Dawn did not rise in Haldrith. It crept. Pale mist slithered through the tall pine trunks like breath on the verge of a whisper, curling low around the roots and rocks as if afraid to be seen. Birds remained silent. Even the trees didn't dare rustle unless the wind demanded it. And beneath their ancient limbs, a hunter moved.
Rowen Gravenmar crouched low to the earth, gloved fingers brushing against damp leaves. The print was fresh—three claws, wide gait, weight uneven. The beast was limping.
He rose silently, the pine-scented air clinging to his worn leather coat. In the half-light, his eyes seemed too sharp, as if they drank in more than what the forest offered. He listened—not for sound, but for absence. The hush of something unnatural. The quiet that came when the world braced itself.
Something had crossed through again.
He moved like a shadow between the trunks, longbow slung over one shoulder, a simple hunting knife sheathed at his thigh. There were no sigils carved into his weapons. No trinkets for luck. Just iron and instinct.
Haldrith's borderlands weren't safe, not for years. Whispers told of beasts walking where they shouldn't, or groves turned sour and still. But no one ever talked about it out loud. It was easier to blame the weather or wolves. Easier not to see.
Rowen saw. That was his curse. Or maybe just habit. He'd been seeing since the day he ran—from his bloodline, from the stone halls and screaming banners of Gravenmar. They had tried to shape him into a weapon. And maybe they had. But he'd pointed the blade away from them and fled.
The forest had taken him in like a wary dog. He made his way trapping hare, gathering herbs, guiding the occasional caravan. He didn't take work that asked questions. When odd things happened—strange lights over the lake, a stag walking backwards in its tracks—people looked the other way. He followed.
He found the creature an hour later.
It lay half-curled in a thicket, its body half-revealed by frostbitten brush. A great boar—or something close to it—except its skin shimmered faintly, like oil on water, and its eyes were wrong. Too many of them. Too focused.
It wasn't dead.
He nocked an arrow, pulled. But the creature didn't charge.
It watched him.
Then it spoke.
Not aloud. Not with voice. But inside his skull—raw and trembling.
"You burn... You are ash and root..."
The arrow flew before he knew he'd loosed it.
The body dropped without sound. Just a faint hiss as its blood met the cold ground and steamed.
Rowen stood over it, chest rising slow, eyes hard. He didn't answer the voice. He'd heard worse in his dreams.
He turned to leave—
—and saw the spear.
It stood upright in the earth behind the thicket. Eight feet tall, etched with unfamiliar markings. Dark iron, wrapped near the haft with braided red cloth. It hadn't been there before.
Rowen approached, every step wary. The weapon pulsed faintly with warmth, like something alive. Like something watching.
Someone else had hunted here.
Not townsfolk. Not trappers.
Someone who left marks like warnings.
He stepped back into the mist, heart ticking faster than he liked. There were no footprints. No broken brush. But the feeling lingered:
He wasn't alone in his woods anymore.
And whoever had left that spear—they hadn't come for the beast.
They had come for him.
The smoke of a cookfire greeted him before the village did. Rowen followed the scent down a narrow trail, boots sloshing quietly through mud where the morning frost had begun to melt. By the time he reached the outskirts, the sun had burned a pale circle through the clouds, and the mist clung low like a second skin.
Kareth's Hollow wasn't much—seven homes, two barns, one crooked shrine to the Watcher of Bound Paths. Rowen wasn't a part of it. Not truly. He slept on the ridge above the northern ridge, in a shack he'd built himself. But the villagers tolerated him. He brought meat, mostly. And news when it mattered.
Old Rill, the miller's widow, was tending her drying rack when she saw him.
"You're early," she said, eyeing the blood on his coat.
"Was a long night," he replied.
"More beasts?"
"Just one."
She gave a half-smile. "That's all it takes to ruin a field or a child."
He nodded. That was the most either of them ever said. But her eyes lingered longer than usual.
As he passed the square—a trampled loop of earth and stone—he noticed them. Strangers. Three of them, cloaked and still. Standing by the well.
Wardens.
He knew without needing to ask. The way they carried themselves—not like travelers, but watchers. One had armor beneath the cloak, oiled leather marked with the crown's crescent and thistle. Another leaned on a spear whose blade curved slightly, like a crescent moon made for killing.
Rowen kept walking. Didn't look at them. Didn't change pace.
Behind him, one of them turned.
By the time he reached the slope leading to his shack, the sun was climbing and the mist was burning off. The trees above his shelter rustled, and he knew before he saw them.
More of them. A full unit.
Fifteen riders. Fifteen Wardens. Waiting.
He stepped into the clearing slowly, bow still slung over his shoulder.
A woman dismounted from the lead horse. Her armor was simple but clean, her face half-shadowed beneath a hood of dark green. She removed it, revealing short-cropped ash-blond hair and eyes like wet stone.
"Rowen Gravenmar," she said.
His jaw tightened. "That name's dead."
"Then you won't mind if we borrow it."
He stared at her.
She gestured to the woods. "You've been watched. Not just by us. By things that don't belong here. Beasts and worse. You know the signs. You move like someone trained. You kill like someone haunted. And you saw the spear, didn't you?"
His silence was answer enough.
"You're not what you say you are," she said, voice low. "You're something else. And we need something else."
He looked past her. Fifteen horses. Fifteen eyes. All staring.
He had spent years running from one name, one house, one legacy.
And yet here it was again. Not in the banners of Gravenmar—but in the voice of someone who saw him too clearly.
Rowen exhaled slowly.
"What are you asking?"
"Ride with us," she said. "Three days. No oath. No title. Just watch. If you see what we see—then maybe you'll know where you belong."
He looked at the woods. The spear. The creature's eyes.
He nodded once.
And the mist began to rise again.