Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Igmar pulled his coat tighter around himself, but it did little to stop the damp chill seeping into his bones. The sky was a dull, washed-out gray, the kind that promised rain but refused to commit. The wind carried the lingering scent of wet earth and rotting leaves, the remnants of winter stubbornly clinging to the world.
He shifted on his feet, trying to shake off the stiffness creeping up his legs. An hour. An entire hour wasted standing outside this wretched place. He checked the road again, his eyes narrowing at the empty path disappearing into the skeletal trees. No sign of the hunter.
The hunting lodge loomed behind him, a relic of better days. Its wooden beams, once proud and polished, were now warped by time and neglect. Some of the outer buildings, storage sheds, perhaps a stable, leaned like tired old men, their roofs sagging under years of disrepair. The main structure still held itself together, but the silence pressing against its walls made it clear: this place was more forgotten than remembered.
A muffled bleat broke the stillness.
Igmar turned his head slowly, staring at the sole inhabitant of the lodge, a goat, standing in a makeshift pen that looked like it had been built out of scrap wood and wishful thinking. The creature chewed lazily on something that might have been hay, its rectangular eyes locked onto him with an unnerving, unreadable judgment.
Igmar grimaced. He despised animals.
The damp air clung to his skin, making his clothes feel heavier than they were. He ran a hand through his short blond hair, then shook the moisture off his fingers with a look of mild disgust. He hated traveling. He hated the countryside. He hated wasting time.
A faint crunch of boots behind him, then a voice. Low. Gravelly.
"You?"
It did not come from the road.
Igmar stiffened, his pulse stuttering for half a beat. He turned slowly. The hunter stood a few paces behind him, silent as a shadow. Igmar had seen many men in the magistrate’s office; merchants, nobles, mercenaries, but none like this. Tall. Too tall. Broad-shouldered, wrapped in a dark, weather-stained coat that made him seem even larger. His face was unreadable, his hair dark and wild, but it was his skin that stood out the most. A deep, sun-worn bronze, the color of someone who did not belong here. Maybe even not quite human, if the stories were to be believed. And then there were his eyes, hazel irises set against black sclera. The rumor was that he could see in the dark.
The hunter stared at Igmar the way a predator might regard something caught in its teeth. "Why are you here?" His voice was low, rough, with the slow, deliberate cadence of a man used to being obeyed.
Igmar swallowed, forcing his shoulders back. He wasn’t a superstitious peasant. He wasn’t scared of the hunter. And yet, his stomach twisted all the same.
"I drew the short straw," he murmured, masking his nervousness with irritation.
Wolf said nothing, just studied him, gaze raking him over.
"And what do you want?" It was not an invitation.
"I was sent by the magistrate," Igmar said. "To check up on the rumor."
"Which one? That I eat people who wander into the woods?" Wolf’s lips twitched in a dry, knowing smirk, as if he had heard it all before.
Igmar rolled his eyes. He had heard those stories too. "That you no longer live here alone."
The hunter stiffened. His expression darkened, the air between them thick with unspoken threat. "I would advise you to mind your own business and get back to the city. Right now."
So it was true. Igmar hadn't expected such an easy confirmation.
"Do you want me to return with the guards?" he asked, matching the threat with one of his own.
Wolf held his stare for a long moment, then exhaled sharply through his nose. His stance relaxed, but only slightly. "Like I need more of you here," he muttered, turning toward the door. With a flick of his wrist, he unlocked it. "Go in. But you are not welcome."
The lodge looked better from the inside. More importantly, it was dry and warm.
Wolf and Igmar shrugged off their soaked coats, hanging them on the pegs near the door. A short hallway led them into a large dining hall, a place that had once seen better days. The walls of hewed logs were lined with old hunting trophies, their glassy eyes staring down like ghosts of a more prosperous past. Weapon racks stood between them, now more of a display than an armory. In the center of the room stood a massive, ornate table, once built for feasts and drunken laughter when nobles gathered after a long hunt. Now it was nothing more than an old relic, too large to be practical, in a house too big for one man to maintain.
Before either of them could sit or even continue their conversation, there was a sudden flurry of movement from the other room. Quick, light footsteps patterned across the wooden floor, then a burst of enthusiastic, garbled babbling broke the stillness, accompanied by the excited rush of a small figure darting into the room. It latched onto Wolf's leg with the force of a storm, beaming up at him, eyes alight with excitement.
The clerk blinked, caught completely off guard. The child, three, maybe four, though Igmar was no expert, was pale-skinned, with tousled gray hair. Probably a boy. He looked healthy and full of energy.
Wolf chuckled, ruffling the boy’s hair. He murmured a soft stream of utter nonsense, but with a voice softer than Igmar had ever heard it.
Then, the hunter’s gaze lifted, sharp and knowing. The jig was up. "It’s funny what one can sometimes find in the forest," he said, amusement flickering in his eyes.
Igmar frowned, staring at the child with a mix of concern and disbelief. "Is he yours?"
"Would that shut you up if I said yes?"
"Would it be true?" Of course not. The boy looked nothing like him.
Sensing the scrutiny, the child glanced at Igmar, uncertain what to do in the presence of a stranger. It let out a sound, something between a moan and a garbled word, guttural and unnatural. Igmar stiffened at the disgusting sounds.
"Does he even speak?" he asked, barely hiding his distaste.
Wolf shrugged. "Nothing you would understand."
Igmar sighed, rubbing his temple. This was getting worse by the second. The child was mute, probably slow. It would explain why it got abandoned. He pulled out his scrapbook, flipping it open with practiced efficiency.
"How long has it been with you?"
Wolf moved toward the table, sitting down heavily. The child scrambled after him, clambering onto the tabletop without hesitation.
"Since winter started," he said simply.
The rumors had already suggested the hunter was hiding a child. If that were true, then surely it had been stolen. But Igmar searched his memory; there were no reports of missing children from Thornwick or the surrounding villages. If the boy came from around here, no one was looking for him.
"Does it have a name?"
"He reacts to Dago."
Clerk nodded, jotting down Dagobert. At the sound of its name, the child made a shrill, excited noise that set Igmar’s teeth on edge.
"I see," he muttered. "I will send keepers to pick him up tomorrow."
"No, the hell you won’t," Wolf snapped.
Igmar looked up, surprised by the force of the protest. Kids were loud, messy, chaotic. More trouble than they were worth. He couldn’t fathom why anyone would willingly take on the burden of raising a stranger’s child. Especially a defective one.
"You want to keep it?" His voice carried a note of disgust.
"Do you want me to spell it out for you?"
Igmar shook his head. "I don’t think that’s a good idea." If he allowed this madness to continue, and something happened to the child, sickness, injury, or worse, he would be the one blamed for not intervening. "Do you even know how to take care of a child?"
Wolf smirked. "I’m the oldest of fourteen siblings. I think I’m qualified."
Fourteen? Igmar felt pity for Wolf’s mother. Even if she was a demon.
"And what happens to the child when you’re on patrol?"
Hunter frowned. "What about it?"
Igmar gave him a look. "You’re telling me you take it with you?"
"Obviously." Wolf seemed genuinely confused.
Igmar could not believe his ears. "Out of the question." But the look on Wolf’s face told him he would get nowhere trying to enforce that rule. He exhaled sharply. "Fine. Then you will leave the child at the temple while you’re gone."
Wolf scoffed. "Hell, I will."
"Sure, have it your way," Igmar crossed his arms. "Let’s see how long it takes before the locals try to rescue the child from you. That will go smoothly, I’m sure. No one will get hurt."
