A collective exhale followed Jacobs's grave pronouncement, a soft rustle of barely contained tension, D-Rank. On paper, manageable but the Captain's uncharacteristic hesitation, set against the chilling backdrop of sixty vanished souls, left a residue of deep unease.
Recent months had seen a worrying uptick in dangerous assignments across Zephyros; whispers in the barracks spoke of strained borders, simmering internal dissent, and unsettling anomalies stretching the Royal Army thin. Even a seemingly minor reconnaissance mission now seemed fraught with potential peril.
"Alright, listen up," Jacobs snapped. His voice, regaining its customary sharpness, pulled them back to the present task. "We move out immediately. First stop, supply depot. Standard loadout plus extra healing draughts, signal flares, and reserve rations. Check your gear twice. Rendezvous back here, ready to move, in fifteen minutes sharp."
There was no dissent. The Captain was a solid Rank 3 veteran and expected nothing less than swift obedience. His gruff humour often masked a razor-sharp mind forged by years of hard-won experience.
As the squad dispersed, Henry fell into step beside Sophia heading towards the depot. He noticed the slight furrow in her brow and the thoughtful, almost distant look she wore. She carried burdens of her own, Henry knew, not least the weight of a potential far exceeding her current rank, a potential the higher-ups watched closely. He, like Jacobs, was supposedly capable of reaching Rank 5 someday, a respectable, solid command rank.
But Sophia, hers was whispered to be something else entirely, something reaching towards the demigod tiers. Why she remained tethered to their rough-and-tumble scout squad, facing daily dangers far beneath her projected station, was a question Henry never asked but often pondered. Her quiet loyalty was a fierce, grounding presence, one that ignited in him an unspoken duty to protect.
The preparations were swift, practiced movements born of routine. They drew supplies, checked straps, and filled waterskins. Fifteen minutes later, they were mounted, leaving the towering stone walls of East Aerion behind, the sprawling city fading into the morning haze as they rode south.
The journey took two hours, hooves drumming a steady rhythm on the packed earth road, carrying them away from the relative security of the capital's immediate influence and into the more sparsely populated territories bordering the ancient southern woods. Their destination, the village of Lykuzt, emerged from the rolling landscape like a half-forgotten memory.
It was small, nestled vulnerably near the edge of the shadowed treeline, and an unnatural quiet hung over it. Missing were the usual sounds of rural life, the ring of a blacksmith's hammer, the chatter of villagers, the barking of dogs. Instead, the tension was a suffocating presence, born of fear and unspoken grief.
The village elder met them near the humble, weather-beaten chapel at the center of the settlement. His face was a roadmap of worry, deep lines etched around his eyes, his shoulders slumped with the weight of responsibility and sleepless nights.
With a low, trembling whisper, he recounted the events, confirming the sobering details Jacobs already knew. Seven villagers had vanished over the past week or so, mostly hunters and gatherers who frequented the nearby forest. Two had disappeared just three days ago.
"No signs, Captain," the elder insisted, wringing his calloused hands. "No strange lights, no omens. They just didn't come back. We formed search parties, scoured the fringes" He gestured vaguely towards the forbidding treeline. "But the woods, there's something wrong with them now. More ominous. Most folk won't go far past the edge, especially after young Thomas and his brother disappeared."
Fear kept the search limited, superficial. Stern warnings had been issued, avoid the woods after dusk, travel only in groups but against an enemy that struck unseen, such precautions were woefully inadequate. With a curt jerk of his chin, Jacobs dismissed the elder politely before dispatching the squad in pairs.
Henry partnered with Daniel, the quiet mage, moving through the hushed lanes, speaking with frightened families huddled inside their small cottages. They listened patiently to tearful accounts from spouses, siblings, and neighbours.
The stories echoed the elder's words: the missing had shown no unusual behavior beforehand, reported no strange encounters. There were no witnesses to their disappearance, no clues left behind within the village itself. The prevailing belief, fueled by terror and the lack of any other explanation, was that the danger resided solely within the forest's deep, gloomy embrace.
The squad shared their findings near the chapel, while the anxious village elder looked on. Nothing new, no concrete leads pointed away from the woods.
