Quiet draped the path out of the forest, a silence deep and absolute in the wake of the chase. The frigid winter air drifted across the ndscape, a whisper of ice, teasing loose snow into a fleeting ballet across the frozen ground. Ahead, the manor stood in austere grandeur, a massive silhouette etched against the stark white of the mountain. Snow-den pines, sileinels, ris base, pleting the se of desote majesty.

  “Finally,” Watters exhaled, sliding stiffly from the saddle of the massive horse. “Mayor Mikkelson summon the Order… end this madness at st.” He stretched, his joints protesting with a chorus of pops and cracks.

  Grimm dismounted, his movements fluid and silent, a skeptical grunt esg his lips. “Why assume the Order will ride to our aid, Doctor?” he tered, his voice edged with steel. “Barrowham lies in ruin, and still no banner flies from the horizon. I fear, Doctor, we faething far more… insidious than mere .”

  “You know, Grimm,” Watters observed, a thread of genuine curiosity woven into his doubt, “you hold a… rather dim view of the Order. Something more than general principle at py, I suspect.”

  Grimm’s eyes tightehe fai spark of flint strikih the surface. “Skeptical?” he echoed, the word ced with a quiet disdain that cut deeper than any scoff. “The Order is not merely fwed, Doctor. It is rotted. A gilded cage built by zealotry and fueled by avarice. They offer prote as wolves guard sheep, ahe flock to sughter in their name.”

  “The Crusades… that’s your touchstone of grievance, is it?” Watters remarked, flig snowfkes from his pel.

  Grimm’s jaw tightened. “Grievance is too mild a word, Doctor.” His voice dropped, hardening like iron in winter. “I speak of the Order’s true crusade: trol. The Great Crusades… a ve pretext to seize power, to crush anything that challeheir authority. Cryptids… they were different, yes. Outside their trol. And that, Doctor, was the true sin in the Order’s eyes. Not danger. Not peace. trol.”

  “So, you’re saying the monsters are the victims now, is that it?” Watters pressed, his skepticism curdling into open hostility, his gaze fixed acgly on Grimm.

  Grimm exploded. “Victims?!” he bellowed, his voice ripping through the quiet, raw with fury. “Doctor, you twist my words with a childish willfulness!” Watters flinched back as if struck, his initial defiance colpsing inwards.

  “Right, right, uood,” Watters stammered, retreating behind a wall of detached observation. He busied himself adjusting his coat, his earlier bravado utterly extinguished.

  “Cryptid or Crusader… it’s all just names for the same bloody cycle, Doctor. Your Order? A whisper on the wind. Ay promise in a storm. Where is their righteous fury now? Where are their angels when the darkness falls? You pce your faith in ghosts, and call it skepticism. I see more than doubt in your eyes, Doctor. I see the haunted look of a man who’s stared into the abyss. Your hands… they still remember the cold grip of fear. You fought for them, bled for them, believed for them. And still, you question? After all you’ve seen… are you still so blind, Doctor?”

  The air crackled with unspoken tension, thid suffog. The wind shed against Grimm’s coat, a furious, restless energy mirr the storm within him.

  “Mark me, Drimm broke the silence, his voice ft and edged with ice, a clear threat underlying the words. “Ynorance is a liability here. And your… obstinate doubt will drag us both into the grave.”

  “Wait, I—” Watters began, attempting a pg tone, but Grimm’s words cut him off like a knife.

  “What do you io do beyond questiohing and tribute nothing, Doctor?”

  Before the doctor could respond, a loud sm echoed from the manor drawing attention from Watters and Grimm. “What was that?” Watters whispered.

  Grimm reached behind him, drawing his rifle close to his shoulder. “Put your foolishness aside, Doctor, we have work to do.”. Watters grasped the letter opener, following closely behind Grimm.

  What darkness has the Order cast upon this man, that their very name ignites such a firestorm e? he wondered. Surely Mayor Mikkelson will see reason. Surely, despite Grimm’s pronous, the Order must answer Barrowham’s cry. I know they will. They must.

  They moved across the manor wn, the snow g softly underfoot, the only sound in the vast stillness. It was almost too perfect, too untouched by the night’s violehat the manor stood, windows bzing warmly. As they approached the main doors, the unspoken uween them solidified into a cold certainty.

