken trails south of Veilthorn. A ragged procession of armored guards, covered wagons, and hooded figures.
Corvin crouched atop a low ridge, cloaked in mist and silence, his presence reduced to a ghostly whisper.
He watched.
Patience had been his shield, from the burning cities of Earth to the savage wilds of Valtheris. It served him now.
He counted numbers, mapped patrol rotations, marked blind spots.
He used the stealth arts siphoned from Veilthorn's lesser predators, blending Dark Elven agility with the ruthless fieldcraft of Earth's special forces.
Every movement calculated. Every breath controlled.
At first glance, the caravan seemed typical, hardened mercenaries, minor Arcanists maintaining barrier wards, merchants or slavers haggling over crates.
But Corvin dug deeper.
Spores drifted invisibly from his hidden perch.
He attached them carefully, each mercenary, each wagon driver, even the low ranked Arcanists have not felt the unseen threads latch onto them.
And with each connection, Corvin siphoned:
Names, routes, secrets.
And something darker.
The wagons weren't filled with goods.
They were filled with slaves.
Men, women, and even children, shackled and drugged, hidden under false partitions.
Not for sale to simple markets.
They were being moved south, deeper into Dark Elf territory.
Destination: a Magus. Not just any Magus, a Dark Magus, whispered among the guards with superstitious dread.
A sorcerer capable of raising the dead.
Not as shambling corpses, but as disciplined, tireless soldiers. Cannon fodder molded through dark arts into weapons of flesh and bone.
Corvin's heart hammered once, sharply.
Excitement, raw and undeniable, surged through him.
For the first time in this world, he had found something resembling the forbidden arts he craved.
Proof that deeper, darker magics existed here.
Proof that his path, his evolution could reach even greater heights.
He let the emotion flicker briefly, then buried it beneath cold calculation.
He recorded every useful detail, caravan numbers, escort patterns, approximate slave count.
But he did not report the Dark Magus.
No. He would keep that knowledge close. It was too valuable to waste.
When Corvin returned to Veilthorn, he filed his official report with the Mercenary Guild:
"Confirmed Dark Elf caravan. Multiple wagons. Approximately thirty captives, likely intended for sale or labor south of the border. No direct engagement."
The clerk stamped the parchment and handed over a modest pouch of coin.
Transaction complete.
Mission accomplished.
Corvin tucked the pouch away without a second thought.
The real prize waited far beyond the Guild's simple rewards.
A new path. A darker current. A deeper evolution.
Power. He would need more, far more. The human continent, locked in endless wars, would offer plentiful prey, if he was ready.
Not yet. He needed more completed assignments first, to build credibility. To move freely when the time came.
And once he was strong enough, once he could siphon, kill, and absorb that Dark Magus..
He would find him. Study him. And when the time was right... Absorb everything he had to offer.
Power called to him. And he would answer.
Veilthorn was only the beginning.
--
Months passed.
The Inquisition swept the Verdant Shroud and its surrounding wilderness with ruthless efficiency, leaving no grove, no cave, no hollow untouched.
And yet, they found nothing.
The anomaly, the beast, as they still believed remained elusive.
Sabotage by covert agents from the Circle's own factions slowed their progress heavily: slight misdirections in patrol routes, delayed orders, minor sensor failures during detection sweeps. Nothing overt. Nothing that could be proven.
The commanders grew restless.
Reports of strange animal behavior, wild magic surges, and minor aetheric disturbances trickled in. None matched the spectral signature recorded at the Verdant Shroud.
Frustration mounted.
At Fort Vael'Zareth, the ranking Inquisitors met under veiled secrecy. A decision was made.
Expand the search.
If the beast had fled the wilds, perhaps it had slithered closer to civilization.
New orders spread like wildfire.
Inspect all minor settlements within two hundred miles.
Monitor caravan routes, trade posts, and border towns.
Investigate any strange magical occurrences, no matter how small.
Identify and catalog all unregistered magic users, no matter their rank.
The Verdant Shroud was no longer the sole focus.
Towns like Veilthorn, lawles and 'forgotten' entered their radar.
But they did not understand how far behind they already were.
In the unseen shadows of Veilthorn, Corvin had grown.
While the Inquisition floundered in forests and fields, he completed mission after mission. Observation assignments, minor assassinations, resource raids.
Each assignment honed him sharper. Each kill wove more stolen strength into his core.
By the time the Inquisition's expanded perimeter brushed the outskirts of civilization, Corvin had already secured his place among the mercenary circles.
Dozens of clean, efficient contracts completed. A growing reputation among those who mattered and anonymity among those who didn't.
He even earned himself a moniker, Raven. Named for his ghost like efficiency, and the eerie fact that no bodies were ever found after he presented the clear evidence of his assignments. Rumors whispered that the mercenary didn't just kill, he devoured his prey.
And now, as the Inquisition prepared to waste months scouring settlements, Corvin was preparing his next move.
The Human Continent.
A land of open war. A forge for the strong.
Corvin tightened the straps on his traveling gear, checking the documents and supplies carefully hidden within his storage ring.
Veilthorn had served its purpose.
The hunt would continue elsewhere.
--
The caravan was moving toward the city of Eldrithas. Known as the hearth of Murky Waters it was one of the trade hubs. The carriage jolted gently as it rolled over uneven terrain. Corvin, seated near the rear as one of the hired guard, watched the shifting landscape with detached amusement.
News traveled even here: whispered rumors of heightened inspections, of strange beasts still haunting the wilds, of border fortresses sharpening their vigilance. Corvin listened without comment, processing the threads.
He wasn't certain, not entirely yet he felt as if all the recent chaos was about him. But the timing was too convenient, the reactions too measured. Some part of him, sharpened by years of survival, accepted the probability.
He smirked faintly, hiding the expression beneath the brim of his cloak.
Escaping their net.
Again.
He leaned back slightly and summoned his status screen, the familiar pane sliding into existence before his eyes.
[Status]
Name: Corvin Blackmoor
Race: Dark Parasyte (Awakening Stage)
Level: 77
Attributes:
STR: A-
END: A-
AGI: A-
INT: A
WIS: A
LCK: A-
Magic Affinities:
Water Magic: B+
Fire, Earth, Wind Magic: B
Dark, Lightning, Psychic Magic: B-
Blood Magic: C+
Skills:
Shadow Siphon
Telekinesis
Telepathy
Minor Blood Manipulation
Spore Limit: 30 Active Spores
--
Corvin closed the screen with a thought, satisfaction curling coldly in his chest.
He was no longer simply a predator skulking in the woods.
He was evolving into something far more dangerous.
The port, the ships, the Human Continent beyond, they were merely the next steps.
The real hunt had only just begun.