Patience was the sharpest weapon in Captain Graves's arsenal. For nine days, he had sat at his simple field desk, a specter of calm command amidst the swirling Greywood Mists. He observed the silent, unmoving facade of the Threshold Inn, his focus absolute. He had seen the massive, desperate surge of magical energy a week ago and had correctly identified it as a failed gambit, a lashing out from a cornered animal. Since then, there had been nothing. Perfect silence.
His strategy was sound. The containment field, maintained by his mages in rotating shifts, was flawless. Nothing could get in, and nothing could get out. Inside that architectural anomaly, his quarry, the Dragon Lord, was trapped with her handful of guardians. They had finite supplies, finite willpower, and finite hope. Every silent passing hour was another turn of the screw, another victory for his patient siege. He had imagined their fraying nerves, their dwindling rations, the slow creep of despair. The hunt was proceeding exactly as planned.
On the morning of the tenth day, the plan shattered.
The interruption came in the form of Mage-Scout Elrin, a specialist whose entire purpose was the detection and analysis of life-force signatures. Elrin approached Graves's desk, his face pale, his posture radiating a confusion so profound it bordered on fear.
"Captain," he began, his voice barely a whisper.
Graves did not look up from the map he was annotating. "Report."
"The life-signatures, sir…" Elrin stammered. "They're gone."
Graves calmly placed a mark on his map before raising his head, his helmeted gaze fixing on the scout. "Explain. Are they cloaked? Masked by an illusion?" It was a common tactic for desperate prey.
"No, Captain," Elrin said, swallowing hard. "That's just it. The signatures are not masked. They are not suppressed. They are simply… absent. The S-Rank signature of the primary target, the handful of B and C-rank signatures of her guardians, even the F-rank signatures of the newcomers… they have all vanished. The building is empty."
For the first time in the campaign, Graves felt a flicker of annoyance. "That is impossible. The containment field is absolute. Nothing can pass it. Run the diagnostic again. Your instruments are faulty."
"I have, sir. Three times," the mage insisted, his voice trembling slightly under his captain's cold gaze. "I've cross-referenced with secondary scanners. The structure is still there, radiating its unusual null-field. But biologically and magically, it is as empty as a tomb."
A cold stillness settled over the camp as the mage's report was passed silently through the ranks. Graves stood up, his movements still calm and deliberate, betraying none of his inner turmoil. He walked to the edge of the containment field, staring at the quiet, unassuming inn. A trick. It had to be a trick. A sophisticated illusion designed to make them drop the field so the targets could flee.
"Probe it," Graves commanded.
An archer from the Black Arrows stepped forward. He nocked not one of his deadly, soul-tracking arrows, but a simple, unenchanted bolt with a blunt iron head. This was not an act of aggression; it was a test of reality. The archer drew, aimed, and released.
The bolt flew true, passing through the shimmering containment field without resistance. It crossed the fifty-foot boundary of the Inn's domain and continued on its path. The small group of tenants who had been watching from inside were, of course, no longer there to witness it.
THUNK.
The sound was small, mundane, and utterly damning. It was the simple, unmistakable sound of an iron arrowhead striking solid, unyielding wood. The bolt bounced off the front door and fell to the misty ground.
The building was real. The building was solid. And the building was, as the scout had reported, empty.
Captain Graves stood motionless for a full minute, the minds of his men connected to his in a silent, disciplined network of disbelief. The truth settled over him not like a sudden revelation, but like a slow, creeping frost, chilling him to the bone.
They hadn't been fighting a desperate, cornered animal. They hadn't been locked in a battle of wills. They hadn't even been noticed.
For the last seven days, since that massive, unexplained energy surge, they had been laying siege to an empty house.
The sheer, profound, and monumental stupidity of it was a physical blow. His perfect strategy, his patient mastery, his entire professional methodology—all of it had been rendered a complete and utter joke. He had been a scarecrow guarding an empty field.
A low murmur rippled through the ranks of the Black Arrows. These were the most feared mercenaries in the world, men and women who had faced down liches and behemoths without flinching. But this was a different kind of defeat. This wasn't a loss in battle; this was a strategic humiliation of the highest order. Their morale, once forged of iron and absolute confidence, crumbled into dust.
Graves felt a cold, black fury ignite in the pit of his stomach. It was not the hot, explosive rage of the Duke. It was the chilling, focused hatred of a predator that has been made a fool of by its prey. He had been outwitted. His perfect record was shattered, not by a worthy foe in glorious combat, but by a trickster, a landlord who had simply… packed up his house and left.
With a sharp, cutting gesture, he gave the silent command to dismantle the camp. There was no point in staying. His quarry was gone.
He turned his back on the silent, mocking inn and walked to his command tent. He had a report to file. A report to a powerful, unforgiving benefactor, explaining how an S-Rank target and the very building she was hiding in had vanished into thin air from under his nose.
The contract was a failure. But as he began to mentally compose the humiliating message, a new objective formed in his mind, hard and sharp as obsidian. This was no longer just a contract. This was no longer about a bounty.
It was now personal.
He would find this trickster landlord and his dragon. He would hunt them across any kingdom, any continent, any dimension if he had to. And he would teach them what it truly meant to be the prey of the Black Arrows.