  Watters stopped short, his breath catg in his throat. “It’s… open,” he managed, barely a thread of sound, clutg the letter opener. Grimm’s only response was a silent shift, the almost imperceptible rasp of metal oal as he readied his rifle. He ined his head, a minimal, unspoken and.

  They edged towards the open doorway, each footfall heavy with unspoken apprehension, crossing the threshold into the manor felt like plunging into the maw of an enigma.

  The entrance hall unfolded before them, a cavernous space of eg silence. A sweeping double staircase climbed into the shadows of the upper story, and twin corridors vanished into the depths of the manor’s wings. Warmth wafted from within, a deceptive invitation in the face of the absolute stillness. Grimm moved with silent purpose, his senses sharp and alert, systematically clearing the immediate chambers, a phantom stalking through a tomb.

  Time stretched, marked only by Grimm’s silent passage through the manor's depths. Each chamber he checked returhe same verdict: empty. “Vat,” Grimm stated finally, his voice ft, devoid of reassurance, l his rifle but maintaining a vigint stance.

  “It makes no sense,” Watters murmured, his brow furrowed. “Lights abze, door ajar… it’s as if he simply vanished. Who abandons a home like this?” A gust of wind sighed through the open doorway, a mournful whisper in the unnerving silence of the deserted manor. They stood alowo figures adrift in an eg void.

  Watters sed the expansive foyer, his gaze settling on a heavy, emerald-green double door led beh the grand staircase. “That room,” he began, his voice barely above a whisper, “Have we… checked there?”

  Grimm’s eyes followed Watters’ line of sight, his gaze sharp and assessing. “No,” he firmed, his tone clipped and decisive, pivoting towards the green doors, rifle held ready. Watters shadowed his advance, his letter opener feeling utterly insignifit in his grasp. Grimm approached the door with deliberate cautioing the rifle in a practiced grip, his finger ghosting the trigger. His free hand, moving with agonizing slowness, reached for the handle. Locked.

  “Then a key is needed, it seems,” Watters began, a faint trace of his usual intellectualism returning, “Perhaps the west wi–” His words shattered, cut short by a deafening crash that reverberated from behind them, ripping through the oppressive silence. “What in the hell…?” he gasped, turning sharply to find Grimm a looming silhouette framed in the noing doorway, the green doors sprung wide with a forseen.

  “Hm, well then...” Watters muttered, pausing at the threshold, taking in the improbable sight. The room unveiled itself: a t library, a testament to both intelled obsession. Row upon row of books, leather and vellum worn with age, pressed against the walls. Below, tables y den with the tools of research, instruments arranged in a meticulous, if cluttered, order. A wrought-iron spiral staircase climbed like frozen ivy towards the shadowed upper shelves. And then there was the pedestal, tered precisely in the room, a somber iron stand, its book holder eborate yet bare, suggesting not ht, but a deliberate vacy.

  To their right, a bea of normal this uling pce, stood a dusty copper telephos base heavy and intricately cast, adorned with a single, aged dial. “There!” Watters excimed, a tide of relief washing over him, as he surged towards the pho was as if a crushi had been lifted from his shoulders, and with trembling hands, he snatched the ha and began to frantically spiary dial, his finger a blur of desperate motion.

  He pressed the receiver to his ear, the stark, meical burr of the ringing eg in his skull, a pulse ile hope in the oppressive silence.

  While Watters drummed his fingers impatiently on the pedestal, a nervous tic against the unnerving silence, Grimm moved with quiet purpose, his gaze sweeping over the instruments as scattered across the library tables, a detached observer in this schorly chaos.

  The phone’s ringing stretched on, an insistent meical plea swallowed by the manor’s oppressive quiet. After ay, a sharp click shattered the silence. “Yes, yes, hello?” Watters burst out, his voice a raw urgency, “Doctor Theodore Watters, Barroractitioner. We are in dire need of Order assistance—immediately!” The line remaihick with static, a ghostly hiss that masked all but the fai, uling sound of breathing. “Hello? Is ahere?” Watters pressed, his hope fraying at the edges.

