The sky darkened—bruised, like rotting iron—its weight pressing down like a threat.
Thunder growled overhead as black clouds churned violently over the forest canopy. Then came the rain—hard and sudden, cold as steel.
It didn't fall. It slammed down.
Within seconds, the world turned to shadow and slurry.
Rainwater streaked down every leaf, every trunk, turning soil to mire and air to mist.
Everything blurred. Everything bled grey.
Freya stumbled, her foot catching on a hidden root. She barely caught herself, biting down on a curse that escaped anyway.
Her dress clung like wet paper, heavy and snagging on every thorn, dragging her with every step.
It was slowing her. It was a noose.
She ducked beneath a gnarled pine and hissed her rapier free.
Celine turned sharply. "My lady?"
Freya didn't answer at first. Her jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the sodden fabric. Her teeth clicked in frustration.
"I liked this dress," she muttered.
Then she dropped into the mud, grabbed the hem with both hands, and sliced.
The blade glided through the soaked cloth like it was silk, parting in a single, practiced motion.
She cast the ruined length aside and rose, legs bare and streaked with filth and rain.
Celine arched a brow. "I liked that one too."
Freya slammed her blade back into its sheath. "Not enough to be buried in it."
The downpour worsened.
It pounded the canopy, hammered the earth, drenched them to the bone.
Freya's skin stung from cold, her breath fogging like steam as she moved forward.
The forest had changed. The trees seemed to lean, twisted into clawed silhouettes. The fog was alive—shifting, curling, watching.
Every shadow looked wrong.
Every breath came with the weight of being hunted.
Celine crouched suddenly, fingers brushing across a patch of disturbed moss. Faint depressions. Almost washed away.
"Tracks," she said. "Big cat."
Freya exhaled through her nose. "Perfect. Cherry on the bloody cake."
They kept moving, feet sinking deep into the black muck.
Rain dripped in rivulets from every branch.
The mist swirled between trees like smoke after a fire.
Freya tilted her head. No birds. No wind.
Just water.
And silence.
That kind of silence—the kind that waits.
Then, like teeth breaking through flesh—sound.
Footsteps.
Many.
At first they were distant, muffled in the rain. Then clearer—fast, uncoordinated. Boots hammering through puddles.
Branches snapping. Voices barking in the dark.
Not hunters. Hounds.
Celine froze, one foot raised. Her head tilted like a predator catching scent. "They're close," she breathed.
Freya's hand slipped back to her rapier. Her eyes scanned the gloom.
Shadows moved—half-seen, flickering between trees, vanishing as quickly as they appeared.
"Too close," she whispered.
Celine cursed low. "We can't outrun them. Not in this sludge."
Freya's gaze snapped to a rise ahead—a narrow incline, slick with rain, flanked by stone and a fallen tree. A bottleneck.
"There," she said. "We hold them there."
They scrambled up the slope. Mud clung to their feet like chains, sucking at every step. Thunder cracked, closer now—shaking the forest's bones.
Celine dropped low behind the fallen trunk, blades drawn, her breath sharp and still.
She disappeared into the underbrush—silent, patient, lethal.
Freya stayed visible, standing tall at the center of the rise, one foot planted on a root.
Her torn dress whipped in the wind, plastered to her skin. Her rapier gleamed, waiting.
She whispered, "Come on. Come find us."
The footfalls slowed.
Then came the voices—
"Spread out."
"They're close…"
"I don't like this fog—"
"This place is cursed."
Freya's eyes narrowed to slits.
The first goon crested the rise. Rain dripped from his hood. He spotted her—eyes widening.
Too late.
She lunged, fast and low. The rapier pierced beneath his jaw, a clean vertical thrust.
He gurgled, fingers twitching, and collapsed in a heap of mud and blood.
Shouts followed—scrambled and panicked.
Celine exploded from the side, a flash of steel in the rain.
One blade slit a throat, the other buried itself in soft gut. The man crumpled before he could scream.
More figures scrambled up the slope. One raised a wand-staff, runes glowing down its spine with pulsing blue light.
Freya dove to the side, snatched a fist-sized rock, and hurled it.
It struck home—square against the staff.
The runes flickered, overloaded—then detonated in a burst of violet sparks. The man howled, his hand charred black.
She closed the distance in a heartbeat.
Her feet slipped in the mud, but her blade did not falter.
With a grunt, Freya drove her rapier up into the man's shoulder—angled high beneath the collarbone.
There was a sickening crack as the steel punched through bone and sinew.
His scream tore loose, raw and high, echoing between the trees.
She twisted once—clean and cruel—then yanked the blade free. Blood sprayed in a dark arc, steaming against the cold rain.
Another figure surged in from the flank, shouting. Heavy boots, clumsy with adrenaline.
But too slow.
Celine moved like smoke in moonlight—there, then gone, then there again.
