The silence was worse than the screaming.
Rowan woke to the taste of ash and copper. The red light that had drowned the world was gone, replaced by the cold, grey creeping of dawn through the canopy.
He didn't move at first. He couldn't. His body felt like it had been taken apart and stitched back together by a blind seamstress. A dull, throbbing heat pulsed in his right forearm—the place where the bone spike had erupted.
The Maw.
The memory hit him like a physical blow. The glowing sigil. The bone snapping through his skin. The way the beast had looked at him—not with hunger, but with recognition.
Rowan forced himself up. His muscles screamed, twitching with a leftover energy that felt foreign, electric. He grasped a nearby root to haul himself to his feet, and the wood splintered under his grip. He stared at his hand. He hadn't meant to squeeze that hard.
"Caren?" his voice was a dry rasp.
No answer. The ruins of Black Hollow were still. The fog curled around the broken pillars like wet wool.
"Caren!"
He stumbled toward the center of the clearing, toward the fallen pillar where the Maw had pinned her. He remembered her scream. He remembered the sound of the beast slamming her against the stone.
He reached the spot and froze.
There was blood. A dark, heavy smear on the mossy stone. Her spear lay in the mud, the shaft snapped cleanly in two.
But Caren was gone.
Rowan spun around, eyes scanning the shadows, his vision sharpening in a way that made his head spin. The shadows looked... thinner. He could see the texture of bark fifty paces away in the gloom.
"Caren?"
He fell to his knees beside the broken spear. They had trained together for five years. She was the only one who could keep up with his silence, the only one who didn't mock his caution. If she were dead, the Maw would have left a body. Beasts didn't carry prey away unless they were nesting.
Or feeding something else.
He looked at the mud. The Maw's heavy, uneven claw marks led away from the pillar, dragging deeper into the ruin. And alongside them... drag marks. Two heels digging into the earth.
She had been alive. She had struggled.
Rowan tried to stand, to follow the tracks, but his legs buckled. The world tilted violently.
> [System Alert: Critical Vitality. Essence Depleted.]
The whisper wasn't a sound; it was a vibration in his bone marrow.
> [Recovery Required. Sleep... or feed.]
"Shut up," Rowan hissed, clutching his chest. The sigil beneath his tunic burned hot.
He couldn't go after her. Not like this. He had no weapon, his body was failing, and he could barely walk. If he went deeper into the hollow now, he would die, and no one would know where she was.
Get back, his mind screamed. Get to Fellwatch. Get Garrick. Get Lyra.
He grabbed the top half of Caren's broken spear, using it as a crutch. Tears blurred his vision—hot and angry. He hadn't seen her die. That meant there was a chance.
"I'm coming back," he whispered to the empty ruins. "Hold on, Caren. I'm coming back."
He turned away from the drag marks, stumbling toward the tree line. Every step was a war against gravity. The forest seemed to watch him, the wind carrying the scent of pine and something sweeter... something rotting.
He had to make it to the gates. He had to tell them what happened.
Even if he wasn't sure what he was anymore.
The trek back was a blur of agony and impossible stamina.
By all rights, Rowan should have died a mile from the ruins. His ribs ground together with every breath. The gashes across his chest, left by the Maw's earlier swipe, burned like they were stuffed with hot coals.
But he didn't stop. He couldn't.
It felt as if something had hooked into his spine, dragging him forward like a marionette. His legs moved with a rhythmic, mechanical efficiency that terrified him. When he stumbled over a root, his hand shot out to catch the fall before his mind even registered the trip.
Reflexes, he thought dizzily. Not mine.
The sun was high and cruel by the time the wooden palisades of Fellwatch broke through the tree line. The outpost looked peaceful—smoke rising from chimneys, the distant clang of the smithy—completely unaware that a nightmare was waking up just a few miles north.
Rowan stumbled out of the tree line. The broken spear slipped from his sweating grip.
"Gate!" a voice shouted from the watchtower. "Hunter incoming!"
