The tavern stank of sweat, woodsmoke, and cheap ale—exactly the kind of place Kaelen Virek liked.
He was halfway through a loud, cackling story that had already spiraled well past the truth, standing with one boot on the bench and arms flying like a bard mid-performance. "—and then the thing screeched, right? Sounded like a goat being strangled underwater! I swear, even the ghoul looked confused!"
The table roared with laughter, though not everyone was in on the joke. A few of the locals wore tight smiles—nervous, glancing at his eyes. Those eyes. Witcher eyes. Yellow and cold and far too sober for how much he'd supposedly drunk.
Kaelen didn't care. He liked the attention, the discomfort, the way people tried not to stare and failed every time.
His armor creaked as he flopped back onto the bench, light and battered, patched with mismatched leather and scorched linen. One of the rivets near his shoulder was still crusted with something dry and brownish. Blood? Mud? Who could tell anymore.
His longsword—unadorned, wicked-sharp, and utterly unremarkable to anyone who didn't know how fast he was—rested against the table leg, within easy reach.
"So then what'd you do?" someone asked—a red-faced man with too many rings and not enough muscle.
Kaelen grinned, wide and arrogant. "What I do? I told the ghoul to sit down and shut up. Then I split its head in half before it could argue."
Another laugh burst from him, this one raw and real. He didn't bother clarifying whether it was true. He liked the blurring line between story and fact. It made the world more fun. And besides—he could've done it.
Someone clinked a mug beside him, and Kaelen caught the motion in his peripheral. A stranger. Cloaked. Quiet. Watching too closely.
The grin didn't fade, but the air around him shifted—just slightly. His shoulders stayed loose, but his foot edged closer to his sword.
"Enjoying the show?" he asked without looking.
The tavern kept laughing.
But Kaelen's knuckles were already tightening around the wooden tankard, every inch of him ready to explode from stillness into violence.
Kaelen finally turned his head.
The stranger wasn't some cloaked drifter or rival Witcher after all. His cloak was too fine—trimmed in silver, patterned subtly with a noble crest Kaelen didn't recognize. His boots were polished, even after walking into this place, and his posture screamed someone used to being obeyed.
A noble. Out of place. Out of patience.
Kaelen cocked an eyebrow. "You're either lost, desperate, or both. This isn't the kind of place people like you wander into by mistake."
The noble man stepped closer, unfazed by the mockery. "My name is Lord Albin Trevors of Bellmere Hold. I'm looking for someone with... your particular skillset."
Kaelen leaned back, dragging a finger through the foam of his half-empty mug. "You need a story told or a tavern charmed?"
Albin didn't smile. "My son. He went missing yesterday evening. Took a walk through the northwood trail just beyond our estate walls. He's fifteen. Strong-willed. Likes sneaking off."
Kaelen's grin vanished like breath on steel.
"Northwood?" he asked, tone shifting, eyes sharpening. "That place has a reputation."
Albin nodded, jaw tight. "Old woods. Dark ones. Locals say it's haunted, cursed—whatever excuses cowards use to justify not looking. I sent two of my guards. They came back pale and trembling. Said the trees whispered to them. One refuses to go near it again."
Kaelen stood, suddenly too tall and too predatory to belong in any tavern. His armor whispered against itself as he moved. His sword scraped as he slung it across his back.
"You have coin?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Then you've got yourself a Witcher."
He paused at the doorway, glancing back over his shoulder at the noble.
"But I'll warn you now," Kaelen said, voice lower, colder. "If your boy's in those woods and something's taken him... it won't be coin that gets him back."
Then he was gone, pushing through the door into the night, the tavern laughter dying behind him like the last embers of a fire.
It was a little past midnight when Kaelen arrived at the edge of the Northwood.
Moonlight filtered through a jagged patch of clouds, casting pale streaks across the gnarled tree line. The woods loomed like a jagged mouth—black, crooked, and waiting.
Kaelen rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, eyes gleaming gold in the dark. The forest air smelled wrong—damp moss, old rot, and something under it all that reminded him of burnt herbs and blood.
He grinned.
"Perfect."
