NOVPUBNight draped itself over the camp in thick, silver-rimmed folds. The waterfall's rumble muted to a distant hush, while mist curled around tent stakes and supply crates. Above the treetops, stars punched holes in the sky—sharp, cold glimmers that felt painfully clean after so much tainted firelight.
Most warriors slept, sprawled in exhausted heaps around dying hearths. A few kept watch, silhouettes against fog, their reflective eyes sweeping the dark. Sylvanna sat near a low fire where logs burned down to ember-orange knots. She held a tin cup of broth between both palms; it steamed in the chill, fragrant with nettle and marrow. Yet each time she brought it to her lips, the scent of scorched sap intruded, turning her stomach. The cup cooled untouched.
Around her, conversation dipped whenever she shifted. Soldiers who had cheered moments ago during field dressing now avoided her gaze. A veteran archer fumbled an arrow in his lap, muttered something under his breath, and moved three paces farther from the fire. Even the half-elves from the supply corps—folk who had once teased her about arrow counts—kept polite distance, gratitude overshadowed by the lingering crackle of static near her skin.
Vaelira joined her, settling with practiced grace atop a fallen log. She offered a small pottery bowl filled with ration stew. "Eat," she urged. "Your body needs salt."
Sylvanna shook her head. "Can't stomach it." She stared into the embers, watching tiny sparks leap, flare, and die. They reminded her of the pylon's explosion—of energy too vast to hold.
"They see the storm," Vaelira said, following her line of sight. "Not the toll it takes."
"I don't need their pity." The words came out harsher than intended.
"Not pity," Vaelira corrected gently. "Understanding."
They sat in silence, listening to the wind comb through leaves overhead. Somewhere a healer's bell tinkled—someone needed water. Raëdrithar dozed behind Sylvanna, massive form curled protectively, breaths deep and even. The occasional spark hopped along his whiskers, but otherwise his storm slept.
Across camp, the council's pavilion glowed dim. Inside, Draven stood before elders, his voice a measured cadence carrying through the canvas walls. Sylvanna couldn't make out words, only the rhythm: report, conclusion, recommendation. Even from here she could tell he reduced the battle to statistics—damage mitigated, percentages of corruption eliminated, probability curves for further incursions. Her name would appear as "asset EFFECTIVE" or "asset VOLATILE." A column, not a person.
She hugged her knees tighter. Victory felt hollow tonight.
_____
When the camp's last lanterns guttered, Sylvanna tried to sleep. She lay on a bedroll beside Raëdrithar's warm flank, the beast's breathing a deep, rolling tide. Each exhale rattled the fabric of the tent and caressed her cheek like a breeze; each inhale drew away the cold. Still, dreams clawed at the edge of consciousness: ember-red lightning crackling across her arms, Virellionn's laughter echoing in the pylon's shatter, Draven's voice saying "asset terminated." She woke twice gasping, and Raëdrithar pressed closer until her heartbeat steadied.
Eventually she drifted, but not for long. A whisper of cloth drew her half-awake. Through half-lidded eyes she saw a tall shadow slide past the tent flap—silent, deliberate. Draven. His silhouette glided between moonlit patches, cloak whispering like a tide receding over pebbles.
She almost called out, but fatigue anchored her tongue. In moments he was gone, swallowed by mist.
_____
Draven moved through the camp like a whisper of ink across parchment, shadows folding around him with each step. His cloak swept in his wake, rune-stitched threads drinking the moonlight and leaving only a faint shimmer that blinked in and out of sight. Around him, the camp lay still—tents like clustered cocoons, their canvas walls sagging with the weight of mist. Stars pricked the sky in cold, indifferent patterns, silver pins stitching darkness to infinity.
Firelight bled through gaps in tent seams, painting the mist in faint, wavering amber. Somewhere, a soldier murmured in his sleep, a name caught between fear and longing. The healer's bell tinkled once, then stilled. Even Raëdrithar's low thunderous breathing was a distant rumble, a warm pulse beneath the crisp, chill air.
