I watched Murasa’s party vanish into the treeline several paces to our left, their silhouettes swallowed by the gloom until not even the gleam of armor remained. My head turned back as our own line parted the first bows of the trees, stepping into the dark expanse of the Fellwoods.

  A cool mist curled around our boots, clinging to the mud with every step. The scent of rot turned sharp, almost metallic, and the air thickened as if we had stepped into a world with its own atmosphere. The sounds of Night’s Reach faded behind us until all that remained was the faint rustle of leaves and the muted clink of armor shifting against packs.

  We moved in tight formation. The twinblade wielder, Haizen, led as our vanguard, his silver-and-gold armor glinting faintly even in the dim. Selene flanked him to the left, the hilt of her rapier clutched tightly, while a soldier mirrored her on the right. Just behind their V-formation walked the Archmage, Celeste, her flowing blue and gold robes barely disturbed by her steady stride. To her side, Lyria kept close, lavender eyes alert, staff tight in her grip.

  On the right marched Kaela, spear at the ready, her fiery hair dampened by the fog but her gaze sharp as a hawk’s. I took the left, bowstring taut, eyes sweeping the shadows between the trees. The rear was held by a three-man line formation—two soldiers spread to the edges, with Bront in the middle, tower shield raised high, his every step a wall behind us.

  The forest pressed in with twisted timbers, bark blackened and bearded with pale moss. At intervals Celeste’s staff pulsed with faint blue light, detection runes crawling outward across the soil before fading again into nothing.

  For a while, the only sound was our own measured steps. But the longer we walked, the more the silence grew unnatural. The birdsong had died. No insects hummed. Even the wind seemed absent, though the mist continued to shift, twisting around us like smoke from a dying fire.

  Kaela muttered under her breath, just loud enough for me to catch, “Feels like something’s watching us.”

  “Stay focused,” Selene said sharply, though I didn’t miss the slight tremor in her voice.

  I strained my ears, trying to pierce the quiet. For just a moment I thought I heard it—an extra set of footsteps, faint, pacing us from somewhere deeper in the trees. But when I stopped to listen, the sound melted into the silence.

  Celeste’s staff pulsed again. The blue wave rippled outward, faded—then stuttered, like water splashing against something unseen. She frowned, her eyes narrowing into the mist.

  “...Something brushed the edge of the ward,” she whispered.

  None of us spoke, but every hand tightened around hilt, bow, or spear.

  I spotted something glowing faintly in the shadows, and squinted my eyes to get a better look, it wasn’t an enemy… only a tree, but pouring from notches in its bark was a glowing green ichor. Something told me I’d seen this somewhere before—but the memory eluded me. I took a sharp breath and pressed on with the group.

  “We’re making good progress,” Celeste eventually said. “Normally there would have been an encounter by now.”

  Haizen grunted from the front, agreeing with her observation.

  I nodded and glanced to the rear, but something was out of place… There, beside Bront where one of the soldiers should have been, was a chink in our formation. The soldier was gone.

  I spun to face back, eyes scanning the trees. “Soldier missing—!” I hissed urgently.

  Bront glanced to his right, his face twisting in confusion. “Where did he…”

  Celeste tapped her staff into the ground, more blue ripples pulsed along the forest floor frantically, extending her detection spell. “They slipped right past my spell…”

  Lyria was next, she raised her staff up, and with a quick chant, a translucent bluish bubble expanded from her staff. It seemed to be a slightly different detection spell, one that expanded out in all directions—to cover ground horizontally—but also vertically. She closed her eyes, waiting, and then—her head snapped up, looking into the canopy.

  “Above us…” Lyria muttered quietly.

  I trained my bow on the canopy above, but I saw nothing…

  At first, there was only darkness between the branches, the fog curling upward in faint streams. Then—something shifted. Leaves shuddered, though there was no breeze. A long, spindly shape recoiled deeper into the canopy.

  “Eyes up!” Haizen barked, his twinblade tilting skyward.

  “I still don’t see it,” Kaela muttered, her knuckles white on her spear shaft. “Lyria, are you sure—”

  A wet drip spattered against Bront’s pauldron. He touched it with two fingers and pulled them back slick with green ichor, the same as the tree’s. His face darkened. “Something’s bleeding on us.”

  Selene cursed under her breath, drawing and holding her rapier at the ready. “Stay close. If they’re above us, they’re hunting like predators, not simple beasts.”

