“Hellhounds?”

A surprised murmur escaped Lannor atop the saddle.

With the miserable lighting of an underdeveloped world, beneath a winter sky smothered by clouds, visibility along a country road was exactly as bad as one might imagine.

Two steps ahead, and the darkness swallowed everything.

Lannor had downed a vial of Cat beforehand just to keep traveling. Among modern Witchers, he was probably the only one willing to spend an expensive potion simply to see the road.

After all, how much did a torch cost? Most people would make do.

Pope, however, showed no anxiety over the darkness. As a warhorse, she had been trained to charge while blindfolded. Following a rider without sight was nothing new to her.

Yet amid the darkness drowning the world, several eerie lights illuminated the village palisade.

The glow was sulfur-yellow, thick and solid-looking, shining with the faint radiance of radioactive ore. Their shapes resembled short-haired hunting hounds. Their eyes burned blood-red.

Lannor’s own faintly luminous eyes narrowed as he stared at the two or three Hellhounds prowling near the fence.

He had only seen creatures like these in bestiaries and old texts.

Legend claimed Hellhounds were drawn to evil.

Unforgivable crimes, people said, summoned these canine monsters from Hell itself, where they served as the Wild Hunt’s outriders, bringing punishment to the wicked.

Their danger rose with their numbers. A pack of Hellhounds was enough to make even renowned Master Witchers think twice before drawing steel.

But only three?

Lannor smacked his lips and swung down from the saddle.

He stroked Pope’s neck, calming the mare before the Chaos magic radiating from the monsters could agitate her.

To ordinary living creatures, Chaos was profoundly unpleasant.

It corroded. It mutated.

Sorcerers and Witchers were, in a sense, humans who had learned to use “radiation” safely. That did not make radiation any less terrifying to everything else.

It was one reason society instinctively distrusted both professions. Prolonged contact left ordinary people with a subtle but unmistakable discomfort.

Moon-bright steel slid slowly from its scabbard.

The soft scrape of Arondight against the sheath sounded almost pleasant in the stillness.

The Hellhounds circling the village fence turned in unison. Blood-gem eyes locked onto the approaching living thing.

Common folk liked to repeat the tale that Hellhounds sought out evil.

Witchers understood them better.

Most Witchers agreed that great crimes attracted Hellhounds. They also agreed on something else.

The monsters did not particularly care whether their prey was guilty or innocent.

Meat was meat.

The three Hellhounds lowered themselves and charged, growling like ordinary hunting dogs.

Each step left behind a patch of sulfur-colored flame.

Hellfire.

The fire usually lingered for several seconds. Stepping into it, or taking a direct blast, rarely ended well.

Faced with such creatures, Lannor continued forward at the same measured pace.

The elegant Elven naginata spun lightly beneath his wrist, tracing a brilliant flourish through the darkness.

The first Hellhound launched itself straight for his throat.

Its body was only partially material, making it far lighter than a flesh-and-blood dog. That unnatural lightness gave it speed and agility enough to embarrass veteran hunters.

Lannor’s eyes remained calm.

“Compared to the wolves in Ashina, fed on Fountainhead Waters and trained by shinobi… hm. Pretty straightforward.”

Clang!

The snapping jaws aimed at his neck were knocked aside by the gleaming blade.

Combat Art: Ascending Carp.

“Oh? So the body structure really is close to a dog’s.”

The strike did more than deflect its fangs.

The refined mechanics of Eastern martial arts disrupted the monster’s posture the instant steel met flesh. The Hellhound’s body recoiled backward, completely losing control of its balance.

By Ashina standards, its posture had broken.

Lannor did not even need to adjust his blade.

His stance shifted. His front foot drove forward.

The naginata followed his body like a storm of sharpened steel.

The edge swept across the exposed throat.

Arondight carved a wound spanning half the creature’s neck. Sulfur-yellow fire leaked from the gash in shimmering streams.

After only a single exchange, most of the Hellfire sustaining the creature had already spilled away.

Its dying whine sounded no different from that of an ordinary dog.

Lannor instinctively flicked nonexistent blood from the blade and turned his glowing cat eyes toward the two remaining yellow-lit hounds.

They had stopped midway through their charge.

Hesitation.

Doubt.

Fear.

The instinct to hunt urged them forward.

The instinct to survive held them back.

Lannor made the decision for them.

“Wraaaugh!”

The Hellhound trapped beneath a studded leather glove howled like a beaten house dog.

The short-range burst of movement came from techniques recorded within the Lone Shadow Ninjutsu Esoteric Text. Driven by Lannor’s monstrous leg strength, it was faster than even a partially materialized Hellhound.

The second beast lunged reflexively.

Halfway through the leap, Lannor seized the first creature and slammed its body into the attack, pinning the second hound’s jaws against the ground with its companion.

Then he raised the blade.

Stab.

One clean thrust.

