Just ten seconds ago, her world was reduced to one certainty:
SHE WAS GOING TO DIE.
She could smell the breath of the beast behind her neck, she could feel the vibration of the ground, and her muscles had tensed in that last painful spasm of one who waits for the impact of teeth tearing her.
She had closed her eyes, not out of cowardice, but out of resignation.
But the pain never came.
Instead, a force, like a giant hand but fluid like the wind, had snatched her from her spot, canceling gravity and inertia to deposit her gently on the wet grass, far from the trajectory of death.
And now, upon opening her eyes... her brain refused to process the image before her.
The air, which moments before was full of roars, was now plunged into silence, broken only by the rhythmic dripping of blood.
Plip... Plip... Plip...
That monster... that abomination of nature that had massacred her companions, that had chased her through kilometers of forest... now hung a meter off the ground.
It was pinned to the trunk of an oak, pierced from side to side by a sword.
Dead... Absolutely and irrevocably dead.
And the one responsible for that macabre work of art was not panting, nor bleeding.
The shirtless young man was standing in front of the gigantic corpse, he had one hand on his chin and the other on his hip, tilting his head while he examined the monster's claws.
The woman's breathing was irregular, her lungs burned from the effort of the run, and her hands trembled violently.
She tried to speak, to formulate a question, a warning, or a thank you, but her throat was dry and closed.
W-Who... or what was he?
Just then a desperate and familiar scream broke the stillness from the tree line.
"ANNA!"
A heart-wrenching scream, charged with a pure panic that made the birds remaining in the treetops take flight again.
Seconds later, a male figure burst violently from the undergrowth, pushing aside branches and ferns not caring about the thorns.
It was a young man, of a similar age to hers and with an undeniable family resemblance, he shared the same dark brown, long and wavy hair falling over his shoulders, and a face of opposite features, although at that moment it was contorted by anguish.
He dressed like a noble on a hunt, a white shirt with loose sleeves, now stained with dirt and sweat, under a dark velvet and leather vest that fitted his athletic torso.
His right hand gripped tightly a drawn longsword and he did not stop until arriving in front of her.
He let go of the sword, letting it drop and grabbed Anna's shoulders with a force that almost hurt her, shaking her slightly to ensure she was real.
"ANNA! Look at me! Are you hurt?"
His eyes frantically scanned his sister's body, looking for blood, looking for the bite.
Upon finding no mortal wounds, the air escaped his lungs in a sigh and he pulled her toward him in a brief embrace, pressing her against his chest.
"...I heard the roar... I thought it had reached you," he gasped, separating enough to look her in the eyes, "Where is it? Did you lose it in the ravine? That thing won't stop tracking..."
The woman named Anna, still unable to articulate coherent words due to the shock, did not answer verbally.
She simply raised an arm that was still trembling and pointed slowly toward a point behind him, toward the oak.
The man, confused by her silence followed the direction of her finger and turned, but froze mid-movement.
!
His eyes locked onto the tree.
The anxiety and relief flooding his face evaporated instantly, replaced by total paralysis.
As a blood heir of House Valerious, his entire life had been a long lesson on how to survive and hunt these abominations. He knew how fucking terrifying an adult lycanthrope was.
They possessed muscles dense as steel, a speed that defied the human eye, and a regeneration capacity so absurd that you could stab them in the stomach and watch the wound close before pulling out the blade.
Conventional weapons were jokes against them.
Even a full squad of his best men, armed with crossbows, silver bolts, and chains, often ended up torn to pieces before being able to subdue a single solitary specimen.
But this... this defied all logic.
There was an adult beast pinned to a tree as if it were an insignificant insect, dispatched with ease…
Without apparent struggle...
His brain made a chilling connection. 'If he can do that to a werewolf without sweating... what would he do to us if he decides we are a nuisance?'
His gaze drifted slowly from the monster toward the architect.
His eyes evaluated Lief.
He was a young man, standing under the shade of the tree, with a bare and toned torso, wearing only dark long pants that seemed out of place.
He wore no armor, no amulets, no water pouches.
He looked like someone who had just come out of his room, not a warrior.
His protective instinct triggered.
Without saying a word, he took a quick side step, interposing his body between Lief and Anna, and with a sharp movement, retrieved his sword from the ground, gripping the hilt tightly.
He didn't raise the weapon in an open attack position, but adopted a low and tense guard, ready to die if necessary to buy his sister time.
