The Dark Woods swallowed sound first. Footsteps softened, then vanished altogether, as if the ground itself refused to acknowledge them. Leaves hung unnaturally still despite a breeze Dorian could feel against his skin. The canopy overhead knitted tighter the deeper they went, light thinning into a gray, bruised twilight that never quite reached the forest floor. They walked in silence for a while. Not the tense kind that came from fear alone, but the heavier silence of people conserving breath, thought, and resolve. Helena stayed close to Dorian, her shoulder brushing his arm when roots forced them nearer together. He could feel the tremor she tried to hide. She was doing her best. He knew that. Wilhelm fell into step beside him without announcing it. "You holding up?" he asked quietly. Dorian glanced at him. The professor looked out of place here in a way that unsettled him. Too calm. Too observant. His eyes tracked patterns in the forest rather than threats, like he was cataloging behavior instead of reacting to it. "I'm fine," Dorian said. Then, after a beat, "As fine as anyone can be, I guess." Wilhelm nodded, accepting the half-truth for what it was. Dorian nodded and Helena took the clue and went to ahead to walk with Evan and Len. "And Helena?" Wilhelm asked when she was out of earshot. Dorian's gaze drifted ahead to where she walked with Lena and Evan. She was listening more than she spoke, hands clenched around her wand even when nothing stirred. "She's scared," he said simply. "But she's still here. That counts for something."
"It does," Wilhelm agreed. He hesitated, then added, "How did you two meet?" The question was gentle. Careful. Framed the way Wilhelm always framed things when he didn't want to corner someone. Dorian felt tension he hadn't noticed ease slightly from his shoulders. "Senior year," he said. "English Lit. Mrs. Caldwell's class." Wilhelm smiled faintly. "That tracks." He replied. "She sat two rows over," Dorian went on.
"I didn't talk much back then. Still don't, I guess. First day, teacher asks us to analyze some poem about fate or whatever. I say something stupid about how it's all just people pretending they have control." Dorian says with a smirk. "And?"
"And Helena raises her hand and says, 'That's the most depressing take I've ever heard. But I kind of respect it.'" Dorian snorted quietly. "Whole class laughed. I thought she was making fun of me." He replies. "But she wasn't." Wilhelm observes. "No. After class she caught up to me and said, 'You don't actually believe that, right? That nothing matters?' I told her I didn't know. She said that was worse." Wilhelm chuckled under his breath. "She started sitting closer after that," Dorian continued. "Arguing with me. Pushing back. I think she liked that I didn't pretend things were okay when they weren't." His expression softened. "She was… bright. Not naive. Just stubborn about believing life could be better than what we're handed."
"And she became important," Wilhelm said. "She's my light," Dorian said without hesitation. "The only reason I didn't enlist right after graduation just to get out of that fucking city and the constant pity stares." A faint smirk tugged at his mouth. "Figured if I was going to run from hell, I might as well do it somewhere that didn't involve getting shot at immediately. At least I know I can keep my cool now." Wilhelm studied him in silence, the way he always did when he was measuring something deeper than words. Finally, he reached out and rested a hand on Dorian's shoulder.
"I'm proud of you," he said. "You're adapting. Not just surviving. Evolving even." His eyes sharpened slightly. "That matters more than brute strength in situations like this." Dorian nodded. "Still creepy as hell watching you raise the dead." Wilhelm laughed softly, a real laugh. "Fair. I suppose it's poetic, in a way. Years spent helping the police profile killers, understand patterns of violence, and now I'm animating corpses." He shook his head. "A bit on the nose, I'll admit."
