Sylvania did not welcome travelers; it digested them. There was no sharp physical border, no wall of fire or iron gate, but the crossing was unmistakable. One meter before, the grass was dry and brown; one meter after, it was grey, oily, and tasted of ash. The Strigany caravan proceeded creakingly along the Old Way, a road paved centuries ago by the Empire and now reduced to a skeleton of disconnected stones that shattered wheels and lamed horses.
Geneviève sat on the box of the lead wagon, wrapped in her coarse cloak that smelled of grease and smoke. She held the reins of two skeletal but resilient draft horses, while Madame Katerina smoked her pipe beside her, her milky eyes lost in the darkness of the surrounding forest. The woods here had a name: The Forest of Hunger. The trees had no leaves, but their branches intertwined above the road like arthritic fingers, blocking the view of the two moons, Mannslieb and Morrslieb. There was no wind, yet the branches moved. A dry, continuous rustling, like thousands of insects walking on paper.
"Do not look too deep into the trees, Iron Knight," Katerina croaked, spitting out purplish smoke. "If you look, they look back. And if they see you, they call you."
Geneviève did not answer immediately. She kept one hand on the axe resting on her knees. "What are they?"
"Spirits of those who died of hunger here. Peasants who tried to escape from the Counts. Imperial soldiers who got lost. They have no body, so they want your warmth."
Duraz, tied behind the wagon, let out a choked sound, tugging at his rope. The dwarven horse sensed something that even Geneviève's sharp senses had not yet captured. Geneviève stiffened. The itch at the base of her neck—that signal her divine nature sent her in the presence of evil—had become a constant, dull pain, like a migraine that never went away. She had to spend half of her concentration just to hold back her inner light, so as not to shine like a torch in that eternal night.
At midnight, the caravan stopped. Not by Katerina's order. The lead horses froze, trembling violently, refusing to take another step. Before them, the road was blocked by mist. But in the mist, there were lights. Not lanterns. Eyes. Yellow, green, red. Low to the ground.
"Wolves," whispered one of the Strigany men, running toward the lead wagon with a flickering torch. "A whole pack, Mother."
"They are not wolves," Geneviève corrected, standing up on the box. Her voice was calm, but her hand gripped the axe handle until the wood creaked. From the mist, shapes emerged. They were as large as ponies. Their fur was patchy, revealing exposed ribs and dead grey muscles. Their jaws hung open, drooling a black liquid. Dire Wolves. They did not hunt for biological hunger. They hunted out of hatred for life.
There were twenty of them. And at the center, a gigantic specimen, with a rusted arrow embedded in its left socket, growled silently.
"The toll!" Katerina shouted to the other wagons. "Take the goat!"
The Strigany, terrified but fast, dragged an old, bleating black goat from a cage. They slit its throat in the middle of the road and threw it toward the pack. The warm blood steamed on the cold asphalt.
The alpha wolf sniffed the offering. Then it raised its head and looked at Geneviève. It ignored the goat. Had the beast sensed the scent of the Grail beneath the grease and mud? Or had it simply recognized the most dangerous predator in the group? With a snarl that sounded like stone scraping on stone, the alpha charged. Not toward the goat. Toward the wagon.
"Get back!" Geneviève yelled, pushing Katerina inside the tent-protected wagon. She jumped down from the box, landing heavily on the road. The alpha was on her in a second. Geneviève did not dodge. She planted her feet. She used the shaft of the axe to block the gaping maws aiming for her throat. She felt the impact of two hundred kilos of dead flesh and magical muscle. Her boots slid back half a meter, leaving furrows in the earth. The beast's breath tasted of a tomb opened for centuries.
"Gottfried! Help us!" the Strigany behind her screamed. The rest of the pack had attacked the flanks of the caravan. Geneviève could not use the Light. If she did, she would pulverize the wolves, but Katerina would understand. She had to fight like a mortal. With rage and steel.
She pushed the alpha away with a heave of her shoulders, making it stagger. Instead of striking with the axe blade (which would have jammed in the beast's hard bones), she spun the weapon and struck with the rear point—a steel spike. She aimed for the spinal column, just behind the skull. CRACK. The blow was precise and devastating. The undead wolf's spine snapped. The beast collapsed, its hind legs useless, but it continued to try to drag itself toward her with its front legs, snapping at the air. Geneviève finished the job by crushing its skull with an armored boot.
