The Old Watchtower

Wind knifed through the watchtower, setting the old timbers creaking. Varian leaned against a rough post and looked down at the village below—huts clustered together beneath the forest’s shadow, mist coiling through muddy streets. Behind him, Elric shifted his weight and the boards squeaked underfoot. Firelight caught the lines on his face, the marks of too many sleepless nights.

“Quiet,” Elric said, rubbing his hands over the small fire.

“Always is.”

“Could be worse.” A shrug. “Heard they’re battling giant hordes in the Frostgard passes.”

Varian snorted. “Better than guarding turnip farmers from their own shadows.”

“Who says that’s all we’re guarding against?”

The question hung between them. Varian wanted to dismiss it—village gossip, nursery rhymes—but the words wouldn’t come. The way the forest watched them, patient and dark, made his skin prickle.

Whispers of Darkness

“Then why keep us penned in?” Elric pressed, voice dropping. “What’s the commander so afraid we’ll find?”

“His own incompetence, most like.” But even as Varian said it, he knew it was hollow. He’d seen the fear in the commander’s eyes, heard the tremor in his voice when he gave orders: Never venture beyond the tree line. Never.

Elric leaned closer. “My uncle served in the Grukmar campaigns. He told me things. Things they don’t want known.”

“Such as?”

A glance over the shoulder—quick, nervous, as if the night itself might be listening. Then Elric’s words came in a rush: “The Grukmari revere old gods. They use captives for rituals. Blood magic. Gives them unnatural strength.”

“Horseshit.” The denial came automatically, a reflex. But doubt crept in anyway, cold and unwelcome.

“Then why did the Empire pull back? Why leave all this land empty?”

Varian poked at the coals and watched sparks spiral upward. He thought of the stories from his childhood—blood-soaked offering stones, monsters that walked like men, eyes gleaming in the dark. Foolishness. Children’s tales. He shook his head.

“This backwater’s rotted your brain,” he growled. “Nothing out there but—”

The Scream in the Night

A scream split the darkness—high, terrible, the kind that reaches into your chest and squeezes. Both men froze.

“The square!” Elric’s voice cracked on the words, years of stoicism stripped away in an instant.

They moved. Muscle memory took over where courage failed, boots hammering down rickety steps, armor plates clanking too loud in the silent village. Varian’s eyes swept from shadow to shadow—every dark corner suddenly alive with threat. The village lay shuttered and still around them. Only wisps of chimney smoke proved anyone was alive in there at all.

“There!”

A small figure stumbled from between two huts. A girl, twelve at most, dress torn and filthy. She lurched into the open with her arms flailing, fighting at shadows only she could see.

Varian reached her first. He dropped to a crouch, close enough to catch the smell of fear rolling off her—acrid, animal. “Are you hurt?”

Her face lifted. A mask of terror, tear-tracks cutting through the grime. Her mouth worked but nothing came out. Then her fingers found his arm and dug in, nails biting through fabric, and she was shaking so hard he could feel it in his bones.

“You’re safe.” The words rang false even as he spoke them. “Let’s get you home.”

She wouldn’t move. Couldn’t. Her eyes stayed fixed on the alley mouth, on the shadows pooling between those leaning walls.

Slowly, Varian turned to look.

The girl made a sound—small, wounded, more animal than human—and it cut through him worse than any shout. His grip went white-knuckled on the spear. The night pressed close, thick with threat he couldn’t name but knew was there. Every instinct told him to run.

Nothing out there but trees and squirrels, he told himself. The lie tasted like ash.