It was a peaceful night. As the others slept and Darius eventually sheathed his newly cleaned sword to get some sleep as well, Erik remained vigilant. His thoughts wandered in the silence. It struck him that only a couple of weeks ago, he had never heard of Silverkeep or the Tower of Eternum. To him, an office worker thrust into a warrior's life, the idea of journeying to warn a King's Council of a rising Dungeon Lord would have seemed unimaginable. Yet now it was his reality. Did I really adapt to all this so quickly? he wondered. Perhaps it was the urgency and danger that left no room for disbelief or hesitation. Perhaps this world simply felt… right to him, in a way his old life never did. Erik flexed his fingers on the haft of Erythrael. The weapon felt at home in his grasp. Too at home, maybe. He recalled Brogan's words: "Wield it with intent. Feed it battle, but don't let it feed on you."
His gaze drifted to the heavens. Two moons hung among the stars, one a smaller blueish orb, the other larger and silver. In their combined light, he could faintly see his breath as a mist. The night was growing colder. He pulled his fur-lined collar up and kept his senses sharp. Somewhere out in the dark, a lone wolf howled, its cry echoing across the distant hills. Erik's grip tightened on his axe until the howl faded. He heard no answering calls. A single wolf in these parts was no threat to their group, but its lonely cry was a fool's gambit. Announcing its presence like that in these dangerous times would only attract the real predators of the night. That desperate call, he thought, had likely just secured its own death.
His watch passed uneventfully, and when the time came, he roused Darius for the next shift. The knight rose without complaint, giving Erik a pat on the shoulder in thanks and urging him to get some sleep. Erik wrapped himself in his blanket and closed his eyes, confident that in Darius's care, they were safe for the rest of the night. He drifted off almost immediately, fatigue taking him.
The following days settled into a steady rhythm. At dawn they would break camp, say a few words of thanks to the Light (at Lyra's gentle prompting) and to whichever local gods Finn claimed to honor, and resume their march. They encountered other travelers by the second day, a merchant with an ox-drawn cart who hailed them curiously. The merchant was heading toward Blackstone and beyond to frontier villages, carrying a load of pottery. He had little news to share besides a warning: he'd seen unusual tracks on the road a day ago, large and clawed, which spooked him enough to camp in a hamlet rather than the wilds. "Keep your weapons close at hand," the pot-bellied man advised, eyes darting to the party's arms. "The sounds it made… it was the sound of death itself." Darius pressed him for details on the tracks, but the merchant could only say they were larger than a bear's and seemed to show only two rear talons, like a massive bird, though that made no sense.
After that encounter, the party remained doubly watchful. On the third day, they indeed found signs that something big had crossed the King's Road. At a muddy stretch where their smaller trail merged with the main highway, Erik noticed deep impressions in the ground off to the side, half-dried in the sun. He crouched to examine one. It looked like a footprint of some kind, wide and vaguely avian with long claw marks, but each print was the size of a shield. Whatever had made it was immense, easily twenty feet tall, and the soil around the tracks was churned and stained with black, oily residue that smelled of decay and ozone. The very air around the tracks felt wrong, and as Erik drew near, a wave of nausea washed over him, a psychic revulsion that had nothing to do with the smell. The axe on his back gave a low, predatory hum, reacting to the abyssal taint clinging to the earth.
"Look here," a voice called quietly from a few paces off. It was Darius, who had moved further into the grass. Erik and the others followed. Darius stood over a patch of trampled brush. At his feet lay the splintered wreckage of a wagon wheel and torn scraps of a navy-blue military banner. The wood was not just splintered; parts of it were blackened and corroded, as if splashed with a powerful acid.
"Captain Alain's escort," Lyra whispered, her voice hushed with horror.
Darius swore under his breath and scanned the area. "I see blood," Erik said, pointing a few feet away. He had spotted dark stains on the yellowed autumn grass. Quite a lot of it, now that he looked closer, dried, brownish patches where flies buzzed. The group exchanged grim looks. A battle had taken place here recently. A slaughter.
Erik felt a chill unrelated to the weather. He remembered Governor Seraphine's caution: the roads haven't been safe of late. Clearly an understatement. A large beast, possibly the same one the merchant had alluded to, had attacked here. The question was, what happened to Alain and his men? There were no bodies here, at least not now. Some scattered bones by the grass's edge made Lyra pale and quickly look away, an animal might have carried off remains, or… Erik shook the morbid thought from his head.
"We should search for survivors or further signs," Darius said, steeling himself. "Spread out but stay within earshot." He drew his sword, and the others likewise readied their weapons.
They combed the vicinity methodically. Finn found more blood trailing off into a copse of trees, and Darius discovered the tattered remains of a guard's leather gauntlet. But no sign of the men themselves, dead or alive. It was as if they had vanished after the struggle. Perhaps the creature had dragged off victims or chased any survivors away. Erik's heart sank. Alain was a competent fighter and leader; if something could overcome his entire escort, it was truly dangerous.
Lyra knelt by a disturbed patch of earth near the road, bowing her head. It took Erik a moment to realize she was murmuring prayers for the fallen, even though they hadn't found bodies to lay to rest. The cleric traced a small sigil of light in the air, a gesture of guidance for souls lost to darkness. Erik placed a hand gently on her shoulder as she prayed, offering silent solidarity. Finn stood guard a respectful distance away, eyes scanning nervously.