"Alright," Jacobs declared, his decision firm. "The answers aren't here. We go in."
The transition from the relative openness of the village fields to the forest proper was abrupt and startling. One moment they were under the wide sky, the next plunged into a perpetual twilight beneath a dense, suffocating canopy.
Ancient, gnarled trees clawed towards the sky. Their upper branches intertwined like skeletal fingers, blotting out the sun. The air grew instantly cooler, heavy with the cloying dampness of decaying leaves, moss, and rich, somber earth. A dense carpet of emerald moss coated the ground and slicked the bark of the trees, muffling their footsteps but making the footing treacherous. Visibility dropped sharply. Shadows pooled, deep and concealing.
They left their horses tethered at the forest's edge, entrusted to the care of three pale-faced villagers whose faces mingled fear with desperate hope. Then, weapons loosened in their sheaths, the seven soldiers stepped deeper into the brooding stillness.
As they moved beyond the perimeter the villagers had dared to search, something wrong. A sharp, undeniable sensation started to grow, a prickle at the nape of his neck more real than the gloom or the hush. The certainty of being watched intensified with every step. Something was out there - watching. He subtly scanned the dense undergrowth, hand resting near his sword hilt, but saw nothing beyond the endless trees and shifting murk.
The trail, where it existed at all, was faint, often disappearing entirely. They found signs of the missing hunters, small snares for rabbits, cleverly hidden but untriggered; larger loop traps for wolves, equally undisturbed. It suggested the hunters hadn't been taken near the edge, but had ventured deeper.
Then, in a small clearing where the canopy opened slightly, they found it: a makeshift campsite. Bedrolls lay neatly arranged. A small fire pit held cold ashes. Sacks of dried rations leaned against a log, unopened. A few personal items, a whetstone, a carved wooden pipe, a waterskin, were scattered around as if their owners had simply stepped away for a moment. But there were no signs of violence. No bloodstains darkening the leaves, no indication of a struggle, no hint of robbery. The scene was eerily peaceful, frozen in time.
"Something's wrong," Jacobs muttered, his voice barely a whisper. He knelt, his experienced eyes scanning the ground meticulously. "Too clean. No struggle. Valuables untouched." Jacobs stood up, his hand unconsciously resting on his sword hilt. He wasn't looking at the abandoned items, but staring into the dense shadows of the surrounding trees.
"This wasn't animals, wasn't bandits." He looked at his squad, the weight of command settling on him. "We need to cover more ground, faster. Standard recon spread, we split into pairs, search radiating outwards from this camp. Stay within signal range."
"Split up, Captain?" Torsan asked, his words cracking with sudden anxiety as he peered into the dense, menacing woods. "Here? With whatever did this? What about your gut instinct earlier?." The youth's bravado, evident back at the barracks, had evaporated in the face of this tangible, silent threat.
"It's standard procedure for a wide search, Torsan," Jacobs replied firmly, his gaze fixed on the shadows. "A group this large is slow. Loud. We need to be fast and quiet. Efficiency dictates pairs."
"But isn't it more dangerous?" Torsan persisted, unconvinced, fear plain on his face.
"We don't have the luxury of time, Torsan." Henry's calm voice cut through the younger man's fear. "He's right. The longer we take, the colder the trail gets. Stay alert, trust the Captain. We've got your back."
Jacobs gave Henry a sharp glance of approval. "My thoughts exactly. Pairs it is, Lumos with Henry, Sophia. Daniel with Melly. Torsan, you're with me. Stay alert. Maintain visual contact where possible. Anything out of the ordinary, anything, signal immediately. Safety paramount."
Three teams melted into the encroaching gloom, swallowed by the oppressive stillness of the ancient forest. Henry moved cautiously beside Lumos, his senses straining, the sensation of being watched intensifying with every step deeper into the twilight woods. Nearly half an hour crawled by. Henry found his palm slick with sweat, his hand hovering over his sword hilt. Every rustle of leaves, every distant snap of a twig, seemed to echo in the silence.
Then, a sharp, piercing whistle cut through the hush, Daniel's signal, found something.
