Ellios stood frozen behind the fogged glass of the tower window, his hands pressed against the cold surface as if seeking a final handhold on reality.
Down below, the procession of death moved.
He watched Duke Gauss Renville spur his giant black horse through the storm, followed by the 40 shadows of his troops. The dim green light from their modern helmet visors was the only marker of their presence, blinking like venomous fireflies amidst the pitch darkness.
Slowly, the lights moved further away. Shrank. Then one by one extinguished, swallowed by the wide-gaping mouth of night.
Dum-Shadd Fortress fell silent again, abandoned by its protectors. However, this silence was not peace. It was the kind of silence that holds its breath in terror.
"The Hunt..." Ellios whispered, the word feeling alien and sharp on his tongue.
His brilliant mind, usually filled with political calculations and palace intrigue, was now forced to digest a piece of forbidden knowledge previously considered mere fairy tales by city folk.
Shade Walkers. Shadow Roamers.
Ellios shivered. Not from the sea wind seeping through the stone cracks, but from the memory of what he had once read in his father's forbidden library.
Usually, those things perished when rubbing against the atmosphere. They exploded high in the sky, becoming beautiful purple fireworks deemed ordinary natural phenomena by the naive citizens of Carta.
But tonight was different. The sky was sick. The atmosphere was torn.
They did not explode.
Ellios stared into the darkness outside the fortress, toward the expanse of barren land and coral rocks where Renville and his troops had disappeared.
They fell to the ground. Intact.
In his wild imagination, Ellios could see it. Blobs of dark matter, blacker than the night itself, falling with heavy thuds onto the wet earth. They had no bones, no fixed shape. Like crude oil spills possessing a malevolent consciousness.
They didn't walk. They... crawled.
They slithered.
Ellios imagined the sound of those soft, slimy bodies dragging themselves over sharp rocks. Squelch... squelch... squelch...
They were hungry. Not hungry for food, but hungry for vessels.
Those creatures were freezing cosmic parasites. They sought warmth. They sought structure. They sought fleshy bodies to infiltrate, to violate their cells, to make into hosts.
Livestock? Wild deer? Or perhaps... lost humans?
Ellios took a step back from the window, sudden nausea rising in his throat.
If that thing found a body... the flesh would mutate. Bones would be broken and rearranged into horrifying shapes. The host would become a meat puppet for an entity from unimaginable darkness.
"So this is it..." Ellios mumbled, his eyes wide with horror staring at the darkness blanketing the South Coast.
"...This is what Duke Renville has been guarding against all this time."
While Ellios, Reine, and Louis were busy fighting for seats of power in Ironseat, busy backstabbing and sleeping with each other for information... here, at the edge of the world, an old grandfather and his troops were fighting nightmares crawling out from cracks in the sky.
Ironseat politics felt so petty now.
What is the use of being King of Carta, Ellios thought with trembling hands, if your people are slowly replaced by shadows wearing human skin?
Out there, amidst the storm, the hunt had begun. And Ellios prayed to whatever gods still deigned to listen, that Gauss Renville wouldn't miss a single one of them. Because if even one Shade Walker escaped and reached the city...
Doomsday wouldn't come with an explosion. Doomsday would come with a silent crawl under your bedroom door.
Ellios sat on the edge of the large, soft bed, but his body was too tense to rest. Outside the window, the storm still raged, but his attention was fully absorbed by the portable tablet communication device he had stolen from a logistics officer before sneaking south.
The screen blinked, displaying a newly arrived encrypted email. The sender was unnamed—only a string of hexadecimal code Ellios recognized as the signature of the shadow spy network he paid dearly: "The Weaver".
Ellios’ trembling finger swiped the screen. The blue light from the device reflected in his tired eyes as he read the horrifying report of what was actually happening across Carta tonight.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
FROM: [REDACTED]@shadownet.carta
TO: Fox_Randar
SUBJECT: EMERGENCY UPDATE - SEISMIC ACTIVITY & NOBLE MOBILIZATION (HUNT PROTOCOL)
PRIORITY: ABSOLUTE
Sir,
We detected massive energy anomalies across the kingdom. This is not a military exercise. This is a total mobilization unrecorded in modern history.
1. PARTICIPANT STATISTICS (CONFIRMED):
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7 Dukes (All Compass Directions)
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3 Border Guardian Marquis
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48 Viscounts
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167 Counts
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750 Barons
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Plus thousands of landless/titular Great Family members.
STATUS: They all answered the "Holy Fire" call.
2. FIELD REPORTS (REAL-TIME):
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Northern Mountain Sector (Black Keep): Our units report the sound of dirt bike engines breaking the snow silence. The youths of the Leiyin family seen on barren peaks. High-Value Target: Matriarch Marquis Cheng. Action: Subject thrust her sword into the fortress wall (Heart of Stone). Detected flow of pale blue fire (massive static electricity) traveling like blood vessels on the stone surface. Result: Instant extermination of underground parasites. Without hesitation.
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Great Western Desert Sector: High-Value Target: Rams Ghandarevya. Visual: Subject seen wielding the Cauldron War Hammer (Black Iron). Subject's swing produced a sonic shockwave (THOOOOOOOOM) resembling a death knell. Anomaly: Empty air exploded (Pop! Fssst!). Subject seen laughing hysterically amidst pillars of cold fire, slaughtering enemies invisible to the naked eye of his own regular troops.
