Unknown POV
The man in metal armor left the town behind, trudging beneath a low, gray sky until trees swallowed the last rooftops. He walked with the slow, sure step of someone who had done this exact route many times—into the green, down a path where tracks thinned and the world grew quieter. He found the hunter's shack by instinct: a squat, leaning thing half-hidden in brambles, windows like blind eyes. The structure smelled of damp wood and old smoke, the kind of place that kept its secrets.
The hinges shrieked when he pushed the door open. The sound felt too loud in the stillness, a raw note that scattered into dust. Inside, the shack was as the road had foretold—worn, abandoned, furniture overturned, the floor littered with the detritus of careless lives. Empty mugs, broken chairs, and a thick film of dust lay like a slow accusation.
"Ah—welcome back, Quellan," the man in the robe said without looking up from a bundle of yellowed papers. His voice was soft and dry, the sort of voice that fit old books.
"No news, Horris," Quellan replied, dropping the leather strap of his pack and rubbing tired knuckles against his brow. He moved with the efficient, impatient motion of someone who wanted results and had unmet expectations. "Nothing on the girl's identity. No reports. No rumors. She's invisible on every register we've checked."
Horris's eyes kept skimming the pages as if the right line might magic itself onto the paper. He looked older in the lamplight—lines at his mouth deeper, worry carved where nights had eaten him. "Maybe she's from another kingdom," he offered, voice tentative more than certain.
"Then she'd have an escort," Quellan snapped, and uncorked a bottle of ale. He drained half of it in a few long gulps, the motion more to burn down his agitation than to slake thirst. "She looked clean enough to be noble. Not many can fake that—no, she's not a commoner."
Jasper, the man in leather, wandered in from the hall like a dog seeking scraps. He dropped into a chair with a careless grin that didn't reach his eyes. "Boss, I don't think she understands us," he said. "I tried everything. I even—" he lowered his voice into a sneer, "—told her the boss would grow impatient and that—" he made a lewd gesture "—we might have to use other methods."
Quellan's jaw tightened; the room cooled to a new kind of tension. "Do not. You know the rules." He set the bottle down with a hard thunk that made the table ring. "Nobles—there are laws. Not that any of this matters to you, Jasper."
Jasper shrugged, insolent, defensive. "I know the laws, boss. I'm saying she doesn't answer. She…she won't react."
Horris rubbed his chin and leaned closer, voice small. "Think on it—nobody reported her. She was not known. Perhaps she was abandoned. Perhaps from beyond the usual roads. Or—" He looked up, eyes glassy with something like dread— "perhaps there's something about her. Peculiarities."
Quellan snorted. "Peculiarities," he echoed. "Possessed, more like."
"Or cursed," Jasper offered lightly.
"Contagious too, I've heard stories—" Horris took a deep breath before continuing quietly, like he was sharing a secret "Don't touch the possessed, or you'll—"
"You idiots' stories aren't evidence," Quellan said, more tired than angry. "We have a living body. That's all that matters. The rest is superstition. Missing or runaway nobles are the most profitable, that's why we grabbed her in the first place. If no one comes looking for her, then we just sell her, get paid and move on with our lives."
A shadow flitted across the open frame where one shutter hung loose and Horris's head snapped up. He stumbled back, eyes wide as if the room had tilted. "It's here," he whispered. "The fog. The fog's come back."
Outside, dusk had begun to draw its thick veil across the hollow. Quellan glanced once at the failing light and cursed under his breath. "Damn it. Jasper, why didn't you watch—"
"I did," Jasper protested. "She fell asleep. You weren't here when she… I left; she was sleeping."
Quellan's hand trembled around his cup. The three men moved as if the shack itself might fall in around them; the practical scramble started—boards on hinges, extra nails from a tin, bolts shoved into rotten frames.
They were not brave so much as brutalized by necessity; if they made the shack impenetrable, superstition could be deferred.
Horris—always the one to tilt toward omens—crossed the room and pressed a hand to the open frame. There was no glass in the windows, the knowledge had sharpened his fear the last week. The fog rolled in without restraint, fingers of white curling through the gap. "The fog's thick," he whimpered, voice thin. "I can see…something."
Cold slid down his spine, and he dropped to his knees as if pulled. The others barked at him half in irritation, half in concern. Quellan snapped, "Horris stop being a pixie and close the windows!"
Horris floundered back into motion with the frantic competence of a man who'd feign composure long past its expiry, quietly muttering to himself "I'm not a pixie", He slammed the shutter closed and bolted it.
The floorboards thudded with anxious feet as Quellan and Jasper hauled furniture across every door.
When Horris tried to lock the third frame, a stifled cry escaped him— "Quellan," he choked, pointing with a shaking finger. "She's at the window."