  The breathing persisted, a chillingly deliberate pause. Then, a voice, utterly devoid of iion, cold and ft as wione, responded, “State the nature of your unication.” “Creatures! They’ve overrun Barrowham! Killing… everyone!” Watters cmbered over his words, panic rising in his voice, “Werewolv—I, I mean, Lys! Send help now!” he excimed, his voice sharpening with desperation.

  A chilling silence desded upon Watters, broken only by the faint, uling tick-tick-tick of something meical in the distance. “And… your assigown leader?” the voiquired, its ftness almost inhuman, devoid of any ce. “Mayaldur Mikkelson,” Watters replied, his voice a hesitant echo in the sudden void. The line fell utterly silent once more, the oppressive quiet now ced with a new, icy dread.

  Time stretched, each sed amplifying the unnerving stillness. Grimm tinued his slow, deliberate circuit of the room, his senses heightened, abs the sheer, overwhelming volume of books. There must have been legions of volumes here, a vast repository of forbidden knowledge, blending are mysticism with precise stifiquiry. A prig unease began to crawl beh Grimm’s skin, a sense of something deeply wrong with this pce. As he moved, a sudden, inexplicable rush of hot air brushed against his face, a discerting warmth in the heart of winter.

  “Hello, is ahere?” Watters shouted, his impatience b on panic. The audio shifted on the line, a series of rapid clicks giving way to a signal suddenly, disturbingly clear. A gravelly voice, colder and more anding, emerged from the receiver, sharp with suspi. “Who gave you this number?” it demahe question nding like a gauhrown.

  “Mayor Mikkelson’s manor… Barrowham,” Watters began, his voice losing vi. “Doctor Theodore Watters. We urgently require assistance—our town—”

  “Galdur Mikkelson?” the voiapped back, disbelief and dismissal hardening its tone. Watters’ blood ran cold. “There is no Mayor Mikkelson now. He’s beehese past years. We installed a priest. Where are you exactly?” The question hung in the air, heavy with unspoken implication.

  “Barrowham…” Watters whispered, the name a lead weight on his tohe realization chilling him to the bone.

  Grimm, oblivious to the chilling exge, turned his attention fully to the unexpined heat, a tangible anomaly in the frigid air. He trailed his fingers along the bookshelf, the warmth intensifying behind the densely packed volumes. Grimm’s eyes narrowed, sing the spines, searg for any disruption, any hidden meism. Then, he saw it: a jarring spsh of idst the somber browns and bcks—a book bound in vibrant red leather, its title embzoned in gold: “Transmutation.” “Watters!” Grimm barked, his voice a and eg through the sudden tension.

  “Location,” the voi the phone demanded, its patience abruptly gone, before being severed mid-word. Simultaneously, darkness swallowed the manor whole, the lights dying in a sudden, unnerving plunge.

  Grimm’s fist gripped the book, wreng it from the shelf. A meical snick, followed by a bst of furnace heat, annouhe passage’s opening. “Watters! Now!” Grimm roared, his rifle already rising.

  Watters leapt, reag instantly to Grimm’s and. “Go!” Grimm bellowed, his hand shoving Watters towards the opening, his gaze fixed on the hallway beyond. Screams and howls exploded from the outer reaches of the library, closing fast. “Move, damn it!” Grimm thundered. Watters dove into the narro, scrambling through the rough stone opening. Grimm backed into the passage after him, eyes sweeping the doorway, catg the glint of feral eyes in the shadows. He spun, shoulder smming the hidden door shut, the tch clig audibly as it engaged.

  Watters pressed himself deeper into the passage wall, his back scraping against the rough stoaring at the sealed bookshelf, now an imperable fa the suffog dimness. His heart hammered a desperate tattoo against his ribs, his body drenched in a cold, cmmy fear that g to him like the passage walls. He gasped, his voice catg in his throat, a strangled sound of pure, raw panic, “We’re…”

  "Trapped,” he stated, the words clipped and definitive, devoid of fort. He stepped deeper into the passage, the fined space pressing in, the air thick with the st of damp stone and an unspoken, shared dread. The faint drip… drip… drip… of water echoed around them, a metronome ting down to an unknown fate. Grimm’s rifle, a dark presen the gloom, remained raised, a silent promise of vigince against the darkhat now surrouhem, before and behind. Trapped, they were, not just by stone, but by the sileself, and the unseen horrors beyond it.