Wolf’s expression darkened. He hated that the clerk had a point. But instead of arguing, he just sat back, arms crossed in defiant silence.
"You will leave the child in the temple," Igmar pressed, "and I will make it clear to the keepers that they are to hand him back to you. That way, he will be cared for while you’re away, and seeing him safe and sound once in a while will stop the locals from assuming the worst."
"Worse than what?" Wolf’s jaw tensed. He thought he had already heard every wild story about himself, but this suggestion was a new low. "It wasn’t me who abandoned him in the middle of winter."
Igmar raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Beats me, but I know what people think, and I know how rumors spread. I am not against you, but I am trying to keep things civil here. And the gods know that’s not an easy job." He sighed. "You’ve been a reasonable man so far. Don’t start acting like an idiot now."
Wolf looked at him. Then at the child. Then back again.
"Fine," he muttered at last.
Igmar let out a breath. "And for the love of all that’s holy, If that’s possible, try to teach him at least some words."

The gray sky hung low, stealing the last of the day's weak light. Each breath drew in the damp, cold air that bit at the edges of Wolf’s awareness. Winter was getting closer, and he had caught its smell from a few weeks away. The patrol had been long, quiet, and covered in dusk. Forest was getting ready for the four months of snow.
He moved through Thornwick's lanes, the town a muted landscape of grays and browns in the failing light. The sharp edges of rooftops blurred against the heavy sky, but the flicker of movements in windows as he passed, the sudden stilling of chatter from an alleyway, those quick movements registered clear as day. Humans. Predictable in their unease.
The temple square opened before him. Against the dull timber and weathered stone of the surrounding buildings, the temple itself was a stark, pale landmark. Even in this dying light, its white stone seemed to gather what little daylight remained. He caught the usual distant, muffled scrape of a Keeper's broom, the sigh of wind through the balding branches of the trees. And the everpresent birds, the wistful warble of a robin, sharp clatter of a blackbird, and loud, bold rattling of a magpie.
As Wolf came closer, he heard the children playing on the square, long before he could see them. A flurry of small movements near the temple steps, excited shouts, calling each other. The lessons in the temple were over, and now kids took over the square, not discouraged by dusk or weather, waiting for their parents to show up. Some were chasing each other, some climbing the trees. Wolf noticed Dagobert in a small group playing with sticks, all of them waving improvised weapons at each other, then clumsily striking stick against stick - no force, no aim, no posture. Mimicking without understanding. Unintentionally performing a vicious mockery of a skill, full of wrong, accidental lessons, that in real fight would get them killed.
Would get the boy killed.
"Dago!" Wolf called out from a distance.
He watched the turn, the small, pale face, short, frail frame.
"Wolf! You back!" The boy’s voice, high and excited, cut through the evening chill.
The other kids, larger, clumsier, scattered like startled deer as they realized Wolf’s towering presence. The play was over.
The kid ran up to him, welcoming Wolf with a tale of the last few days. It was chaotic, made of unfinished sentences, more to convey a mood than the information. It sounded like it went well this time, without any major conflict with Keepers or other kids.
"...and we were swordfights!" Dagobert sounded proud, either of his imagined skills, or that he finally managed to play with other boys.
"You calling it a sword fight?" Wolf chuckled. "Not even close!" He said before thinking it over. He knew he shouldn’t criticize the boy's achievement, but a warrior in him could not hold back the comment.
Dago’s proud smile falter, his shoulders slumpler slightly.
"It wasn't?" He asked quietly, with a mix of disappointment and confusion.
For Wolf it felt like a well deserved kick in the head. That’s what one gets for speaking without thinking.
"I guess it was fine, for a first try." The hunter tried to salvage the situation. In the end, who’s fault it was, that the kid didn’t know what to do with a sword? "Let’s go home, and I will show you how to do it properly."
The change was instantaneous. Dago's face lit up, his eyes widened with an excitement. "Really? You'll teach me?"
"I’m the only one who can." Wolf nodded, smiling softly at this sudden change.
"Yay!" The boy jumped up, and ran ahead. "Can I use your sword?!"
"No way." The man cut this fantasy short.
"...after I learn more?" The child tried to bargain.
The hunter only shook his head. "Do you want to wear my shoes next?" Asked. "Your sword should match the length of your arms."

The great hall of the lodge was quiet, the world outside having surrendered to overcast night. The only light came from the hearth, where a low fire crackled, casting long, dancing shadows in the eyes of the hunting trophies. Wolf was tired, the long patrol settled deep in his bones, but the boy beside him was a thrumming knot of energy. Forcing him wait until morning would be cruel. Better to burn up this excitement, than make him lose sleep over it.
"Alright," Wolf grunted, pointing toward the massive dining table that dominated the room. "Up you go."
Dagobert blinked, confused. "On the table?"
"Do you want to fight me, or my ankles?" Wolf lifted the boy with ease, his hands spanning the child’s small torso, and set him down on the polished surface of the wood. The table, built for a dozen feasting nobles, now served as a makeshift dueling platform. From this new height, Dagobert looked less like a child and more like a small, serious combatant. Wolf handed him one of the smooth, heavy sticks that he had chosen for the training. He took up his own, the longer staff feeling like a familiar extension of his arm. He stood back, leaving a wide space between them.
"Now," Wolf’s voice was low, serious, the earlier flicker of amusement gone. "What you and the other boys were doing… that was just tapping sticks. In a real fight, you don’t aim for your opponent’s sword. You aim at your opponent. Give me your best swing."
Dago’s brow furrowed with an earnest concern that got mixed with excitement. He gripped the stick tightly, but his posture was hesitant. "But… what if I hurt you?"
A slow smirk touched Wolf’s lips. "You won’t," he said, his voice a low rumble.
For a moment, the boy hesitated. "You shure?"
The hunter chuckled. "I fight demons for a living. What do you think you are, tiny human?" It might be a little harsh, but he hoped that some hurt pride would prompt the boy to act.
It worked. Dago stiffed with indignation, then, with a determined shout, he lunged, swinging the stick in a wide, energetic arc aimed at Wolf’s shoulder.
Hunter didn’t seem to move. His own stick simply rose, a dark line in the firelight, and met Dago’s with a short, hard thwack. The force of the block stopped the boy’s swing dead, sending a vibration up his arms.
"See, not that easy, huh?" Wolf teased him, as the boy smiled both with energy and relief.
He tried again, a quicker, lower swing aimed at Wolf’s legs. Again, the hunter’s stick was just… there. A solid, unmoving defense that appeared without effort. Dago jabbed, swung, tried to be clever, but every single attempt was met with the same impassive block. He was panting now, the initial excitement giving way to a dawning frustration. He couldn’t land a single hit.
"How do you know where to block?!" The kid protested, realizing that the match was completely one sided.
"I watch how you move." He said simply, but the boy responded only with a confusing stare. Wolf sighed. "Now you try." He took one step back, then slowly, very slowly marked a swing. "I am aiming at your left arm." He warned him.
Dago giggled and clumsly put his stick in the way. Wolf tapped it with a gentle *pat*. "See? Not that hard." He nodded, then tried again, then again. Slowly, giving the child plenty of time to react.
They continued for a while, the great hall echoing with the soft pat of Wolf's telegraphed strikes and the clatter of Dago's increasingly confident blocks. The boy's initial giggles turned into grunts of concentration, his small body twisting and turning on the tabletop, a whirlwind of focused energy. Wolf kept the pace slow, a steady, predictable rhythm, at some point he stopped to call out his targets.