Both Hellhounds, forced into a pile, were nailed to the earth.

Lannor rose calmly and returned Arondight to his waist.

“Looks like I’m strong now, Mentos.”

His cat eyes drifted toward the moon overhead, carrying a faint air of lonely mastery.

Inside his mind, the Biological Intelligence Core responded in a similarly lofty tone.

“Yes, sir. You are indeed powerful. However…”

The shift came abruptly.

“According to my weather records, a low ground-level wind crosses this area from the lake every few minutes. In other words, a surface gust. Are you truly planning to leave the Specter Dust lying there?”

The tall young man who had just been gazing solemnly at the moon immediately broke into a run toward Pope.

He yanked open the saddlebags and scrambled out a collection kit before hurrying back to gather the three small piles of glittering dust.

The contrast was almost embarrassing.

But Mentos knew something important.

He ought to be grateful.

Sure enough, moments later:

“Damn, thanks, Mentos! Even a tiny pile of Specter Dust sells for more than ten Orens. That’s practically free money!”

The Biological Intelligence Core felt deeply satisfied by its host’s admirable frugality.

Lannor worked quickly.

Before long, he had collected the dirt mixed with Specter Dust into a container. After washing it with the proper alchemical solutions, pure Specter Dust could be refined from the sediment.

Once finished, he straightened up and looked toward the nearby village.

Torches were beginning to flare to life beyond the palisade.

Villagers gathered at the gate.

The grin of a man who had just found money slowly faded from Lannor’s face.

In the firelight, the villagers wore warm, grateful smiles, the sort reserved for heroes.

Yet Lannor knew one thing with absolute certainty.

Hellhounds really were attracted to evil.

Three Hellhounds were not many.

But they had come.

The villagers welcomed Lannor and Pope warmly enough, at least on the surface.

The moment he turned his back, though, people still instinctively kept their distance from a Witcher.

The village elder was a man named Mutt, somewhere in his forties or fifties. Years of hard living had carved a permanent gloom into his features. His linen shirt had frayed into threads at the seams, and the leather boots on his feet shone with the greasy polish of long use.

He invited Lannor to spend the night in his home.

“We’re truly grateful to you, Master Witcher. Those glowing beasts outside have plagued our village for a long time now. Every night, us honest villagers can do nothing but huddle inside our little homes and pray. We don’t even dare peek out the window.”

Seated at the table, Lannor ate the meal provided by the elder at an unhurried pace.

There was nothing remarkable about it. Mushroom soup and hard bread, likely mixed with acorn flour.

Meanwhile, Mutt painted a vivid picture of a simple, hardworking village besieged by monsters and struggling to survive.

Lannor glanced up from his bowl.

“Those were Hellhounds, Master Mutt. You’ve never heard of them? They’re rather famous among common folk.”

“Hellhounds? Master, we’re honest farmers. Not like those green-skinned bitches in the forest, robbing and murdering whenever they please. We don’t know what kind of monster that was, and we don’t want to know. We just want to farm our land in peace.”

He was lying.

Lannor reached that conclusion before he even looked up from his soup.

If Mutt truly knew nothing of the stories claiming Hellhounds were drawn to evil, then why compare himself to the supposedly wicked Dryads?

The only question was whether the sins attracting the Hellhounds belonged to Mutt alone, or to half the village.

In rural communities, villagers covering for one another, even working together in matters that violated both law and conscience, was hardly uncommon.

Three Hellhounds did not suggest anything truly monstrous…

Probably.

Lannor lacked experience in such matters. For now, he intended to finish the Curse of the Cormorant investigation and ask the more experienced Geralt for advice afterward.

So he shifted the conversation and asked whether there were any notable scenic spots nearby suitable for secret trysts.

The matter concerned lifting Baron Ham’s curse. Mutt would do well to cooperate.

To Lannor’s surprise, however, the tactic that had worked in every other village failed completely here.

Instead, Mutt seemed intent on turning the pressure around.

“Ah! This concerns Baron Ham becoming human again!”

The moment delight crept into the man’s voice, Lannor’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Sure enough, the next moment came.

“Master! Master Witcher! This is serious business! You, you can’t afford to let this job fail either, can you?”

Mutt swallowed nervously, yet forced himself to keep staring directly into Lannor’s cat eyes.

“Please, just do us this favor. Get rid of that monster wandering outside the village, and we’ll cooperate with anything!”

Lannor looked at the elder.

The man was frightened.

The smell of fear practically seeped from his skin.

Yet he clung to the information like a drowning man clutching driftwood.

Damn.

So people like this really did exist.

Lannor had invoked Baron Ham’s name because the baron’s authority genuinely carried weight among villagers.

To peasants, the man who controlled taxes and grain assessments was the highest power imaginable.

But what happened when the baron’s authority was no longer the greatest fear in town?

For example…

A monster lurking beyond the village fence.

