The summons came before dawn.
Lore had not been sleeping well since the first vilage. When the knock came at his door, he was already sitting on the edge of his bed, boots half-laced, staring at the empty space where his true sword should have been. Garron still had it. The absence felt heavier with each passing night.
Captain Riven waited beside the eastern map table.
New markings had been added since Lore last stood there. Not many. Just enough to suggest motion.
"These weren't raids," Riven said. "They were placed."
Lore stepped closer.
Villages.
Farmholds.
Road junctions.
None lay directly on the border.
"They wanted them found," Lore said slowly.
Riven inclined his head. "And they wanted us looking where they chose."
Seris, Bram, and Nessa stood behind him, silent.
"We have three locations," Riven continued. "All struck within two nights. One has no survivors. One has survivors. The last went quiet at dawn."
Lore's jaw tightened. "Orders?"
"Go to the silent one first."
They reached it two days later.
The road felt wrong long before the houses came into view. Fields lay untended. Fences sagged where cattle had forced their way through instead of being guided. No smoke rose from any hearth.
Lore knocked on the first door.
No answer.
The square was empty.
Not scattered.
Abandoned.
Tools lay where they had been dropped. A bucket still sat at the well. Laundry stirred weakly in the wind with no one to gather it.
"They didn't flee," Seris said. "They vanished."
They followed the trail beyond the last house.
It was not hidden.
Deep gouges scarred the dirt. Branches lay snapped and twisted. Long drag marks led toward the tree line.
The trail ended in a clearing.
Something waited there.
It had once been human.
Now its body looked as though it had been pulled apart and forced back together without regard for symmetry. Muscle stretched too tight over widened bone. Its shoulders jutted unevenly. Its arms hung too long, fingers split into hardened hooks that scraped softly against each other as it shifted.
Its chest rose and fell in spasms.
Each breath rasped wetly.
It did not charge.
It did not flee.
It twitched.
Bram stepped forward, lifting his kite shield into place. The steel face caught the dull light as earth magic bled through his boots into the soil.
Seris moved wide, wind coiling faintly along her blade.
Nessa stayed back, eyes unfocused. "It knows we're here," she whispered. "Not like an animal. Like something told it to wait."
Lore drew his blade.
No warmth answered him.
No shaping of fire into steel.
Only the weight of metal and the faint resistance of magic sliding uselessly across its surface.
The creature's head jerked up.
Its mouth opened too far.
"Khrr… rrr…"
It dragged one claw across its own chest, carving a dark line.
Then it lunged.
Not wildly.
Straight at Bram.
The impact rang like a struck anvil.
Steel screamed as the creature slammed into the shield, driving Bram backward a full step. His boots carved furrows in the earth as he braced, magic surging up through his legs to hold him in place.
Seris's blade cut across its flank. Wind tore flesh open in a long arc—only for muscle to knot and pull inward again, as if the body could not decide how to remain whole.
The creature howled.
Not in pain.
In frustration.
It seized the rim of Bram's shield with split fingers. Claws shrieked along the reinforced edge as it tried to wrench it away.
Lore moved.
Fire surged down his arm and along the blade. The heat refused to merge with the steel as it once had, skittering across the surface instead—unstable, disobedient.
He struck low.
Bone split. The creature staggered sideways, dragging Bram with it.
"Now!" Lore shouted.
Seris drove her sword into its shoulder from behind. Wind burst outward and hurled the thing forward.
Bram tore his shield free and smashed it into the creature's skull.
The sound echoed through the clearing.
Lore stepped in and struck again—this time without forcing magic into the blade. Steel only. Timing and muscle.
The head came away in a spray of dark fluid and ash.
The body collapsed.
It did not dissolve.
It twitched.
Limbs spasmed against the dirt as if they had not yet learned they were finished.
Seris ended it with a final thrust through the chest.
Silence reclaimed the clearing.
Only their breathing and the slow creak of broken trees remained.
Nessa stared at the corpse. "It didn't try to run."
Lore nodded. "It wasn't meant to."
Bram frowned. "Then what was it meant to do?"
Lore looked back toward the empty village.
"…Be found."
They burned what remained and marked the road.
Not as ceremony.
As warning.
The second site lay farther east.
This one had survivors.
Three.
A woman clutching an empty shawl.
A man whispering the same name again and again.
A girl who stared at the road and would not turn away.
"They came at night," the man said when Lore questioned him. "They took the strong ones first."
Seris's jaw tightened. "Why?"
The man swallowed. "They said the weak break wrong."
Nessa found no sigils. No ritual trace. Only disturbed ground where people had been dragged away.
"They weren't killing them," she whispered. "They were choosing."
Lore felt something cold settle in his chest.
They turned back for Windas two days later.
Fear traveled faster than messengers.
Windas still gleamed with glass and torchlight when they returned, but Lore saw the difference.
More guards on the walls.
More runners in the streets.
More banners from command towers.
They reported before removing their armor.
Lore spoke carefully.
Of the empty village.
The creature's shape.
The way it fought.
Seris described its movement. Bram its strength. Nessa the warped magic clinging to its remains.
Riven stood with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the eastern map.
"It didn't retreat," he said.
"No, sir," Lore replied. "It stayed where we found it."
Riven nodded. "Then it was placed."
Lore hesitated. "The second site was different. It rushed us. I don't know why."
Riven studied the markings.
"They aren't repeating themselves," he said quietly. "They're adjusting."
Lore frowned. "Adjusting to what?"
"To us."
Riven rolled the map farther open.