Slowly, however, the energy began to wane. A block that had been quick was now a fraction of a second late. A stance that had been solid now wobbled. Dago stifled a yawn, his eyelids drooping. The stick in his hands felt heavier, its tip dipping toward the wood of the table. He parried another gentle tap from Wolf, but his follow-through was sluggish, his body swaying with the movement.
Wolf lowered his staff, the lesson over. "Alright, little warrior," he said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet hall. "That's enough for one night."
The boy blinked slowly, his focus blurring. "But... I can still..." he mumbled, his words slurring as another yawn overtook him. He listed to one side, catching himself on the table with a hand.
With two long strides, Wolf was there, easily scooping the boy off the table and into his arms. Dago's head immediately rested on Wolf's shoulder, his body going limp with exhaustion. "Time for the bed," The man said, more to himself than to the dozing child.
In the small washroom, he lowered Dago in the lukewarm water. The boy woke up enough to make a few half-hearted attempts at washing, listlessly moving a cloth over his arms, but his movements grew slower, his head nodding forward.
Seeing it, Wolf sighed gently, taking the cloth.
Dago murmured something unintelligible, his eyes closing completely. By the time Wolf had finished scrubbing the day's dirt from his back and arms, the boy was fast asleep, his head pillowed on the tub's wooden rim, breathing deeply and evenly.
A faint smile touched the man's lips. He worked quickly and quietly, lifting the sleeping child from the cooling water and wrapping him in a rough-spun towel. He dried him with practiced efficiency, then pulled a clean linen nightshirt over his head. Dagobert didn't stir, a pliant, trusting weight in his arms.
Carrying him into the bedroom, Wolf pulled back the heavy furs on the large bed. He laid Dago down, the boy immediately curling into a small ball, already lost to his dreams. After extinguishing the last of the lamps, the hunter slipped into the bed beside him, the familiar warmth and steady, quiet breathing of the child became a grounding presence in the silent lodge. The forest outside was still, and for tonight, their small world was safe.

The air in Thornwick held the messy beginning of winter. Gray, half-melted snow clung in dirty patches to the rooftops and lay in slushy puddles on the cobbled square. The cold was a wet, clinging thing, soon to turn into the sharp, dry bite of deep winter. Wolf moved through it with his usual quiet stride, the patrol finished, his path leading, as it always did, to the pale stone of the temple.
He sensed the trouble before he saw it clearly. Not a predator's ambush, but the distinctly human knot of distress. Two Keepers, their green robes dark with damp, were fussing on the temple steps. He could hear their placating murmurs and, beneath that, the hiccupping, wretched sound of a child crying. Two children, he realized as he got closer.
His gaze immediately found Dago. The boy was huddled on the bottom step, small and miserable, his face buried in his hands. Tears tracked clean paths through the grime on his cheeks. Across from him sat another boy, stout, red-faced, with a prominent bruise already purpling on side of his neck, sobbing with a loud, indignant fury.
Wolf's pace quickened, his boots making a heavy, wet sound on the flagstones. The Keepers looked up, their expressions shifting from concern to a more complicated mix of relief and apprehension at his approach. He ignored them, crouching down in front of the boy. The smell of wet wool, tears, and mud rose from the small, trembling figure.
"Dago," Wolf's voice was a low rumble, cutting through the other boy's wails. "What happened?"
The boy looked up, his gray eyes huge and swimming with tears. "We... we were playing," he choked out between sobs. "I was showing them... a proper sword fight."
A cold knot tightened in Wolf's gut. He glanced at the other boy's bruised neck, then back at Dago's desolate face. He already knew the answer, but the question had to be asked. "And what happened?"
"I tried to hit Vynn," He whispered, gesturing with a trembling chin toward the other boy.
Wolf waited, his expression unreadable. "And?"
The dam broke. A fresh wave of desperate sobs wracked Dago's small frame. He buried his face in his hands again, his voice a muffled, horrified wail.
"I did!"
The man’s shoulder slumped in resignation. "That’s how sword fights usually go: someone ends up hurt." He said, surrounding the boy with his arm.
Dagobert nodded, and kept crying into Wolf’s chest. In the corner of his eyes, the hunter saw an adult figure approaching.
"Maybe you shouldn’t teach him how to hurt other children." The female voice of the Keeper was stern, and laced with judgment.
Wolf slowly looked up, his gaze sweeping over her with a tired disbelief. He didn't rise. He didn't even shift his hold on the boy sobbing into his coat. Instead, he simply tilted his head, gesturing with his chin at the trembling, hiccupping mess he was holding.
"Do you really think he will do that again?" He asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp of sarcasm.
The Keeper sighed, her patience clearly worn thin. "Sword is not a tool fit for a commoner. Stepping out of one's role ends up in, well... incidents like this." Her eyes flicked from Vynn's bruise to Wolf's impassive face. "Leave your forest savagery where it belongs, hunter."
His expression didn't change, he didn’t even look her way, still focusing on the boy crying softly into his coat. When the child calmed down a little, Wolf stood up, lifting Dago into his arms. He turned toward the Keeper, her rigid stare faltered a little, meeting his imposing stance. "Leave your lessons for someone who cares," he said with a flat dismissal, and started the walk back to the lodge, his shoulders blocking out the entire square.

Igmar grunted, pulling a heavy ledger from a high shelf, its spine cracking in protest. Halfway between the archives and the relative sanctuary of his own office, he was already mentally composing the report on overdue taxes. It was tedious, predictable work. The best kind.
"I’m sorry, sir. How to send a letter?"
The voice was quiet, hesitant, and familiar enough to be jarring. Igmar turned, the heavy ledger balanced on his hip. It was the hunter’s ward, the strange, silent boy, now older, perhaps ten. He stood alone in the middle of the hall, looking small and entirely out of place. Igmar’s brow furrowed. What was a child doing here? Why was Wolf not keeping an eye on him? And who, in the name of the twelve realms, had let him in?
"You want something," Igmar stated, his tone flat, impatient.
The boy flinched at the directness, his gaze darting to the floor. He didn’t answer, but his hands tightened on something he was clutching to his chest. An envelope. He held it out with both arms stiff and straight, a strange, formal gesture, as if offering a sacred relic.
Igmar sighed, ready to dismiss him. He wasn't a courier. But the letter itself stopped him. It wasn't fresh parchment. The envelope was old, the paper yellowed and discolored at the edges. The green wax seal looked porous and weathered, as if it had spent decades locked away in some dusty cache. A flicker of unease, sharp and unwelcome, cut through Igmar’s irritation. This was not a child's game.
"Where did you get this?" Igmar asked, setting his own ledger down on a nearby table with a thud. He took the letter, his fingers brushing against the brittle paper. It was addressed to the Guild of Sorcistor. Great, he thought with a grimace. Mage business. The ink was partially faded but, troublingly, still perfectly readable.
"Wolf," the child whispered, still not meeting his eyes.
The response didn't surprise him. The implications, however, were beginning to form a cold knot in his stomach. "He told you to send it?"
The child nodded, a single, jerky motion.
"I see." Igmar’s mind raced. Why send the boy? If the letter was this old, written and sealed years ago, why use it now? The answer clicked into place with chilling certainty. An urgent message, prepared long in advance. A signal for a crisis. A call for help. Or reinforcement.
Suddenly, the hunter's absence was no longer a matter of lax parenting. It was a very bad sign.
