The moment the arrow left her bow, Nyxia vanished into the mist. Snow whirled around her like restless spirits, masking her scent, muffling her steps. Behind her, the warband's cries turned to screams—short, sharp, and silenced. Beside her, a pair of spectral eyes glowed in the whiteout, Loque'nahak's low growl vibrating through the stillness. Something was hunting the hunters now, and it didn't bleed easy. She crouched beside a frozen tree trunk, fingers brushing the blood-warmed snow. Not hers. Not Loque's. Good. The scent was wrong—too acrid, too human. She closed her eyes for a breath, letting instinct guide her. This wasn't just a patrol. It was bait. And someone had made the mistake of thinking a huntress with a scarred face and a ghost-cat was the prey. "You're not going to survive out there alone," the Sentinel captain had said, her voice low but not unkind. "You should stay. Let the wounds heal before you chase ghosts."
Nyxia hadn't answered then. She remembered standing in the doorway of the barracks, the scent of salve thick in her nostrils, her face aching beneath fresh stitches. The claw marks hadn't even scabbed yet. But something deeper than flesh had torn—something no healer could reach.
"They're not ghosts," she'd finally muttered, eyes fixed on the dark forest beyond the walls. "They're calling me."
The forest had been quiet that night—too quiet. No owls, no wind. Just the crunch of frost beneath her boots and the racing of her heartbeat in her ears. She'd followed the claw marks for miles, half-limping, half-dreaming, until the world narrowed to a clearing bathed in moonlight.
Then she saw him.
Loque'nahak stood at its center, spectral fur shimmering like starlight against the snow. His eyes locked with hers—not hostile, not afraid. Curious. Ancient. Understanding.
"You were the one," she whispered, voice cracking. "The one who left the scars."
He didn't growl. Didn't run. He simply stepped closer, slow and deliberate, until his nose nearly touched her bruised cheek. She froze, breath shallow, the pain of old wounds flaring—and then fading. The cold left her. The ache melted. And in that heartbeat, something passed between them. A vow not spoken, but felt in the marrow. A branch snapped to her right.
Nyxia's eyes snapped open. The memory bled away like fog under sunlight, but the feeling lingered—warmth, strength, the weight of a promise made beneath silver stars. She rose silently, drawing another arrow with practiced grace. Loque'nahak melted from the treeline at her side, his spectral form rippling like moonlight on water. He didn't need to speak; the tension in his body told her everything.
They were surrounded.
She smiled faintly, the old scar on her cheek pulling tight. Let them come. The girl who'd once limped through these woods was gone. What remained was a predator in her own right—and the wild would remember her name.
They came in fast—four shadows breaking from the trees in a pincer formation, blades drawn, eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hunt. Nyxia didn't move at first. She waited, still as frost, until the first one lunged.
Then she erupted.
Her arrow found his eye before his foot hit the ground. The force of it snapped his head back with a wet crunch, and he crumpled, twitching. The second raider barely had time to register the death of his brother before Loque'nahak struck—silent, ghostly jaws sinking into his throat with ethereal fire. He didn't scream. The blood hissed as it hit the snow, steaming.
Nyxia rolled under a blade swipe, came up behind the third, and drove her dagger into his kidney. He howled, spasmed, and she twisted the blade upward, carving a path through meat and muscle. His insides spilled onto the forest floor with a sickening squelch, heat rising in plumes from the gore.
The last one hesitated. Just for a breath. But that was enough.
She moved faster than thought—an arrow to his thigh to drop him, a boot to his chest to pin him. He choked as her blade pressed to his throat, wide-eyed and shaking. Snowflakes clung to his lashes.
"Who sent you?" she growled, pressing until blood welled beneath the steel.
"I—I don't know her name," he gasped, voice ragged. "She just said the scarred hunter wouldn't see another moon. Paid in gold. Void-touched eyes. Pale hair."
Nyxia's expression didn't change, but something inside her did.
Void-touched. She'd heard those words before. Long ago.
Without another word, she slit his throat. Clean. Cold.
Blood sprayed across the snow in a crimson arc, steaming as it sank. Loque'nahak padded to her side, nuzzling her hip softly.