"Who are you?" asked finally the man named Velkan.
Lief, who was mentally calculating if the agency wall would support the weight of the wolf's head, blinked upon being interrupted.
He ended his interior decoration fantasies with a mental sigh and turned around slowly to face the siblings.
He could feel the hostility radiating from Velkan, the tension in his shoulders, and the way he shielded the girl.
It was the logical reaction of prey before an unknown predator, and he didn't take it the wrong way; on the contrary, he found it sensible.
He relaxed his posture, letting his arms fall to his sides to show he had no immediate aggressive intentions, and curved his lips into a smile that he considered kind, although with the corpse dripping blood behind him, the effect was a bit unsettling.
"I'm just a demon hunter passing through."
That answer made Velkan's frown deepen even more.
Hunter?
He scanned him again.
Shirtless, no visible scars, no equipment, no horse.
Never in his family stories nor in the order's records had he heard of a hunter who wandered half-naked and who could annihilate a lycanthrope easily.
"QUICK! Over here! I HEARD THE ROAR!"
The tension between them broke abruptly when the din of voices and boots arrived from the thick of the forest.
A dozen men burst in. They weren't soldiers, but a militia of desperate villagers, wielding a pitiful collection of pitchforks, axes, and old flintlock muskets that seemed more dangerous to the shooter than to the target.
They were the search party that had separated from Velkan during the hunt, guided by panic upon hearing the screams.
"Prince Velkan! Lady Anna!" shouted one of them running forward.
But the shout of relief died in his throat.
As soon as their eyes adapted to the light and they saw what was hanging from the tree at the edge of the precipice, they stopped dead, creating a domino effect where those coming behind crashed into those in front.
A sepulchral silence, much heavier than the previous one, fell.
"Mother of God..." whispered an older man, taking off his wool cap with reverence and terror. "That is..."
"Is it dead?" asked another without daring to get close. "Is that thing really dead?"
Murmurs erupted.
"Who did it? Was it the Prince?"
"Impossible, no one kills one of those alone..."
Their gazes jumped frantically from one side to another: from Velkan, to Anna, who was still pale and in shock, and finally, to the monstrous corpse.
Inevitably, all eyes ended up converging on the only variable that didn't fit into the equation: the bare-torsoed stranger who was watching them with annoyance.
Velkan ignored the chorus of speculations and didn't take his eyes off Lief for even a second, his narrowed eyes trying to dissect any movement, looking for a shred of weakness.
But he found nothing.
Lief's expression was too calm.
It was an unnatural calm, the indifference of someone who doesn't consider anything in front of him a threat and that, for someone like him, was more unsettling than a werewolf.
Understanding that the situation was slipping out of his hands, he finally broke his vigilance to give an order.
"Get it down from the tree!" he barked, pointing at the corpse. "We will take the body to the village."
With his order, the people stepped forward.
Three burly men grabbed the hanging legs of the werewolf and pulled upward to try to free it, grunting from the effort of lifting three hundred kilos of dead weight.
"On three! One, two...!"
They pushed, pulled, and struggled.
The wood of the tree creaked, the flesh stretched... but the body did not fall.
The longsword that pierced the chest of the monster and sank into the heart of the tree did not move.
It was anchored with a firmness that defied physics, as if it had become a fundamental part of the tree itself.
"Damn it!" gasped one of them, with the veins of his neck swollen by the useless effort. "It's stuck! This damn sword won't come out!"
The group stopped, panting and sweating, looking at the weapon with a renewed mixture of fear and superstition.
Slowly, as if they were attracted by a magnet, the heads of the villagers, of Anna, and of Velkan himself turned in unison toward Lief.
Upon seeing that everyone's gazes were directed toward him, he decided that the show had lasted long enough.
He let out a sigh, pushed off the tree he had been leaning against, and took a step forward.
His advance had an immediate effect.
As if a force repelled the crowd, the people let go of the corpse and retreated hurriedly, opening a wide path for him.
He arrived in front of the tree and raised his right hand toward the hilt of the sword and without apparent effort.
In the instant that his fingers closed around the leather of the hilt, the aggressive resonance of the weapon calmed instantly, recognizing its owner.
Crishhh...
And before the astonished eyes of the crowd, the sword was not extracted, it simply ceased to exist.
