Children of the Dawn

It was a peaceful night. As the others slept and Darius eventually sheathed his newly cleaned sword to get some sleep as well, Eirik remained vigilant. His thoughts wandered in the silence. It struck him that only a couple of days ago, he had never heard of Silverkeep. To him, an office worker thrust into a warrior's life, the idea of journeying to warn a kingdom of a rising Dungeon Lord would have seemed unimaginable. Yet now it was his reality. Did I really adapt to all this so quickly? he wondered. Perhaps it was the urgency and danger that left no room for disbelief or hesitation. Perhaps this place simply felt… right to him, in a way his old life never did. Eirik flexed his fingers on the haft of Erythrael. The weapon felt at home in his grasp. Too at home, maybe. He recalled Brogan's words: "Wield it with intent. Feed it battle, but don't let it feed on you."

His gaze drifted to the heavens. Two moons hung among the stars, one a smaller blueish orb, the other larger and silver. In their combined light, he could faintly see his breath as a mist. The night was growing colder. He pulled his fur-lined collar up and kept his senses sharp. Somewhere out in the dark, a lone wolf howled, its cry echoing across the distant hills. Eirik's grip tightened on his axe until the howl faded. He heard no answering calls. A single wolf in these parts was no threat to their group, but its lonely cry was a fool's gambit. Announcing its presence like that in these dangerous times would only attract the real predators of the night. That desperate call, he thought, had likely just secured its own death.

His watch passed uneventfully, and when the time came, he roused Darius for the next shift. The knight rose without complaint, giving Eirik a pat on the shoulder in thanks and urging him to get some sleep. Eirik wrapped himself in his blanket and closed his eyes, confident that in Darius's care, they were safe for the rest of the night. He drifted off almost immediately, fatigue taking him.

The following days settled into a steady rhythm. At dawn they would break camp, say a few words of thanks to the Light (at Lyra's gentle prompting) and to whichever local gods Finn claimed to honor, and resume their march. It was on the second day that they had their first and only encounter on the lonely road.

He was a lone pilgrim, walking west, away from the capital. He was gaunt, his clothes little more than rags, but his eyes were bright with a strange, feverish intensity. He carried no pack, no waterskin, only a rough-hewn wooden staff.

"Blessings of the road upon you, travelers," he called, his voice surprisingly strong. His smile was wide, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "It is a fine day to walk in the Light's grace, is it not?"

Darius hailed him cautiously. "It is a dangerous road to walk alone, friend. Where are you headed?"

"To where I am needed," the pilgrim replied, his gaze seeming to look through them. "The whispers guide my feet." He chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "You travel east? To the city of spires? Be wary. The road ahead has grown… hungry. It sings a new song. But a strong wolf need not fear the dark, eh?"

The phrase, so close to their own party's name, made Finn's hand go to his dagger. Eirik felt a prickle of unease. The man's words felt less like a warning and more like a pronouncement. Lyra frowned, sensing a dissonance in the man's spirit, a hollowness where faith should be.

"We'll keep that in mind," Eirik said, his voice flat.

The pilgrim's smile widened, becoming a little too broad, a little too sharp. "Oh, I know you will." With a final, unsettling nod, he continued on his way, his pace brisk and unnatural for one so ill-equipped. They watched him go until he was a small speck on the horizon.

"Well," Finn muttered, once the man was out of earshot. "He was creepy."

"His spirit felt… hollow," Lyra agreed, a shiver running down her spine. "As if something else were speaking through him."

After that encounter, the party remained doubly watchful. On the third day, the air grew heavy and still. The normal sounds of the wild, the chatter of birds, the hum of insects, faded into an oppressive quiet. Darius, who had been leading the way with a watchful eye on the terrain, held up a hand, bringing the party to a halt.

"Something's wrong," he said, his voice a low rumble. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword.

Eirik sniffed the air. Beneath the scent of damp earth, there was something else. A faint, foul odor of decay and something sharp and chemical, like ozone. His own senses were on high alert, a low thrum of unease resonating from the axe on his back. They moved forward with a new, grim caution.

