The man with the torch took his final step toward the pyre. The scent of pitch and burning oil filled the air, a prelude to the scent of burning flesh. Kaelen did not move. His soldiers remained like statues of obsidian and steel. They would let it happen.
Lilith moved.
It was not a rush, not a desperate sprint, but a single, fluid motion that seemed to bend the space around her. One moment she was beside Kaelen, the next she was standing between the torchbearer and the pyre, her hand resting gently on the man's arm.
Her touch was as light as a moth's wing, yet the man froze as if seized by a vise of ice. The torch trembled in his hand.
"That is enough," she said. Her voice was still quiet, but it carried a new resonance, an ancient authority that silenced the chanting and rooted every villager to the spot.
Kaelen's eyes narrowed, his hand instinctively moving to the hilt of his sword. He had not seen her move. She had simply… been there.
"Witch!" the elder shrieked, breaking the spell. "She is one of them! She defends the curse!"
Ignoring the rising panic, Lilith turned her back on the men and faced the small girl tied to the post. The child flinched, her wide, terrified eyes staring up at the strange, serene woman.
Lilith knelt in the mud, bringing herself to the girl's eye level. "It is alright," she whispered, her voice losing its chill, softening into something almost like warmth. "I am not going to hurt you."
She raised a hand, her slender fingers hovering just over the girl's forehead. Kaelen watched, his body tensed for a trick, for an attack. But there was no attack.
Lilith closed her eyes. She reached inward, not to the cold, echoing memories of the dead that usually sustained her, but deeper, to the faint, flickering ember of her own Fae nature. She drew upon the memory of life, of growth, of the world before her Heart-Bone was torn from her. It was a painful, draining act, like a starving woman offering her last crumb of bread.
A soft, silver light, barely visible in the grey afternoon, bloomed from her fingertips. It was not the cold, sterile blue of the corruption in the dead lord's veins, but a living, breathing luminescence. She gently touched the girl's forehead.
The effect was instantaneous.
The dark lesions on the child's skin began to fade, receding like shadows at sunrise. The feverish flush on her cheeks cooled, and a healthy color returned to her lips. The girl's ragged, shallow breaths deepened into a steady, even rhythm. The plague, the curse that had held a village hostage, was simply… erased.
Lilith pulled her hand back, a wave of dizziness washing over her. The effort had cost her dearly. The world swam at the edges of her vision.
The little girl stared at her, her fear replaced by a profound, childlike awe.
But the villagers did not share her wonder. They saw only a different kind of monster. They had been prepared to burn a demon they understood; now they faced a saint they could not comprehend, and it terrified them more.
"What have you done?" Kaelen's voice was a low growl at her side. He had moved with the silence of a hunting cat. His fury was a palpable force, more chilling than the mountain wind.
Before she could answer, a scream tore through the village. It came not from the square, but from the forest's edge.
One of Kaelen's soldiers, posted as a sentry, stumbled into view, his hands clutching at his throat. The same ice-blue veins that had marked the lord's family were now crawling up his neck, glowing with a malevolent light. He collapsed, his body convulsing in the mud.
"We were exposed," Kaelen hissed, his hand now gripping his sword's hilt. "Your display of power was a beacon. You've just announced our presence to whatever is truly lurking in this valley."
He was right. Her act of mercy had been a flare fired in the dead of night. The true source of the plague, the intelligence behind the corruption, now knew they were here.
"Get the child and fall back to the manor!" Kaelen barked to his remaining soldier. He turned his furious gaze back to Lilith, his eyes promising retribution. "You wanted to play the savior. Now you will face the consequences."
From the dark woods surrounding the village, a low, guttural chittering began to rise, a sound of scraping bone and ancient hunger. The hunt had begun. And they were no longer the hunters. They were the prey.