The trip south, toward the troubled borderlands near House Sterling's territory, was done with a grim, quiet sense of urgency. The happy energy of coming back from the capital was gone. Instead of laughing and having fun with friends, everyone was focused on the hunt. We rode hard, a small, close-knit group of three: me, Garrick, and Rolan. We cut through the familiar rough terrain of the Ashworth mountains. The air got thinner and sharper, and it smelled like high pines and the cold breath of stone.
Seraphina had watched us prepare to leave from the infirmary doorway, her hands twisting the hem of her apron, her face a mask of poorly concealed anxiety. "Be careful," she'd said quietly, the words not a servant's plea to her lord, but a friend's to a friend. I had promised I would. The lie had tasted bitter even then.
Rolan rode beside me, his usual cheerful demeanor replaced by a stony silence, his hand never straying far from the hilt of his sword. He had lost friends in Patrol Gamma-7, good men he had trained with, laughed with, shared barracks with for years. This was personal for him, a smoldering coal of grief and rage banked behind his eyes. Bringing up the rear, a silent, imposing anchor, was Garrick. His Master-level presence was a constant, grounding weight, but his face was etched with a deeper concern than I had ever seen. Losing an entire patrol without a trace was not just a tragedy; it was an insult to his command, a failure he clearly felt in his bones.
We found the site late in the afternoon, guided by Finn, the grey-faced young scout from the initial discovery. It was high on a windswept ridge overlooking a deep, shadowed valley that marked the border with Sterling lands. The scene was… wrong. Eerily clean. There were signs of a brief, violent struggle—deep scrapes on the rock face where a shield had been hammered back, a discarded waterskin, a snapped spear shaft bearing the faded Ashworth wolf crest—but they were unnervingly sparse. No bodies. No significant bloodstains, despite the signs indicating at least a dozen men had fought for their lives here. It was as if the aftermath had been meticulously, unnaturally, scrubbed away.
"They were taken," Garrick growled, his gaze sweeping the surroundings, his hand resting on his sword hilt, every line of his body radiating controlled fury. "Or… erased."
Rolan knelt, his expression tight with a grief he was trying to suppress. He found a single, discarded gauntlet, its leather straps severed cleanly. "Bennard's," he murmured, his voice thick. "He always polished the wolf's head insignia."
I ignored the physical signs for a moment. Closing my eyes, I sank deep into the Two-Heart Cadence, the steady rhythm a familiar anchor in the unsettling silence of the ridge. I pushed my Rhythmic Sense outward, not as a tight combat sphere, but expanding it, thinning it, trying to use it forensically. It was like trying to read fine print through frosted glass, but there were echoes left behind. I felt the lingering, chaotic Aetheric signatures of a dozen panicked Ashworth guards, their final moments of terror a faint, sour note still clinging to the stones. And I felt something else. Something overlaid upon it, colder, sharper, and utterly alien. The wrongness. The psychic stench of the Void, far more potent than the faint trace from Viktor Vane. This was the direct signature of Void Arts actively wielded.
"The Cult," I murmured, opening my eyes. Garrick and Rolan looked at me sharply. "They were here. Directly involved. This wasn't bandits."
My Sense picked up something else—a disturbance, a subtle knot in the Aetheric flow near the cliff edge where the struggle seemed to have ended. "Rolan," I directed, "over there. Near the edge. There's something… off about the ground."
Rolan hurried over, his warrior's eyes scanning the terrain. He knelt, brushing away loose soil and pebbles, his breath catching. "Drag marks, my lord. Faint. Something heavy was pulled this way. Towards the valley."
While he followed the physical trail, I moved towards the Aetheric disturbance. It was centered on a cluster of jagged rocks. Almost hidden beneath a dusting of windblown grit, I felt a flicker. Something deliberately obscured. I brushed away the soil. Scratched crudely into the dark grey stone, almost invisible, were three intersecting lines, a jagged, star-like symbol. It was small, easily missed. But it radiated the same faint, nauseating wrongness as the smear on the crushed horn, a point of concentrated corruption.
"A marker," I said, my voice grim. "Ritualistic. They didn't just kill them, Rolan. I think… I think they were harvested." The word felt vile on my tongue, the implication genuinely chilling. The Void Cult wasn't just a political conspiracy; they were monstrous.
Garrick joined us, his face hardening as he saw the symbol and felt the lingering taint. "I've seen marks like this before," he rumbled, his voice low and dangerous. "Years ago, during the Crimson Peak campaign. We thought it was just some mountain tribe's primitive sigil. Found near sites where entire villages had vanished overnight." He looked towards the shadowed valley. "We never found out what it meant."
The sun began to dip below the western peaks, painting the sky in bloody streaks of orange and purple. The temperature dropped rapidly. The ridge felt exposed, hostile.
"They went down there," I said, pointing towards the valley where the drag marks led, where the Void signature felt subtly stronger, a faint trail leading into the deepening shadows. "Into Sterling lands."
"We cannot pursue," Garrick stated firmly, ever the soldier bound by rules of engagement. "Crossing the border without Lord Sterling's permission, especially now… it would be an act of war."
He was right. We were hamstrung. Our men were likely dead, their souls possibly consumed by some dark ritual, and their killers had vanished into territory we could not legally enter. The sheer, calculated audacity of it was staggering.
We made camp a mile back from the ridge, a grim, silent affair. The fire did little to ward off the chill that had settled deep in my bones. I felt useless. My power, honed for the arena, felt blunt and inadequate against this creeping, invisible threat. My Rhythmic Sense could feel the echo of the Void, yes, but it couldn't track it over distance, couldn't pinpoint the enemy's location. It was like trying to hunt a wolf pack with only my ears, blindfolded.
As I stared into the flickering flames, the throwing knife from the horn lay on a rock beside me. Its black steel seemed to drink the firelight. It felt cold, efficient, alien. A tool crafted for a specific, brutal purpose.
The Void Cult didn't fight like warriors. They fought like killers, like people who want to hurt others, like a disease. I couldn't just be a stronger wolf to fight them. I had to learn how to act like a snake. I needed skills and knowledge that the Ashworth training yards didn't teach. The way ahead was dark, and for the first time since I got here, I felt a real, paralyzing sense of uncertainty. How do you fight an enemy you can't see, one whose very presence makes the world around them sick? I felt like the weight of my ignorance was heavier than any sword.