"Where is Wolf?" Igmar’s voice was sharp now, demanding.
"…home."
"Why isn’t he with you?" Igmar pressed, his gaze fixed on the boy, noting for the first time the smudge of dirt on his cheek, the way his knuckles were white where he clenched his fists.
Then the child started to cry.

The Infirmary’s afternoon drone was a familiar hum, but the recurring case of Old Man Tomar’s leg ulcers grated on Crow’s patience. Healer Silver Willow had just presented the chart again, magical mending holding for a week, then failing. "The sweetness in his water persists, Master," she'd said, her own frustration evident. It was the insidious creep of sugar-sickness, Crow knew, a malady their best healing spells could only patch, never truly root out. He was about to suggest another dietary regimen, more a hope than a cure, when the door to the room creaked, and an unfamiliar face came in, without knocking.
It was another mage from the guild, one of the many that Crow tried to avoid. Per usual, asking to speak with him in private. Of course, he agreed, leading the guest to the office, hoping that whatever the guild wanted, would not take too much time. Probably some paperwork.
The visitor didn’t seem interested either. His aura was bland, fading into the background, his face rang some distant bell in the back of Crow’s mind. He of course introduced himself, but Crow had to admit in shame, that by the time they reached his office, he already forgot the name. Asking again will be a little awkward, in his defence, he had a long day already.
He ushered the man into his office, a space that always felt more like a working laboratory than a Master Mage’s receiving room. Crow glanced around with a familiar, critical eye, not for untidiness, as he kept it meticulously ordered, but for its overall impression. The broad oak desk, inherited from a predecessor who’d had grander tastes, was certainly imposing enough, its surface cleared save for a neatly stacked set of diagnostic tools and a single, well-used tome on toxicology. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined two walls, crammed with functional, unadorned binders and older, leather-bound volumes whose value lay in their content, not their gilding. A pair of sturdy, if plain, guest chairs faced the desk.
Was it enough? The Guild, especially its higher echelons in Sorcistor, often equated visible status with competence. His own quarters here, attached to the Infirmary, prioritized function over form. The air smelled faintly of dried herbs and antiseptic solutions, not the perfumed oils or rare incenses favored in more political chambers. There were no tapestries depicting heroic magical feats, no gleaming displays of inert but impressive artifacts – just the tools of his trade, anatomical charts, and a framed, rather dry-looking charter outlining the Infirmary’s founding principles.
He sometimes wondered if this deliberate lack of ostentation was perceived as humility, eccentricity, or worse: a disrespect for his own rank.
Still, it was clean, ordered, and conveyed serious purpose. The light from the tall window was good. Perhaps the visitor (whose name still stubbornly eluded him) wouldn't judge it too harshly. He gestured for the man to sit.
"Now," Crow said, settling into his own worn but comfortable chair, its leather smoothed by years of use. "What is this private matter?"
Before the words, there was a spell, not activating, but fading off. An illusion that veiled the guest realised its hold on Crow’s mind.
The shift was less a dropping of a veil and more like the sudden, startling change of stage lights, the mundane figure of the 'ordinary mage' dissolving to reveal the principal player. And Gray Cat, Crow had to admit, always knew how to command his stage. He presented the world with a study in luminous youth; though thirty-five years had surely passed him by, they’d left little trace upon the bright, almost naive inquiry in his eyes, the look of a fresh contender in the grand theatre of politics. His skin, smooth as polished marble, features so symmetrical they might have been an artist’s rendering of unattainable beauty, far removed from the grit of daily life. One might easily paint him as a long-life beneficiary of immense wealth, buffered from the world's harsh winds. Gray color of his hairs shimmered like silver, falling in soft, sculpted waves around features that seemed fixed on some inner, ethereal landscape. And the robes – white, catching the light with intricate threads of gold and crimson – were a statement, adhering to fashion's dictates and then, with a characteristic flourish, exceeding them one step.
It was how Gray Cat, Grandmaster of Illusion, composed himself for the realm: an artist of ethereal visions, a soul seemingly out of step with the Council's stern march, and political machinations.
All a calculated pose, of course. Crow had learned long ago to see past the dazzling glare of such performances. How much of that captivating beauty was inherent, and how much of it was a subtle haze of illusion, artfully melded with the Grandmaster’s aura? He will never know. Still no cosmetic trick, nor a spell-spun glamour, could truly conceal the truth that lies beneath: a dark pact. Immortals marked Cat as their servant, and it resonated clearly in his aura. A visceral reminder of Cat’s lust for power. Brand of a man who sold his soul away.
Grandmaster came to the guest chair, smooth, curated movements of an actor who never stepped out of the stage.
"We got an urgent notice from one of our posts in the wildlands." His voice was soft, youthful as his appearance, words clear, yet marked by an alien accent. A deliberate spice of mystique. As Crow knew well that Cat was born and raised in Trakar, despite a few drops of Onari blood in his noble veins. "Our operative there contracted the plague."
"The Plague?" Crow froze mid way to his chair, and looked at the Grandmaster with restrained terror, as images of previous encounters jumped out of his memory. The gore of disfigured bodies, cries of pain, massive graves, empty streets. Was all of it about to return?
"Where?"
"Thornwick," Grandmaster, maybe too young to remember, or too indifferent to care, responded in a neutral tone, like he was talking about a minor inconvenience that came to just distract him from the art. "a little place near Wynford." He dismissed it with a subtle handwave.
But it wasn’t just an inconvenience, wasn’t it? Gray Cat had to understand the implication, otherwise he would not come to him like this.
"Wynford?" Crow asked, he heard the name, just a few times. Nothing more than a minor trade hub, but surprisingly, those lands did not belong to the Grandmaster's noble family. "I had no idea that it had wildlands nearby."
"A silent tragedy," Cat revealed with a dramatic mix of pity and sadness. "And count Daren would like to keep it that way."
Crow sighed at what wasn’t said: ‘Don’t warn people about the wildlands, just quietly deal with the consequences. Commoners don’t have to know.’ At one hand he could scoff at the Guild playing along with noble politics, willing to keep their secrets instead of warning people about existing dangers. But on the other hand, he understood that some level of discretion is rewarded or even expected. Besides, what would people in Thornwick do with that knowledge? Abandon the area, and let the wildlands spread even wider? Evacuate the city, and take potential plague to Wynford? And if the Guild, with its openness, would make nobles afraid to ask for help, mages would find about potential troubles only when it’s too late to do anything about them - hurting everyone in the long run.
"How far is the outpost?" Crow asked. It was no time to argue, or ask irrelevant questions.
"Day and a half from Wynford, if you're in a hurry."
Crow made a quick calculation in his head. First the message has to come to the guild, then he needs to travel to Thornwick. The operative, if not dead already, will die long before Crow’s arrival.
He looked at the Cat, wondering what kind of answer the Grandmaster truly expected. Surely, Cat, with his own knowledge and networks, had made similar calculations. Was this a test of Crow's honesty, or was there another, unstated objective for this mission?
"I’m sorry Grandmaster, but I won’t be there in time." Regardless, he could only offer the unavoidable truth. "I will do what I can, of course, but despite some rumors, I don’t possess divine touch."
Gray Cat chuckled, despite the gravity of the situation.
"I hope you don’t, because the operative is Onari," he explained his amusement. "Last thing he needs is the intervention of the divine council."
