The morning sun did little to improve the state of her garden. Celestine stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the damage with a gardener's despair. The lavender was a lost cause, stems snapped, purple buds trampled into the dark soil. Deep, muddy gouges marked the path the sled had taken, and a dark, ominous stain soaked the earth where the wolf had first fallen. It was a violation of her sanctuary, a brutal scar on her carefully maintained peace.
With a sigh that carried the weight of a hundred such small griefs, she fetched her basket and her sturdiest shears. The work was methodical, a quiet penance. She cut away the ruined plants, salvaging what few unbruised sprigs she could for sachets. The air, once perfumed with lavender, now smelled only of torn leaves and damp earth. It would take a full season, perhaps two, to regrow it. The thought was a dull ache in her chest.
An hour later, the ruined plants were piled for compost, and the decision was made. She needed supplies: new lavender seedlings, more linen for bandages (though she tried not to dwell on why her stock was suddenly so low), and a few other sundries she couldn't grow herself. And, a small, practical voice whispered, it would be wise to hear the news from the village. A wounded wolf of that size, laced with silver… it did not simply appear from the mist.
She changed from her soil-stained work dress into a simpler, but still presentable, gown of deep blue wool, lacing the bodice snugly. She draped a grey, hooded cloak over her shoulders, its fabric worn soft with age. A quick check in the polished silver she used as a mirror showed a pale, unremarkable face, its only striking feature her eyes—the color of a twilight sky, too knowing for a simple herbalist. She practiced a bland, pleasant smile. It was a mask she had perfected.
The walk to the village of Oakhaven was a familiar three-mile journey along a winding forest path. She greeted the trees like old friends, her fingers brushing the bark of a ancient oak, her senses open to the quiet hum of the forest. Today, however, the woods felt… watchful. The birdsong was more subdued, the rustle in the undergrowth more furtive. Or perhaps it was just her own unease coloring the world.
The wooden palisade of Oakhaven came into view, and the familiar sounds and smells of human settlement washed over her: the smoke of hearth fires, the scent of baking bread, the clang of the blacksmith's hammer, the distant lowing of cattle. At the gate, two watchmen nodded to her, their expressions friendly.
"Mistress Stine!" called one, using the name she'd given them years ago. "Early for your supplies, isn't it?"
"A bit of misfortune with a wild boar in my garden last night," Celestine said, her voice light and rueful. It was a convenient, believable lie. "Trampled my best lavender. The world is full of unruly beasts, it seems."
She moved through the muddy main street, returning the greetings of the villagers with gentle smiles and nods. She was a familiar, slightly eccentric figure: the quiet herbalist who lived in the woods, who always had a poultice for a fever or a tea for a troubled sleep, and who paid for her goods with flawless, if oddly ancient, coin.
She had just purchased a bundle of young lavender seedlings from the grumpy old gardener, Hobb, when the atmosphere shifted. A group of the Church's Knights, their polished steel plate armor gleaming dully under the overcast sky, clattered into the town square. Their leader, a man with a severe, clean-shaven face and the sunburst insignia of a Captain on his tabard, dismounted. The chatter in the square died down to a nervous murmur.
The Captain's voice cut through the quiet, sharp and authoritative. "People of Oakhaven! A notice. Last night, our patrol engaged a dangerous lycanthrope—a werewolf—in the woods bordering this village. The beast was wounded, but it escaped. It is large, exceptionally savage, and silver-tainted. A curfew is in effect from dusk till dawn. No one is to travel the woods alone. Report any strange sounds, any signs of a large predator, immediately to the Church guard."
A frightened ripple went through the crowd. Lycanthropes were boogeymen from stories, creatures of heresy and primal savagery. To have one so close was terrifying.
The baker's wife, Martha, a woman with a kind, perpetually worried face, clutched at Celestine's arm. "Oh, Stine! You hear that? A werewolf! And you live all alone out there in those woods. You must be careful!"
Celestine placed a calming hand over Martha's, her touch cool. "I will be, I promise. My cottage is sturdy, and I have my herbs to protect me." She injected a note of whimsical bravery into her voice, the kind a slightly naive human woman might affect.
"Herbs won't do much against a monster's claws," grumbled Hobb, wrapping her new seedlings in rough sacking. "You should stay in the village tonight, girl. Old Widow Hilda has a spare room."
"That is kind of you," Celestine demurred, her smile unwavering. "But I have my own wards. I will be perfectly safe." The lie tasted like ash. She had nursed that "savage beast" by her own hearth. She had felt the steady, warm life under its fur. The Church's description felt like a crude caricature of the wounded creature she had known.
After collecting her other supplies—linen, a new spool of thread, a sack of flour—she made her way to her final stop: the Adventurer's Guild. It was a large, noisy hall that smelled of sweat, smoke, and stale ale. While she, "Mistress Stine," had no business with monster hunting, the Guild was always a lucrative market for high-quality, magically-potent herbs. Their alchemists paid a premium for her wolfsbane, her ghost-cap mushrooms, and her specially cultivated magewort.