Around the next bend, the scene of devastation stopped them in their tracks. The lead wagons of Captain Alain's caravan lay shattered, their wheels splintered and their cargo of supplies strewn across the muddy road. Two massive oxen lay dead in their yokes, their thick hides torn open by wounds of incredible size and savagery.

"Gods above…" Lyra whispered, her hand flying to her mouth.

They approached cautiously, weapons drawn. Eirik knelt, examining one of the deep gouges in the side of a wagon. The wood around the mark was blackened and seemed to fizzle faintly, a dark, oily ichor eating away at the timber. "These claw marks… I've never seen anything like them," he murmured.

They found the bodies of three guardsmen near the wreckage. Their Blackstone livery was torn and stained, their plate armor shredded like parchment. But it was the arrangement of the bodies that made Eirik's blood run cold. They weren't scattered where they had fallen in a chaotic fight. They had been dragged.

"Darius," Lyra said, her voice tight with a horrified disbelief as she pointed toward the edge of the woods. "Look."

At the treeline was a gruesome, half-finished pile. The three guardsmen had been stacked haphazardly, their limbs tangled, as if someone, or something, had been interrupted in the middle of a grim collection.

"What in the blazes…?" Finn breathed, his usual bravado gone, replaced by a pale, sickened look. He stared at the bizarre cache of bodies. "No beast I know of hoards its kills like this in the open. They eat, or they drag their prize back to their den. This is… wrong."

Darius walked the perimeter of the attack, his veteran's eyes missing nothing. He noted the massive, clawed footprints in the mud, the corrosive spatter of ichor, and the drag marks leading to the body pile. He finally stopped, his face a mask of grim, disturbed comprehension.

"This wasn't a feeding," he stated, his voice low and heavy. "It wasn't a territorial display. I've hunted beasts my whole life, and none act like this. It's… methodical. Wrong. As if it were trying to complete a task." He looked at the tracks leading away from the carnage, not the beast's tracks, but the frantic, desperate footprints of a dozen panicked men. "Alain's squad. This was the head of their column. The beast must have struck, taken down the vanguard, and then started its… work."

The horrifying implication settled over them. The only reason anyone survived was because the monster had been distracted by its grotesque, unnatural task. While the corrupted beast was obsessively piling up the dead, Captain Alain must have rallied the terrified survivors and ordered a desperate retreat.

The weight of the discovery settled upon them, a heavy, suffocating blanket. This was not the abstract report of a distant danger; this was the brutal, tangible aftermath of a massacre. Finn, who had likely shared ale and traded barbs with these very men in the Gilded Tankard, was uncharacteristically silent, his face a pale mask of shock. The sight of familiar faces, now frozen in death, had extinguished his usual wit, leaving only a cold, hollow dread.

Lyra's hands trembled as she moved toward the fallen, her cleric's vows overriding her fear. "We cannot leave them like this," she said, her voice quiet but firm. "They deserve their rites. They deserve peace."

As she and Darius began the grim task of preparing the bodies, Eirik stood guard, his gaze sweeping the silent, watchful woods. He felt a profound, chilling detachment. A part of him, the ghost of Marcus Kane, saw the scene with a clinical horror. But another part, the part that was now Eirik Thornfell, felt the loss on a deeper, more personal level. He recognized one of the dead guards, a young man named Thom who had a knack for losing at cards. The memory was not his own, yet the sorrow was.

It was Darius who made the next discovery. After taking a grim inventory of the dead, he looked up, a new, sharp tension in his eyes. "They're not all here," he said, his voice a low growl. "Three guardsmen and two oxen are all that's accounted for from the vanguard. Alain himself, and at least eight other men, are missing."

The statement hung in the air, a new layer of mystery over their grief. They searched the area again, this time with a desperate, focused energy. It was Finn who found it. Fifty yards from the road, half-hidden in the underbrush, was a single, officer's gauntlet, its leather cuff marked with the crest of a Blackstone captain. It lay beside a set of frantic, fleeing boot prints.

