CHAPTER 24: The Haunting Begins
The Blackwood Forest – Ten Miles North of the Imperial Advance
Sergeant Valerius grumbled as his patrol pushed through the dense, cloying fog of the Blackwood. It was a miserable forest on a miserable day, but their orders were simple: scout the forest, map the streams, and report any signs of rebel activity. For two days, they had found nothing. No footprints, no campfires, no pickets. The land was unnervingly empty.
"It's like they all just vanished," Corporal Roric muttered, pulling his cloak tighter. The seven-man patrol moved with the easy confidence of soldiers from the heart of the Empire, but the silence was beginning to wear on them. The birds were quiet. The wind made no sound through the thick, black-barked trees.
"They've run," Valerius scoffed. "Heard the legions were coming and ran back to their holes. We'll be in their precious Duskwatch by month's end, drinking their wine."
He spurred his horse forward, parting a curtain of mist. That's when he saw it.
Hanging from the low branch of an ancient oak was a string of small, animal-bone charms, twisting slowly in a breeze he couldn't feel. They were marked with scorched symbols.
"What in the hells…?" Roric began.
He never finished the sentence. From the canopy above, something silent and fast descended. A flash of red cloth, a glint of dark steel. Roric was pulled from his saddle with a choked gasp, vanishing into the trees before he could even scream.
Chaos erupted. The soldiers drew their swords, their eyes darting wildly into the oppressive grey. "Ambush! To me!" Valerius roared, but his voice was swallowed by the fog.
Another soldier fell, a black-fletched arrow appearing in his throat as if by magic. A third screamed as a figure in a red veil seemed to melt out of the trunk of a tree behind him, a hooked blade gutting him with two swift, silent motions.
They weren't fighting soldiers. They were fighting phantoms. The Red Veil moved without sound, their dark robes blending into the deep shadows. They struck and vanished, their attacks so coordinated and swift that the Imperials had no one to fight back against. They were simply being dismantled, piece by piece.
Within a minute, only Sergeant Valerius was left. He stood back-to-back with his horse, his sword slick with a desperate sweat, turning in frantic circles. The woods had fallen silent again, but now it was a predatory silence. He was being watched.
A figure stepped out from the mist before him. It was a woman, barefoot, clad in charred crimson robes. She wore no armor and carried no weapon. It was Seyda.
"You march for an emperor," she said, her voice soft, yet it carried through the fog with unnerving clarity. "You carry his banner. But his authority does not extend this far."
"Who are you?" Valerius demanded, his voice trembling. "Show yourselves, you cowards!"
"We are the whisper in the woods," Seyda replied calmly. "We are the branch that breaks in the night. We are the emptiness that greets you."
From the trees all around him, more figures emerged, their red veils like bloody wounds in the grey mist. They didn't draw blades. They simply stood and watched.
"Go back to your masters," Seyda commanded, her eyes seeming to smolder with a faint, internal light. "Tell your Lord Marshal that the north is haunted now. Tell him the soil is sour and the trees have teeth. Tell him every shadow is a blade, and every gust of wind is a prayer for his demise."
She took a step closer. "We will not meet you on the field of battle. We will meet you in your nightmares. Now run."
For a moment, Valerius was frozen by a fear more profound than any he had known on a battlefield. Then his training, his survival instinct, kicked in. He scrambled onto his horse, kicking its flanks mercilessly, and bolted, fleeing south through the fog-choked woods.
He did not look back. He did not see the Red Veil melt back into the trees as if they were never there. He did not see Seyda kneel and press her palm to the forest floor, whispering a prayer to the hungry, waiting earth.
He only rode, his heart a frantic drum, carrying a message of a new kind of terror back to the heart of the Imperial Legions. The haunting of the north had begun.