Henry and Lumos immediately changed direction, moving swiftly but soundlessly towards the call, converging with Jacobs and Torsan moments later. They found Daniel and Melly near a dense thicket bordering a small, muddy creek bed. Daniel pointed towards the ground at the thicket's edge. He knelt, pointing towards the ground at the thicket's edge. "Here," he murmured. "Looks like an ambush point."
Lumos knelt beside Henry, his focus sharp as he took in the scene. "Broken branches," he murmured, pointing. "Bushes flattened, as if something large waited inside, then lunged." He indicated the soft earth near the creek. "Depressions here, deep, spaced out."
Henry examined the strange indentations closely, tracing their edges with a gloved finger. They weren't the scuffed marks of a struggle, nor the long grooves of something being dragged. They were distinct, deep impressions, concentrated in a small area.
"Lifted," Henry stated, looking up at Jacobs. "Whatever took them was strong enough to carry them away without a fight, without needing to drag them." He remembered the elder's words. "Two hunters vanished together here. A single attacker carrying two grown men clean away?"
"Only possible if the attacker possessed strength far beyond human norms," Jacobs concluded gravely.
"And look," Daniel added, pointing further along the creek bank, "no blood. None here, none leading away. It seems they were incapacitated instantly, taken swiftly and efficiently."
Jacobs straightened, his face hard as flint. "A Ranker," he stated flatly, the word hanging heavy in the damp air. "It has to be. The speed, the strength, the precision, this wasn't some back-alley brawl. This was a professional hit, likely by a Rank 2, maybe even one pushing Rank 3, to take down two experienced hunters without a sound."
A cold dread settled over the squad. Rank 3, operating with lethal efficiency in these woods. The mission parameters had just shattered. They were scouts, mostly Rank 1 and 2, facing a potential predator significantly above their weight class.
"But think about how they're doing this," Sophia said, her calm, analytical words cutting through the fear. "A Rank 3, but this cautious? They're not hitting the village. They're picking people off one by one, out here where no one can see. They're trying to stay hidden. It means they're strong, yes, but they're also spooked. Maybe they don't want to fight a whole squad, even ours."
After a moment of consideration, Jacobs spoke. "Astute observation, Sophia. They're being careful. Doesn't lessen the danger, but it changes the equation slightly." He looked from one face to the next, his inspection lingering for a moment on each soldier as he assessed their resolve.
"Turning back now means reporting a probable Rank 3 perpetrator is snatching citizens near the capital, and admitting we didn't pursue further. Command won't like that. Our squad's reputation takes a hit. Questions will be asked." He paused, letting the unspoken consequences hang in the air, reprimands, possible disbandment. "We push on."
The finality in his tone allowed no argument. "Our mission remains reconnaissance. Identify the threat, gather information. We are not here to engage a Rank 3 head-on unless absolutely necessary for survival. But we will follow this trail. We find out where it leads. Understood?"
The gravity on their faces affirmed their shared understanding. Apprehension warred with duty, but the Captain's resolve was absolute. They were soldiers of Zephyros; retreat wasn't an option yet.
With renewed, albeit nervous, determination, the squad moved deeper into the forest, following the faint signs only a Ranker's passage could leave. The twilight deepened further, the air growing colder, the stillness more profound. Another half hour passed, the trees growing thicker, more ancient, their roots like gnarled claws gripping the earth.
Then, Jacobs stopped dead, holding up a hand, motioning for absolute quiet. Ahead, partially obscured by a dense curtain of hanging vines and thorny brambles growing against a low, moss-covered embankment, was a dark opening. An unnatural blackness that seemed to swallow the already faint light. A cave.
Jacobs stared at it, his face paling slightly, his brow furrowed in concentration. A cold, visceral foreboding washed over him. An instinct honed by decades of experience screamed danger.
"This might be it, their den." He breathed, his voice barely audible.
The forest seemed to hold its breath around them. The squad froze, weapons instinctively coming to the ready, eyes fixed on the ominous black maw. Inside could be the Rank 3 killer, waiting. Or perhaps something worse. Entering meant potentially walking into a death trap. Retreating meant failure, leaving the mystery unsolved, the danger potentially free to strike again.
The weight of the choice, the lives of his squad, rested squarely on Jacobs's shoulders as he stared into the abyss.