She slipped through the underbrush and erupted beside the attacker, her short blade arcing low in a vicious slash.
It kissed the soft flesh inside his thigh—right through the artery.
He shrieked and fell, clutching at the gushing wound, legs kicking wildly in the muck.
Rain slammed down harder. Each droplet felt like gravel on skin. Thunder cracked so close it felt like the earth itself exhaled.
Another goon roared, lunging toward Freya with a cudgel raised.
She turned into the attack, not away.
Her body spun with the storm, hair whipping, trailing like a shadow.
Her rapier flashed silver and carved a deep, savage line across the man's face—forehead to cheekbone, slicing through brow and eye.
He screamed—high and wet—and stumbled back, blood pouring down his face in a red mask.
He hit the mud with a splash and thrashed blindly, shrieking.
The last two froze.
One looked at the carnage. The blood. The women who weren't women anymore—but something else, grim reapers.
They turned and ran.
Celine didn't hesitate.
She vanished into the mist after them—silent, relentless.
The forest swallowed her whole.
A second passed.
Then another.
A scream—short, strangled.
Then silence.
Only one set of footsteps kept running, growing fainter… then gone.
Freya stood where she was, panting, chest rising and falling beneath her clinging dress.
Her blade trembled slightly in her grip—not from fear, but from strain.
Her skin was plastered in rain and streaked in blood—hers, theirs. It was hard to tell anymore.
She exhaled.
The air smelled of copper and ozone and ash.
Thunder rolled above. The storm watched in silence.
And so did she.
The only sound left was the rain and the labored, wet breathing of the dying around her.
Then Celine emerged from the fog—casual, unhurried, as though she hadn't just painted the trees red.
Her knives glinted as she shook the blood off one with a flick of her wrist.
"One got away," she said, voice low.
Freya's eyes stayed fixed on the mist beyond, her jaw clenched, her shoulders rising with each breath.
"Let him," she said coldly. "Let him tell the others."
She turned, blade still dripping, boots squelching in the mud.
Celine fell into step beside her, eyes sweeping the shadowed treetops. "They'll come back," she said quietly. "More of them."
Freya didn't break stride. Didn't glance back.
"Good."
They slipped into the storm, swallowed by fog and thunder, leaving behind only twisted corpses, scattered weapons—and the quiet hiss of rain on blood...
At a distance, another group pressed through the mire, drawn by echoes of violence and the trail of the dead.
Aldrich led the way, his lantern swinging in the dark like a searching eye.
Norman walked just behind, boots sinking deep, revolver holstered but ready. His eyes never stopped moving.
Flanking them, a dozen Rosenvale guards moved in tense formation—silent, tight-lipped, rifles up, eyes wide. Trained men, but rattled.
The forest had gone wrong.
Even the guards, hardened men who'd seen their share of blood and bodies, kept glancing over their shoulders—jittery, fingers tight on triggers.
The rain hadn't let up. It hammered the leaves, filled their boots, and turned breath into mist.
The fog swirled low to the ground like something alive, curling around roots and ankles, muffling the world.
Then they saw it.
A shape in the gloom—slumped, motionless.
One of the guards moved forward and knelt, brushing aside leaves slick with rain.
"Fresh," he muttered. "Neck's been opened clean. Deep cut. Surgical. Just like the others."
More shapes emerged ahead. Four bodies. Then five. Scattered in the muck like discarded dolls.
Norman's breath caught.
They weren't just killed. They were dissected. Precise. Efficient.
One man still had a look of shock frozen on his face, even as half his throat was missing.
Aldrich knelt by another. The lantern's light spilled over a wound clean through the chest—angled, deliberate.
"I heard Lord Reinhart was a swordsman of rare talent," he murmured. "I wonder if he taught his daughter."
Norman stepped beside him. "This one's got a rapier wound. Straight through. Shoulder to heart."
Aldrich didn't respond immediately. He straightened slowly, rain slicking off his coat.
"Fast," he said. "Clean. No wasted motion. Whoever did this wasn't improvising."
Norman scanned the trees, the shadows, the fog. "You think it was her?" he asked. "Lady Freya?"
Aldrich didn't answer immediately. He just stood, slowly, brushing the rain from his coat. Then: "It's possible."
"Well," Norman teased, "anyone who killed this many thugs from the Second Glyphwork is a friend of mine."
The guards exchanged uneasy glances.
One of them muttered, "Whatever killed these bastards moved like a ghost."
Aldrich exhaled smoke into the cold. "Ghosts don't leave trails."
He tilted the lantern forward.
There, cutting through the mud—military-style, smeared but clear, leading deeper into the forest.
"Looks like we're not the only ones chasing ghosts." he said. "Eyes up. Weapons ready."
And they did.
Into the storm. Into the trees.
Toward whatever waited ahead...