Rowan tried to wave, but his arm felt like lead. He took one step, then another, the ground rushing up to meet him.
"Help..." he wheezed, the word scraping his throat raw. "Caren... she's..."
The dark earth slammed into his face. The last thing he felt was the vibration of boots running toward him, and a deep, hungry pulse from the sigil against the soil.
The Clinic
Waking up felt like breaking the surface of a frozen lake.
Rowan gasped, his body jerking upright on the cot. A hand immediately pressed him back down—firm, cool, and smelling of crushed sage and iron.
"Easy, Rowan. Easy."
The voice was soft but laced with a steel edge he knew well. Rowan blinked, the blurry room resolving into the familiar cluttered interior of the Guild's infirmary. Dried herbs hung from the rafters like dead birds, and the shelves were lined with glass jars of salves and tinctures.
Lyra Thornwell stood over him. Her copper-brown braid was frayed, a smudge of soot on her cheek, and her pale green eyes were wide with a mixture of relief and confusion.
"Lyra," Rowan croaked. He tried to sit up again, ignoring her hands. "Caren. Is she—did she make it back?"
Lyra's expression faltered. She glanced toward the door, then back at him, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Rowan... you came back alone."
The air left the room.
"No," Rowan shook his head, wincing as a headache spiked behind his eyes. "She's alive. The Maw... it took her. Dragged her deep into the ruins. We have to send a team. Now."
"The Maw?" Lyra pulled a stool over and sat, checking the bandages wrapped tight around his chest. "Rowan, that's a Tier 3 legend. If you two fought a Maw..." She stopped, her eyes drifting to his right arm.
Rowan looked down. His tunic had been cut away. His chest was wrapped in linen, but his right forearm—where the bone spike had burst through—was bare.
There were no stitches.
Where the jagged, tearing wound should have been, there was only a raised, angry scar. The skin around it was darker, veined with faint crimson lines that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
"I cleaned the wound an hour ago," Lyra whispered, her fingers hovering over the scar but not touching it. "It was deep, Rowan. It should have taken weeks to knit together. It's been an hour."
> [System Notification: Flesh Mending Complete. Essence Consumed.]
The text flashed in Rowan's mind, bright and intrusive. He flinched.
"I don't know," Rowan lied, pulling his arm away. "Maybe the adrenaline. Or a potion I took."
"No potion does that," Lyra said, her healer's instinct taking over. She grabbed his wrist, her fingers pressing against his pulse point.
She froze.
Rowan felt it too. His heart wasn't beating like a man's anymore. It was slower. Heavier. A thud... thud... thud that felt powerful enough to crack his ribs from the inside.
Lyra looked into his eyes. He knew what she was seeing. The faint, unnatural glow deep in his irises that hadn't been there yesterday.
"Rowan," she breathed, her voice trembling. "Your skin is burning hot. Your pulse is wrong. What happened in those ruins?"
"I told you," Rowan said, desperation sharpening his tone. He grabbed her hand—the one checking his pulse—and squeezed. He didn't realize how strong his grip was until she winced. "We found something. An artifact. But that doesn't matter. Caren is out there. She's alive, Lyra. I saw the drag marks. We have to tell Voss."
Lyra pulled her hand back, rubbing her wrist. She looked at him—really looked at him—with a dawn of fear that hurt worse than the wounds. She was the one person who grounded him, the compassionate healer who hated corruption. And now, she was looking at him like he was a carrier.
"Captain Voss is in the main hall," Lyra said quietly, standing up. She wiped her hands on her leather apron, a nervous tick she only did when a patient was dying. "But Rowan... if you go out there looking like this, acting like this... they won't see a survivor."
She gestured to the mirror hanging by the washbasin.
Rowan turned his head.
His reflection stared back. His face was pale, gaunt, covered in dried mud. But his eyes...
In the dim light of the clinic, his pupils weren't round. They were slightly elongated. Vertical.
Predatory.
> [Status: Hunger Rising.]