Right. Grandmaster’s involvement with Immortals was both a curse and a blessing for the guild. His influence among Onari allowed the Guild to sometimes use additional, highly trained personnel. Downside was this personnel had its own baggage - like a training in completely different magical tradition, and a fact that its loyalty ended on Gray Cat, and not extended to the Guild as a whole. Crow could complain that the Council should use their own people, but wildlands outposts required a great competence, and in the Guild, that competence usually came with ambitions greater than being stuck in the middle of nowhere. So Onari it was.
"Are Onari more resistant to the plague?" He knew they weren’t human, but the knowledge about the differences remained vague and mostly spiritual, hopefully irrelevant when it came to medicine. Why not send an Onari healer instead?
"Not normally" Gray Cat shook his head "but this one is a trained demon-hunter, so he may still be breathing." Grandmaster added with a vague hope, but then nodded to the harsh truth: "Let’s be realistic, the operative is a secondary concern. What I need is someone to contain the potential outbreak."
He also nodded, admiring the realistic outlook. Now the Grandmaster’s choice made sense. Because the demon-hunter was already dead, the focus shifted to humans living near the wildlands. And sending the Onari healer into a potentially tense situation could only end in tragedy.
"Any hope of containment?" Crow asked, approaching one of the shelves. He started taking a mental inventory of everything he would need and be able to carry on his trip, without bleeding the most precious resource - time.
"I wish I had more to offer than a gamble." Gray Cat murmured, his gaze distant as grandmaster was weighing again all known probabilities. "The operative knows the protocols, so he should be isolating himself as much as possible. His post is reasonably remote, but unfortunately, he was taking care of a child."
White Crow went pale, the catastrophic scenario was not hard to imagine. Operative dies of the plague, then well meaning locals decide to take care of an orphan, only to find out later that the child was already infected. And in a few months, the whole town could be whipped out of the map.
"I will dispatch immediately." Crow promised. To the Grandmaster, and himself.
"One more thing." Gray Cat stood up, his movement fluid. He reached into a discreet pouch, one almost invisible within the layers of his robe, and produced a crystal. It was small, no bigger than a coin, yet its precise, eight-sided cut was unfamiliar. It immediately told Crow this wasn't a relic from any known ancient ruins; it originated from beyond this realm. "That’s for the case if, by some shred of luck, you find the operative still alive." The Grandmaster offered the item on his open palm, the crystal glinting faintly.
Crow looked at it with deserved caution, but then - what choice did he have? It could be a set up, or a ruse of some kind, but then, Grandmaster of Illusions had bigger games to play, than to harass some ageing healer.
So he took it, carefully probing its content - some kind of structure surrounded by raw magic, similar to a spell, yet completely unfamiliar.
"It’s Onari spell?" Crow asked, hoping to hear ‘yes’. Alternative was an eldritch pattern plucked straight from the void. Or even bolder - a trap with a minor demon inside. Both in character when it comes to Onari arcane traditions.
"It’s a spell." Gray Cat reassured him.
It sounded like a simple answer, but it made the situation only marginally better. Even if Crow knew how to trigger an alien spell, he was unable to scrutinize the magic, and playing with unknown magic was always a recipe for trouble.
"I don’t expect you to use it, Master Crow." Grandmaster said before the other mage even asked the question. "Just give it to Wolf, he’s not a mage, but he knows enough to trigger the crystal. It won’t heal him, but it may keep him alive just long enough."
Crow looked at the unreadable spell, still not fully convinced. Gray Cat sounded casual, like the unsanctioned magic was just a minor thing, and the operative's life just an afterthought, but his actions, the secrecy, and unusual tools - those told a different story. Healing had its own price, usually proportionate to the bleakness of the situation. How desperate was Cat to save one of his own?
"Does it have a cost?" He asked instead, knowing that Onari don’t stray from occasional human sacrifice, if they deemed it necessary. He found it detestable, but he didn’t have a leg to stand on - Trakar had its own death penalty, they just don’t use their convicts as fuel.
A smooth, empty smile touched Grandmaster’s lips. "Don’t worry, Master Crow, the cost was already paid. Your hands will be clear."

Chapter Text

The air in the magistrate’s office was thick enough to chew. For the second day, a heavy, expectant silence had replaced the usual drone of quill on parchment. Igmar tried to collate tax records, but his focus, like everyone else’s, was fixed on the tall, mullioned window that overlooked Thornwick’s main square. Everyone looked busy with their work, but the whole office was just waiting in tense silence. An hour ago, guards spotted a traveler on the road, and everyone was just waiting for a stranger to finally reach the town. Thornwick was expecting a visit, and no one here was happy about it.
Head Judge Ferlon stood by the window, a man whose usual bluster had evaporated into a tight, nervous stillness. He held the letter from the Guild of Sorcistor as if it were a venomous snake, its heavy parchment showing the creases from his constant rereading. Igmar didn't need to see the document again; the words were seared into his own memory. "...sanctioned by your liege, Count Daren... render Master White Crow all necessary assistance... the sole acting authority on this matter..."
"He'll demand the keys to the armory, you'll see," grumbled Kael, an old clerk who'd seen two magistrates come and go. "I heard that when the mages sent someone for that business with the Red Caves, they requisitioned half the town's grain."
"This is different," Ferlon said, his voice tight. "That was an enforcer. This is a Master. We will be under guild’s occupation until he gets what he came for." The judge didn't need to name names. They all knew it was connected to the hunter at the lodge, the quiet crisis that had been simmering for over a week.
"Keepers were right, no matter the hunter’s skills, having a fiend nearby is nothing but trouble.” The half murmured comment hung in the air, and some of the clerks nodded to that.
Then, a flicker of movement by the gates. A small crowd began to clot the street below, curious onlookers drawn out despite the damp chill. A pair of Keepers emerged from the temple, their green robes stark against the grey stone, moving like moths to a strange new flame. A few merchants abandoned their stalls, craning their necks. Regular people stopped to look, thirsty for anything new.
Two rovas approached the main square, their feathers were ruffled from the long journey by constant drizzle and wind. One of them carried a traveler concealed by the long coat, the second was laden with packs and supplies.
"The mage?" someone whispered. "He's come with supplies."
The office went completely still. They watched as the figure stopped and lowered the hood. The rider turned out to be a tall, gray-haired man in practical but well-made travel clothes. He sat atop his mount with the weary posture of someone who had spent too many days on the road, but his control over the animal was firm and confident. He didn't look like a warrior, nor did he carry the ostentatious staves with crystals, or glittering trinkets Igmar associated with mages. He just looked… tired. And old.
"That's him," someone whispered.
Ferlon gripped the window frame, knuckles white, bracing himself for the inevitable, authoritative rap on their front door.
But it never came.
The mage, Master Crow, stopped at the main square. He didn't look towards the magistrate's building. He didn't address the gathering crowd. He simply paused, scanned the layout of the town, and approached a young man from the crowd. A few quiet words were exchanged, the man pointed his finger down the muddy track leading towards the forest, and the mage gave a simple nod of thanks. Then, without a second glance at the magistrate, he turned and started riding toward the lodge.
A full minute of stunned silence passed in the office.
"...that is unusual," Kael murmured, breaking the spell, as the whole office was now glued to the window. The relief in the room was palpable, but it was immediately soured by a new anxiety. A mage with this much authority who didn't want to use it? That was somehow worse. It meant the problem at the lodge was so urgent that the stranger could not be bothered with pleasantries.
Ferlon turned from the window, his face pale with the certainty of a man whose problems had just grown tenfold. His gaze swept the room, landing inevitably on the one clerk who had dealt with the source of their town's weirdness for years.