  Celeste’s voice was calm but edged with steel. “Do not scatter. Whatever it is, it wants to isolate us—like it did that soldier.”

  I kept my bow trained on the shadows above, though my heartbeat thudded like thunder in my ears. The forest pressed in, alive but silent.

  Then came the sound—soft, deliberate, like claws dragging lightly across bark. To the left. To the right. Then behind. All around us at once.

  Kaela cursed in frustration. “They’re circling us–”

  Bront shifted his tower shield higher, his stance wide and solid. “Fine. Let them come. See if their fangs bite harder than steel.”

  But I wasn’t so sure. Whatever was out there—it wasn’t rushing us. It was watching. Waiting.

  The sound came again—scraping, dragging—until suddenly the canopy above convulsed.

  With a sharp crack, a barbed vine snapped down from the branches, lashing at the formation. Another soldier was yanked screaming into the air before anyone could react. His cry cut short as the vine coiled tight, thorns tearing through steel and flesh alike.

  “Cut him loose!” Selene shouted, her rapier flashing as it sliced through the dangling vines.

  Lyria stepped forward, orange light kindling between her palms. She thrust both hands out, releasing a concentrated bolt of fire that struck near the vine’s base. It recoiled, singed—but too late. The soldier’s mangled body plummeted into the mud with a sickening thud.

  Before we could even gasp, the shadows between the trees stirred. Figures slunk forward, their silhouettes too warped to be human—stooped bodies, slick green skin mottled with red blisters pulsing in the gloom. Their arms hung too long, ending in claws that scraped the ground like blades. And their faces… disturbingly wide, frog-like maws filled with rows of serrated needle-teeth.

  “The watchers…” I whispered.

  One hissed, the sound guttural and wet, before it lunged.

  “Hold formation!” Haizen roared, meeting it head-on. His twinblade crashed against its claws, sparks scattering as steel scraped against bone-hard talons.

  Another watcher skittered low for the flank, but Kaela spun her spear with deadly precision, driving it into its side. The creature shrieked, ichor spraying as it writhed against the haft.

  “Yukon!” Lyria’s voice cut through the chaos.

  I’d already seen it. I loosed an arrow. It buried deep into the shoulder of a watcher leaping down from the canopy, pinning it briefly against the bark. But even impaled, the thing dragged itself down, teeth gnashing. I put another arrow through its skull and it went slack.

  Vines lashed again from the treeline, forcing Bront to raise his tower shield. Thorns screeched against the metal, each impact rattling through the ground beneath our feet.

  “Damn it—they’re working together!” Selene cursed, fending off another whip of serrated vines.

  The watchers didn’t swarm us like mindless beasts—they circled, tested, prodded our defenses. Their blistered skin glistened as if fevered, their eyes burning faintly with green luminescence. Patient. Waiting.

  “Keep moving!” Celeste’s voice cut through, firm but sharp. She raised her staff, a pulse of blue light erupting outward. The closest watchers shrieked as the wave struck them, stumbling back into the fog. “They want us trapped here. We need to reach the meeting point!”

  Haizen drove his blade through one that lunged too far, splitting its chest with brutal finality. The creature collapsed, ichor spilling into the mud—but even as it twitched its clawed fingers, the forest seemed to pull its body back, vines curling around it like carrion feeders. As Haizen turned back to the rest of the group, a tangle of thorny vines shot down toward him—my warning caught in my throat as I watched him spin his twinblade through the air with brutal elegance, severing each vine without so much as a look.

  “Onward—!” he bellowed as green ichor rained down around him.

  So this was how Gold-ranked adventurers fought…

  Kaela spat, wiping green blood from her cheek. “I’ll take a goblin raid over these frog-faced bastards any day.”

  Bront grunted, shoving a vine back with his shield. “At least goblins die when you kill them.”

  “Less talk, Let’s move,” Selene snapped.

  We pressed forward, formation tight, every shadow between the trees a threat. The watchers trailed us—I could feel their eyes burning holes into my back. Always circling. Always waiting.

  And as the forest swallowed the fallen soldier whole, I realized with a chill—we hadn’t fought them off.

  We’d only been allowed to leave.