At that point, people found the courage to pressure the baron’s representatives instead.

The baron wants something done?

Fine.

But a monster might tear me apart tomorrow.

If you don’t solve that problem first, somebody else can do the baron’s work.

Mutt wore a humble, pleading expression. He looked moments away from dropping to his knees.

In reality, he was threatening Lannor.

He assumed a Witcher survived by the baron’s favor just as he did. Therefore, the Witcher should be terrified of failing the assignment.

In an age of poor communication and limited knowledge, even village elders rarely possessed broad perspectives.

Lannor shook his head, preparing to refuse outright.

Had he stumbled across a monster slaughtering a village on the road, there was a good chance he would have drawn steel immediately.

But if someone tried to force his hand through threats…

Then even if he intended to kill the monster, it would be after they learned their lesson.

Being a good person did not mean allowing others to point a crossbow at your head.

There was no justice in that.

Yet before he could refuse, Mutt began describing the creature.

“It’s some kind of shadowy spirit, thin as smoke. It appears at noon. Villagers who see it end up looking dried out, like they’ve been roasted alive! For two whole years now, nobody’s dared leave their house between noon and two in the afternoon!”

“Please, have mercy. Drive it away!”

The refusal poised on Lannor’s tongue never emerged.

His cat eyes fixed on the pleading elder.

The words that came out instead were:

“… Alright. No problem.”

Mutt practically leaped from his chair.

He hurried outside to announce the good news, triggering a wave of cheers throughout the village.

Inside the house, Lannor calmly watched the elder’s retreating back.

The reason for his sudden change of heart was the monster itself.

A Noonwraith.

Legends spoke of women burned by the sun, appearing beneath the blazing midday sky in flowing white garments. Most Noonwraiths were the spirits of young women murdered before their weddings.

Bound by pain, bitterness, and hatred, they danced in circles with their phantoms beneath the sun. Ordinary people could be lured into the dance by supernatural enchantment.

When it ended, only a dried corpse remained.

A little too much of a coincidence, wasn’t it?

Two years ago, Vissernet quarreled with his lover and was cursed into a cormorant.

Two years ago, a Noonwraith began haunting the village where they had once met in secret.

A female spirit born from love twisted into hatred.

Lannor felt the threads beginning to connect.

“Sir, we cannot yet confirm that it is a Noonwraith. Farmers’ descriptions are rarely precise. They lack the necessary knowledge and tend to exaggerate.”

Mentos offered the warning cautiously.

Many Master Witchers had died after misidentifying a monster and building their plans around a faulty assumption.

“I know,” Lannor replied.

“We’ll inspect the site ourselves tomorrow.”

As always, the young Witcher preferred caution over certainty.

The next morning, much as he had back in Auridon, Lannor woke beneath the roof of a village elder.

The difference was that Auridon had merely suffered from Drowners.

This village harbored a sin foul enough to draw Hellhounds.

Because of that, Lannor had not even allowed himself to enter a Deep Memory Dive during the night.

Early in the morning, before the sun had climbed very high, he had already equipped himself and made his way onto the stretch of abandoned farmland.

The fields lay close to the village. Turning his head, he could still see smoke curling from the chimneys. Seven or eight hundred meters at most.

A Noonwraith haunting ground that close to people’s homes would be enough to terrify an entire village.

Half a kilometer in the opposite direction lay the outer edge of Brokilon Forest.

“Alright then. Let’s have a look…”

Without hesitation, Lannor’s plated boots stepped onto the cracked, desiccated earth.

Dry clods shattered beneath his feet with sharp crunches.

Though abandoned for two years because of the monster, the fields had not become overgrown with weeds.

Water was plentiful here. A great forest stood nearby.

Yet the soil looked as though it had endured years of drought.

“Supernatural influence. No question.”

Muttering to himself, Lannor crouched and pinched apart a lump of hardened earth before rising to survey the surroundings.

Beyond the field boundaries, the grass remained thick and green.

After a short walk, he arrived beside a corpse.

The only victim.

A widower.

He had died when the spirit first appeared two years ago. Since then, nobody had dared risk collecting his remains.

After two years exposed to the elements, little more than bones should have remained.

Instead, shriveled skin and dried muscles clung tightly to the skeleton. His clothing and flesh looked weathered rather than decomposed.

If Lannor had to describe it, it looked as though someone had just excavated him from an ancient pyramid.

Even the preservation techniques of a pharaonic mummy could scarcely have done better.

Expression unchanged, Lannor drew out his Dragonbone Dagger and began scraping through the brittle remains.

“Muscle breakdown before death. Forced extreme exertion until the fibers collapsed…”

His blade peeled open dried tissue as easily as lifting parchment.

“Danced to death in the Dance of the Spirits?”

The Valyrian steel tip exposed what remained of the muscle beneath.

