The next morning wasn’t the sa.
Delwig awoke beneath a shroud of silence—a kind of silence that weighed heavier than the fog rolling off its walls.
The markets didn’t stir, no distant clangs of blacksmiths rang through the courtyards, and even the birds perched on the watchtowers seed reluctant to sing. The first light of dawn bled across the cobbled streets like a wound reopening.
Veyne was dead.
They found him just beyond the northern gate, his body lying in the frost-damp grass beside two of the guards who had manned the tower through the night.
The report ca early. Too early.
Damien had barely been asleep when the pounding on his door began. A young guard stood there, wide-eyed and pale, the breath misting from his lips in the cold. "Sir Damien—General Ivaan requests your presence. Urgently. It’s... it’s Captain Veyne."
Damien blinked the sleep from his eyes, his thoughts foggy. "What about him?"
The boy swallowed. "Captain Veyne’s dead, sir."
The words didn’t register at first—just echoed hollowly, as though they were ant for soone else. But the look on the guard’s face made denial impossible.
Damien exhaled slowly, the quiet sound too sharp in the cold air, and reached for his coat.
"Tell them I’m coming."
Before leaving, he scribbled a quick note on the small scrap of parchnt near the table, his handwriting uneven from haste:
Urgent summons. Don’t follow. Stay inside. – Damien.
He slipped it under Arielle’s door and stepped into the pre-dawn chill. The streets were empty, save for the faint orange light spilling from the mana lamps.
His boots echoed on the stone as he moved toward the northern gate, his breath steady, his pulse not quite. Sothing in his gut twisted—an old, familiar warning that things were unraveling again.
By the ti he arrived, the horizon was just beginning to burn with gray light. A faint mist clung to the ground, swirling around boots and blood.
Captain Apnoch was already there, his usual confidence replaced by a tight frown. General Ivaan stood beside him, arms folded, his gaze cold and sharp as steel. Several guards ford a periter, whispering quietly but stopping the mont Damien approached.
"Damien," Ivaan greeted without turning. His voice was low, even. "Thank you for coming."
Damien’s eyes flicked to the ground before him—and froze.
Veyne lay there, his armor dented, his cloak torn, his eyes half-open to the pale morning. His expression was not one of pain, but surprise—like he hadn’t even realized he was dying.
Beside him were the bodies of two younger guards. Their blades still clutched in hand, blood drying along the edges. Whatever had killed them had done it cleanly—too cleanly.
Damien’s jaw tightened. "What happened?"
Apnoch sighed, rubbing his temple. "No one knows. The watch reported nothing unusual until the second bell. Then—nothing. When we ca to check, the entire northern wall was empty. We found them outside, like this."
Ivaan finally turned to face him, his expression unreadable. "There were no alarms, no traces of demonic essence. But the blood..."
He gestured toward the ground.
Damien followed the motion, his gaze narrowing. Blood had splattered across the frost, streaking toward the open fields—thin trails that led toward the dark outline of the Verdant Verge.
Even from here, he could feel it faintly: the hum beneath the soil. Old, strange power.
Apnoch continued quietly, "It’s as if soone—or sothing—dragged another body toward the forest."
Damien crouched beside the nearest corpse, his fingers brushing the dirt. The blood wasn’t just from soldiers. There was another kind of scent mixed in—smaller, fainter.
And then he saw it.
Just a few feet away, half hidden beneath a patch of grass and frost, was the body of a child.
His breath caught.
The little boy couldn’t have been more than seven. His clothes were threadbare, his small hands dirt-stained. His eyes were closed as if asleep, but the streak of crimson that marked his throat told the truth clearly enough.
Damien stared, every muscle in his body locking in place.
Tudum!
His heartbeat thudded once—hard, painful—before fury began to creep up his spine.
A soldier approached quietly, kneeling to cover the child with a cloak. "They say he lived near the gate, sir. Might’ve been fetching water when..." The man didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
Damien barely heard him. His thoughts were already sliding backward, to mories he wished he’d buried long ago—the night he’d been sent or rather exiled from humanity by his father and sent to the Forest Of Twin Disasters.
Now, it was echoing again.
Because down the road, a woman’s voice was rising—a scream that split the morning open.