"Igmar," he said, his voice a low command. "Follow the mage. Find out what he wants from us. And hopefully get some answers."
Igmar looked up from his desk, a familiar, weary resignation settling over him. "Why me, sir?" he asked, though he already knew.
The judge gave him a look that was part order, part grim sympathy. "Because," he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the departing mage, "we all agreed years ago, it’s you who deal with the weirdos."
Igmar let out a quiet sigh, pushing back his chair. The short straw he'd drawn a decade ago had turned out to be a lifelong assignment. "I never agreed to that," he muttered, grabbing his coat. But he was already on his way.

The moment he got outside, Igmar was welcomed by a cold drizzle. Nothing today decided to go his way, and it evidently included the weather. He pulled his coat tighter, the damp wool already feeling inadequate, and broke into an undignified jog. His lungs burned in the cold air, but he pushed himself, his boots splashing through the slushy puddles on the main square. The mage's rovas were already approaching the town's main gate. Igmar put on a final burst of speed, managing to catch up just as the rider was passing under the shadow of Thornwick's old stone archway.
"Master White Crow, I assume?" Igmar called out, his voice a little breathless.
The mage reined in his rova with a gentle tug, the second one, laden with packs, stopping obediently behind it. The beast slowed to a halt, turning its head with an indifferent cluck. The rider looked down. He was an older man, perhaps sixty, his face lined with the immediate fatigue of travel. Beneath that, however, his skin was remarkably unweathered for his age. It wasn't the robust health of a man who worked the land; it was the unblemished quality of a scholar or a noble, someone sheltered from the elements and the harsher realities of life. Mage’s gray hair was cut short, practical, and he was clean-shaven, though a pair of thick, bushy brows suggested that if he ever decided to grow a beard, it would be a formidable one. His gaze was steady, tired, but held a glint of patient intelligence.
"Yes," Crow replied, his tone that of a man willing to bear an interruption, but not invite it. "To whom do I owe the pleasure?"
"Igmar, sir. A clerk with the magistrate," he said, catching his breath. "We received your letter. We were expecting you at the office."
Crow’s focus was already past him, towards the looming forest. "I apologize for the lack of courtesy, but my business is urgent, and not at your office. It's at the lodge. What is the situation there?"
"That's just it, sir. We don't rightly know," Igmar admitted. "No one has seen the hunter for over a week. He's closed himself up in there with the child. The boy is the only one who has been seen, coming out to pick up food the Keepers have been leaving at the edge of the property." A flicker of concern crossed the mage's features, but he only nodded.
"You know this hunter?" Igmar asked, not knowing how exactly Wolf’s connection with the guild looked like.
"It is possible that we met briefly years ago," Crow said, his voice carefully neutral, "but I have no recollection of him."
"Should then I send an escort with you, Master?" Igmar offered, glancing nervously at the dark, dripping trees behind open gates. "Let me warn you, he is not a calm man, or a gentle one. He doesn't take kindly to strangers."
A deep weariness settled in Crow’s eyes, aging him another decade in an instant. "I doubt he will be able to put up a fight. If he is still alive." He paused, his gaze sharpening. "Is the child Onari as well?"
Onari? A weird, foreign word. Did the mage mean ‘fiend’? Igmar assumed so.
"We... think it's human," The clerk said, with the proper amount of uncertainty.
Crow's bushy brows furrowed. "You think? Are there doubts?"
Igmar shifted uncomfortably. "It's hard to tell, Master. We never found the parents. The boy looks human enough, but... he's mentally lacking. Understands little, and speaks even less."
Mages’s bushy brows furrowed at Igmar’s words. It seemed he had learned all he needed to know, and the conclusion was not a good one.
"I see," Crow said, and the two words sounded final. The brief flicker of patient intelligence in his eyes was replaced by a grim, focused resolve. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod, more to himself than to the clerk. "I will be on my way. Send no men to follow, or you won’t get them back."
Igmar froze, was that a threat or a warning? He opened his mouth to ask for clarification, then wisely shut it. There was no good answer.
Without another word of explanation, Crow urged his rovas forward with a quiet command. They began to move down the muddy track that led to the lodge, leaving Igmar standing alone at the edge of the road, with no answers and only more questions. Judge Felron would not be happy.

The hunting lodge emerged from the skeletal trees, and Crow’s first thought was one of quiet, professional regret. He’d seen places like this before, tucked away on the grander estates closer to the capital. He recognized the fine, practical architecture beneath the neglect: the expert joinery of the main beams, the elegant pitch of the roof designed to shed the heavy winter snows, the balanced proportions of a structure built not just for shelter, but for the refined comfort of a noble on his hunt. He could almost see its past glory: the wood oiled and gleaming, the stone steps clear of moss, the air filled with the scent of woodsmoke and roasting meat instead of quiet rot. It had been a place of pride once. Now, it was just a sad husk. One would say that the place was touched by the corruption, but Master Crow was not a religious man, it was simply neglect and time.
He was still quite far away, when the lodge door burst open with a jarring creak. A child, no more than ten years old, sprinted out onto the porch, their small frame wiry and tense. They wore plain brown trousers and a simple grey tunic, the simplest clothes imaginable, but Crow’s practiced eye noted the decent fabric and the fact they were impeccably clean, a stark contrast to the surrounding neglect.
The child—no, a boy, if Crow remembered correctly—ran down the muddy path, planting himself directly in the way of the rovas with surprising, desperate bravery.
"No come in!” His intonation was slightly off, the words clipped and imperfect, but the meaning was unmistakable. So the child could speak. He stood there, a small, defiant figure with arms spread wide, as if he could physically bar the path of a Master Mage.
Crow reined in his mounts, and assessed the child from his saddle. No feverish flush to the skin, just the natural pale of humans. No visible rashes or sores. His breathing, though quick with panic, wasn't labored or rattling. His gray eyes were wide and bright, focused with sharp, intelligent fear. At first glance, he looked perfectly healthy.
"Don’t go!” The boy warned him, this time with fear in his voice.
Crow considered himself a kind man, but his experience with children was limited, mostly confined to young patients in the Infirmary. He swung down from his rova, his movements slow and deliberate, trying not to appear threatening.
"It's fine.” he said, his voice calm and even. He started to wonder how simple he should keep the conversation? He was dealing not only with a child, but one with limited speech. "I am a healer. Swift Wolf asked me to come.”
The boy looked at him confused. "Wolf did?”
Crow nodded.
The child looked at him, for a moment unsure what to do, but decided to step aside. "...josa'ri.” The boy murmured shyly.

Crow stepped over the threshold, the boy following a pace behind him, a small, anxious shadow. The smell hit the mage instantly. It was a grimly familiar scent of a body failing: of fever, sweat, poorly cleaned waste, and the sticky hint of necrosis. It was unpleasant, yes, but also expected. The plague was indeed here.
As his physical senses catalogued the expected decay, his magical senses recoiled. The place was filled with irritating dissonance. A single, pure sign of the patient's own innate magic was being drowned out by low, bone-penetrating hum from his dark pact. An intrusive, alien signature of a being that Crow encountered once before, and had no desire to ever encounter again. The less experienced mage would conclude that the man is possessed, but Master Crow knew better.
But the aura, no matter how unpleasant, was at lest a proof that the patient was still alive.
Crow moved past the boy, his focus narrowing as his gaze found the source of this sensations. In the center of the great hall, a makeshift sickbed had been arranged on the floor. The hunter lay there, a still form wrapped in layers of blankets, positioned close to the low, crackling fire in the hearth.