"Hey I guess the system has a sense of humor afterall." Dorian said, glancing at him, "You're not bad at keeping yourself together, Doc." Wilhelm's smile lingered just a moment too long. "Experience," he said. "You'd be surprised how much of human behavior is predictable under pressure." They walked on. The forest grew quieter. Not empty. Listening. Dorian felt it then, subtle but undeniable. His awareness stretching, instincts sharpening. He adjusted his stride without thinking, angling slightly to avoid a patch of shadow that felt wrong. No System warning appeared. No prompt. Just certainty. They found the clearing an hour later. The trees opened abruptly into a wide, churned expanse of dirt and shattered undergrowth. The smell hit first, thick and nauseating. Blood soaked into the earth in dark, uneven pools. Limbs lay scattered, torn rather than cut. A charred spiral of scorched ground marked where powerful magic had detonated again and again. Evan swore under his breath. "Oh god…" Three bodies. Or what was left of them. One was missing its head entirely. Another lay sprawled on its back, arms gone at the shoulders, chest torn open. The third… the third was barely recognizable, half-eaten, bones cracked and gnawed. Wilhelm crouched beside the nearest corpse and exhaled slowly. "This wasn't a fair fight," he said.
Lena frowned. "You can tell that just by looking?" Wilhelm reached down and lifted something from the ground. A head. Blood matted the hair, eyes frozen wide in terror. He held it with unsettling care, cradling it as if it were fragile. "I can do more than tell," Wilhelm said calmly. "I can see." Helena stiffened. "What do you mean, see?" Wilhelm looked up. "I have some authority over the dead. Fragments of memory linger. If I perform a ritual, I can access the final moments." Dorian didn't hesitate. "Do it. We'll cover you." Wilhelm nodded once and set the head gently on the ground. He drew a shallow cut across his palm and let blood drip onto the dirt, tracing a careful sigil around the remains. The air grew cold. Still.
"Watch my back," Wilhelm said. "I'll be vulnerable." Dorian stepped forward, senses flaring, lightning humming faintly beneath his skin. The world shifted. The memory slammed into them. They were running. Three arcanists, young, confident. Two women and a man. Laughter echoed through the trees as black wolves burst from the undergrowth. "Easy XP!" the lightning Arcanist shouted, crackling energy dancing along her fingers. Fire and wind combined effortlessly from the other two Arcanists. A roaring tornado of flame ripping through the wolves, incinerating them where they stood.
The lightning Arcanist kited with practiced ease, bolts tearing through shadow-flesh, laughing as the last wolf fell. It howled as it died. They barely noticed. Status windows popped up. They laughed, comparing XP gains. Then… A blur of movement her head flew from her shoulders. It hit the ground and rolled. The fire Arcanist screamed. Something massive stood where nothing had been, a towering werewolf formed of dense black energy, muscles coiled, eyes burning with predatory intelligence. They panicked. Fire and wind surged together again, a larger, hotter tornado screaming toward the beast.
The werewolf leapt aside effortlessly. It raked its claws through the air and a wave of cutting force tore forward. The fire Arcanist' s arms were severed instantly. He screamed, blood spraying as he collapsed. The last remaining one blasted herself upward, fleeing into the air on a pillar of wind, sobbing, completely uncoordinated. The werewolf bounded up a tree trunk. Launched and crashed down on her from above. Teeth and claws. Screaming. Then nothing. The memory shattered. Wilhelm straightened, breath steady. "That's what happened." Evan stared at the ground. "Holy fuck."
"That thing ate them," Helena whispered. Lena swallowed hard, forcing a crooked grin. "I mean… I'm sure we can take it, right?" She glanced at Dorian. "We've got our resident badass shadow assassin and curse user. Right?" Helena smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. Dorian didn't respond. Something moved. He felt it before he saw it, a ripple through the trees, branches bending unnaturally. His hand snapped up and he hurled his dagger without thinking. The blade buried itself deep into a tree trunk with a heavy thunk. Dorian was already moving. He reached the tree and crouched, eyes scanning the disturbed earth. A footprint. Massive and deep.
Wolf-shaped, but wrong, elongated, pressed into the dirt as if whatever made it was far heavier than it should be. Dorian rose slowly. "It's tracking us, stay alert." he said.