>>Draken
The stench hit us before the sight did.
I held Vesper in my arms as we crested the final ridge, the rocks beneath our feet slick with blood that had dried and cracked in long, angry lines. The wind was dead still, heavy with rot. Not just blood. Death. The kind that soaks into the earth and stays.
And then we saw it.
The ritual site stretched wide across the barren plateau—an altar ground that had once pulsed with arcane symbols, spiraling in precise, cursed symmetry. The blood had dried, but the marks were still visible. What should have been swirling runes of power… were now nothing more than dark stains, hollow and lifeless.
But what made my gut twist—what made Vesper slowly climb down from my arms, her face pale and eyes wide—was the bodies.
They were everywhere.
