The sky bled red in the morning.
Eudora woke before the horns, before the kitchen fires lit, before even the restless groans of the wounded in the infirmary began their chorus. He sat on the edge of his bunk, fingers wrapped around the hilt of a dull training dagger, watching the first light of dawn creep through the stone slits of the wall.
Something was different.
The silence wasn't empty today.
It was expectant.
---
The Guild Hall
"Stand straight," barked Captain Varro.
He was built like a wall of old iron—scarred, rusted, and still too solid to move. His voice echoed across the chamber like the clang of a funeral bell.
Eudora stood beside Marx near the front. Eight others lined the chamber wall. Some familiar faces. Some not.
All quiet.
A mission briefing.
Not the usual rag-work hunts or post-cleaning for nobility. No, this felt heavier. The kind of assignment that started with silence and ended with names etched in stone.
A long wooden table lay at the center of the room. On it, a map of Velharra's eastern outskirts. Forested terrain. Feral zones. Borderland.
"Pack of bone fiends has taken root near the Hollow Timber Line," Varro said. "Four squads sent. Only one returned."
He didn't sugarcoat it.
He didn't need to.
Marx leaned over and whispered, "They're sending us to die."
Eudora didn't blink. "Good."
Varro stabbed a knife into the table, right into the marked red circle.
"This isn't a kill mission. It's a retrieval."
Murmurs.
Varro raised a hand.
"A noble expedition went missing near the ruins of Asterfold. Survivors? Unlikely. But a relic was among them. Something old. Something cursed. The client wants it back."
He looked at each of them like he was choosing which ones would be buried first.
"You leave by dusk. Twelve hours to reach the border. Don't waste time."
His eyes landed on Eudora.
"You. You're promoted."
Eudora blinked.
"Why?" someone muttered.
"He's not stronger than us—"
"Because he doesn't break," Varro said flatly.
And that was that.
---
Dusk
The march began with little ceremony. Packs, blades, cloaks. Six members assigned. Marx. Eudora. A spearwoman named Lys. A shieldbearer named Drogan. Two more with sharp eyes and too little fear.
The road into Hollow Timber wasn't really a road at all. It was an old trail half-swallowed by roots and mist. Trees leaned like bent soldiers, their limbs aching with ancient weight.
The sun disappeared faster there.
As if the forest hated light.
"Keep alert," Marx said. "Fiends hunt through sound."
Eudora walked at the front. He didn't speak. Didn't breathe too loud. Just watched.
His hand rested near the hilt of a real weapon now—not wood, not dulled.
Iron.
Sharp.
Alive.
---
Midnight
They reached the outskirts of the ruins just as the last embers of twilight died.
The ground cracked beneath their boots. Bones. Scattered, white, and brittle. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Human and beast both.
Eudora knelt and touched the earth.
Still warm.
Marx moved beside him. "Something's watching."
The fog thickened.
Shapes shifted.
Then the first screech came from the darkness—sharp, jagged, like a blade dragged over bone.
Figures emerged.
Not monsters.
Things made from dead things. Hollow-eyed. Armor sewn from skin. They didn't move like beasts.
They moved like memory.
"Formation!" Marx yelled.
But Eudora had already stepped forward, blade drawn.
He didn't wait.
He ran toward the sound of his own death.