Their heartbeats were loud enough to fill the small room.
Horris's finger wavered in the fog-slimmed light. A shape, tall and white, drifted in the grey outside. It moved with the slow grace of something that never had to hurry; it's dress floated like mist, it's hair a dark curtain.
At first the figure was only an impression—white at the edge of sight—then the hair parted, revealing a face: pale as old bone, eyes like green embers, a smile too broad and wet dark at the teeth.
Horris screamed a few octaves too high, when the figure leaned close. The thing's hand slid in a liquid motion against his face and left a wet smear.
Horris's cheek tingled from the gooey substance left behind from the creature's touch, leaving the memory burning like a brand. He staggered back, hands to his face, babbling.
Jasper lunged for him and hauled him away from the frame, rough in the way that could pass for protection or cruelty.
Quellan barreled to the open window, sword half drawn, he let the blade bite the air— the figure outside was gone.
He briefly scanned the surroundings outside until he saw the creature again— it was farther off now, and there were more: three smaller figures, lantern-eyed and patient. They turned as one and stared straight at Quellan, with a look that said, you took something; answer for it.
"Shite," Quellan swore, and slammed the shutter with a force that shook the frame. He stumbled back, braced against the table.
Inside, the mood shifted from irritated expectation to helpless fear. Horris fumbled for a rag and wiped at the wet smear on his cheek.
The goo was a light pink in color, very slimy and a little sticky, while he was cleaning his face, he noticed something odd about the goo. Curious, he lifted the rag and sniffed it, confirming the oddity. — "Why does it smell sweet?"
Quellan looked over and rolled his eyes, then turned his attention back to the windows, barking "Hurry and throw that shite away, you don't know what its effects are."
Jasper, understanding the severity of the situation grabbed the rag and threw it away across the room, leaving the now empty handed Horris staring after it with mixed feelings.
Beyond the closed windows, the fog thickened, and an eerie green light bled across the panels where the creatures gathered.
A sound like nails on timber scratched at one shutter; while the second shook and rattled with such intensity, that it was a wonder how it stayed secure; the third answered with whispering that was almost a voice, almost a memory. The shack itself groaned as if something heavy leaned on its bones.
Horris curled into himself, voice small and broken. "Boss… when will this end?" He sounded, for once, like a man who wished only for sleep.
Jasper's bravado finally wore thin. Even he looked hollowed by nights of dread, the way the land seemed to watch them back.
Quellan set his jaw—the hard line of a man who had to make decisions that would not be pretty. "Tomorrow," he said; the word hung between them like promise and sentence both. "Tomorrow, we move her. Take her down to the slave-house. Get coin for our trouble and put an end to this nightmare."
An eerie laugh drifted from the back room, low but soft, dry and wrong. It echoed like a trick in an empty alley.
The three men turned slowly toward it, senses taut as wire. The sound repeated from behind the blockaded back room, where the smoke-dark corners seemed to drink the light.
"Heh heh heh," the voice said again, multiplied into silence. For a second they stood—men who'd done brutal things, but not this.
Outside, one of the pale creatures answered with an eerie laugh of its own, then the second and third creatures joined with their own eerie laugh.
The combined laughter between the four of them gave off an ominous atmosphere and the walls seemed to pulse with it.
Quellan swallowed hard and gripped his sword until his knuckles paled. He had plans—dirty, practical plans—and the idea that the world itself might complicate them was intolerable. "Tomorrow," he repeated, quieter now. "Tomorrow, we take her. We sell her and we go. Burn this place down and leave the memory to the trees."
They listened after that, each man pretending the plan's certainty could outrun whatever abominable creatures that had circled them. The fog pressed at the walls like a living thing—patient, hungry—and the three captors waited for dawn with the brittle hope of the damned.
When the fire finally went low, they settled into a ragged, watchful hush. Quellan stayed by the door with his sword across his knees, eyes fixed on the grain of the wood as if the pattern might map out danger. Jasper sat near the hearth, hands idle, thumbs worrying at nothing.
Horris curled into himself on a broken stool; his breathing was thin and uneven, like a man already dreaming of being somewhere else.
Quellan tried not to think of the girl in chains—looked away from the memory of her quiet eyes that never quite looked frightened. He didn't believe in curses, he kept telling himself, but the silence that lived where her voice should be set at the back of his neck like a stone.
**********************************
Outside, the fog rolled and folded until the forest was a single, flat sheet of gray. From deep within it came a faint sound: a scattered, childish laugh—high, bright, and careless—then another, and another, as if three voices chased each other between the trees.
The three voices continued to laugh like they had just pulled off the biggest prank of their lives. It was wrong for that place, wrong for that hour.
None of the captors noticed.