She approached the quartermaster's counter, a massive structure of scarred oak, and set her basket down. The quartermaster, a bald, barrel-chested man named Borin, gave her a gap-toothed grin.
"Stine! Good to see you. What wonders have you brought from your woodland patch today?"
"The usual, Master Borin," she said, unpacking her bundles with care. "But I have a particularly fine batch of magewort. The blossoms are at their peak potency."
They haggled amiably for a few minutes, a familiar dance. As Borin counted out her coin, the main doors of the guild hall slammed open with a force that made the timbers shudder.
A sudden silence fell.
In the doorway stood a woman.
She was tall, well over six feet, with a lean, whipcord strength that her practical, travel-stained leather armor did nothing to hide. Her hair was a striking, unruly mane of steel-grey, streaked with white, tied back in a messy plait that fell over one shoulder. Her face was all sharp, unforgiving angles—a blade of a nose, a stubborn jaw dusted with the faint silvery scars of old fights. And her eyes… they were a molten, predatory gold, scanning the room with a palpable mix of contempt and impatience.
In one hand, she carried a large, stained burlap sack from which a grotesque, reptilian head with milky dead eyes lolled. In the other, she held a small, pulsating crystal that glowed with a sickly green light—a soul gem, containing the captured essence of the slain monster.
The woman's presence was a winter gale in the stuffy hall. She strode to the counter, ignoring the stares, and dumped the reptilian head and the soul gem onto the scarred wood with a heavy, final thud.
"Cockatrice. Nest cleared from the old mill south of here," her voice was a low, gravelly rasp, devoid of pleasantries. It was the voice of the woman from her cottage. The voice of the wolf. It resonated in Celestine's bones, a vibration she felt rather than heard.
Borin, to his credit, didn't flinch. He poked the head with a stubby finger. "Aye, that's a cockatrice, right enough. Soul gem checks out. Bounty's fifteen gold crowns." He began counting the coins.
The grey-haired woman—Prious—scooped them up without a word of thanks, her golden eyes sweeping dismissively over the room. They passed over Borin, over the gawking adventurers, and for one fleeting, heart-stopping second, they landed on Celestine.
It was not a look of recognition. It was the flat, assessing gaze of a predator scanning a field of prey, categorizing everything as either a threat, a tool, or irrelevant. Celestine was firmly placed in the last category. The woman's eyes, the color of hardened amber, held no warmth, no curiosity, only a simmering impatience that seemed to suck the very air from the room. Then, just as abruptly as she had entered, the woman turned and stalked out of the hall, the doors swinging shut behind her and leaving a vacuum of silence in her wake.
A collective, subtle exhale went through the room. Conversations started up again, hushed and wary.
Celestine stood perfectly still, her fingers curled around the cool metal of the coins Borin had just given her. The encounter had left a strange, staticky feeling in the air, a charge that prickled against her skin.
Well, she was… intense, Celestine thought, carefully tucking her payment into a pouch at her belt. A profound understatement. The woman's sheer, unapologetic rudeness was staggering. It was the kind of blunt, antisocial behavior that reminded her of a feral dog, all bared teeth and hackles, trusting no one and expecting hostility from every corner.
But as she turned to leave, the ghost of the woman's scent lingered in her nostrils, cutting through the smells of ale and sweat. It was a clean, sharp aroma: cold night air, worn leather, oiled steel, and beneath it all, the faint, wild, and unmistakably familiar scent of the deep, shadowed woods. It was the same scent that had clung to the great, wounded wolf now absent from her hearth.
The connection was not a logical one. It was a primal, instinctual thread, tying the two disruptive events of the last day together in her mind. The massive, dangerous beast and the tall, dangerous woman. Both were violent, both were wounded in their own ways, and both carried the same wild perfume of the untamed world.
A shiver, cold and deliberate, traced a path down Celestine's spine. This woman was a hunter, a creature of violence. She was the embodiment of the very world Celestine had retreated from centuries ago. She smelled of blood, conflict, and everything Celestine's peaceful, cottagecore existence was meant to avoid.
And yet.
A part of her, a deep, dormant part she had buried under lavender and chamomile, stirred. It was the part that remembered the thrill of the hunt, the intoxicating rush of power, the sharp, clean lines of a world where you were either predator or prey. This woman was a walking reminder of that forgotten self.
As she stepped out of the guild hall and into the weak sunlight of the village square, the thought solidified, unbidden and unsettling.
I should stay away from her.
The warning was clear, logical, sane.
But beneath it, a more compelling, more terrifying impulse whispered: I should get closer.
Not because she knew who the woman was, but precisely because she didn't. The woman was a mystery wrapped in danger, and the scent of her called to the oldest, darkest part of Celestine's soul. The hunt, it seemed, had found her in a form far more complicated and alluring than she ever could have imagined.