She turned. The caravan was in chaos. Three wolves had overturned a light wagon. A Strigany woman was screaming, trying to protect a child with her own body while a wolf gnawed on her arm. Geneviève sprinted. She didn't run; she charged like a bull. She hit the wolf in the flank with her shoulder, throwing it off the woman. The beast rolled and stood up immediately, snarling. Geneviève did not wait. She grabbed a torch that had fallen to the ground with her left hand. "Fire!" she yelled, slamming the torch onto the wolf's snout. The beast's oily, dry fur caught fire instantly. The wolf felt no pain, but the fire consumed the magic holding it together. The beast became a ball of fire running blindly, igniting a dry bush before collapsing into ash.
Duraz, having freed himself from the rope, was fighting his own personal battle. The dwarven horse had kicked a wolf with such violence that it stove in its ribcage, and now he was trying to bite the ear of another. "Away! Away!" Geneviève shouted, swinging the axe in a deadly arc, decapitating a wolf that tried to jump onto Katerina's wagon.
Seeing their leader dead and the fire spreading, the rest of the pack hesitated. The magic animating them was predatory but cowardly. Faced with such brutal resistance, the instinct for preservation prevailed. They retreated into the mist, vanishing like smoke.
The silence returned, broken only by the child's crying and the crackling of burnt wood. Geneviève leaned on the axe, breathing heavily. Her disguise had held, but barely. She approached the wounded woman. The bite on her arm was deep, black.
"Let me," Katerina said, descending from the wagon with a box of ointments. The old woman looked at Geneviève. She looked at the alpha wolf slaughtered with bare hands and boots. "You fought like a demon, Gottfried," the old woman said, using Geneviève's false name. "But you did not bleed."
Geneviève pointed to her dented, grease-covered armor. "Iron does not bleed, Grandmother."
Katerina did not answer, but her eyes were calculating. "Put the dead in the ditch and let's go," the matriarch ordered. "The fire will attract worse things than wolves. Vargheists fly fast."
As she helped right the overturned wagon, Geneviève felt a vibration in the ground. It wasn't hooves. It was a pulsation. She looked toward the east, toward the heart of Sylvania. Down there, beyond the hills, something had awakened. Had the Grand Master reached Drakenhof? Or was there something else? She wiped her axe on the dead grass. Sylvania was reacting to her presence as a body reacts to a virus. The fever was rising.
At dawn on the second day—a relative concept, since the sky only passed from black to leaden grey—they arrived at Siegfriedhof. The village was not in ruins, which was almost worse. The houses were intact, with black slate roofs and barred windows. The chimneys smoked. But there was no one in the streets. No dog barked. No rooster crowed. The inhabitants of Siegfriedhof lived, but they lived in absolute terror, going out only to work the fields of withered turnips under the watchful gaze of the Castle's servants.
"Here we part," said Madame Katerina, stopping the caravan at the main crossroads, beneath a gallows from which a skeleton hung in an iron cage. "We go south, toward the mountain passes. You seek death in the east."
Geneviève climbed down from the wagon. She took Duraz's reins. "Thank you for the passage."
Katerina threw her a bag of dried herbs. "Garlic and Belladonna. They don't stop the Vampires, but they confuse their wolves. And listen: if you see a black carriage pulled by headless nightmares... do not fight. Hide. That is not a beast. It is a ferry to hell."
The caravan set off again, the wheels creaking away, leaving Geneviève alone in the ghost village square. She looked around. She needed information. The Grand Master of the Grey Circle could not have passed unnoticed here. A powerful mage leaves a trail, even if he tries to hide it.
She headed toward the only building with a light on: the inn "The Broken Chalice." She pushed open the heavy door. The interior was warm and smelled of clotted blood and sour beer. There were no human patrons. Sitting at the tables were silent figures. Three men. But they were not breathing. They were Grave Guard—ancient skeletal warriors encased in magical flesh to look almost human, used by the Vampires as local police. They wore ancient, rusted armor, and their eyes glowed with a faint green light.
The innkeeper, a living human but hunched and terrified, was cleaning the counter with a filthy rag. When Geneviève entered, the Guards turned slowly. Their movements were jerky. Geneviève advanced to the counter, ignoring the monsters. "Beer," she said.
