The streets of Hollowmere are still damp with mist, the kind that clings to skin and makes cloaks feel twice as heavy. The sun hasn’t quite burned through the fog yet, and Lorcan doesn’t expect it to anytime soon. Not here. Not this close to the Wendwoods.
He adjusts the strap of his pack, boots crunching gravel as he moves through the streets of town. Everything about this place looks pinched, tight little houses huddled together like they’re bracing for bad weather. The locals watch from behind cracked shutters or half-open doors, pretending not to.
It had taken a full day to track down the two he needed; someone who knows magic well enough to hold a thread of communication, and someone who actually knows the Wendwoods by more than tavern stories. That second part had proven harder than expected but eventually, he found Bran, a Hollowmere-born grunt. He had also found a mage from Graywatch who could at least pretend she knew what she was doing.
Three more days of hard riding followed, straight through dust, rain, and not enough sleep. By the time they reached Hollowmere, the horses were near spent, and Lorcan wasn’t far behind them.
The mage, Kess, a thin, pale woman with dark circles under her eyes, was still upstairs in the rented room, trying to re-establish magical contact with Iven. So far, there is nothing but static and the same vague phrases she’s pulled before: Magic. Not what we thought.
Bran trails him, mid-twenties, broad-shouldered, with the look of someone who’s spent his life toeing the edge of fear. How Lorcan managed to end up with the only soldier from Hollowmere is anyone’s guess. The man hadn’t stopped muttering since they left the inn that morning.
“My uncle swore the trees lean closer when you talk. Said he heard his own words come back twisted.” Bran says, voice low, like the mist might carry his words back to the forest.
Lorcan gives him a flat look. “You planning to sing bedtime stories next, or just waste breath?”
Bran shuts up fast, but Lorcan catches the twitch in his jaw. The man is nervous - too nervous - but he’s all they have. No one else wants to guide them in. Hollowmere has been polite enough, but the second he asks about the Wendwoods, people clam up tighter than sealed vaults. They’re kinder to one of their own.
“The last group that came through,” Bran says after a long pause, “they asked after the Wendwoods. Didn’t talk to many folks, just stocked up and headed northwest. Took the old trail past the streambeds. That’s where I’d start looking.”
Lorcan is already approaching the treeline.
Bran hesitates. “Nothing that goes in there comes back whole.”
Lorcan doesn’t bother replying.
He doesn’t believe in curses. He believes in incompetence.
Iven’s orders were clear: scout the edges, sense for disturbances, probe. Not plunge headlong into the trees chasing relic-glory and half-remembered myths.
And yet, here they are.
He reaches the edge of the forest and pauses. The trees are close together, their trunks dark with dew, and the underbrush is heavy; too heavy for clean travel. If Iven’s team went in this way, they’d have left signs.
Lorcan glances back once, toward the inn, where Kess is likely still muttering over her scrying stone. If she pulls a solid message from Iven, good. If not, they’ll be relying on mud and guesswork.
By late afternoon, frustration had settled sharp beneath his ribs.
Fifteen men do not simply evaporate
Iven’s team went in loud and overconfident, chattering about old magic and blessings. There should be evidence of that arrogance; broken limbs, trampled ferns, a damn scuff in the dirt. But the forest stands untouched.
Bran trails behind him, half-muttering another tale about ghost lights and cursed ground. Lorcan has long since stopped listening to the content, only registering the constant hum of his voice like a stone in his boot.
“They say the moss grows over footsteps in an hour out here,” Bran offers.
“No it doesn’t,” Lorcan snaps, crouching near a patch of wet earth. “And stop saying ‘they say’ unless ‘they’ were out here with a measuring stick.”
Bran grunts and falls silent.
To his credit, the man knows the terrain. He marks deer runs, shallow dips that collect runoff, the sort of natural funnels soldiers would unconsciously follow. He startles at every creak, yes - but he’s not useless.
“Waste of a day,” Lorcan mutters, turning back toward the village. “Come on.”
They find Kess where they left her, upstairs in the inn, sitting cross-legged on the creaky floorboards, a faint sheen of sweat across her brow and her fingers hovering over her scrying stone. She looks up when they enter.
“He made contact.”
Lorcan straightens. “Iven?”
Kess nods once. “Briefly.”
The word tightens something in his chest.
“What did he say?”
“That they’ll be back within a few days. Meeting us here in Hollowmere.”
Lorcan waits.
Kess swallows. “That was all.”
“All?”
“He didn’t elaborate. I tried to press. The connection…”
“And he’s certain?”
“He sounded certain.” A beat. “ He sounded normal.”
Normal. After nearly a week of silence, the word doesn’t sit right.
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No strain. No urgency. No explanation.
Just we’ll be back.
Lorcan studies her face. “ You're sure it was him?”
“Yes.”
It’s something at least.
“Fine,” Lorcan says after a long moment. “Send word to Elira. Let her know Iven’s team is returning and we’ll wait here to meet them.”
Kess nods and bends back over her stone, already beginning the work.
Lorcan steps to the window and looks out toward the treeline, now softened by the gold of dying light.
No mention of magic.
No mention of what they found.
Just normal.
–
The moon hangs low and swollen over Hollowmere, casting long, silver streaks across the muddied roads. Lorcan sits just outside the inn, elbows braced on his knees, watching the mist creep across the grass.
They chose the inn closest to the Wendwoods. It’s barely functioning, cheap and half-abandoned. No one with sense sleeps this near the treeline. That suits him fine. If Iven’s team returns, Lorcan wants first sight of them.