He took a breath—deep and steady—not to calm himself, but to feel the tension coil in his muscles. The anticipation. The fun part. His heart was already racing, not with fear but excitement. He lived for this. The unknown. The danger. The chance to finally prove he was more than just another sword on the Path.
Then he ran.
Boots thudded over gnarled roots and soft earth, his frame moving with practiced speed, weaving through underbrush and low-hanging limbs. No torch. No trail. Just his senses, his instincts, and that twisted forest breathing around him like a living thing.
Branches reached like claws. Leaves whispered things he didn't want to hear—but he grinned harder, pushing faster.
Something was in here. He could feel it.
The boy's scent was faint but present—sweat, oil, the copper tang of dried blood. And under it… something else. Wrong. Twisted.
Kaelen didn't slow down.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't hesitate.
Whatever was in these woods had made a mistake the moment it touched a noble's son.
Because now he was coming.
And Kaelen Virek didn't just kill monsters.
He enjoyed it.
The forest howled around him—not with sound, but with pressure. Every tree seemed to lean inward, watching.
Kaelen's boots barely touched the ground as he moved—silent, swift, his breath even. That's when it happened.
Snap.
A branch broke behind him.
Kaelen didn't stop. He pivoted, foot slamming into the soil, body twisting as his hand flew to his back.
The steel flashed in the moonlight—clean, perfect motion—then sang through the air.
The beast never even touched him.
Its head hit the dirt with a wet thump, the body tumbling after it in a flurry of claws, fur, and momentum. Steam poured from the neck, blood sizzling faintly against Kaelen's silver-lined blade.
He stood over the corpse, chest rising only slightly from the exertion, and stared down at the thing with a furrowed brow.
Werewolf.
Big one. Male. Freshly turned.
Kaelen scowled.
"...That's not right."
He knelt, flipping the creature over with a boot and a grunt. The fur was matted, the eyes still twitching in the head as residual nerves fired. The jaw was broken—snapped mid-lunge when Kaelen struck. He'd cut clean through vertebrae.
No pack markings. No scars. No scent of others.
But still... a werewolf. This far south?
He glanced around, suddenly less cocky, more calculating.
There weren't supposed to be packs this deep below the Yaruga. Not for a hundred miles.
And a lone wolf this young didn't just wander into cursed woods on accident.
Kaelen wiped his blade clean, the smirk gone, his expression now cold and focused.
Something was very wrong in Northwood.
And it had teeth.
He barely had time to process the werewolf when the stench hit him.
Rot. Earth. Death.
Kaelen turned, nostrils flaring, senses snapping back into overdrive—just in time to hear the low growls and the frantic, clawing scrapes of feet on forest floor.
Ghouls.
Four of them, bursting from the underbrush in a hungry, screeching frenzy—limbs flailing, eyes wide with mindless hunger. They came fast, too fast for most. But Kaelen wasn't most.
His blade was already moving.
The first ghoul lunged—and lost its arm before it touched him. Kaelen stepped past it in a blur, spun, and cut clean through its spine with a backhanded sweep.
The second one shrieked, going low. Kaelen jumped, driving his heel down into its skull mid-air, crushing it into the dirt with a sickening crack.
He landed in a crouch, just as the third ghoul slashed at his face—missed.
Kaelen surged up under its guard, driving his sword up through its jaw and out the top of its skull.
The fourth tried to circle, smarter than the others—hesitant.
Kaelen locked eyes with it, Witcher yellow meeting its sickly red. He tilted his head just slightly.
"Come on," he whispered.
The ghoul shrieked and pounced.
Kaelen caught it mid-air, twisted, and slammed it into a tree trunk. His blade followed—once—splitting it from neck to belly.
Then silence.
The clearing stank of blood and rot. Kaelen stood in the middle of it, breathing hard but steady, his blade gleaming and slick.
He looked down at the corpses. First a werewolf, now ghouls?
In the same cursed forest?
Kaelen's brow furrowed.
"This isn't random," he muttered. "This is a nesting ground."
He glanced toward the deeper dark of the forest, where the boy's trail still led.