She ca running, barefoot across the stones, her nightdress torn, hair unbound. "No—no, no, no—!" She fell to her knees beside the boy before anyone could stop her, her hands shaking as she pulled the cloak away. Her sobs tore through the cold like glass splintering. "Darwin, you can’t be dead! Not before your mother!"
The soldiers looked away, so bowing their heads. Damien’s stomach collapsed on itself.
’Did mother feel like this after she found out?’ He would never get to find out or maybe he would. When he returned to deal with his father.
Right now though, he couldn’t move. Neither could he speak.
General Ivaan placed a steady hand on his shoulder, the gesture ant to ground him—but sothing inside Damien rebelled against the man’s hands on his shoulder. His fury flared hotter at the touch, like a storm resisting its cage.
"Easy," Ivaan murmured. "There’ll be ti for vengeance. But not if we lose our heads."
Damien’s gaze snapped toward him, eyes colder than steel. "You think I’m losing it?"
"I think you’re feeling what any man would," Ivaan replied evenly. "But this—this needs calculation, not chaos."
Damien said nothing. The rage didn’t fade; it just compressed into sothing quieter, sharper.
He turned toward Apnoch. "You should lay the bodies to rest. All of them." His voice was low, steady in a way that made the captain straighten instinctively. "I’ll go into the forest. If whoever did this is still out there, I’ll find them."
Apnoch’s eyes widened. "You shouldn’t go alone—"
But Damien was already moving, stepping past the ring of soldiers. "I won’t be alone."
He lifted a hand, and blue light rippled through the air. "Summon Aquila." He commanded and a mont later it manifested.
A deep, resonant cry answered from above—the kind that made every head turn skyward.
Aquila descended in a rush of wind and feathers, landing with such force the frost scattered into mist. Her golden eyes t Damien’s, understanding passing between them wordlessly.
Without another glance back, he vaulted onto her back.
"Damien!" Apnoch shouted, but the rest of his protest was lost to the wind as Aquila leapt skyward, wings carving through the pale dawn.
From above, the city shrank quickly, its towers and ramparts fading into the morning haze. The Verdant Verge stretched ahead—an ocean of green shadow at the world’s edge. The forest was still, but sothing inside it pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat hidden beneath the roots.
Damien’s hands tightened on Aquila’s reins. The cold wind cut across his face, biting through his coat, but it didn’t matter. His mind was fixed, focused on the blood trail that had vanished into the trees.
Veyne. The guards. The boy.
Each thought sharpened into another blade.
Aquila let out a low rumble, sensing his anger. "I know," he murmured, voice nearly lost to the wind. "I’ll keep it together."
They reached the edge of the forest in minutes. The treetops swayed gently, deceptive in their peace. The Verdant Verge had always felt strange since he visited earlier, alive in ways the rest of the world wasn’t. The barrier of old mana still lingered faintly in the air—a whisper of sothing ancient that should have stayed buried.
He directed Aquila lower, skimming just above the canopy. From here, he could see faint impressions on the ground—broken branches, displaced leaves. Tracks.
Sothing—or soone—had moved through here recently.
He narrowed his eyes. "There," he whispered.
Aquila banked sharply. Below, through the patchy mist, sothing shifted. Not the lurch of beasts, not the scurry of wildlife. These movents were deliberate—coordinated.
Humanoid.
Damien stilled, his heart pounding once. He waited, watching. The figures moved between the trees—blurred forms, almost invisible to the untrained eye. They carried themselves with a fluidity that spoke of training, not wildness. Whoever they were, they didn’t belong to Delwig’s ranks.
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
He reached down, brushing his fingers against Aquila’s feathers. "Follow my mark."
Then, without warning, he leapt.
The world dropped away beneath him. Air roared past his ears as he fell, his coat whipping around him like dark wings. The wind tore at his skin, his blood thrumming with the rush of descent.
From below, the forest surged upward—green and endless.
His eyes locked on the figures below, moving swiftly through the mist. He could almost hear their steps, the faint whisper of blades drawn, unaware of what was about to fall upon them.
For a heartbeat, everything was weightless—the calm before the impact, the breath before the storm.
Then Damien angled his body downward, cutting through the morning light like a cot streaking toward the earth.
And as the trees rushed up to et him, the forest seed to hold its breath.
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