The Reeve, Gunnar, stood his ground in the center of the silent square. He held his blacksmith’s hammer like a scepter of grim authority, but his knuckles were white, betraying the terror gripping his heart.

  He looked at us—a mud-caked, blood-splattered collection of misfits standing amidst a squad of terrified farmers.

  He was a man drowning in a problem he couldn't hammer into submission, and we were just another unknown variable in an equation that was already killing his people.

  Lyra, Arlan’s wife, stepped forward. Her small daughter, Elara, was still hiding behind her legs, peeking out at Willow’s glowing butterflies. Lyra’s voice, though trembling, was firm.

  “He’s telling the truth, Gunnar! We saw it!” She pointed a shaky finger at Faelar. “That dwarf… he was a whirlwind of death. He cleaved one of those beasts clean in two. Black blood, steaming… it was horrible, but he did it. And the elf moved like a ghost. And the little one…” She looked at Willow. “She made the very ground rise up to protect us. They saved us. They saved Elara.”

  Arlan found his courage, nodding vigorously. “It’s true! It was chaos. Magic, and… and a chicken that was yellow! They appeared from nowhere, Gunnar. They are not the Hand.”

  Gunnar’s broad shoulders slumped. The aggression drained out of him, leaving only a bone-deep weariness. He let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the whole village’s fear.

  He lowered the hammer, its head thudding softly against the packed earth.

  “Saved you?” his voice was a low, skeptical growl. “Or led the wolves to our door? We’ve had nothing but trouble since strangers started appearing on these roads. Every new face is a potential new grave.”

  He looked at me, his eyes hard and red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

  “You say you’re here to help. I’ve heard that before. The King’s men said it, right before they raised our taxes and left us to rot. Adventurers say it right before they loot our crypts and wake up things that should have stayed sleeping. What makes you different?”

  “We’re not the King’s men,” I replied, my voice steady. “And we’re not adventurers looking for gold.”

  I stepped forward, letting the moonlight catch the battered sigil on my chest.

  “We’re still here,” I said. “And we’re not leaving until this is done.”

  He stared at me for a long, hard moment, searching my face for lies. He looked at Faelar, who was leaning casually on his massive axe. He looked at Liam, who was cleaning his fingernails with a dagger.

  He found no lies. Just a lot of weapons and a disturbing amount of confidence.

  “Gods have mercy,” he muttered, rubbing a soot-stained hand over his face. “Fine. But we can’t talk here. The shadows have ears, and the walls have eyes.”

  He gestured with his hammer toward a large, two-story building on the far side of the square.

  “Come with me. The only place we can talk without the whole damn village listening is The Weary Traveler. It’s been closed for a week.”

  We followed him across the square. The building’s painted sign—a cheerful-looking gnome with a walking stick and a frothy mug—was faded and peeling, the wood grey with age.

  The door was barred from the inside. Gunnar hammered on it with his fist. Three sharp knocks. Pause. Two knocks.

  “Brenna! It’s me! Open up!”

  We waited. Faelar shifted his weight, his armor clanking.

  “Closed for a week?” the dwarf whispered to me. “That bodes ill for the freshness of the ale, Commander. Stale beer is a crime against morale.”

  “Focus, Faelar,” I whispered back.

  A moment later, the heavy bar was lifted with a groan of wood on wood. The door creaked open.

  A young woman stood in the doorway. She had hair the color of straw tied back in a severe bun and a gaze that was steady, serious, and entirely unimpressed by the group of armed strangers on her doorstep. She held a heavy iron poker in one hand.

  She looked at Gunnar, then at us. Her eyes lingered on Liam for a fraction of a second—perhaps noting the elf’s unnatural stillness—before she stepped aside.

  “Inside,” she said. “Quickly.”

  We filed in.

  The tavern was dark. It smelled of stale ale, dust, and old fear—a musk that comes from sweat and sleepless nights. Chairs were stacked on tables, their legs pointing up like dead forests. A thick layer of dust covered the bar.

  Gunnar lit a single lantern on a large, round table in the center of the room. The flame sputtered, casting long, dancing shadows that made the familiar space feel alien and threatening.

  “Brenna, fetch Tamsin and Maeve,” Gunnar ordered softly. “Tell them it’s urgent.”

  Brenna nodded and disappeared into the back rooms.

  “Sit,” Gunnar told us.

  Faelar eyed a chair suspiciously. He poked it with a finger. It wobbled.

  “Quality craftsmanship,” he grumbled, sitting down with a gentleness that belied his bulk. “I’ve sat on sturdier mushrooms.”