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Misty Forest Sector (East): Pungent swamp smell detected. Black water surface calm. Target: Silent hunter leader (Female, middle-aged, wooden bow weapon). Action: Aiming at reflection in the water. Target unseen on the surface, only in reflection. Arrow released into the water.
3. PSYCHOLOGICAL & PUBLIC OBSERVATIONS:
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Modern Military: Mass confusion. Conventional combat logic collapsed. Soldiers witnessing "history rewritten." They continue to follow orders though their common sense is cracking. Sounds of breaking bones and old men's breath forced beyond limits heard on radio channels.
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Civilians: Unaware of danger. They watch energy flashes from behind windows, thinking it is an encore fireworks display of the celebration.
4. SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE: "THREE ASH LINES" RITUAL
Sources inside the palace confirmed the activation of the "Hunt Protocol." Nobles are using weapons made of Cold Karpharah Metal. They withstand counterattacks from falling Shade Walkers (weakened, crawling, seeking hosts) with a self-protection ritual using Kala-Ra Tushka offering ash on their foreheads:
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Line 1 (Top - Sky): Mental shield. So sanity doesn't shatter when seeing the entity's true form.
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Line 2 (Middle - Earth): Soul anchor. Prevents the user's soul from being dragged into the Void.
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Line 3 (Bottom - Valley of Death): Execution Authority. Sacred permission to "kill what should already be dead."
CONCLUSION: The entire aristocracy of Carta is at war against an invisible enemy. We advise you remain hidden. Safe zones do not exist.
Ellios turned off the tablet screen with held breath. The room went dark again, lit only by flashes of lightning from outside.
He leaned his head against the cold stone wall. The information spun in his head.
"So it's not just Renville..." he whispered to the darkness of the room. "Rams... Old Grandma Cheng... even the lowly Barons."
Ellios shivered. He imagined Rams, the fat man he met yesterday, now swinging a hammer in the middle of the desert, killing ghosts with three ash lines on his forehead.
The world he thought he knew—the world of politics, money, and beds—turned out to be merely a thin layer over a horrifying ancient war. And tonight, that layer was torn.
"Three ash lines..." Ellios touched his own clean forehead, feeling naked and unprotected. "Permission to kill what should already be dead."
Ellios turned his face away from the glaring tablet screen, looking back at the darkness outside the window. His mind drifted far across the map of Carta, climbing the cold and deadly heights, toward Mount Rhagas.
"Father..." he whispered, his breath forming a thin fog on the window glass.
In his mind, he tried to assemble the image of Godric Randar amidst this supernatural chaos. However, his imagination stumbled.
It was difficult. Very difficult to imagine the "Old Fox" standing on a mountain peak with a greatsword on his back and three ash lines on his forehead, like Duke Renville or Rams the Fat.
Godric Randar was no knight. He was no war hero. He was a merchant.
Ellios chuckled softly, a laugh that sounded dry and cynical in the empty room.
"What are you doing now, Old Man?" he asked the reflection in the glass. "Are you also descending to the battlefield? Or are you hiding behind your golden walls?"
Ellios imagined his father's study in Rhagas. A room full of ledgers, scrolls of debts and receivables, and the smell of expensive ink.
If Duke Renville fought with a Claymore, Godric Randar fought with a Calculator.
Suddenly, Ellios’ eyes narrowed. His mind returned to one small detail in the intelligence report earlier.
"Cold Karpharah Metal."
Ellios’ blood raced.
House Randar controlled the mining trade routes in the central mountains. They didn't mine it, but they distributed it.
"Damn..." Ellios hissed, his eyes widening realizing something.
For years, he saw his father sign shipments of heavy crates containing strange metals that must not be opened, sent to noble addresses across the country labeled "Industrial Supplies." Ellios never cared about the contents. He thought it was just raw material for machines or ordinary illegal weapons.
Turns out it wasn't.
That was the ammunition for this war.
"You knew..." Ellios mumbled, awe and horror mixed in his chest. "You already knew this would happen, didn't you, Dad?"
He imagined Godric tonight.
Not out there, bleeding fighting Shade Walkers. No, that was too barbaric for a Randar.
Ellios was certain, right now Godric was sitting calmly in his comfortable leather chair, in front of the warm fireplace in Rhagas. On his desk, perhaps the same map as this report was spread out. But Godric wasn't looking at the death toll.
He was counting stock.
He was ensuring that every Karpharah sword swung tonight, every ounce of gunpowder detonated, and every supply crate opened by those Dukes and Barons... all bore the billing stamp of House Randar.
"While others sacrifice their lives to close the gates of hell..." Ellios shook his head in disbelief, a crooked smile carved on his face. "...You are busy ensuring that you are the one holding the key to that gate."
However, beneath his cynicism, a creeping fear slipped in.
If Godric knew about this ancient war, why did he never tell Ellios? Why was Ellios left blind, playing petty politics in Ironseat, while his father played chess with demons?
"Am I not valuable enough to know?" Ellios thought painfully. "Or... was I deliberately left innocent to become an unsuspecting sacrifice?"
Mount Rhagas felt so far away tonight. And the figure of his father, whom he thought was merely a cunning merchant, suddenly felt far more mysterious—and more dangerous—than any shadow monster crawling out there.