Draven's stride was measured, each step precise, each breath a calculated rhythm. His eyes, pale and sharp as frosted glass, flicked from shadow to shadow, measuring the quiet. He had learned long ago that silence was never complete; it was a matter of frequencies—low murmurs, rustles, the subtle shift of fabric against bark. Each sound was a fragment of a map, and Draven mapped without conscious effort.
His fingers brushed against the hilt of one of his twin blades, the touch a familiar reassurance. Not out of fear—no threat here concerned him—but out of habit. Weapons were extensions of his will, edges cut to his intentions. And tonight, his intention was a hunt.
"Time for my own hunt," he murmured to himself, the words slipping from his lips like mist dissolving into the damp air. It wasn't a boast, nor a declaration—it was a simple equation, a variable that needed to be balanced.
He stepped past the outer ring of tents, where the mist thickened like coiling smoke. His footfalls made no sound, each boot placed with a precision that even the damp moss could not betray. A sentry leaned against a tree, chin dipping, eyelids heavy. Draven's gaze brushed over the guard, dismissed him. The man was not part of the calculation.
Beyond, the forest loomed—tall, silent shapes reaching toward the sky, their leaves rustling faintly as the wind combed through. It was a perfect night for shadows, for silent steps and hidden blades.
But then a shape cut across his path—a glint of silver-green in the mist, sharp and deliberate.
"Going somewhere?"
Vaelira Greenbark stepped forward, her silver eyes narrowed, armor plates catching moonlight. Her hand rested lightly on the hilt of her sword, not drawn but poised—a threshold crossed only by will. Her other hand hung loose, but her fingers twitched, not in nervousness, but readiness. She was not blocking his path so much as making it known that she was part of it.
Draven's gaze met hers, his face an unreadable mask, yet his silence spoke volumes. Calculations ran through his mind in a heartbeat—options, responses, probabilities. He weighed each one, dismissed several, chose the simplest.
"I have something to take care of," he said, his voice a smooth current over pebbles—calm, factual, without a ripple of emotion.
"Not something you informed the council of," Vaelira noted, voice sharp but measured. "Or did you think you could simply vanish into the mist without questions?"
"Questions are a currency," Draven replied. "I pay them only when the answers have value."
"Don't patronize me," Vaelira's voice sharpened, though she didn't raise it. "I know you, Draven. You move like a shadow, speak like a diplomat, and think like a trap. Whatever you're hunting, it's not some stray corruption in the woods."
He tilted his head, a faint smile ghosting across his lips—no warmth, only the hint of amusement one might show at a riddle half-solved. "Your perception is as sharp as your sword," he remarked. "But not quite sharp enough."
Vaelira's fingers tightened on her sword hilt, a faint metallic scrape as her grip adjusted. "Humor me, then. What are you after?"
Draven's eyes traced the mist beyond her, the distant tree line, the cold starlight piercing the fog. He could already picture his path—the leaves he would brush past, the root ridges he would step over without a sound, the silent plunge into the dark where his quarry lay. But this exchange was now a new variable—an interruption that required a different calculation.
"I have my own hunt," he repeated, the words firmer, each syllable clipped, cold as a knife's edge. "This must be done by me."
"By you?" Vaelira leaned forward, moonlight catching on her braid rings. "What is it you need to hunt that even the Vanguard cannot aid you against?"
Draven's gaze flicked back to her, and for the briefest moment, something colder than frost glinted in his eyes. "It's not about Virellionn," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to carve through the mist.
"Then what is it?" Vaelira pressed, stepping closer, her presence a sharp, unyielding line drawn between him and the night beyond. "What do you seek, Draven?"
"Humans," he answered, a single word that hung between them like a blade suspended by a thread. No embellishment, no preamble—only that one word, edged with a chill that even the mist could not swallow.
Vaelira's breath caught, her stance wavering for the first time. Confusion rippled across her expression, then wariness, then something deeper—something almost like pity. "Humans?" she repeated, as though testing the weight of the word, trying to pry open its meaning. "Why?"
Draven did not answer. He did not need to. His expression—cold, calculating, as sharp and unreadable as the star-studded void above—said everything. Humans were a problem, a variable. And he was the solution.