"He made it out," Finn breathed, holding up the gauntlet. "Alain. He was here. He ran."

The discovery did little to lift their spirits. It only deepened the dread. Alain and his surviving men were out there, wounded, terrified, and being hunted by a creature whose motives were as monstrous as its claws.

They moved on, somber and on edge. The quiet of the road was no longer peaceful; it was predatory. The memory of the piled bodies and the mystery of the survivors was a constant, gnawing presence. Every shadow seemed to hold a threat, every rustle of leaves a potential attack. Hardships mounted as they journeyed. On the fourth day, a foul, unnatural rain fell, cold and greasy, forcing the companions to take refuge in a disused hay barn. They spent a damp, chilly night there, huddled in musty hay as lightning forked across the sky. Lyra tended to a nasty blister on Finn's heel by the light of flickering witchlight. Meanwhile, Darius and Eirik shared the last of a flask of spiced wine to ward off the chill. It did little to lift Darius's spirits; he was brooding, his thoughts clearly on the fate of his missing comrades.

On the sixth day since leaving Blackstone, the sky finally cleared to a crisp blue. The King's Road had led them out of the hill country and now stretched through flatter plains. The worst of the journey's physical strain was behind them; their muscles had toughened to the routine, and the thought of hot meals and real beds at Oakridge spurred them on. Yet, an invisible weight burdened their hearts.

Eirik's senses were on high alert now. Every rustle of wind in the grass or distant rustling from the trees put him on edge. By late afternoon, the feeling of being watched was no longer a subtle prickle; it was a physical weight on his shoulders, an oppressive certainty that they were being stalked. The air itself seemed tainted, carrying the faint, foul scent of the wreckage they had left behind.

Darius felt it too. He moved with a coiled readiness, his hand never straying from the hilt of his sword. "Eyes up. No distractions," he warned quietly, his voice a low rumble. "Stay close. Whatever it is, it wants us to be complacent." They marched now as a single, bristling unit of steel and grim resolve, weapons drawn: Darius's sword and shield in hand, Eirik's axe loosened from its sling, Finn's daggers in his fists, and Lyra with her oaken staff held tight.

The road ahead curved through a small wooded dell, following the course of a narrow stream. The tall oaks, their leaves a fiery autumn orange, cast long, deep shadows as the sun dipped toward the horizon. The group entered the shaded hollow, and a deep, unnatural hush fell. The late-day birdsong, the hum of insects, it all ceased, as if the forest itself held its breath in terror.

Eirik felt the hair on his arms rise, a primal response to an unseen predator. The rune for Battle Sense on his forearm began to pulse with a faint, insistent warmth, a silent alarm that screamed of imminent danger. The stream babbled softly to their right, its gentle sound a stark, unsettling contrast to the dead silence of the woods. Thick underbrush flanked the road on their left. It was the perfect spot for an ambush.

They moved closer together, forming a tighter, defensive cluster. Finn scanned the trees, daggers held low, his movements now devoid of their usual jaunty grace, replaced by a tense, predatory stillness. Lyra murmured the beginnings of a warding prayer under her breath, her free hand gliding over the holy symbol at her neck. Darius raised his shield, every muscle in his body taut, a fortress of steel and resolve. Eirik slid his hands into position on Erythrael's haft, sweat slick on his palms despite the chill in the air, his gaze narrowing to the space around them, every shadow a potential threat, every rustle of leaves a possible attack.

A sudden, violent flock of sparrows burst from a copse of trees ahead, taking flight not in a graceful arc, but in a frantic, terrified cloud, as if fleeing the devil himself.

Eirik's heart lurched. Something had disturbed them.

"There!" he hissed, pointing his axe toward the brush.

The silence that followed was absolute, and in that single, suspended heartbeat, the air seemed to hold its breath.

Then, a shrill, inhuman screech ripped through the air, a sound of pure, predatory malice that shattered the quiet and promised a bloody end to their journey.