The innkeeper served her, trembling. "You are... you are mad to enter here, stranger. This is the Baron's inn tonight."
"The Baron is not here," Geneviève said, taking the mug. "And I seek another traveler. A man with a silver mask. Has he passed through here?"
At the mention of the mask, one of the Grave Guard stood up. The chair fell back with a thud. The creature drew a rusted sword. It did not speak. It did not need to. The order was clear: no one was to ask questions.
Geneviève did not move. She took a sip of beer. It was terrible. "I don't have time for this," she murmured.
The Guard charged. Geneviève grabbed the heavy pewter mug and slammed it onto the table with force. Not out of anger. For distraction. As the sound echoed, she moved. She dodged the Guard's slow slash. She grabbed the creature's skeletal arm and twisted it. She felt the dry bone snap beneath the fake flesh. She slammed the creature against the wall and ripped off its helmet. Beneath it was no face. Only a grinning skull.
The other two Guards stood up. Geneviève drew her bastard sword (not the Light). "Sit," she ordered, with a voice that vibrated with royal authority, not that of a mercenary. "Or I will dismantle you piece by piece and feed you to my horse."
There was something in her tone. Or perhaps in the way she held the sword. The Guards hesitated. Their necromantic programming recognized the superior threat. The innkeeper, weeping, pointed to the back door. "He passed! Yes! Two nights ago! He... he took the road to the Dead Marshes! Not toward the Castle! He said he had to find the Old Stone!"
The Dead Marshes. Geneviève released the Guard, which slid inert to the floor. He wasn't going to Drakenhof. The Grand Master wasn't seeking an alliance with the Von Carsteins. He was seeking something older, buried in the marshes where ancient battles had been forgotten. A place of pure necromantic power, not controlled by the Vampires. He wanted to use that power to finish the ritual from a distance.
Geneviève threw a coin on the counter. "For the trouble." She went out into the mist. The Marshes were to the north. A place where even the dead drowned. "Let's go, Duraz," she said to the horse waiting outside, growling at a skeletal cat. "We need taller boots."
The Dead Marshes were not land and they were not water; they were a purulent compromise between the two. As Geneviève and Duraz proceeded north, the stone path from Siegfriedhof vanished, swallowed by sickly vegetation. The grass here was not grey, but a pale purple, almost translucent, emitting a faint crackling when stepped upon.
The air was saturated with a dense, sweetish vapor, the typical smell of anaerobic decomposition mixed with the ozone of black magic. Geneviève had to wrap Duraz's legs in treated leather and grease to prevent the acidic water from burning his hooves. The horse proceeded with his head low, snorting nervously every time a gas bubble burst on the surface with a sound like a human sigh.
"Stay where the ground is dark, my friend," Geneviève whispered, leading him by the reins. "The green is only a deception."
As they moved forward, Geneviève began to notice anomalies. In normal marshes, the mist moves with the wind. Here, the mist formed vertical walls, corridors that seemed to guide the traveler toward a single focal point. In the distance, small globes of bluish light—Will-o'-the-Wisps—danced among the dead willows. They were not natural phenomena. They were the fragments of souls too weak to become specters, but sentient enough to try to lure the living toward the quicksand.
Geneviève felt the pressure on the Grail become almost unbearable. In this place, her Light was like a bell ringing in absolute silence. She could feel the gaze of thousands of invisible eyes watching her from the mud. Suddenly, Duraz planted himself. Before them, emerging from the mist like a ghost ship, rose the Old Stone.
It was not a simple menhir. It was an obsidian black obelisk, tall as a watchtower, leaning perilously to the left. The surface was engraved with runes that belonged to neither Dwarves nor Elves. They were angular, violent marks that seemed to wound the stone itself. Around the base of the stone, the marsh had been "purified": the mud had become perfectly dry white ash.
At the center of the ash circle, Geneviève saw the figure she was looking for. The Grand Master. His silver mask, still marked by the crack Geneviève had inflicted in Altdorf, glowed with an internal violet light. He was not alone. Five fresh corpses, dressed in the bloodied liveries of the Siegfriedhof town guard, were arranged in a star pattern around the obelisk. From their wounds came not blood, but grey smoke that was sucked upward into the obelisk's runes.
The mage was not using a dagger. He was using the power of the stone to amplify his voice. "...let the bond be broken, let the blood be ash, let the crown fall into the dust of the mind..."