Darius examined the tracks leading eastward along the road. "It heads toward Silverkeep, that much is clear," he said finally, sheathing his blade. "If these are Alain's men's remains… we'll report their fate when we arrive. For now, we continue forward, but with extreme caution. Whatever beast did this could be up ahead." His voice was grim. Losing fellows from Blackstone, friends, perhaps, clearly weighed on him, but the mission could not be abandoned.
They moved on, somber and on edge. A sense of foreboding hung over the group. The evidence of slaughter they'd left behind served as a foreshadowing of danger yet to come.
Hardships mounted as they journeyed. On the fourth day, a foul, unnatural rain fell, cold and greasy, forcing the companions to take refuge in a disused hay barn. They spent a damp, chilly night there, huddled in musty hay as lightning forked across the sky. Lyra tended to a nasty blister on Finn's heel by the light of flickering witchlight. Meanwhile, Darius and Erik shared the last of a flask of spiced wine to ward off the chill. It did little to lift Darius's spirits; he was brooding, likely over the implication that Alain's squad might have been defeated so easily.
On the sixth day since leaving Blackstone, the sky finally cleared to a crisp blue. The King's Road had led them out of the hill country and now stretched through flatter plains. The worst of the journey's physical strain was behind them; their muscles had toughened to the routine, and the thought of hot meals and real beds at Oakridge spurred them on. Yet, an invisible weight burdened their hearts.
Afternoon light slanted golden when they came upon the next sign of trouble. Erik was the first to spot it: far up the road, a dark shape lying at the path's edge. He lifted a hand, signaling a halt.
Finn, with his keen rogue's eyesight, nodded slowly. "Looks like a body." He slipped a throwing knife from his belt, balancing it in his palm just in case. Lyra uttered a soft prayer under her breath. They approached cautiously.
The body was a man, sprawled face-down in a ditch. As they neared, the stench told the tale, death had come at least a day or two ago. Darius turned the body over gently with his boot, revealing a grisly sight. The corpse wore a torn Blackstone guard's uniform. His torso was rent by gaping claw wounds. Lyra sucked in a breath, quickly kneeling to murmur the rites of passing.
Darius closed the dead guard's eyes, his own filled with a deep, weary sorrow. "One of Alain's," he confirmed hoarsely. "Arden. Good lad, just twenty." A muscle feathered in Darius's jaw, a flicker of the immense anger he kept so tightly controlled. "We'll bury him."
They did so, working in solemn silence, a grim parody of a military burial. A shallow grave off the road, marked with a cairn of stones, was all they could manage. As they worked, Erik's mind wandered. He had seen death in his old world, but it was sterile, distant, hidden behind hospital walls or the cold text of a news report. This was different. This was intimate. The smell of decay, the weight of the cold earth, the finality of it all, it was a brutal lesson in the fragility of life in this world. Lyra's hands glowed with soft light as she consecrated the ground. "May you find rest in the Light's embrace," she whispered, her voice a fragile anchor in the oppressive quiet. When the last stone was placed, Darius bowed his head. "We will see justice done for this, Arden. I swear it."
They pressed on, their hearts even heavier. The presence of the body answered one question: at least some of Alain's men had tried to flee. But none made it out alive, it seemed. The beast was thorough.
Erik's senses were on high alert now. Every rustle of wind in the grass or distant rustling from the trees put him on edge. By late afternoon, the feeling of being watched was no longer a subtle prickle; it was a physical weight on his shoulders, an oppressive certainty that they were being stalked. The air itself seemed tainted, carrying the faint, foul scent of the wreckage they had left behind.
Darius felt it too. He moved with a coiled readiness, his hand never straying from the hilt of his sword. "Eyes up. No distractions," he warned quietly, his voice a low rumble. "Stay close. Whatever it is, it wants us to be complacent." They marched now as a single, bristling unit of steel and grim resolve, weapons drawn: Darius's sword and shield in hand, Erik's axe loosened from its sling, Finn's daggers in his fists, and Lyra with her oaken staff held tight.
The road ahead curved through a small wooded dell, following the course of a narrow stream. The tall oaks, their leaves a fiery autumn orange, cast long, deep shadows as the sun dipped toward the horizon. The group entered the shaded hollow, and a deep, unnatural hush fell. The late-day birdsong, the hum of insects, it all ceased, as if the forest itself held its breath in terror.
Erik felt the hair on his arms rise, a primal response to an unseen predator. The rune for Battle Sense on his forearm began to pulse with a faint, insistent warmth, a silent alarm that screamed of imminent danger. The stream babbled softly to their right, its gentle sound a stark, unsettling contrast to the dead silence of the woods. Thick underbrush flanked the road on their left. It was the perfect spot for an ambush.
They moved closer together, forming a tighter, defensive cluster. Finn scanned the trees, daggers held low, his movements now devoid of their usual jaunty grace, replaced by a tense, predatory stillness. Lyra murmured the beginnings of a warding prayer under her breath, her free hand gliding over the holy symbol at her neck. Darius raised his shield, every muscle in his body taut, a fortress of steel and resolve. Erik slid his hands into position on Erythrael's haft, sweat slick on his palms despite the chill in the air, his world narrowing to the space around them, every shadow a potential threat, every rustle of leaves a possible attack.
A sudden, violent flock of sparrows burst from a copse of trees ahead, taking flight not in a graceful arc, but in a frantic, terrified cloud, as if fleeing the devil himself.
Erik's heart lurched. Something had disturbed them.
"There!" he hissed, pointing his axe toward the brush.
The silence that followed was absolute, and in that single, suspended heartbeat, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Then, a shrill, inhuman screech ripped through the air, a sound of pure, predatory malice that shattered the quiet and promised a bloody end to their journey.