With his Gene-lore knowledge, identifying the signs of muscle destruction was effortless.

The evidence pointed in a single direction.

The spirit haunting this place was almost certainly a Noonwraith.

“Mentos. Pull up the monster records. If I remember correctly, Noonwraiths don’t stray far from their remains.”

Half-crouched beside the corpse, Lannor’s gaze swept across the surrounding ground, searching for traces.

Entity Analysis — Noonwraith

Behavioral Model: Updated

Correction:

Binding Condition: Not Corpse-Linked

Data Reference:

Anchor Factor: Residual Grievance

Location Type: Site of Death Event

Conclusion:

Remains Location: Non-Determinant

Incident Site: Confirmed Anchor Point

“Thank you for the correction.”

Lannor acknowledged the update inwardly.

At the same time, he continued searching the area with his Witcher senses, trying to grasp some lingering clue from two years ago.

Unrealistic perhaps.

Still worth trying.

While he searched, the temperature across the field began to rise.

Slowly.

Gradually.

Like a frog being boiled without noticing.

Heat seeped upward from the earth, tangling with the winter air. The horizon wavered. Light bent and distorted.

Lannor’s head remained lowered.

His cat-like pupils narrowed.

Steel sang.

In one smooth motion he drew the Sword of the Lady of the Lake and slashed horizontally behind him.

The sound of torn cloth fluttering through the air followed.

A floating figure had drifted into range.

The blade passed cleanly across its chest.

Yet because the thing lacked true physical substance, the strike failed to inflict meaningful damage.

Though caught before it could react, it simply continued drifting backward.

Lannor completed the slash and turned fully to face it.

It looked like a corpse hauled from a fire halfway through cremation.

Tattered clothing.

Charred flesh.

Hair floating as though suspended underwater.

Its lower jaw was entirely gone, leaving a rotten tongue dangling from its throat.

A Noonwraith.

The moment it fully manifested, Lannor felt his mouth grow dry despite the winter wind.

“Not completely immune.”

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“Otherwise it wouldn’t have dodged.”

Most Witchers encountering a Noonwraith for the first time would likely panic after seeing a direct hit accomplish almost nothing.

Lannor remained calm.

His own observations layered atop Mentos’ analytical capability, and subtle details immediately began surfacing.

The spirit seemed fundamentally incompatible with the Material World.

Around the edges of its form, colors blurred into pale gray.

As though two different paintings had been forced together.

Yet when Arondight had swept through its chest moments earlier, the gray distortion along the blade’s path had vanished entirely.

Even now, it had not recovered.

The Sword of the Lady of the Lake’s Evil-Breaking property was not merely decorative.

The problem was that physical contact alone interacted poorly with a partially incorporeal target.

“Basic attacks can hurt it.”

He organized the situation quickly.

“Just inefficiently.”

The mindless Noonwraith shrieked and lunged.

Lannor slid sideways with a short step.

The spirit’s straightforward charge passed harmlessly by.

As he shifted, he adjusted his footing and raised Arondight overhead in both hands.

Ashina Style: Ichimonji.

A thunderous boom erupted.

The swordsmanship technique drove air violently aside, producing a howl like a storm wind.

Against the spirit, however, the strike felt like cutting empty space.

The floating corpse screamed through its ruined throat.

Its rotten tongue whipped wildly in the air.

A nearly transparent sphere of sound burst outward from the Noonwraith, expanding three meters in every direction.

Within that radius, the sonic force alone could inflict physical harm.

Outside it, ordinary humans would still stagger with nausea and dizziness merely from hearing it.

Witchers were not ordinary humans.

They had been created specifically to fight monsters.

“Yrden Sign.”

Standing beyond the destructive range, Lannor calmly returned the blade to its scabbard and traced a sequence of hand signs toward the ground.

Violet runes blossomed beneath his feet.

A circle of magical symbols flared into existence.

Yrden functioned as both trap and magical barrier, slowing enemies caught within its boundaries while forcing incorporeal spirits into physical form.

The Noonwraith’s scream faded.

The circle closed around it.

Its body, which had flickered like a faulty image moments before, sharpened into solid reality.

Lannor had already lowered his center of gravity.

Left hand resting against the scabbard.

Right hand gripping the sword hilt.

His cat eyes locked onto the spirit.

One smooth sliding step carried him forward.

Maintaining the stance of an iaijutsu draw, he entered striking distance.

Ashina Style Combat Art: Ashina Cross.

The shriek that followed tore through the air unlike anything before.

This was no ordinary sword technique.

This was a technique capable of leaving behind a tangible, lethal Vacuum Cleave.

The first stroke of the cross-slash carved through the Noonwraith’s chest.

This time there was no sensation of cutting empty air.

Arondight’s supernatural edge bit cleanly through blackened flesh and brittle bone. The feedback traveled straight into Lannor’s hands.

The third and fourth ribs shattered.