  Shortly after, we came to a small clearing with a totem-like ward at its center. The mist seemed to recoil from it. Its surface stood shimmering with runes, some sharp edged and bright orange—reminiscent of the warding runes Sylico, Lyria, and Karne had used to block the watchers the morning before—and some glowing a soft green. The totem itself was a unique blend of stone and wood.

  “Is that a warding totem…?” Lyria gasped. “I’ve never seen one this advanced.”

  Celeste stepped forward, her hand encased in a teal arcane energy as she tampered with the totem.

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  “Yes—the design’s Sylico’s, but the power source is mine,” Celeste said, brow tightening as she reinforced the totem. “It’s an unstable combination of our magic that we tried using for checkpoints during previous attempts, but it does seem to be holding.”

  Lyria nodded along, clearly fascinated despite the darkness surrounding us as the Fellwoods loomed on. Her simple intrigue brought a faint smile to my lips, momentarily easing the tension that had seeped in.

  Haizen stood near the edge of the clearing, staring into the shadowed forest beyond. The others gathered near the totem, knuckles white on weapons and staves.

  I followed Haizen’s lead, keeping my guard up as we waited for Murasa’s group to arrive. My nerves kept my concentration taut, so much so that I barely noticed him stepping in—

  “Watch out, ranger,” Haizen hissed quietly, his helm never turning from the woods.

  I glanced behind me quickly, then around to the sides, and finally back front—I’d thought he meant ‘watch out for something in the woods’, but the way he stood, facing forward, unmoving, told me he meant something else entirely.

  “...watch out—for what exactly?” I whispered back.

  He leaned in, his size and presence imposing even now. “Murasa’s got his eye on you. Don’t know why. But if you mean us harm…” his voice dropped lower “…I’ll cut you down myself.”

  He paused, letting the threat sink in as my blood ran cold.

  “If it’s something else he’s after... watch yourself. He can be—intense.”

  I didn’t know what to make of his words. I couldn’t understand why Murasa would be keeping an eye on me, but Haizen’s threat, and his warning, made my stomach churn.

  “T–Thanks…” I mumbled, adjusting my grip on my bow and peering back into the gloom.

  Just then, two faint purple orbs appeared in the misty shadows beyond the clearing. Their glow brightened, forcing me back a step as my instincts battled reason.

  Before panic had a chance to set in, more lights appeared—floating, multiplying—until full sets of armor, torches, light spells, and Murasa’s own amethyst eyes took shape.

  As Murasa’s party stepped into the clearing, a unanimous sigh of relief resounded shortly, followed by concerned gasps as they shook off the shroud of clinging mist. By the looks of things, Murasa’s group had faced trouble of their own.

  Armor scratched and coated in drying green ichor—fresh wounds leaking bright red into the mud—faces taut with the lingering light of paranoia.

  Haizen bowed to Murasa, stepping to his side, twinblade held at the ready.

  Celeste sprang forward, her concern evident.

  “You were attacked too then? Which creature was it this time?” Celeste asked quickly.

  Murasa blinked and glanced back at his group, noticeably missing a few soldiers as well, though Jango’s party and the lone wizard Karne seemed intact.

  “Massive Fell-warped serpent,” Murasa said, eyes narrowing at the memory. “Its blood ran green with Fell ichor—I’ve never seen one so big. Watchers and twisting vines gave us some trouble too.”

  “Then it seems we were the lucky ones, we only saw watchers and twisting vines,” Celeste reported.

  “None can be considered lucky in this hellscape…” Jango cut in, wiping a bit of blood from his brow.

  “Aye, none indeed—but that doesn’t change our mission,” Haizen said flatly, his voice gruff and low.

  Murasa nodded in agreement with Haizen and Jango, stepping toward the ward and turning to face us.

  “You’ve now seen only a glimpse of what awaits us in these woods,” Murasa said, his voice steady but low. “We’ll take a different route back—but from this point on, we move as one.”

  He turned toward a narrow side path winding out of the clearing, and we set off almost immediately. The priest—whose name I still hadn’t caught—moved among us with quiet efficiency, murmuring incantations and dabbing salves over our cuts and bruises before we began.

  Curiosity gnawed at me as we fell back into formation. I drifted closer to Celeste, who walked near the center of the line, her staff faintly pulsing with teal light.

  “Celeste,” I murmured, keeping my voice low. “These creatures—the watchers, that serpent Murasa mentioned—they were native to these woods once, weren’t they? Before the Fell twisted them?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, just long enough for the gold flecks in her blue eyes to catch the dim light. “That’s right,” she said softly. “Most of what we’ve encountered fits that theory. The Fell doesn’t create—it corrupts.”