The structure of the weapon fractured into thousands of motes of bright light that spun briefly around Lief's hand like fireflies in a whirlwind, before being absorbed by his skin and disappearing completely into nothingness.
Without the support that kept it pinned against gravity, physical reality claimed its debt.
Boom
The huge body of the werewolf collapsed heavily against the ground, raising a cloud of dust and landing at Lief's feet.
"..."
Silence.
The people looked at the spot where the sword had been and then at Lief's empty hand, eyes wide. Some made the sign of the cross frantically, murmuring prayers.
"..."
Velkan understood the reality of the situation: the power gap between them was not a crack, it was an abyss.
Anna took a shaky breath, filling her lungs with oxygen to stabilize her heart rate.
She smoothed her velvet jacket with hands she forced to stop trembling, straightened her back recovering her bearing, and took a firm step forward, passing her brother who was still processing the scene.
She stopped in front of Lief and bowed in an elegant and respectful manner, acknowledging the life debt.
"Thank you for intervening. Without your sword, my fate would have been sealed," Her face was still pale and there was residual tension in the corners of her eyes, but her voice came out firm.
"I am Anna Valerious. And this is my older brother, Velkan. We are the last of our line and the guardians of this land."
She paused, evaluating him.
"We cannot offer you much here in the forest, but please, allow us to take you back to our home to offer you the hospitality you deserve and express our gratitude properly."
"..."
Lief observed the change in the woman with approval.
"Lief."
He accepted the offer without hesitation.
Under Velkan's complex and cautious gaze, and the reverent eyes of the peasants, the group set off.
Six men had to take turns carrying the massive corpse of the werewolf.
When the procession entered the village wrapped in the violet shadows of twilight, the place erupted.
The news traveled faster than the wind.
The doors of the stone houses burst open and people came out into the streets. Men, women, and children crowded to see the incredible.
Their faces contorted in a mixture of disbelief and wild euphoria upon seeing the dead monster.
The fear that had suffocated the village for generations seemed to tear for an instant, letting in a ray of blinding hope.
Lief, the architect of that miracle, remained on the sidelines of the celebration.
He was guided by the Valerious siblings away from the tumult, crossing the cobblestone streets until reaching the base of Valerious Castle.
It was a grandiose and spectacular structure, but time had not been kind. The marks of decay were visible on every stone.
The castle emanated melancholy.
Upon crossing the threshold and entering the great hall, the sensation of noble abandonment became even more palpable.
The hall was vast, designed to impress, with vaulted ceilings that were lost in the darkness. There were majestic suits of armor standing guard in the corridors and ancient paintings of glorious ancestors hanging on the walls.
However, there was no shine in the metal nor vividness in the colors.
Everything was covered by a fine layer of dust and cobwebs in the high corners.
"Please, follow me."
Anna took the lead, guiding Lief through torch-lit corridors, up a spiral staircase, until reaching a double door on the second floor.
Upon pushing it, she revealed an immense study.
The walls were lined with shelves reaching the ceiling, but what dominated the space were the portraits. Dozens of paintings looking down from the heights, faces of men and women with severe expressions.
However, Lief's eyes skipped over the dead to lock onto the wall opposite the entrance.
There hung a huge map, a piece of cartography. It depicted with obsessive detail a geography of mountain ranges, deep valleys, and endless forests.
And in the center of that topography, marked with bright red ink, was a detailed illustration.
"This is the legacy of our curse," Anna said heavily beside him, "A map drawn by our ancestors."
'Dracula's Castle...'
Lief observed the drawing and the pieces fell into place.
'It's definitely here,' he thought, hiding his astonishment under a mask of interest. 'I am in Transylvania. Specifically, in the version from the Van Helsing movie.'
This painting was not just decoration, it was the physical door, the fixed-coordinate portal that led to the vampire's frozen lair.
He took a step closer, almost grazing the material with his nose, and then...
Zzzzt
A strange sensation ran through his nervous system, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
It was a resonance...
His own ability, the one that connected him to the Agency, reacted violently to the presence of that other portal in front of him.
During this time, he had tried to call Airam or force open the return passage, but it had been useless.
But now...
Standing in front of this anomaly, the map acted like an amplifying antenna.
Through the dimensional static, Lief felt a pull.
It was weak... incredibly faint, but it was there.
He could feel, somewhere infinitely far away through the void, the familiar sensation of his Agency.
________
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