Three days of riding. Half a day in the brush. No tracks. No signs.
Just: We’ll be back in a few days.
He drags a hand down his face with a sigh.
Inside, Bran nurses ale like it might keep the woods away. Every time the door opens, he stiffens.
Lorcan doesn’t believe the Wendwoods are cursed but he can’t deny something feels off. Fifteen people don’t just melt into tree bark.
He stands, stretching his back, and lets his eyes sweep the edge of the village. Lanterns burn low in the windows. A few locals move between homes, but most have shuttered in for the night.
He walks to the edge of the tiny town and stops where the road meets the treeline. The forest rises like a black wall.
Lorcan squints into the dark like it might offer up a secret if he stares long enough.
Two expeditions have gone into those woods before Iven.
The first had sent a dozen soldiers. Only three came out, days later, covered in filth and wild-eyed. One bled to death. The second screamed at shadows until he was silenced. The last refused to cross running water and never spoke again.
The second party had been worse. Twenty men, fewer returned.
Lorcan doesn’t need superstition to make sense of that. Something is in those trees - something dangerous, magical, likely. A relic, a ward, some buried remnant no one bothered to map before borders mattered.
The commander wants answers. Something usable. Something that might tilt a war.
That’s why he sent mages this time, not steel.
Iven took fifteen. Maybe sixteen.
How many are left?
They can’t afford to lose them. Not when half the Court’s trained casters are already tied up reinforcing the eastern and northern fronts, the rest barely trained. Losing one is costly.
Losing five is crippling.
Lorcan’s jaw tightens.
The Wendwoods are not a puzzle. They are a graveyard.
Lorcan takes one last look at the trees, then turns back toward the inn.
That night, sleep never comes.
He lies on the cot with one hand on his knife. The walls of the room feel too close, the air too thick. Kess curls up on her cot in the corner, scrying stone dead cold beside her. Bran snores softly downstairs, or maybe just mutters through uneasy dreams; Lorcan can’t tell.
He swears the Wendwoods are getting closer. That wrongness he’s felt all day hasn’t stayed in the trees, it follows him into the inn, coiling in the corners like smoke.
He mentally blames Bran. The man had spent all day spitting omens and ghost tales, now the stories were rooting in his skull.
-
Morning comes wrapped in thick mist. Lorcan feels it before he opens the door.
Bran steps out behind him and freezes. “Something’s wrong.”
The town feels it too.
People stand in doorways. No one pretends not to watch the trees. Weapons hang at hips that were empty yesterday. The temple is crowded, candles already burning.
A shopkeeper nails her shutters closed, hands shaking.
This is not ordinary fear.
A shout tears through the fog.
Lorcan turns toward the sound, hand already on his blade.
“Something’s coming out of the Wendwoods!”
He’s already moving, boots kicking up gravel as he sprints down the muddy street. Bran stumbles after him.
By the time they reach the clearing just beyond the last house, a crowd has formed, mostly men, villagers clutching pitchforks, rusted axes, old swords dragged out from under floorboards. A few women stand behind them, eyes wide with dread.
They all face the forest.
Lorcan feels it then, stronger than before. That wrongness. The thing that’s been leaking from the trees, slow and silent like smoke under a door, is here. No longer creeping. It has arrived.
He steps to the front of the villagers, gaze locked on the treeline.
A figure steps out of the trees. Then another.
Lorcan blinks. Recognition settles in as more emerge, mud-streaked, exhausted, eyes hollow. Iven’s team.
Relief almost forms-
Then dies.
There are only four.
Out of fifteen.
And… there is something else.
The crowd shifts uneasily. A murmur rolls through them.
Whatever walks among the soldiers isn’t like them. Lorcan can’t see clearly yet, but he feels it, like the air around it bends wrong, like the oppressive weight pressing on Hollowmere follows it straight out of the woods.
“What have they brought back?” someone whispers behind him.
Lorcan pushes forward before fear can sharpen into violence.
“Iven!” he calls, voice cutting through the noise.
The young mage turns. Dirt streaks his face. The bright arrogance Lorcan remembers is gone. What remains looks carved down to bone.
Lorcan closes the distance, eyes flicking across the survivors again.
Four.
“Where are the rest?” he demands.
Iven doesn’t answer.
“What the hell have you done?” Lorcan snaps, his voice low but cutting.
And then he sees it.
His boots halt mid-step. The words dry up in his throat.
It stands slightly apart from the others, half-shadowed by the trees behind. It wears a cloak, hood low, arms shackled, and even from this distance, Lorcan can feel it - wrong.
Its posture is too still.
Not human.
His fingers curl tighter around the hilt at his side.
Reactions ripple through the crowd behind him. One of the villagers shouts something, another raises a weapon.
“Stand down!” Lorcan barks over his shoulder without turning. “No one moves.”
He steps closer.
The thing looks up.
Inhuman eyes meet his; wide, unnatural, reflecting light in a way no normal gaze should. Its face is shaped like a person’s, almost.
Its skin is pale, but not with the ashen hue of illness or fatigue. There’s a faint undertone beneath it; something Lorcan can’t name, only recognize as unnatural.
Its features aren’t grotesque. They aren’t twisted. But they’re off, and off in a way that makes his instincts recoil.
It isn’t snarling. It isn’t armed.
But it doesn’t have to be.
“This,” Lorcan growls, barely above a whisper, “is what you brought back?”