  Her words confirmed what I’d feared.

  I fell back into step, eyes scanning the mist-shrouded path ahead. The watchers were likely once some kind of marshland predator—maybe akin to the Kurlocs I’d seen in the wetlands. Twisted things even before the Fell’s touch, known to drag the unwary beneath still water. The serpent Murasa described might have been the same—just a simple forest constrictor, bloated and poisoned by corruption until it became a monster.

  But those weren’t the creatures that haunted my thoughts.

  In forests like these, there were bound to be wolves. Bears. Even trolls. And if the Fell had reached them… then we hadn’t yet seen the worst this place could offer.

  During the trek back, I found my gaze drawn to Lyria more than once. Her eyes were closed in focus, sweat tracing lines down her temple as her hands shimmered with a faint greenish glow. The energy pulsing from her fingertips rippled through the mist, bending it away from us in quiet waves.

  Celeste, Karne, and Murasa each wove their own variations of the same warding spell—different hues of light merging and fading in slow, rhythmic pulses. The combined magic masked our presence, repelled lesser Fell creatures, and carved a faint corridor of clarity through the fog.

  For a while, it seemed to work. The forest fell into an uncanny stillness, broken only by the squelch of our boots in the mud and the whisper of leaves brushing against armor.

  Every so often, the wards flickered—dimmed for just a heartbeat—and I caught the faintest sound from beyond the mist: something dragging through the muck, slow and deliberate. Once, a shadow moved parallel to our flank, vanishing the instant I turned my head.

  But the danger didn’t come from the shadows this time.

  It came from our own line.

  A familiar chill bloomed deep in my chest, freezing the air in my lungs. Lunae’s presence flared without warning, sharp and urgent. Before I could question why she had returned, instinct took over—I lunged forward and yanked Celeste aside.

  An arrow screamed past us, splitting the mist, and burying itself in the skull of the soldier marching ahead. The thud of impact echoed like a hammer strike, and our formation shattered instantly.

  Cold vapor curled from my breath as Lunae’s influence lingered, and I turned to see where the shot had come from—

  The last soldier was swinging wildly at Jango’s stout shieldbearer, steel ringing against steel. His eyes burned with a sickly green light, veins crawling up his face in pulsating streaks of red and black.

  But the real horror stood behind him.

  The archer from Jango’s party—her golden eyes now glowing that same virulent green—had her bow drawn and trained down our line. Veins of black-red corruption webbed beneath her skin, and from a shallow cut on her arm, green ichor oozed in place of blood.

  Another arrow loosed.

  I reached for Lunae’s power again—desperate—but her presence was gone as quickly as it came. The world snapped back into silence just as Bront stepped forward, raising his tower shield in time for the arrow to strike with a dull, bone-jarring thud. The impact drove him back half a step, the shaft quivering where it lodged deep in the metal.

  “Hold formation!” Murasa’s voice thundered through the trees, his maul of twisted iron and amethyst sweeping up to deflect an arrow meant for Karne. The impact sparked against the metal, scattering green droplets of Fell ichor that hissed when they struck the ground.

  “She’s one of ours!” Jango bellowed, voice cracking as he tried to rush forward—but Haizen caught him by the shoulder, heaving him back.

  “Not anymore,” Haizen growled.

  Another volley came. The corrupted archer’s bowstring sang, her movements jerky and inhuman, like a puppet guided by invisible strings. Every arrow she fired trailed faint green light and carried a sickening force that split wood and stone alike.

  “Suppressing fire—now!” Celeste shouted. Her staff ignited with a swirl of teal flame, casting a wide shockwave that warped the air, forcing the vines at the path's edge to recoil. Beside her, Karne extended a hand, muttering a word that ripped through the fog like a gunshot—the ground erupted, a dozen earthen spears bursting upward to intercept the next volley.

  It didn’t stop the vines.

  Barbed tendrils thicker than a man’s arm slithered down from the canopy, wrapping around trunks and legs alike. One caught Kaela who yelped as the thorns punctured her armor and pulled her screaming toward the fog. Selene was there in an instant, her rapier flashing as she cut Kaela free and helped her to her feet. Another lashed out at Haizen, who caught it mid-swing and hacked through it with a single powerful stroke of his twinblade, the sap spraying like hot oil.