The vertebrae between them exploded into fragments.

The spirit’s ruined body offered almost no resistance.

The second strike descended vertically.

From the left shoulder it hacked through scapula and ribs alike before finally emerging through the abdomen, where the body had long since become little more than a hollow cavity.

Then the Vacuum Cleave took effect.

Broken bone splintered further.

Rotting scraps of cloth burst into drifting fragments.

Even a spirit could not withstand damage on this scale.

The Noonwraith had nearly been cut into four separate pieces.

Immediately it threw back its head and screamed as though enduring some ancient torture.

Green flames surged upward from its feet.

The fire swallowed it whole.

A heartbeat later, nothing remained.

Only the violet runes of Yrden still glowed upon the ground.

The loose dust stripped away by the sword wind drifted across the field.

It looked as though nothing had happened.

At first glance, Lannor seemed to have completely destroyed the hate-filled spirit.

In reality…

“Can’t kill it.”

He sheathed the Elven-style naginata and frowned as he looked around.

Beyond the field boundary, the damp chill of winter still could not penetrate.

It was as if an invisible wall stood between this place and the rest of the world.

The Noonwraith’s influence remained.

It had only been driven back.

Shaking his head, Lannor withdrew from the abandoned field and headed toward the village.

* * *

“Master! Master Witcher!”

The moment the nearly two-meter-tall Witcher approached the village gate, the gathered villagers burst into cheers at a signal from the elder.

Mutt hurried forward, smiling broadly.

“Master, we heard that scream all the way from the village. Everyone felt sick to their stomachs. My dog pissed itself from fright! But you don’t even look winded. Is it over? Have you killed it?”

Lannor looked calmly at the man’s eager smile.

He knew perfectly well that the respectful “Master” existed only so long as the problem remained unsolved.

The moment they felt safe, few would speak to a Witcher so politely.

“Not even close.”

He waved dismissively.

The words landed like a hammer.

Mutt’s smile froze.

The villagers’ cheers died just as quickly.

The elder hurried after him.

“Not even close? What does that mean? The monster’s gone quiet, and you’re back. Doesn’t that mean it’s dead?”

Lannor’s gaze swept across the gathered villagers.

Every face carried the same nervous fear.

Fear of being chosen next.

A perfect opportunity.

If he tied the information he wanted to their survival, the villagers themselves would pry it from the elder’s hands.

“Then let me be direct, everyone.”

Lannor suddenly turned to face the crowd.

His expression hardened.

His voice carried easily across the square.

The habits of an Emperor’s Child had not left him.

“Two years ago, a woman who was about to be married died in that field. Murdered.”

“The spirit haunting those farmlands is the hatred she left behind.”

“It wanders in pain and fury, searching for the lover who betrayed her, the rival who stabbed her in the back, or perhaps the person who killed her on the very eve of her wedding. And if it finds none of them, it will gladly settle for anyone else foolish enough to stand in its path.”

“You cannot kill it.”

“Silver swords. Spells. Wise women’s remedies. None of them can kill it.”

“I cut it into four pieces moments ago. At most, that buys us until tomorrow. Then it will return as though nothing happened.”

The confidence in his voice carried weight.

His detailed description transformed the villagers’ vague fear of a monster into something concrete.

Something real.

Whispers spread through the crowd.

People grabbed at spouses and children, then released them again as if suddenly remembering that terror itself could be contagious.

Eyes darted everywhere.

Shoulders hunched.

The panic grew exactly as Lannor expected.

When the fear had spread far enough, when even Mutt’s lips had begun to tremble, Lannor shifted tone.

“But there is a way to deal with it.”

The effect was immediate.

The crowd stared at him like drowning sailors spotting a rope.

Hope mixed with desperation in every gaze.

His amber cat eyes swept slowly across them.

Steady.

Reassuring.

Each villager felt, if only for a moment, that the Witcher already knew how to save them.

Even Mutt.

“My lord! Good lord! Tell us! Please, tell us what we must do!”

He had stopped calling him Master.

Now he called him lord.

As though the mutant before him had suddenly become the highest authority in the village.

Finally, those amber eyes settled upon the elder.

“I need the woman’s belongings, Mutt.”

The words were calm.

The effect was not.

The anticipation drained from the elder’s face.

A chill seemed to pass through him.

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“I need the woman’s belongings.”

Lannor cut him off immediately.

“The woman who died in that field two years ago. Something carefully preserved. Something carrying emotional significance. Without it, the Noonwraith cannot be destroyed.”

“Do you understand me?”

The sharp interruption struck harder than any accusation.

Mutt’s forehead gleamed with sweat despite the winter air.

Without waiting for an answer, Lannor turned back to the villagers.

“I know her death wasn’t natural.”

“A Noonwraith doesn’t come from nowhere. She died carrying enough hatred to birth a monster.”