She didn't look down. Her eyes were on the trees now—watching for the next threat. Or maybe, the past coming to collect its debt.
The bodies lay cooling behind her, but Nyxia barely noticed. Her breath came in controlled exhales, misting the frigid air. She knelt beside the corpse of the last man, fingers sifting through his belt pouches, searching for anything—coin, sigils, a letter. And then she found it.
A small scrap of parchment, half-burned at the edges, sealed with wax bearing the unmistakable swirl of a void rune. Her blood chilled. That mark hadn't been seen since the Battle of Starfall Reach—when whispers turned allies into monsters, and night elves tore at each other under the maddening pulse of the void.
She broke the seal.
The note was short. Brutally so.
"She remembers. Kill her before she starts looking."
No name. No sender. Just a smear of purple ink that shimmered faintly in the gloom—void essence, harvested from a living source. The kind only those deep in the practice could handle without losing themselves.
She stood, eyes scanning the treeline as if the words themselves had summoned something. And perhaps they had. Loque'nahak gave a low growl, tail twitching. His hackles were raised.
"I know who this is," she whispered, the words tasting like iron. "Ves'Sariel."
A name she hadn't said aloud in years. Once a priestess, once her friend—now a revenant of shadows, twisted by the void she had sworn to master. Ves'Sariel had vanished after the war, her temple left in ruin, her acolytes either mad or dead. And yet, if she lived… if she remembered…
Nyxia clenched the parchment, crushing it in her fist.
Then it's only a matter of time before she comes herself.
The temple was barely recognizable.
Once, it had been a place of serene moonlight and sacred rites—a sanctuary of the Elun'thir Sisters, tucked between stone and starfall in the cliffs of Ash'myra. Now, it was a bleeding wound in the land. Twisted trees groaned beneath the weight of dark banners, their leaves blackened, their trunks veined with void crystal. Statues of Elune lay shattered, replaced by crude effigies of Ves'Sariel—tall, faceless figures of writhing stone and bone, eyes socketed with screaming mouths.
Nyxia moved silently through the outer sanctum, Loque'nahak a wraith at her side. Her eyes scanned the pillars—each one pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat underground. The smell was the worst: incense mingled with rot, wet flesh, and something ancient enough to make her stomach churn.
Then came the chanting.
Low, guttural. Wrong.
She ducked into the shadows of a collapsed wall, peering into the central atrium. A ring of twisted night elves knelt before a blood-drenched altar, their bodies warped beyond recognition—spines arched like spiders, mouths torn wider to speak the void's tongue. Some had extra limbs. One dragged its entrails like a bridal train.
At the altar stood a high acolyte, draped in robes of living silk, her face hidden behind a mask made of flayed bone.
"She comes," the acolyte rasped, head tilting unnaturally. "The scarred one returns to the womb. Make her bleed. Make her sing for our goddess."
Then the ambush sprang.
The ground beneath Nyxia exploded—hands clawing through stone, dragging her down. She rolled, lashed out, her dagger slashing through the eye of one attacker before its teeth could sink into her thigh. Blood fountained in a black arc, spraying her armor. Loque'nahak roared, spectral form erupting into primal fury. He barreled into the fray, ripping one cultist clean in half, spine cracking like dry wood.
Another leapt at Nyxia from the shadows—limbs too long, fingers like knives. She ducked, grabbed its jaw, and ripped it off. The scream gurgled into silence as she buried her blade through its temple, twisting until bone split with a sharp pop.
More poured in.
Loque's claws left viscera in their wake—one cultist's chest opened like a book, ribs snapping outward. He snarled and tore through a second, flinging its lower half against the blood-slick walls. Nyxia moved with grim poetry—arrows shot at close range, one shaft lodging so deep in a cultist's gut it pierced its spine and pinned it to a pillar. Another attacker got close enough to slash her cheek—she responded by shoving her dagger up through his chin and into his skull, his body spasming before going limp.
Breathing hard, blood dripping from dozens of cuts—hers and theirs—Nyxia stood amidst a scene of ruin.