And deeper still… something waited.
He could feel it now.
Something old.
Kaelen pressed deeper into the forest, the moonlight fading behind a tangle of trees that seemed to lean closer with every step. The ghouls were just the beginning—he could feel it in the air. The pressure building. The quiet wrongness that made his skin prickle under his armor.
Then he felt it.
A pulse—cold and thick, like a heartbeat made of tar. It vibrated through the ground, thudded in his chest, and made his medallion buzz faintly against his collarbone.
He slowed.
Ahead, through a clearing choked with fog, something shimmered.
A point—not a place, not a ruin or a shrine, but a raw, open wound in the world. A place where dark magic had been used recently and with force. The trees around it were blackened and twisted, their trunks warped into unnatural curves. Bark flaked like old scabs. No birds, no insects. Just that sick hum of wrong.
Kaelen stepped closer.
The soil was cracked and stained with symbols—runes scorched deep into the earth, still warm to the touch. Some kind of ritual. Blood had been spilled here, lots of it, pooled in old roots and feeding the corruption.
And at the center—
A circle of ash and bone. Charred bones. Human.
Kaelen crouched, eyes narrowing.
"No ordinary hedge-witch did this," he muttered.
This was powerful work. Deliberate. Focused. And messy. Like someone trying to force magic they didn't fully understand.
He glanced up.
And there—just past the edge of the clearing—was something else.
A strip of cloth.
Caught on a thorned branch.
Noble fabric. Torn.
Kaelen's jaw clenched.
The boy had been here.
And whatever had worked this magic... might not be finished yet.
Kaelen froze.
The forest went still.
Then—
"Help!"
A scream—young, raw, and real—ripped through the trees, cutting through the magical residue like a blade. A boy's voice, panicked and hoarse, echoing between the twisted trunks.
"Please! Somebody—help me!"
Kaelen was already moving.
He darted through the underbrush, sword still slick from the last fight, boots slamming into dirt and roots. The scream came again, closer this time, ragged with terror.
He vaulted a fallen tree, slid under a low branch, and burst into a clearing—
There.
The boy.
Slumped against a gnarled old stone half-buried in moss, his clothes torn, one leg twisted at an angle that screamed broken. He looked about fifteen, dirty-faced and wide-eyed. His tunic—fine fabric, noble crest—was stained with blood and ash.
Kaelen's instincts screamed at him. The place reeked of magic. Of bait.
But the boy's eyes locked with his, filled with the kind of desperate fear no monster could fake.
"Are you him?" the boy gasped. "The Witcher? Please—they're coming back—they said they'd come back—"
Kaelen raised a hand to silence him, turning his head slowly. Listening.
The wind shifted.
Footsteps. Wet ones.
Low snarls from the trees beyond. Heavy breathing. And something else…
A whisper. Right next to his ear.
"Witcher..."
Kaelen didn't flinch. His grip on his sword tightened.
"Stay behind me," he muttered to the boy, stepping forward, muscles coiled.
Whatever had cast the spell at that ritual site wasn't done yet.
And it was sending company.
The trees split.
Snarls tore through the stillness as two massive werewolves loped into the clearing—fangs bared, eyes burning with unnatural fury. Their fur was patchy, mangy, and wrong—almost like they'd been stitched together. Behind them, three ghouls shambled forward, faster than the last ones, eyes milky and jaws slick with fresh blood.
But it was what stood behind them that made Kaelen's blood cool.
Three cloaked figures. Silent. Motionless.
Their robes were soaked dark, faces hidden deep in their hoods, but Kaelen didn't need to see their eyes to know what they were.
Sorcerers. Or cultists playing with power they didn't understand.
And they were controlling all of this.
The ghouls hissed, clawing the air. The werewolves paced, muscles rippling with violent tension.
Kaelen didn't move.
Behind him, the boy whimpered.
Kaelen lowered his stance, his voice calm but sharp.
"Stay down. Close your eyes if you have to. Whatever happens—don't run."
The cultists raised their hands.
The monsters charged.
Kaelen exploded into motion.