“And I know all of you live together here. You see one another every day. No one likes selling out a neighbor over some dead outsider.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

Then Lannor’s voice rose.

“But ladies and gentlemen!”

“This is no longer about keeping the peace.”

“That Noonwraith is waiting outside. Waiting to take your lives.”

“Will you still stay silent?”

“Will you still claim to know nothing?”

The crowd shifted uneasily.

More than a few glances began drifting toward Mutt.

Lannor’s eyebrow twitched upward.

Then he almost laughed.

So it really was you.

He had originally suspected the elder was merely helping conceal the truth.

Protecting a villager.

Preserving manpower.

Now it appeared Mutt himself was tangled in whatever had happened.

The fear Lannor had cultivated was finally bearing fruit.

A middle-aged farmer stepped forward first.

His wife stood beside him.

Their child clung to his leg.

They said nothing.

Simply stood before Mutt and stared.

One family became two.

Then three.

Then ten.

One by one the villagers approached.

No accusations.

No shouting.

Just silent eyes fixed upon the sweating elder.

The message was perfectly clear.

Whatever happened two years ago, Mutt would finish it today.

He would hand over the woman’s belongings.

He would hand them to the damned Witcher.

Mutt slowly raised his head.

His face had gone pale.

Across from him, the outsider stood with arms folded, looking almost detached from the entire affair.

Lannor merely lifted a finger and pointed at the villagers surrounding him.

The gesture said everything.

This is your village’s business.

Settle it yourselves.

I’ll wait for the evidence and do my job.

Mutt ground his teeth so hard it seemed they might crack.

The villagers’ silent stares pressed hard on Mutt.

He knew well enough that everything he had, his roof, his standing, his very skin, depended on the villagers. In this place, he was the elder. Outside it, or once the village stopped recognizing him, he was only a useless old man nearing fifty.

Trust and authority were precious things. Fragile things. He could not afford to lose them.

And yet… could he really speak of this?

The elder’s eyes flickered, panic and hesitation crawling through them. The pressure Lannor had stirred up with a few well-placed words stretched the man’s nerves thin enough to snap.

Before returning to the village, Lannor had thrown his cloak back over his shoulders, covering what he had stripped away during the fight. Now, he decided the moment had come.

Axii Sign.

Cold white magical aura bloomed over Lannor’s left hand. The cloak covered it, and with the crowd’s blood up, no one noticed the light.

According to Mentos’s mental quantification, Mutt’s mind, strained almost to collapse, had just reached the threshold where Axii could exert deep control.

Lannor did not want a momentary daze. He did not want misdirection.

He wanted the truth.

In the next instant, the village elder, who had been shrinking beneath the villagers’ stares, went slack-faced and still.

At first the villagers only frowned, puzzled. Then Mutt opened his mouth, and confusion vanished beneath what poured out.

“It wasn’t my fault! It was that woman… that woman deserved it!”

His voice came out thick and dazed.

The villagers did not react at once. They looked from one face to another before someone finally tried, cautiously, “Old Mutt, what… what are you saying?”

“I said she deserved it! Who told her to come into our village with her hair loose? A woman who doesn’t cover her head is either a whore or a harlot. She was plainly trying to tempt men!”

“I took her, aye. I strangled her too. But it wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t! Who told her to be so pretty? To have such big tits? To walk about with her head uncovered?”

Under Axii’s grip, Mutt’s urge to confess seemed to have been dragged up from whatever pit he had buried it in. At first his face was merely vacant. Then it twisted into a feverish zeal that chilled the onlookers more than fear had.

He believed it. Truly believed it.

“That woman wasn’t decent! She came to our village and walked straight toward the forest of those green-skinned bitches. Praying as she went! Praying to their gods, their trees, their filth! Praying for those demons to punish our Baron Ham!”

“I was saving the baron!”

The villagers stared, stunned. Those who had pressed inward moments ago began retreating without noticing their own feet. That only made the elder’s fever-bright fury more naked.

Lannor stood with his arms folded, listening to the hidden thoughts teased out by the Sign. After a moment, he nodded, his face complicated.

“You said she tried to call down a curse on the baron before Brokilon Forest. What exactly did she do?”

“She… she told the forest that the baron farted in bed, and that after finishing he never even washed…”

“That barely counts as a complaint. Your wife never complains about you?”

“Yes, but she also said the baron had courted her, yet could never marry her, only keep her as a rich man’s mistress. She agreed to it, but that woman still clasped her hands toward the forest and muttered, ‘If that’s all men are, a cormorant on the lake is more reliable than any of them.’ Then…”

“Then what happened?”

The Witcher sensed the key to the curse and the spirit beginning to surface, and he pressed.

Mutt’s terror, still visible even through hypnosis, confirmed it.

“Then… then the damned forest answered her!”

A bitter wind moved through the village, slow and sharp enough to bite through wool.

