The gate guards at Fort Ironroot didn't cheer when Theta-Seven returned.
They stared.
Silent.
Unblinking.
As if a phantom had passed through the trees and walked back wearing the face of a man.
Duncan led the battered squad through the archway, boots dragging, clothes torn and bloodstained. Garran bore Rell over one shoulder, his limp body bound in a sling of scavenged vines and torn canvas. The rest limped in silence, eyes sunken with exhaustion.
Captain Eryndor stood waiting, arms folded, brows drawn like blades. Behind him, several men in obsidian cloaks flanked a tall, slim figure—not military, yet carrying the air of authority more dangerous than any rank.
"Report," the captain barked.
Duncan saluted with a bloodied fist. "Engaged an unknown apex-class wild. Casualties: none fatal. One wounded. Objective completed. Beast activity confirmed—recommending immediate watchtower deployment on the eastern ridge."
The slim figure beside Eryndor tilted his head. His face was pale, unscarred, almost too smooth, with cold blue eyes that held no light.
Duncan didn't know him.
But he knew the type.
Capitol-born. Dominion-sanctioned.
One of the quiet ones who made people disappear.
Later – Command Quarters
The room stank of parchment and pipe smoke. Maps were scattered across a stone table, detailing frontier troop positions and patrol zones.
Duncan stood alone before Eryndor and the stranger.
"So," the captain said gruffly, "you claim to have fought off an apex-class?"
"Not alone," Duncan replied. "My squad functioned as a unit."
The stranger stepped forward, voice smooth as oil. "And yet the creature spared you, Lieutenant."
Duncan said nothing.
The man's eyes narrowed slightly. "You hesitate."
"I think before I speak."
"You fought it… then it stopped. And left. That doesn't happen."
"No," Duncan said. "It doesn't."
A long silence passed.
Then Eryndor sighed. "This is Inquisitor Harrow, Dominion Office of Internal Integrity. He's here to ensure wild corruption has not reached our ranks."
"Corruption?" Duncan's jaw clenched. "We bled in those woods. We lost men out there last cycle. You sent us knowing what was coming."
The Inquisitor smiled, thin and brittle. "That's not your concern, soldier."
"It is if we're being culled."
The room dropped into stillness.
Captain Eryndor cleared his throat, but Harrow raised a hand, silencing him. "You speak boldly, Duncan Haleth. As did your father. And his father before him."
Duncan's breath caught.
"You knew them?"
"I know what they were."
That Evening – Barracks Shadows
Word spread fast through the fort. Duncan's squad was alive—and something else walked with them. Men began avoiding their bunkhouse, whispering about bloodline curses, about creatures not attacking them because they were kin.
Superstition took root quickly in the dark.
Even Kel, once quick to joke, kept glancing at Duncan when he thought no one saw.
Vey and Marra sharpened weapons in silence.
Rell remained unconscious, fevered and tossing in a cot, muttering words none could understand.
Duncan sat by the shuttered window, staring into the moonlight, the journal of Rask open on his lap.
A new page had torn loose from the binding during the patrol.
It was one of Rask's last entries:
"Saw it again. Yellow eyes in the trees. Felt it in my chest—calling me. Not with words. With blood. Sergeant says it's just the Wilds getting in my head. But I think it knows my name. Just like it knew my grandfather's."
Duncan closed the journal.
Too many coincidences. Too many bloodlines that vanished into the forest.
Maybe this wasn't about a beast sighting.
Maybe it was about a hunt—but the prey wasn't wild.
It was people like him.
Midnight – A Knife in the Dark
The first blade came silently, slipping through the tent flap like a shadow. Duncan moved just as it plunged, the dagger scraping along his ribcage.
He grabbed the attacker's wrist, twisted, then headbutted him hard enough to crack bone.
The man collapsed.
Another figure lunged in from behind, but Garran, already awake in the shadows, slammed him into the tent post with enough force to snap his spine.
In moments, it was over.
Two bodies.
Both dressed in gray civilian garb. No insignias. But each carried a coin—a black obsidian disk, etched with a closed eye.
The symbol of internal cleansers—agents tasked with eliminating "blood anomalies" before they became threats.
Duncan wiped his blade clean.
"I was right," he murmured.
Garran nodded once. "They sent them to erase you."
"They failed."
He bent over the body, pulled something from the assassin's pocket—a parchment with a sigil.
It wasn't from the Dominion front.
It was from the Capitol.
And the wax seal bore a crest he hadn't seen since he was a boy—his grandfather's mark.
The Next Morning – Unrest in the Fort
News of the attempted assassination spread faster than fire through dry brush.
Captain Eryndor didn't speak to Duncan again. The Inquisitor was gone.
Recalled, supposedly.
But the feeling in the barracks changed. The men didn't whisper anymore.
They stared.
Duncan felt it in their eyes—fear.
Not of failure.
Not of beasts.
But of him.
Something was shifting. He'd passed some invisible threshold, no longer just another conscript.
Now he was something else.
Something dangerous.
And the Dominion did not tolerate anomalies for long.