Limbs littered the floor. The walls pulsed with fresh blood. And yet, behind the altar, a door had opened.
A whisper carried on the darkness.
"Come, Nyxia… I've been waiting to see what you've become." The door yawned open like a wound in the stone, slick with veins of void crystal that pulsed with every step Nyxia took. Behind her, Loque'nahak lingered at the threshold, unwilling—or perhaps unable—to pass. She gave him a glance, a silent command.
Stay.
This was something she had to face alone.
The corridor narrowed, the air thickening with memory. It smelled like moonpetals and old parchment—familiar, achingly so. She passed the old prayer chamber, now webbed with tendrils that pulsed like a heart. Her fingers brushed the doorframe, where her name was once etched in gentle druidic script. Someone had gouged it out.
She stepped into the sanctum.
It hadn't changed.
A small chamber of marble and silver,
now laced with crawling vines of void-inked corruption. And there, seated upon the dais where they once shared whispered dreams and trembling confessions, was Ves'Sariel.
She had not aged.
Hair like liquid starlight spilled down her shoulders, though voidlight danced in her veins like lightning beneath her skin. Her eyes were twin eclipses—deep, devouring. She wore no armor, only a flowing robe that clung to her body like shadow made silk. Around her neck still hung the moonstone Nyxia had given her the night they'd first kissed.
"You still wear it," Nyxia said quietly.
Ves'Sariel looked up, her voice a melody wrapped in grief. "Of course I do. It was the only piece of you that didn't leave."
Silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring. Nyxia took a step forward.
"You sent your followers to kill me."
"I warned them not to," Ves'Sariel murmured. "But they hear my hunger as prophecy. They think if they tear you apart, I'll be whole again."
Nyxia scoffed. "You chose this."
"I chose knowledge. Power. I didn't know the cost until it was too late." Her gaze softened, and for just a heartbeat, Nyxia saw the woman she'd loved—under the void, under the madness. "You were always the only thing that anchored me. When you left…"
"I ran," Nyxia corrected, her voice cracking. "You were changing. And I didn't know how to stop it without losing myself."
Ves'Sariel stood slowly, descending from the dais like a specter in silk. "You came back."
"I came for answers."
Ves smiled sadly. "Then here's the truth: the corruption spreads faster now. There is something coming, something deeper than even I can see. And you're not here by accident. The void calls you too, love. Just like it called me."
Nyxia's heart twisted. "No. I'm nothing like you."
A pause.
"Not yet," Ves'Sariel whispered. Then she reached out, fingers almost brushing Nyxia's cheek—but stopped. Her hand trembled. "Go. Before they return. But know this, my hunter… when the stars begin to fall, you'll look for me again."
And then, Ves'Sariel vanished—melting into shadow, leaving the sanctum empty save for the memory of her voice and the faint scent of moonpetals.
The fire crackled softly.
It was small, flickering, tucked beneath a crag of stone outcroppings in the wilds north of Ash'myra. The stars above were dim, veiled behind thick clouds as if even the sky could not bear witness to what had unfolded beneath it.
Nyxia sat near the fire, her back to Loque'nahak. Her armor lay in a pile beside her—chestplate bloodstained, one pauldron cracked. She wore only her under-tunic now, soaked with sweat and blood and ash. Her hands trembled as she stared down at them, black smudges of dried ichor lining the creases of her palms.
Loque laid nearby, silent, his glowing eyes fixed on her with a kind of quiet reverence. He knew. He always knew.
And then—she broke.
Without a word, she shoved the pile of armor off the stone ledge. It clattered and clanged, echoing down into the gorge.
"Damn her!" Nyxia shouted, voice hoarse and ragged. "Damn her, damn me, damn this whole gods-forsaken path!"
She stood abruptly, pacing the camp like a caged animal. Her tail lashed behind her, her breathing sharp and uneven. She grabbed a stone and hurled it at a nearby tree—it shattered bark in a sharp crack.
"She was mine!" Her voice cracked. "She was light, she was hope!" Another stone—this one missed, sailing into the darkness. "She looked at me like I was something more than a killer! And I left her! I—" her voice dropped to a whisper, ragged and wet, "I left her…"
Nyxia fell to her knees.
