The prince Irineus had sent messengers to the Fort, with a message to bring Lucius to Emilia and the soldiers, two days later they had arrived.

  The fire in Lord Emilian’s hearth crackled, casting long, flickering shadows that danced across stone walls lined with old, moth-eaten banners—remnants of a proud house now reduced to a torchlit refuge clinging to the edges of a dying world. Rain tapped faintly on the high windows, and wind moaned through the long corridors of the old manor like a voice trying to be heard.

  Irineus stood near the hearth, his arms crossed over his chest. He was silent, gaze fixed on the flames but seeing other things: visions of hollow-eyed villagers, empty cradles, fields gone fallow. The empire had fallen, and with it the natural order seemed to have unraveled.

  Across from him sat Philip, lord of these crumbling lands—still noble in bearing, though the years and the weight of survival had hollowed him. His sharp features were drawn tight in the firelight. In his hands he held a pewter cup, not for wine, but boiled root tea—bitter, dark, and sober.

  Irineus was not alone. Martin stood behind him like a wall of iron, his face calm, but alert, as always. Lucius, gray at the temples now, leaned against a bookcase, ever the watcher. Alexios was seated near the window, silent and pale, fingers twitching slightly as he listened to the tale being told.

  Varis, the scout who had ridden ahead, stood before them all, sweating despite the cold. His hands were still stained with forest dirt. And his voice trembled.

  “Tall,” he said again. “Too tall. Shoulders hunched like they were folded in half. Their skin—it wasn’t skin. More like bark, or… dried leather. But tight, pulled so close over the bones you could hear it creak when they moved. And the eyes—black. No whites. Just… dark.”

  No one spoke.

  The fire cracked.

  Martin was the first to find words. “Describe how they moved.”

  Varis swallowed hard. “Wrong. Like… something pretending to be human. They’d twist sideways to fit through places no man could. One of them—its arms bent backwards when it climbed a tree. Didn’t make a sound. Just… gone, like smoke.”

  Lord Emilian’s face remained impassive, but his fingers curled tighter around his cup. He exhaled slowly through his nose. “The locals have a name for them. Drüghal. Means ‘Hollow Ones.’ They’re not new. But they never came down from the mountains before. Not in my father’s time. Not even when the plague swept through and left corpses unburied.”

  Lucius narrowed his eyes. “What changed?”

  Emilian’s gaze drifted to the high, dark windows, where wind pulled at the shutters. “Hunger,” he said quietly. “The forests are dying. The animals are gone. There’s nothing left to hunt. So they come closer. Drawn by the scent of blood. Of fear. Of ruin.”

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  He didn’t say it, but they all heard the word unsaid: flesh.

  Martin’s jaw clenched. “You’ve fought them before?”

  “Yes,” Emilian said, eyes distant. “Three winters ago. A village called Red Vale, far to the north. They came at night. Screaming, not with mouths—but bones. Steel wounds them, but they don’t bleed. And they don’t stop unless you burn them. Fire hurts them. That’s the only thing they fear.”

  “And salt?” Lucius asked. “The old texts mention salt circles—”

  Emilian shook his head. “Doesn’t stop them. Just slows them.”

  Irineus said nothing. The weight of this new threat was immense. They had barely reclaimed a fragment of order, and now this.

  “We need answers,” he said quietly. “Not just old stories.”

  Emilian gave a slow nod. “My sister may help. Livia. She’s not a court scholar, but she’s studied the old ways—scriptures, scrolls, field records from long before the Empire fell. She reads the things most men would burn.”

  Almost on cue, the heavy oak doors creaked open.

  A tall woman entered, wrapped in a dark wool cloak, damp from the rain. Her boots left prints on the stone floor. Her braid was bound tight, her hands calloused and ink-stained. A knife hung at her belt—not ceremonial, but worn and used.

  She stopped just inside, her gaze sweeping the room. It lingered on Irineus a moment longer than the others.

  “So,” she said at last, “the last prince of a dead empire comes to our doorstep.”

  There was no mockery in her tone—only weary amusement.

  Irineus inclined his head. “And finds something still standing.”

  Livia approached the hearth, eyes scanning Varis briefly before fixing on Irineus. “You’ve seen the Drüghal?”

  “My men have. I’ve seen the wounds they leave behind.”

  She stirred the embers with a black iron poker, sparks jumping like fireflies. “They’re drawn to places where blood has been spilled. Old battlefields. Execution sites. Your fortress—how many died there during the collapse?”

  Irineus hesitated. “Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

  Livia’s lips pressed thin. “Then they will come.”

  Martin leaned forward. “How do we fight them?”

  “Fire. Silver if you have it—pure, not plated. They recoil from it. But more than that… you must not treat them like beasts. They’re not animals. They’re remnants. The rot left behind when the gods turned away from this world. They don’t just hunger. They remember.”

  Irineus frowned. “Remember what?”

  Livia looked up, her eyes sharp and unblinking. “The Empire.”

  Silence fell. Lucius’s brow furrowed in thought. Alexios whispered something under his breath that no one caught.

  “They won’t just attack you,” Livia continued. “They will hate you. They’ll sense the blood in your veins, Irineus. You’re a scion of Arcadius. The last living thread of a world that banished them.”

  Emilian shifted uncomfortably. “They remember old enemies.”

  The wind outside rose to a howl. The fire danced violently for a moment, casting strange shapes on the wall—shadows that twisted like things with minds of their own.

  Irineus stood. His expression was grim, but resolute. “Then we prepare. We light the fires. We sharpen every blade.”

  Martin stood with him, hand resting on his hilt. “We march at dawn.”

  Livia stepped forward and pressed a cloth bundle into Irineus’s hand. “This won’t save you,” she said. “But it may buy you time.”

  Inside, wrapped in dark linen, lay a silver pendant etched with jagged, ancient runes. The metal burned cold in his palm, far colder than silver had any right to be.

  They departed before sunrise.

  As the road stretched back toward the fortress, the mountains loomed like silent gods. And deep within their forests, the Drüghal stirred.

  They had tasted the fall of one world.

  And now they hungered for the ruin of another.