A gas lamp burned on the bedroom desk.
Ivy, her face heavy, sealed the envelope. On the windowsill, a red falcon dipped its head to her. It took the letter in its beak, spread its wings, and melted into the night.
Over the past two years, she had sent the Society no fewer than twenty letters—yet not once had she received an answer she could accept.
This time, as expected, the great nobles of the capital had once again rejected her request to station troops in Creekwood Town.
Those pampered people always believed they had more important matters to handle. They dismissed the dangers she described with casual contempt.
In tonight's reply, her teacher urged her to transfer back to the capital, saying her mother was getting old, and she shouldn't keep her family worried.
Ivy clenched her fist.
They didn't understand the crisis the empire was facing.
A werewolf appearing in the mountains. A cursed object estimated at tier three or above. The blood moon of last night—
Every sign pointed to one conclusion: the cultists of evil gods had already set their sights on this border town.
Her gaze fell again to the yellowing newspaper on her desk.
The Witch's End—Evil God Cultists Are No Match for the Empire!
The sprawling headline dripped with pride. The reporter from the Griffin Gazette had been present at the execution platform, witnessing the witch's death with his own eyes. In his article, he wrote the witch's biography—once one of the empire's most outstanding elemental shapers, yet lured by an evil god into corruption.
The newspaper's black-and-white illustration shifted and replayed the execution scene Ivy had seen countless times.
A woman with a black hood over her head, tied to a stake.
An executioner poured oil over her and set a torch to her body.
Flames swallowed her almost instantly.
When the fire died, only a charred corpse remained on the stake.
Ivy's brow stayed tightly furrowed.
From start to finish, the Church had never allowed anyone to see the witch's face. Officially, they claimed the witch possessed a pair of evil eyes capable of bewitching hearts.
But in doing so, they left room for other interpretations.
For instance—
In that battle that had destroyed more than half the capital, the Church had failed to capture the Winter Witch alive.
So they had found a substitute to die in her place.
The Griffin Gazette reporter believed the Church's propaganda wholeheartedly. After the execution, the paper praised the Church's "great achievements" at length.
To this day, the great nobles of the capital believed the Winter Witch was well and truly dead.
Yet rumors persisted:
The badly wounded witch had broken through the Church and the Knights' encirclement, fled to a border town, and slipped past the empire's frontier.
Ivy rubbed her forehead in exhaustion.
She had sorted through every rumor, every thread, every scrap of testimony, and pieced together the Winter Witch's most likely escape route.
That was why she had left the capital in the first place—why she had come to Creekwood Town and refused to leave.
Creekwood Town was the Winter Witch's last stop.
In the eyes of evil god cultists, this town held special meaning.
They called it—
The Place of Destruction and Rebirth.
They believed that when the Winter Witch returned, she would bring ruin to this rotten empire.
That had been two years ago.
Recently, signs around Creekwood suggested something stirring again—signs of rebirth.
Ivy had already mailed her compiled routes and notes back to the Society.
But…
The capital nobles thought she was a clown plagued by delusions.
They still believed the Winter Witch had burned to death in that execution two years ago.
In the capital, someone like Ivy—a mere tier-two Society graduate—had no voice at all.
Even her father had written to warn her not to send any more "nonsensical" letters, saying she was disgracing the family.
Ivy sighed and gathered her documents, sliding them into a drawer.
Only time could prove the truth.
So she ignored her teacher's advice again.
She would rather die together with the truth.
She took off her trench coat and hung it on the rack, wrapped herself in blankets, and lay in bed—unable to fall asleep for a long time.
The evil god cultists were one thing.
But something else gnawed at her.
Ivy felt as if she had forgotten something important. When she tried to think it through, there was no thread to catch, no corner to hold.
For a seeker of truth, that kind of blankness was torment.
She slept poorly.
Nightmares swallowed her whole.
She dreamed she stood in the streets of town, the world buried under ice and snow. Familiar residents ran toward her, frozen mid-flight—their terrified expressions trapped forever in that instant.
She dreamed of a cloaked figure standing high atop the bell tower, looking down at her. A strange mask covered its face, and beneath the mask was a single crimson pupil.
When the sky outside turned pale at dawn, Ivy jolted awake.
She threw off the blankets and sat up. Her clothes were soaked with sweat. The tuft of blond hair atop her head split in panic.
And finally, she remembered what she'd forgotten last night.
Oh no.
She forgot to bring Ethan food.
That guy…
Had he been eaten by the hungry wolf-chicken?
Meanwhile, Ethan—an early sleeper, an early riser—stepped out of the cabin and suffered a bolt from a clear sky.
Miss Chloe saw him and immediately stood up on the bedding, cheerfully greeting him good morning.
Which also revealed what she'd been sitting on.
A corpse.
A corpse with eyes wide open, face twisted, one hand stretched forward as if still trying to crawl.
A long trail of blood smeared across the ground where it had been dragged.
Ethan stared at it for more than ten seconds.
Then he calmly stepped back into the cabin and closed the door.
He must not be fully awake yet.
Ethan steadied his breathing, patted his cheeks, forced himself alert, prepared—then opened the door again.
"Good morning, Miss Chloe."
"Goo-goo!"
Miss Chloe answered brightly.
She sat back down on the bedding. This time, the corpse was mostly hidden—only an arm jutted out from beneath her body, and the bedding itself was soaked with blood.
"Go dig a hole, Miss Chloe."
"Goo?"
Given the command, Miss Chloe trotted to the open ground in front of the cabin and started digging with her claws.
Ethan grabbed a shovel from inside and hurried after her.
As they dug, Ethan "heard" Miss Chloe's explanation.
She had found the corpse on the road.
In the middle of the night, she'd heard cries for help and went to look. By the time she arrived, the man was already bleeding from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, convulsing on the ground. When she realized he'd completely lost consciousness, she worried he'd get cold lying there—so she dragged him all the way back to the cabin, placed him on the bedding, and kept him warm with the feathers on her belly.
Like incubating an egg.
What a kind little hen.
Ethan wanted to praise Miss Chloe's kindness—but if someone saw this scene, they'd write a different story.
One where he and his wolf-chicken ambushed an innocent passerby in the wilderness, murdered him, stole his belongings, and buried the body.
"Ethan, I brought you milk and fl—"
A voice that made Ethan's scalp crawl rose behind him.
And as the speaker approached, it cut off abruptly.
Ethan turned stiffly.
Ivy stood on the dirt slope, bread and milk in hand, her eyes—along with the tuft of blond hair atop her head—scanning him like a threat.
"You need to let me explain," Ethan said.
He had to keep it as brief as possible.
"This man… died naturally."
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