Her claws dug into the dirt, fingers tearing at the soil as if she could bury her shame. Her shoulders heaved, silent sobs wracking her lithe frame. Her face pressed against the cold ground as she whispered again and again:
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"
The fire crackled, casting her shadow like a broken wing across the rocks.
And still, Loque'nahak did not move.
Not until she was silent.
Then, with the patience of ancient snow and the grace of a specter, he rose and padded to her side. He lowered his great head and pressed his forehead gently to her back. Just enough to say: I'm here.
Nyxia didn't flinch.
She leaned into him, arms curling around his neck, her sobs muffled in his fur.
Together, they stayed like that—hunter and beast, soul and solace—as the stars finally broke through the clouds above them.
Dawn came slow.
The fire had died to embers, soft orange light casting sleepy shadows on the stone walls. Nyxia sat wrapped in her cloak, knees drawn to her chest, eyes rimmed red but clear now. Loque'nahak dozed nearby, his spectral body curled tight, one ear occasionally twitching at unseen sounds in the trees.
Birds sang.
The forest smelled wet—moss, earth, and the faint sweetness of spring.
Nyxia turned the moonstone pendant over in her hand. It caught the light, dull now. As if the gem remembered Ves'Sariel's voice, too.
"I should have told her I still loved her," she whispered, voice barely audible.
Loque raised his head slightly, eyes watching.
"I should've said it, even if it meant nothing. Even if she's already gone."
She exhaled slowly, letting the quiet hold her like a warm current.
Then the birds stopped.
All at once.
Every chirp, every rustle, every whisper of life—snuffed.
Loque shot to his feet, body tense. Nyxia stood, gripping her weapons.
Then came the sound: a low, wet groan that vibrated through the stones.
And then the stench—rot. Flesh left too long in the sun. Decay laced with something older. Wronger.
The trees exploded.
A massive form burst through the forest like a meteor, black ichor flinging from its wings. It was a dragon—once a dragon. Now a twisted colossus of festering flesh and void corruption. Its scales had peeled back in places, revealing muscle and bone riddled with tumors. One of its wings dragged uselessly, melting at the edges, dripping necrotic slime. Its head was partially exposed skull, and from its maw oozed a green miasma that sizzled the earth where it touched.
"Move!" Nyxia screamed as the beast lunged.
Loque vanished into the shadows. Nyxia rolled, just as the dragon's tail smashed the stone ledge where she'd slept hours ago. The entire camp disintegrated in a rain of debris.
She loosed three arrows—one pierced the eye, another hit a swollen pustule that burst in a wave of acidic sludge. The third embedded in its throat, but it didn't slow. It roared, and the very air twisted, trees warping, stones melting.
Loque reappeared behind it, slashing across its spine with claws of spectral fury. The beast shrieked and swung its ruined wing, knocking him midair into a tree with a crunch.
"Loque!"
Nyxia charged, using the dragon's lowered head as a ramp. She leapt onto its back, stabbing into a soft patch of exposed flesh. Her blade sank deep, black blood spurting in steaming arcs. The dragon shrieked, twisting violently—throwing her.
She hit the ground hard. Something cracked.
Her ribs screamed.
The rot dragon reared back, bile gathering in its throat, bubbling like molten filth.
She couldn't move fast enough.
Loque appeared again, flinging himself between her and the coming torrent. The bile struck him mid-leap, searing his flesh, burning his fur to ash in streaks—but he landed, tearing out the creature's other eye with a vicious growl.
It reared in agony.
Nyxia dragged herself up and fired one last arrow—straight into its gaping, ruined maw. It pierced something deep.
The rot dragon choked—and exploded in a cloud of noxious gas, blood, and shattered bone.
Silence returned.
The forest was dead around them.
Loque limped to her side, blackened and burned but alive. Nyxia coughed, her face slick with blood that wasn't hers.
They had survived.
Barely.
She looked at the ruined forest, the bones of the dragon still twitching, and whispered through cracked lips:
"…This is just the beginning."