  Elmsworth didn't sit. He wandered over to the fireplace, inspecting the cold ash. Nugget, perched on his shoulder, had turned a deep, melancholic blue, blending into the shadows.

  “The thermal residue suggests this fire hasn’t been lit in three days,” Elmsworth muttered. “Statistically significant. A tavern without a hearth is a sociological anomaly.”

  Minutes later, Brenna returned. She was followed by two women.

  One was grizzled and wiry, with skin like tanned leather and a longbow slung over her shoulder. She moved with the silent, rolling gait of a hunter.

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  The other was a nervous, bird-like woman who wrung her hands constantly, her eyes darting around the room as if expecting the shadows to bite.

  “This is Tamsin,” Gunnar said, gesturing to the hunter. “Best tracker in the valley. And Maeve, our healer.”

  They sat. The circle was formed.

  I took the lead, placing the obsidian token in the center of the table. The black stone seemed to suck the light from the lantern.

  Maeve gasped, pulling her shawl tighter. Tamsin’s eyes narrowed.

  “Tell me everything,” I said. “How many have been taken? Where were they last seen? What are the patrol schedules for the village watch?”

  Gunnar let out a short, bitter, profane laugh. It sounded like gravel grinding together.

  “Watch?” he grunted, gesturing around the table. “You’re looking at it. A blacksmith, a barmaid, a hunter, and a healer. We have a few farmers with rusty pitchforks who are too damn scared to go past the edge of the village after sundown. We’ve lost six people in a month, damn it all. Six. Just… gone.”

  “It’s the woods,” Tamsin said. Her voice was raspy, like dry leaves rubbing together. “They’re not right anymore. The game is gone. The birds are silent. You feel… watched. I found tracks two days ago, near the old quarry. Cloven hooves, bigger than any stag I’ve ever seen. And something else… something that dragged itself, leaving a trail like thick, black ichor. It smelled of sulfur and rot.”

  She shuddered, a full-body tremor. “I didn’t follow. I’m a hunter, not a fool. Whatever made those tracks wasn’t natural.”

  “It’s the Miller’s boy, Tom,” Maeve whispered. Her hands were twisting in her lap so hard I thought her fingers might break. “That was the worst. He was a good lad. Strong. Seventeen summers.”

  She looked at me, her eyes wide and watery. “He was in his own yard. Chopping wood. They found his dog… what was left of it… torn to shreds. Just… pieces. Spread all over the yard like… like…” She choked back a sob. “Blood all over the woodpile. But no body. Just that… that hand painted on the door in the dog’s blood.”

  A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach. The image was vivid, brutal. This was psychological warfare. They weren’t just killing; they were terrorizing.

  “Did the dog appear to have been exploded or disassembled?” Elmsworth asked suddenly, leaning in with genuine curiosity. “The distinction is important for determining the magical signature of the entity.”

  “Elmsworth!” I snapped.

  “What?” The wizard blinked. “If it was exploded, we’re dealing with telekinetic force. If it was disassembled, it’s a physical predator. Science requires specifics, Kaelen.”

  Faelar slammed his empty flask down on the table. The sound cracked like a gunshot in the quiet room. Maeve jumped.

  “Enough talk of dead dogs and shadows!” Faelar roared. “Where’s the last place you saw one of these bastards? Point me in that direction, and I’ll get you some answers written in their own entrails. Bessie hasn’t eaten her fill today.”

  Liam, who had been leaning against a wall in the shadows, spoke for the first time. His voice was quiet, cutting through the bluster.

  “The symbols on the doors. The white ones. When did they appear?”

  Gunnar frowned. “The warding signs? Maeve made them for us, after Tom was taken. Just old symbols, for luck. Chalk and salt.”

  “They’re not all the same,” Liam stated. He walked into the light, pulling a throwing knife from his belt and beginning to clean a speck of dirt from under his fingernail.

  “The one on your smithy has an extra curl at the bottom,” Liam continued. “The one on the baker’s door is thicker on the left side. I saw three different variations just walking across the square. It’s not a ward. It’s a code.”

  “A code?” Tamsin asked.

  “Thieves’ cant,” Liam said, holding the knife up to the light to check the edge. “Or something like it. They aren’t protecting you. They’re marking you. That curl on the smithy? In the city, that means ‘heavy resistance, valuable loot.’ The one on the baker’s? ‘Soft target, food supplies.’ You haven’t been warding your homes. You’ve been cataloging them for the enemy.”

  A cold silence descended on the room. The villagers looked at each other, horror dawning on their faces. They had been painting targets on their own doors.

