Ian saw through their ambush.
Whatever plan they had after the fallen woman's seduction.
It failed, woefully.
He could smell their killing intent from even before he entered the forest, that's how he knew they were real.
Seven shapes emerged from the veil of trees, coalescing like ghosts given form. Mist curled around their boots as if reluctant to let them go.
Each figure was armed—not just with steel, but with intent. A silence clung to them like armor, suffocating the space between.
Then the first voice broke it.
"Well, well," a man chuckled, low and bitter. "If it isn't the Demonblade. The Prophet of Death himself."
Another, a broad-shouldered woman with iron rings braided into her hair, spat into the soil.
"Pity. I expected more from the Reaper of Esgard. You've been making mistake after mistake… so much so nobles from the Imperial City finally sent us to clean it all up."
Ian didn't speak for a moment.
The mist shifted around him like it feared his breath.