Every villager shuddered.

“There was a voice. Old. So old I couldn’t tell if it was man or woman. Laughing in the dark. It said her wish had been granted.”

“The woman was frightened too. She turned and ran, ran toward our village. She wanted to drag that filthy thing back to us. Of course I stopped her!”

By then, Lannor could picture the rest clearly enough.

His voice stayed calm and cold, as if speaking of some quarrel seen by the roadside.

“You stopped her. There was a struggle. Her body was big and soft, and that stirred your appetite. So you pulled down your trousers and killed her. What did you do with the corpse?”

“I didn’t…” Mutt’s voice sank into a sleepwalker’s murmur. “The forest did. The forest moved like it was alive. Vines stretched out, fifty meters at least. They dragged her body in.”

In the forest…

Lannor turned his eyes toward the distant trees, dense and dark enough to look watchful.

To truly dispel a Noonwraith, he needed the remains and an object that held emotional weight.

“Did she leave anything behind?”

Lannor crossed through the villagers and stopped beside the elder.

Mutt, still fogged, reached into his coat and drew out a handkerchief. Lannor recognized it at first glance. It matched the one Vissernet’s sister carried.

Men who bought gifts tended to buy them in sets.

“Understood.”

Lannor snatched the handkerchief away and turned toward the village edge.

At the same moment, Mutt woke as if from a dream. Under Axii’s influence, he remembered nothing of what had passed. One blink, and the villagers stood around him, staring with fear in their eyes.

The elder staggered back, bewildered and panicked. The familiar faces of people he had known for decades now looked strange to him. He stumbled into his house and slammed the door shut, throwing the bolt with a heavy clack.

The village he had lived in for half his life suddenly felt like a place he no longer knew.

Lannor did not return to the Noonwraith’s field.

He crossed the village boundary and went straight toward the great forest nearby.

From the trees, thick and shadowed, came the faint scrape of leaves disturbed by careful bodies.

An arrow fletched with pheasant feathers cut a clean arc through the air and struck a tree trunk six steps from Lannor with a hard thud.

A dryad’s warning.

Decades ago, when their relations with humans had not yet rotted so badly, they would loose three arrows as warning. The fourth would take a life.

In these times, if the warned party made so much as a suspicious twitch, the second arrow would be aimed at flesh.

The Witcher stopped and drew both hands out from beneath his cloak, showing he meant no harm.

“Ladies, can we speak in Common? My Elder Speech isn’t much good.”

Another hiss, another thud. A second arrow sank into bark three steps from him.

A string of sharp, difficult female voices came from the trees. Elder Speech. Lannor’s was not “not much good.” He had never learned it at all.

The Witcher continued as if nothing had happened, palms still open.

“I know you can understand me. In the last decade or so, you’ve taken in more human girls than your own kind have birthed, haven’t you?”

“I came to deal with the Noonwraith in that field. It is close to the human village, and close to you as well.”

As he spoke, Lannor’s open hands suddenly swept through the air beside him.

When the blur of motion cleared, a pheasant-fletched arrow was clenched in his fingers.

“A spirit can hardly be part of nature or the forest. You need it gone too. So let us help each other.”

The forest fell abruptly silent.

Whether the dryads were considering his words or the fact that he had caught an arrow barehanded, Lannor could not tell.

“You’re a… Witcher?”

The words came from the forest in slightly halting Common Speech.

Lannor casually tossed aside the arrow he had caught, then pulled back his hood and turned his head, letting the dryads see his cat eyes.

“The genuine article, ladies.”

Once he had given them a full look, a small group of dryads seemed to emerge from nowhere within the dense woods.

Just as Lannor had heard, their skin carried shades of green, their bodies lithe and graceful, like nymphs born from the forest itself.

Their ability to hide among the trees was absurd. If they wished it, the sounds of the forest concealed their own completely.

Even their sweat smelled of tree sap rather than flesh. There was none of the human scent a tracker might follow.

Even a Witcher’s supernatural senses struggled to find them here.

Lannor watched a brick-red-haired dryad step from behind a fir tree with bow in hand, despite the trunk being far too narrow to have concealed her frame. Moments later, another dryad with olive-green hair emerged from a patch of brush he had looked directly at before and sworn was empty.

There were undoubtedly more hidden among the trees, but these seemed enough for conversation.

The red-haired dryad studied him for a long moment. Her expression was so severe that Lannor could not decide whether she was beautiful or not.

She spoke a string of sharp Elder Speech syllables. Judging by her face, she was urging someone on.

The target, however, was not Lannor.

A honey-haired dryad stepped forward with visible reluctance and assumed the role of translator.

“Witcher. Your name.”

Judging from the voice, she had been the one speaking to him earlier.

Lannor understood perfectly well why dryads disliked dealing with outsiders. If people were placing bounties on his scalp, he would not be eager to chat with anyone who might collect it either.