  “We… we didn’t know,” Maeve whispered, tears spilling over. “I just wanted to help.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Willow said gently, reaching across the table to touch Maeve’s hand. “They tricked you. That’s what bullies do. They take your hope and use it against you.”

  “We need a target,” I said, looking at the hunter to break the despair. “Tamsin. You said you saw tracks near the quarry. Anything else? A camp? A fire?”

  Tamsin met my gaze. Her hunter’s instinct seemed to override her fear.

  “There’s an old watchtower,” she said. “South of here, on the ridge overlooking the valley. It’s been abandoned for a generation. A ruin. But a few nights ago, I was tracking a fox and I saw lights up there. Strange, purple lights, like the ones Arlan described in the swamp. No one from the village would go near that cursed place, not even on a dare.”

  That was it. A base. A forward position.

  “The fortress can wait,” I said, a decision forming in my mind. “This watchtower is our first target. We need to know what they’re doing so close to your homes. We take the tower, we take their eyes.”

  As we spoke, the young woman, Brenna, had been quietly moving around the table. She carried a clay pitcher. She filled Gunnar’s mug, then Faelar’s.

  Faelar looked into the mug. He sniffed it. He looked at Brenna.

  “Water?” he asked, his voice filled with profound betrayal.

  “We’re rationing the ale,” Brenna said flatly. “Water keeps you alive. Ale makes you loud.”

  “I am loud regardless of hydration!” Faelar argued. “It is a racial trait!”

  Brenna moved to Liam’s side. He was currently counting his knives. He had laid five of them out on the table and was meticulously wiping mud from the hilt of the sixth.

  “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty…” he muttered.

  Brenna poured water into his mug. He looked up. Their eyes met.

  “You’re not like the others,” she said. Her voice was low, pitched just for him.

  Liam paused in his counting. He looked at the sturdy, serious woman who held a pitcher like a weapon.

  “No?” he asked, a faint, roguish smile touching his lips. “And what are the others like?”

  “Loud,” she said, glancing at Faelar. “Confused,” she added, looking at Elmsworth who was now licking the fireplace ash. “You’re quiet.”

  “The quiet ones are the ones you should watch,” Liam murmured, sliding the clean knife back into a sheath hidden in his boot. “It means we’re paying attention.”

  “Or that you’re planning to leave before the bill comes,” she countered.

  Liam laughed—a genuine, surprised sound. “I haven’t paid a bill in twenty years, darling. But I usually leave through the window, not the door.”

  “Just make sure you leave through the window after you kill the things in the woods,” she said.

  She left the pitcher on the table, her gaze lingering on him for a second longer than necessary before she retreated to the shadows of the bar. Liam watched her go, then immediately went back to counting.

  “Forty-one. Wait, where is forty-two? I had forty-two.” He began patting his pockets frantically.

  Gunnar stood up. The chair scraped loudly on the floor.

  “You’ll need a place to stay,” the Reeve said. “The inn is yours. We don’t have much food—mostly porridge and root vegetables—but what we have, we’ll share. Just… just give us something to fight back with. Give us some hope.”

  “We’ll give you more than hope,” I said, standing to join him. “We’ll give you the tower.”

  Later that night, I stood in my small, rustic room on the second floor of the inn.

  I looked out the single, grime-streaked window. The moon had risen, casting a pale, silver light over Oakhaven.

  The sounds of the village preparing for the night were a chorus of fear. I heard the heavy thud of wooden bars being dropped into place. I heard the hushed, fearful whispers of families huddled in their homes. I saw a candle flicker in a window across the square, then abruptly snuff out, as if the owner was afraid even the light would attract the shadows.

  The entire village was a prison of its own making.

  I pulled the cold, obsidian token from my pouch. It felt heavier now.

  My training at the Citadel had been about worlds. About strategic objectives. About acceptable losses. They taught us to view a village like this as a resource node, a tactical asset.

  But looking out at the shuttered windows of Oakhaven, I didn't see assets.

  I saw Arlan’s terror. I saw Lyra’s grief. I saw Elara’s small hand clutching the wooden doll Willow had given her. I saw Brenna’s defiance and Gunnar’s exhaustion.

  The mission was no longer an abstraction. It wasn't just lines on a map or a holographic briefing.

  It was the weight of this village, the weight of their lives, settling squarely on my shoulders.

  I looked at the token. The black hand seemed to mock me.

  I closed my hand around it, the cold edges digging into my palm until it hurt. My resolve hardened into a sharp, cold point of steel.

  “We’re coming for you,” I whispered to the dark forest beyond the village walls.

  The watchtower. It would be our first answer. It would be our first blow against the shadow that was strangling this world.

  I turned away from the window and blew out the candle.