The mage knelt beside the unconscious man, his movements economical and precise. He placed the back of his hand against the hunter’s forehead. Warm to the touch, yes, but not the raging heat of a fever. It was the sluggish, deep warmth of a body too exhausted to mount a proper defense against the infection.
His skin felt rough, dry, and hung loose over the bone—a clear sign of severe dehydration and rapid weight loss. The hunter’s deep brown skin tone, a trait of his Onari heritage, masked the potential redness, robbing Crow of a key diagnostic clue. He gently lifted an eyelid; the black sclera, another Onari trait, similarly concealed any jaundice or irritation.
But there were other signs. Leaning closer, Crow detected the faint, sharp scent on the man's breath: ammonia and decay. The unmistakable signature of liver failure. The plague was not just consuming the body; it was shutting it down, piece by piece.
With a practiced, impersonal touch, Crow began to peel back the layers of heavy blankets, then the simple linen undertunic that clung to the hunter's frame. The sight beneath confirmed the plague's terrifying efficiency.
The man was bone-thin, his frame skeletal, looking less like a patient and more like a victim of prolonged famine. But the locals had said he was on his feet only a week ago. Crow's gaze followed the contours of the man's body. There was a shocking amount of loose skin draped over ribs and hip bones, hanging in slack folds around his shoulders and thighs. It was a clear testament to the powerful physique that had once been there, the strong muscle now seemingly devoured by the illness in a matter of days. The juices from dissolved muscles usually end up in the blood, poisoning the rest of the body from within.
He quickly realized that to heal the man, he first had to save his life. The rapid muscle dissolution was poisoning him, and the dehydration was shutting him down. Water and the liver were the immediate priorities.
He turned, his gaze finding the boy standing a few paces away, a small, silent statue of focused intensity. Crow wasn't sure if the child's limited speech would be enough, or if he was too shocked to be useful. He had to try.
"Water," Crow said, his voice a calm, clear command. He pointed towards the kitchen archway, then gestured with his hands as if holding a pot. "Clean" added.
He didn't wait to see if the boy understood, instead turning immediately to his own medical pack, which he’d set down beside the hearth. He unrolled the thick leather, revealing a meticulously organized array of vials, powdered reagents, polished diagnostic crystals, and sterile linen wraps.
He had barely selected the necessary vials when the soft clink of pottery on the floorboards made him look up. The boy was back, a small clay pot held steady in his hands, filled nearly to the brim with clean water from the well. He understood, good. Crow gave a single, appreciative nod.
First, the water. He held a hand over the pot, weaving a short, simple spell he cast more times he could even remember. A faint silver shimmer rippled through the liquid, purifying it of any mundane contaminants. Then, using a hook from the hearth, he suspended the pot over the low flames, waiting until the water was precisely body temperature. He worked quickly, adding a pinch of mineral salts from one vial and a few drops of a clear, viscous fluid from another. An alchemical solution to aid absorption and stabilize the blood.
He could not make an unconscious man drink, but the body had other ways. From his kit, he produced a long, thin tube of flexible, treated gut, smooth as silk, attached to a durable bladder made from a cured sheep stomach. He filled the bladder with the prepared solution, then carefully, with the touch of a seasoned healer, he administered the rehydrating enema. It was the surest way to get vital fluids back into a failing body. Slow and undignified process; a treatment no Trakari man would ever admit to receiving. But as far as Crow knew, Onari rarely had any dignity to lose in the first place.
One crisis addressed. Now, for the next.
Finally, Crow closed his eyes, resting a hand lightly on the hunter's chest. He reached out with his own magic, a delicate probe seeking the man's vitality. He found it, and a familiar frustration surfaced. Onari weren’t humans, their vitality flowed differently, their healers had their own methods to shape it. For a Trakari healer like him, it felt unpleasantly resistant.
He cursed himself inwardly. On the journey here, during rest stops, he had opened the Onari healing manual Gray Cat had provided. He'd hoped for diagrams, a universal language of magic that might bridge the gap. The hope had died quickly. The script was an impenetrable wall, not even an alphabet, and the arcane charts were not a precise schematics of magical flow, but a series of sharp bullet points, abbreviated to the point of obfuscation. The book sat in his pack right now, a useless brick of leather and paper.
He wasted more of his magic by pushing past the resistance, mapping the interior landscape, forced to rely on what he could feel and guess. He focused on the liver. The vitality there was discordant, inflamed. He could feel the damage, but the texture was all wrong. In a human, he would have known the exact degree of swelling. Here, he was translating. Guessing. He was sure the organ was in a bad shape, but couldn't be certain how bad. It was hard to pinpoint a crucial moment at which he would stop mending, and starting to disfigure the tissue. All improvisation. He was forced to be a field medic... again.
He worked carefully, slowly returning the liver to its - hopefully - intended state. It would not last, of course. The poison was still in the blood, and will damage the liver again. In a day or two he would have to repeat the process. If during that time the body won’t start to fight off the infection, the muscles would keep dissolving. He wondered what would happen first: him running out of magic, or hunter running out of muscles, until he is too weak to breathe, or his heart too weak to pump. And Crow did not have enough magic to heal all that’s broken.
The arcane work was done, a temporary dam against a relentless tide. Crow withdrew his hand, a deep weariness settling into his bones. The sheer effort of imposing his will on an unwilling, alien vitality had left him drained. He was tired after a long trip, he was hungry. But the work wasn't finished.
He rose stiffly, his gaze sweeping over the makeshift sickbed. He needed more water, clean linens, and several specific salves from his pack. He turned to the boy, who had been watching the entire magical process with wide, silent eyes.
"More water," Crow said, his voice a little rough with fatigue. He made a gentle washing motion with his hands. "And linen. Clean cloth."
The boy didn't need to be told twice. He disappeared into the back of the lodge and returned moments later, his small arms laden with a stack of surprisingly clean, if threadbare, linen sheets and a fresh bucket of water.
Crow thanked in the same manner he addressed the nurse staff in the infirmary, and set to work with the same quiet efficiency he'd applied to his spells. He gently washed Wolf's face and neck, cleaning away the grime and dried sweat. From a small porcelain jar in his kit, he took a clear, cool gel and carefully applied it to hunter’s cracked lips and, with a delicate touch, under his closed eyelids to provide moisture where the dehydrated body could not.
Next, he addressed the position. Lying motionless for days invited bedsores and fluid in the lungs. With a strength that belied his age and current exhaustion, he carefully shifted the man’s limp, skeletal frame, rolling him slightly onto his side, propping his back with a rolled-up blanket to ease the pressure on his bones and help his breathing. He straightened the limbs, ensuring there were no awkward bends, no undue strain.
Each action was small, practical, and devoid of grand magic. It was the humble, essential work of a caregiver: bringing comfort, maintaining dignity, and giving the body every possible chance to endure the fight ahead. Only when the patient was settled, cleaned, and positioned for rest, did Crow finally allow himself to lean back against the hearth, the full weight of his own fatigue finally pressing down.
He sank onto a rough-hewn stool near the hearth, intending to rest for just a moment before beginning the arduous task of unpacking supplies, taking care of rovas, and tending a fire for himself. And also the boy. He was his responsibility now, wasn’t he?
"Here."
The voice was quiet, hesitant, pulling him from his stupor. Crow looked up, his brow furrowing in surprise. The boy stood before him, holding a simple wooden bowl with both hands, steam rising from it in a fragrant, wispy column. He held it out with the solemn care of a small, serious offering.