  “Fall back!” Murasa ordered, his voice nearly lost in the cacophony. “Regroup and form a wedge—now!”

  I loosed arrow after arrow toward the archer, aiming for her hands, not her heart—but she moved too fast, jerking with unnatural precision. I cursed under my breath and drew my sword instead, slashing a vine that tried to coil around my leg. The Fell ichor burned through the leather of my boot like acid.

  “Bront!” I shouted.

  Our giant half-orc was already moving, slamming his tower shield into the ground and forming a wall for Lyria and Selene. Kaela staggered to my side, limping but unyielding, her spear flashing in fierce, precise arcs that kept the vines at bay. Our eyes met for a heartbeat—a wordless exchange that said we had each other’s backs. Lyria’s chants wove through the chaos, a desperate melody, and an arc of violet lightning tore through the canopy above, briefly illuminating our attackers in harsh silhouette.

  “Yukon, the archer—she’s still breathing!” Selene called out, her rapier glowing faint blue as she parried a vine that shot toward Lyria’s throat. “If we can subdue her—”

  “I’m trying!” I snarled, ducking as another arrow tore through the mist and grazed my shoulder.

  Murasa charged through the fray, his deep purple eyes burning like coals. The vines seemed to shrink from his presence as radiant light poured from his maul. In one fluid motion he knocked Jango aside, leapt the distance to the archer, and with a surge of divine energy, shattered her bow in half.

  The corrupted woman convulsed violently, collapsing to her knees as green ichor began trickling from her mouth and eyes. Murasa raised his great hammer again—

  “Wait!” Lyria and Jango shouted simultaneously. She stepped forward, hand outstretched. “She’s still alive!”

  Murasa froze mid-strike, his jaw tight.

  From behind them, Karne gritted his teeth. “We can’t keep this position much longer! Our spells are failing!”

  Indeed, the faint glow of the warding spells that Karne and Celeste had been maintaining while battling vines and watchers, flickered and dulled, and the mist began to press inward again. The whispers of the Fellwoods grew louder—soft, indistinct voices, overlapping, clawing at the edges of our sanity.

  “Haizen! Take point—everyone, make for Night’s Reach!” Murasa barked, his voice snapping the group into motion.

  Haizen moved first, carving a path with brute strength. Celeste and Karne fell to the rear, weaving barrier after barrier as they retreated. Bront shielded the mages, every step rocking the ground beneath him.

  Lyria cast a sealing spell on the corrupted archer, blue chains of arcane energy encased her body, and Jango hoisted her over his shoulder despite the bile that rose in his throat—her blood was still leaking that shimmering green.

  “Don’t touch her skin directly!” Celeste warned, voice sharp. “The corruption may be able to spread!”

  He gritted his teeth, wrapping her cloak around her before lifting her again. “Noted!”

  The retreat turned into a sprint. The vines lashed after us in furious pursuit, roots tearing through the soil, trees shuddering as if the forest itself meant to swallow us whole.

  When the first glimpse of the Night’s Reach palisades broke through the fog, a ragged shout of relief escaped someone’s throat. Arrows from the watchtower etched with ignition runes whistled past, bursting into orange flames as they struck the encroaching vines.

  Murasa turned one last time, his maul pulsing with blinding light that tore a path clean through the pursuing tendrils. “Move!” he roared. “Get inside the barrier—now!”

  As we crossed the palisade and the gates slammed shut behind us, the vines recoiled with a hiss, melting back into the mist.

  The corrupted archer lay limp in Jango's arms, her chest still faintly rising and falling. The glow in her eyes had faded—but her veins still pulsed faintly red and black beneath the skin.

  Lyria knelt beside her immediately, whispering a spell of purification that sparked but failed to take hold.

  “She’s resisting…” she breathed.

  Murasa let his maul land, his face grim. “We must find a way to reverse the corruption—Barton,” He called to the priest. “Take her to the chapel, call for any clerics or magic-users to join as well. We can’t let this chance slip.”

  As Jango was ushered off toward the chapel with his fallen comrade in his arms, I finally began to catch my breath…

  Lyria ran to Kaela and began performing a light healing spell on the wounds from where the vines had grabbed her, and the rest of us all met eyes.

  Shaken.

  Terrified.

  But we knew—

  —This was only the beginning.