The ritual that had been interrupted in Altdorf was being completed here, using the Old Stone as a magical antenna to strike the Crown Prince across the hundreds of miles separating them. Geneviève wasted no time in threats. She dropped Duraz's reins and sprinted. She did not draw the common sword. She knew against that magic it would be like a toothpick. She reached for her back and unsheathed Vesper's Light. The marsh seemed to lurch. The blue glow of the sword pierced the purple mist like a bolt from the blue.
"STOP!" Geneviève yelled.
The Grand Master did not even turn. He made a fluid gesture with his left hand behind his back. The marsh mud in front of Geneviève exploded. Four massive figures emerged from the sludge. They were Crypt Horrors: deformed giants, former ghouls empowered by vampire blood and necromantic magic. They had bony spines protruding from their backs and claws as long as daggers.
"Kill the nuisance," the Master's voice hissed through the mask. "I have almost finished."
The first Horror charged with a speed that belied its bulk. Geneviève slipped under its right arm, which could have crushed her skull, and struck with the sacred sword. The blue blade cut through the monster's infected flesh as if it were melted butter. There was no blood; the wound was instantaneously cauterized by the divine light, burning the creature from the inside. The Horror let out a scream that made the marsh water vibrate, collapsing into a heap of ash and charred bone.
But the other three were on her simultaneously. Geneviève had to use all her agility. She jumped onto the chest of one, using it as a springboard to avoid the lateral attack of the third. In the air, she spun her sword, describing a circle of blue fire. ZAP-CRACK. The tips of a monster's claws were sheared away, sending it into a frenzy of pain.
Meanwhile, the sky above the obelisk was changing. A vortex of black clouds was forming, with purple lightning striking the tip of the stone. "One more moment..." the mage recited. "The seed of madness is planted..."
Geneviève felt a shiver. She could perceive the magic traveling toward Altdorf. She saw in her mind the Prince in his healing bed, beginning to scream as the shadows crept into his dreams.
"DURAZ! NOW!" Geneviève shouted.
The dwarven horse, who had remained on the edge, did not charge the monsters. He charged the ash circle. The dwarves had taught Duraz to charge siege engines. The horse lowered his armored head and struck one of the ritual corpses, dragging it out of its position in the circle.
The magical flow broke abruptly. The vortex above the stone lurched. The Grand Master finally turned, the silver mask vibrating with pure rage. "STUPID BEAST!"
The mage hurled a bolt of grey energy at Duraz. Geneviève was faster. She threw herself in front of the horse, raising her shield. The impact was enormous. Geneviève's shield, blessed by the Lady, absorbed much of the blow, but the force slammed her against the obsidian obelisk.
CLANG. The sound of armor metal against the sacrilegious stone echoed throughout the marsh. Geneviève fell to the ground, her vision blurred. She felt the taste of iron in her mouth. The Grand Master advanced toward her, floating a few centimeters above the ash. The two remaining Horrors positioned themselves at his sides like guard dogs.
"You have ruined everything for the last time," hissed the Master. "I do not need the obelisk to kill you. And once you are dead, I will use your 'holy' blood to consecrate this place to a God you do not even know."
Geneviève tried to stand up, but her left leg would not respond. The impact against the stone had numbed it. She gripped the hilt of Vesper's Light. The sword glowed faintly now, as if sensing its mistress's exhaustion.
"I know my God," Geneviève said, spitting blood. "And I know she doesn't like cowards who hide behind a mask."
The Grand Master burst into a shrill, inhuman laugh. "You want to see what is beneath? You shall see it as your soul is ripped away."
He raised his hands. The air around him became cold as the void between the stars. But just as he was about to strike the final blow, a deep and ancestral sound echoed from the forest behind them. A howl. But not that of a wolf. Something much larger. Something that possessed Sylvania long before the Vampires and the Grey Circle.
The Grand Master's ears strained. Even the Crypt Horrors began to tremble. From the mist emerged red eyes, three meters off the ground. The Varghulfs. The alpha predators of Sylvania—vampires who had lost every trace of humanity to become giant beasts of muscle and atrophied wings. And they did not seem happy that someone was playing with the Old Stone in their territory.
Geneviève smiled, despite the pain. "It seems we have company, 'Master'."