Rhok crouched near the edge of the clearing, his dagger held tightly in his hands, the scent of blood and damp earth thick in the air. The wind blew low through the glaves, stirring the mist that curled around his body. He motioned to the others behind him.“We split here,” he said, voice low but firm. “Eryn, you take Dian. Move to the west. Liora and I will head east. Look for signs of a nest, but if you see anything move, kill it first and ask questions later.”Eryn nodded. Dian didn’t say a word, just gave one short nod, already scanning the trees surrounding them. The two eventually stood up and left, the just covered them completely.Liora raised an eyebrow. “You sure about this? Splitting up’s how people die in stories like this.”“We’re not in a story,” Rhok muttered, moving forward. “We’re in a nightmare. Keep close, and use your magic when I say.”They walked east, the forest thickening, trees growing closer together like teeth in a rotting mouth. The smell worsened. Flesh. B

The second marionette rose like a nightmare sculpted from the remains of graveyard corpses.But worse that anything, the previous wolf monster has fused with the humanoid skeletal monster.Twisted bone lashed with tendons, taller than the trees, its head a crooked skull fused with iron. Its limbs stretched far too long, moving with a hideous grace as it stepped from behind the altar. Half its ribs had been reshaped into jagged spears, the other half twitched with stolen muscle. And inside its chest cavity, like a blasphemous core, glowed the blood-red rune of its master.Rhok stared up at it, teeth clenched, shoulders heaving. His breath came out in sharp clouds that instantly froze as they left his lips. Blood trickled from his nose, from a cut above his eyebrow, from the gash running down his thigh. He was hurt. Bad.But he didn’t move back.“I’m not done,” he growled, dragging his dagger against the ground. The steel sparked, then hissed as it touched the cold mist swirling around

Rhok felt the cold.Not just on his skin. Not just in his bones. It was deeper than that, burrowing past marrow, past flesh, past thought, down into the very pit of his soul. The Blackfrost had done something to him. It didn’t just coat his body. It claimed him completely, it wasn’t a spell, it wasn’t magic, it was something worse. Older. Hungrier. Feral.He heard a voice, but it came like a whisper underwater, muddled and familiar, yet unfamiliar.[WARNING: SOUL UNSTABLE. SYSTEM RECALIBRATING. ABY IS WORKING HARDER THAN YOU DESERVE, JUST FYI.]Aby. Of course it was Aby, that glitchy, sarcastic system lodged into his soul like a digital worm. Rhok barely registered the words. They were distant, annoying, pointless. He didn’t care.All he knew was that he was cold. Incomprehensibly cold.It wasn’t the kind of chill you could wrap a blanket around or warm yourself with fire. It wasn’t even the freezing cold that split stone and stopped hearts. No, this was colder than that. It was the v

Lord Darrell stood at the head of the war room, arms crossed, expression stone cold and serious. His sharp green eyes scanned the group like they owed him rent.“What in the seven hells happened out there?” he demanded, voice sharp enough to cut steel. “Explain yourself, boy!”Rhok stood, arms at his side, back straight. He was still pale, his skin slightly cold to the touch, and his breathing uneven. But he was alive, and that was something. He met Darrell’s gaze without flinching.“It started with the reptilian monsters, turns out that they were hunting and killing humans but we managed to kill them all off in their nest, but the true problem was the demonic worshipper,” Rhok began. “He was controlling the corpses like puppets, using them to attack us. I held him off for as long as I could with my shadow powers alone, but he was... persistent, fast, strong, not human anymore. He was using some kind of dark magic to feed the skeletal bodies from an altar.”Rhok paused for a second,