His blade flashed—one smooth arc, low to high—cleaving through a ghoul's chest before it even reached him. He spun, ducked under a werewolf's massive swing, and drove the blade straight into its ribs, twisting as the beast howled and staggered back.
A second ghoul leapt—Kaelen stepped aside, grabbed it midair by the throat, and slammed it into the stone beside the boy. Skull cracked. No time to watch it drop.
The second werewolf came from his blind side.
Kaelen dropped low, rolled, came up behind it—sliced its Achilles tendon in one perfect strike, then vaulted onto its back and drove his sword down between its shoulder blades.
The creature collapsed beneath him, twitching.
But the cultists hadn't moved.
One lifted a hand—and the air shimmered.
A low, guttural voice spilled from the hood. "You are not welcome here, mutant."
Kaelen didn't answer.
He just stared.
Unblinking.
Predatory.
Then he smirked.
"I wasn't invited. But I brought steel anyway."
The cultists began to chant.
Low at first—muttered syllables thick with old magic—but the words grew louder, faster, surging with rhythm and purpose. The air warped. The ground trembled. Kaelen took a step forward—
—and then the impact hit.
CRASH.
Something massive slammed into him from the side like a runaway cart. Kaelen went airborne, his body flung across the clearing. He hit the dirt hard, tumbled twice, and rolled to a crouch—breath ragged, ribs screaming.
His sword skidded a few feet away.
He looked up—and saw it.
Towering above the cultists, dragging itself out of the ground with a sound like mountains grinding together, was a golem.
Ten feet tall. Made of cracked stone, dirt, and old bone. Its eyes glowed dimly—sickly green, not natural magic, but forced. Corrupted.
It let out a deep, rumbling growl as it raised one titanic arm—fingers like tombstones curled into a fist.
Kaelen spat blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes locked on the towering beast.
"Well," he muttered, voice tight with pain and adrenaline, "that's new."
Behind him, the boy screamed again.
The cultists kept chanting, their hands glowing brighter, feeding the golem more energy with every word.
Kaelen didn't have time.
He dove for his sword—rolled under another crushing blow that split the ground—and came up just in time to slash at the creature's leg.
The blade sparked off stone.
No give.
"Damn thing's warded," he growled, backing up fast.
This wasn't going to be a clean kill. Not like the werewolves. Not like the ghouls.
This thing wasn't alive.
It was a commanded corpse made of earth and hate.
Kaelen circled, watching, calculating, while the cultists laughed—thinking they'd already won.
He wasn't beaten.
He was thinking.
And the second they gave him an opening—he'd remind them exactly why no one should ever corner a Witcher.
The golem raised its massive fist again, ready to crush him.
Kaelen didn't move away.
He ran toward it.
Just before the stone fist came down, he slid under the golem's legs, boots carving a deep groove in the dirt. As he passed beneath its body, he threw a Sign behind him.
Aard.
The blast of kinetic energy struck the creature in its exposed lower back—off-balance, still mid-turn. It staggered, just slightly.
But enough.
Kaelen was already up and moving, faster than any normal man should be. He surged past the lumbering monster, blade flashing out to his side—not toward the golem.
Toward the cultists.
The first never saw him coming.
Steel split the air—and then his throat. Blood sprayed as the chanting cut off in a wet gargle.
The second cultist raised a hand, fumbling a spell—too slow.
Kaelen drove his blade through the man's chest, yanked it free with a vicious twist, and kicked the body off the blade.
The third turned to run.
Kaelen let him.
For two steps.
Then his sword sang through the night—arcing clean through the air and burying itself in the cultist's spine with a sickening crack.
Three heartbeats.
Three dead cultists.
Behind him, the golem froze mid-motion—arms twitching. Without the magic to guide it, the light in its eyes flickered... then faded.
It collapsed with a thunderous crash, shaking the ground as dust and broken stone scattered across the clearing.
Kaelen walked over, yanked his sword from the final corpse, and turned to the boy.
"Still breathing?"
The boy, wide-eyed and pale, just nodded.
Kaelen wiped his blade clean on a cultist's robe.
"Good," he muttered. "Then let's get the hell out of this forest."