But he knew something else just as clearly.

He would never take such a contract.

So when he answered, there was nothing guarded in his manner.

“Lannor. Lannor of Cintra. And yours? Names are usually a useful foundation for a conversation.”

“That isn’t important…”

The honey-haired dryad dismissed the question immediately. Then she pressed her lips together.

“Bryn. If you think names matter, call me Bryn.”

“Very well, Bryn. I’m a Witcher who does not kill sentient beings for coin or contracts. Believe that or don’t. I came into Brokilon for one reason only, the Noonwraith. It has haunted this place for two years. I assume you know something about it.”

Bryn stopped seven paces away. Lannor, meanwhile, simply sat down on a fallen, rotting log.

“The Noonwraith is trouble for humans and for you. If I can put it to rest, there’s no reason not to make things easier for me. Agreed?”

Bryn glanced over her shoulder.

The red-haired dryad had not spoken once, but now she gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

Bryn turned back.

“I know the Witchers’ code. No hunting sentient beings. I hope you keep to it. If you want to free this spirit, what do you need?”

Lannor nodded. Cooperation made everything easier.

He gave her a concise explanation of how a Noonwraith was destroyed and recounted the chain of events that had created it.

“So…” Bryn frowned once he finished. “You need the woman’s remains? Remains that have been lying somewhere in this forest for two years?”

The dryad spread her hands as though he had started speaking nonsense.

No one understood decomposition better than dryads. The vitality of Brokilon Forest surpassed anything humans imagined. A fully grown griffin carcass would not last three days here.

A woman barely weighing fifty kilograms?

“Leave that aside for the moment. What interests me more is this,” Lannor said. “A voice twisted that woman’s wish into a curse, then dragged away her corpse after granting it. Aren’t you curious what that voice was?”

Resting his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward in a relaxed posture.

The dryads behind Bryn had lowered their bows slightly as the conversation progressed. Several leaned against tree trunks, watching.

Bryn seemed entirely unmoved by his curiosity.

“This forest has existed since the ancient ages, Witcher. It still stands today. Brokilon is nearly as large as Verden and Brugge combined. How many dryads do you think there are? Tens of thousands? More? Do you imagine we are the guardians and rulers of Brokilon?”

A faintly mocking smile touched her lips.

“Do not judge us by human standards, Witcher. Brokilon has no rulers and no guardians. We are daughters of the forest, not its masters.”

“In a place like this, ancient powers and unknown creatures are perfectly ordinary. If you wish, I could tell you half a dozen stories stranger than that one.”

“No, thank you,” Lannor replied with a nod. “I understand. You’re accustomed to supernatural phenomena.”

“All I ask is that no finely crafted arrow suddenly appears in the back of my head while I search for those remains. Give me that assurance, and I can free the Noonwraith for humans and dryads alike.”

“You have my word, Witcher.”

Standing well beyond bow range, Bryn inclined her head.

The forest soon returned to its eerie silence.

The dryads vanished almost as quickly as they had appeared. One blink and they were gone, as though they had never existed.

Lannor pushed himself upright from the rotten log.

With temporary permission to travel through Brokilon, it was time to work.

Noon was approaching. He intended to spend the afternoon locating the remains, then summon the Noonwraith after nightfall.

Darkness weakened a Noonwraith. In that respect they were easier to handle than Nightwraiths.

A Nightwraith reached its peak at midnight. At other times, one could scarcely summon it at all.

Mentos began projecting information across Lannor’s vision. Environmental data was organized and potential clues highlighted, layered neatly over his Witcher senses.

Even with an advantage most Witchers could only dream of, progress came slowly.

Bryn had been right.

The forest was too alive.

Plants, animals, decay, growth, endless cycles of life. Together they erased traces as naturally as rain washed footprints from mud.

Lannor quickly abandoned any hope of finding a body through tracking alone. Instead, he relied on the Roaring Bear pendant hanging from his neck.

The Curse of the Cormorant had been powerful. The force that had animated vines and twisted a man into a bird had consumed tremendous mana. Traces of such Chaos magic would linger for years, perhaps decades.

He spent hours wandering the borderland between forest and field.

Eventually he found what he was looking for.

A vine.

At first glance it seemed ordinary. Yet faint remnants of Chaos magic still clung to it.

Following that thread, he pushed roughly half a kilometer deeper into the woods.

At last, inside the hollow trunk of a dead tree whose heartwood had long since rotted away, he found his target.

There was no surprise waiting for him. No danger either.

What greeted Lannor’s eyes looked more like a grotesque illustration from a nightmare.

A woman’s corpse lay wrapped in vines. Not merely around her body, but beneath her skin as well. Woody bulges pushed against her face and limbs, visible beneath the shriveled flesh.

The vines had grown into her.

Even after two years, the Chaos magic within those plants had kept the body from rotting.

“What