"Three patrols failed to return while you were out. Two outposts went silent yesterday. And Firoxy reports disturbances along its northern passes."
Lore felt a chill settle in his stomach.
"So it's spreading."
"Yes. And it's no longer choosing places that don't matter."
Riven pointed farther south-east.
"This arrived this morning."
"What is it?"
"Waycrest. River-port town. Trade route between Adobis, Firoxy, and Windas. People are vanishing from its streets."
Lore exhaled slowly. "Not farms anymore."
"No," Riven said. "Movement."
He slid a new order across the table.
"You'll go there next."
Waycrest rose from the riverbanks in tiers of stone and timber.
Quays lined the water where barges from Adobis unloaded grain and salt. Warehouses crowded the slopes above them, marked with trade banners instead of noble crests. Roads converged on the town from three directions, scarred by constant traffic.
It should have been loud.
It was not.
No dock calls echoed.
No wagons passed the gates.
No bells rang for trade.
The guards did not lower their spears when they saw the Magic Knight cloaks.
They only looked tired.
A woman in dock leathers stood beside them, one arm wrapped in stained cloth.
"You're late," she said.
Lore raised his hands slightly. "What's happened?"
She hesitated. "People vanish."
"From where?" Seris asked.
"Everywhere. Docks. Market roads. River trail. Never from their beds."
Inside the walls, Waycrest felt hollow.
Stalls stood half-built. Nets lay coiled where fishermen had dropped them. Barges sat moored with cargo still lashed, crews gone.
People watched from doorways.
Not with anger.
With hope.
A man with ink-stained hands stepped forward. "You're here for the missing?"
Lore swallowed. "We're here to help."
The man nodded too fast. "My son worked the docks."
A woman seized Lore's sleeve. "They took my husband from the river road."
Another voice: "My sister hasn't come back."
Another: "My whole crew is gone."
They were led to the square.
No bodies waited there.
Only names.
Chalk covered the stones.
Lines of them.
Tallies beside them.
"How many?" Bram asked quietly.
The town captain emerged from the guardhouse. Her armor was old, worn smooth by years of use.
She did not answer at first.
"We stopped counting after fifty."
Fifty.
In Waycrest, that was not a crowd.
It was a dock crew.
A caravan rotation.
A warehouse guild.
A stretch of market stalls that would never open again.
"They weren't taken at once," the captain said. "Two or three a night. Enough that people convinced themselves it was coincidence."
Her voice tightened.
"By the time we understood… they were already gone."
Nessa crouched, brushing one chalked name. "There's no residue. No ritual trace."
"Because they weren't killed here," Seris said.
Lore looked up at the three main roads leading out of the square.
"They were moved," he said quietly. "On purpose."
"They took the ones who traveled," the captain said. "The ones who worked the roads and docks."
Bram frowned. "Why them?"
Lore felt something settle in his chest.
"…Because they know the routes."
Silence spread through the square.
A man near the well spoke. "So what do we do?"
Lore opened his mouth.
No answer came.
A woman dropped to her knees before him.
"Please," she said. "We'll close the roads. We'll bar the gates. Just don't leave."
Lore felt heat rise in his chest that had nothing to do with fire.
"We won't," he said.
And he did not know if he meant tonight
or forever.
They stayed in Waycrest three days.
Not because it was safe—
but because it was afraid.
Trade did not resume. Barges stayed moored. Caravans camped outside the gates. Guards doubled their patrols along the quays and market streets.
Lore walked those streets with them.
Waycrest had bakeries whose ovens never cooled. Smithies that rang from dawn to dusk. Taverns built of river stone where sailors drank beside caravan drivers.
And now they all watched the road.
A dockworker with a missing hand brought them water.
A shopkeeper fed Bram until he complained.
Children followed Nessa until their parents dragged them back.
Seris trained with the guard.
Bram reinforced the eastern gate.
Nessa checked the docks each night.
On the fourth evening, the river went quiet.
Not calm.
Empty.
No oars.
No calls.
No lanterns drifting on the water.
Nessa stopped in the street. "Something's wrong."
A scream rose from the warehouse quarter.
Then another.
Then three more.
They ran.
The first creature burst through a grain store wall, splinters flying. Its body was thick and crude, limbs too long, mouth opening in a tearing rasp as it crushed a fleeing dockworker into the stones.
Another vaulted from a rooftop.
Then another from an alley.
"To arms!" the town captain shouted.
Bram met the first head-on. Seris cut across its flank.
Lore forced fire into his blade.
Again it resisted.
Again he struck anyway.
Steel met flesh.
The creature did not fall.
It turned its head toward him and shrieked.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
Behind it, more shapes poured into the street.
People fled.
Lanterns fell.
Warehouses burned.
Nessa cried out, "By the river—there are more!"
Lore spun.
Four more were hauling themselves up from the quay.
His mind tried to count them.
Failed.
Shouts rose from the far end of the street—too many voices, too close together. Steel rang somewhere behind him. Firelight leapt against the warehouse walls.
"Seris—Bram—Nessa-stay with me!" Lore shouted, turning in a slow circle as the town collapsed into noise.
He could not see the docks anymore.
He could not see the eastern gate.
Smoke blurred the streets into twisting corridors of shadow and flame. People ran past him without looking, clutching children, dragging carts, stumbling over one another.
Every road led somewhere he could not follow.
Another scream tore through the square.
Lore tightened his grip on the sword.
For the first time since leaving Windas, he did not know where to move first.
He did not feel like he was hunting something.
He felt like the city was breaking apart around him.
And there were too many lives in the streets to save all at once.