"...for you," the boy clarified.
Crow stared, momentarily taken aback. A bowl of soup. A simple, clear broth, made, he realized, with a sick hunter in mind, but offered now to the healer. He hadn't expected it. He hadn't thought a child, any child, would possess such a skill, or such foresight. Then again, he had to admit, he knew very little about children.
He reached out and took the bowl, his fingers brushing the boy's. The wood was warm, grounding. "Thank you," he said, and the words held a genuine gratitude that surprised even himself.
The boy gave a small, jerky nod, then retreated to the far side of the hearth, curling up on a worn fur rug, watching him with those wide, gray eyes.
Crow lifted the bowl, inhaling the scent. It was uncomplicated: bone broth, a hint of wild onion, perhaps a few winter roots. He took a spoonful. It was nothing to write home about, bland, a little too salty, the work of an inexperienced but careful hand. Yet it was hot, and it was filling. It was sustenance, freely given when he was too exhausted to provide for himself. In that moment, it felt like the most profound nourishment he'd had in years.
He finished the last of the broth, setting the empty bowl aside. The boy was still watching him from the rug, silent, observant, and careful. Crow realized, with a flicker of professional embarrassment, that in the rush of the crisis, he never properly acknowledged the boy's presence. He needed to introduce himself, but the clerk's words about the child being 'mentally lacking' echoed in his mind. A long, formal title would only be a confusing obstacle. Simple was best.
"I'm Crow," he said, deciding on the shortest, most essential part of his name. "What is your name?"
"Dago!” The boy responded, like he was waiting to say it for a long time.
"It’s Dagobert?” The mage wanted to clarify.
"Dago!” He just repeated, in the same tone, no nod or a shake. Ambiguity it is.
"Nice to meet you ...Dago.”

The formal introduction seemed to break the tension. Dagobert watched Crow like a small, observant shadow, as the mage rose and moved towards the main door to begin the arduous task of unpacking. Without a word of prompting, the boy followed.
Crow had expected the child to be a passive, perhaps even fearful, observer. He was prepared to manage a clinging, overwhelmed presence, scared for the fate of the hunter. What he got was an enthusiastic assistant.
The moment they stepped outside into the cold drizzle, Dagobert’s attention fixed on the rovas. The birds, weary from the road, shifted their weight and ruffled their damp feathers. The boy’s face lit up with pure, unadulterated joy, as he ran to the nearest one, a large gray pack animal, and threw his arms around its thick, feathered chest in a fierce hug. "Rova, rova, rova!” He repeated happily, like he was seeing those animals for the first time. Maybe he was? They needed a lot of space, and were expensive to feed. Probably no one in Thornwick would be able to afford them. The birds, completely used to strangers, simply turned its head, blinked its large, dark eye, and allowed the affection.
He began unstrapping the heavy packs, and Dagobert was immediately at his side, hands reaching. "I help!" he insisted, grabbing a heavy-looking medical case. The bag was clearly too heavy for his slight frame; he staggered under the weight, his knuckles white with effort, but his determination was absolute. Crow wanted to protest, then stopped himself, instead taking the heaviest pack and allowing the boy the minor victory of carrying the smaller, still-burdensome one. Between a young child, and an old man, it’s probably Dagobert who had the upper hand.
Inside, Dagobert, now fully in his element as host, led Crow with an eager pride. He pointed out the key features of the Great Hall, then led him down a short corridor. "Beds," he said, pushing open the door to a large, rustic bedroom dominated by a massive bed covered in furs. "Wolf sleep here. I sleep here." He gestured from one side of the bed to the other.
Crow’s eyes swept the room. It was spartan, but clean. The furniture was old but of a fine make, the kind of sturdy, dark wood he associated with noble commissions. He nodded his approval, not just of the room, but of the unspoken trust in the boy’s tour.
Dagobert then led him to the kitchen, pointing out the well, the pantry, the stairs to the upper floors. "Up... dirty," he said, shaking his head with a serious expression, indicating the upper rooms were likely in disrepair. Every new discovery was presented with an air of profound importance.
Crow followed, observing more than just the layout of the lodge. He observed the boy. The clerk had called him 'mentally lacking'. Crow had assumed that meant a dullness, an inability to process new information. But this child was the opposite. He was alert, curious, and moved through his world with a confident purpose. His mind, Crow began to suspect, was anything but slow. Curiosity, he knew, was a hallmark of a bright and active mind.
The pieces weren't fitting together. A child who couldn't form a proper sentence, but acted like understood a lot, if not all. It started to look like the boy's barrier to speech wasn’t a lack of wit at all.

The floorboards of the private hallway groaned softly under Crow's weight as he made his way back from the Great Hall. The low fire cast his long, weary shadow against the log walls behind him. Outside, the forest was a wall of absolute, silent black - a rare moonless night. How fitting.
Behind him, the only sounds were the crackle of embers and the shallow, rasping breath of the man he had just turned. He pushed open the door to his new room, a small, spartan space that had likely been for a guest of lesser importance. The bed was hard, the air cold. He didn't bother with a lamp, navigating the sparse furniture by memory. He sank onto the edge of the mattress, the straw-filled ticking rustling under his weight. His back ached, a dull, persistent throb that had become his constant companion over the past few days. Sleep, when it came, was a shallow, restless thing, measured out by the soft, rhythmic pulse of a small timing crystal he'd set on the bedside table. Every ninety minutes, it would emit a single, sharp chime, pulling him from the depths of his exhaustion back to his duty.
Back at the Infirmary, he would have already been asleep in his own comfortable bed. A team of night-shift orderlies, strong and tireless, would be handling the turning. A junior healer would be monitoring the patient's vitals. His role would have been to give the orders, to apply the crucial bursts of magic, and then to retreat, to rest, to allow his own power to regenerate.
Here, he was the orderly. He was the junior healer. He was the Master. He was everything. And he was too old for it.
The realization settled not with a crash, but with the quiet, weary weight of an undeniable truth. He was too old to do this alone. The constant physical exertion, the sleep deprivation, it was a battle of attrition a younger man might win. He was just managing to hold the line.
"What was the Grandmaster thinking, sending me here?” The question rose, laced with a bitter frustration. Did Gray Cat truly expect him to save this man under these conditions?
Then the second thought, colder and sharper, cut through his self-pity.
Of course not.
The Grandmaster's words from that sterile office in Sorcistor echoed in his mind, now stripped of all diplomatic varnish. Contain the potential outbreak. The operative is a secondary concern.
Crow stared into the darkness of the small room. He hadn't been sent here on a mission of healing. He had been sent to be a warden. To stand guard over a dying man and a potentially infected child, to ensure the plague burned itself out within the walls of this dilapidated lodge and went no further. Gray Cat hadn't sent a team, because containment, unlike healing, only required just one expendable master.
He was not here to save a life, he was here to manage a death. And yet, he could not accept that fact. Every act of healing, every two-hourly turn, every drop of his dwindling magic spent mending the hunter's ravaged body was not the fulfillment of his mission.
It was an act of defiance.

Chapter Text

Awakened by the crystal's sharp chime, Crow moved through the pre-dawn lodge like a ghost. The ninety-minute cycle had ground his fatigue into a state of numb, mechanical duty. He checked the hunter’s shallow breathing, turned the inert body, and administered the solution. The routine was a grim comfort in the profound quiet. As dawn broke, he straightened, facing the new day with an exhaustion so deep it no longer registered as feeling. A new day. He could at least try to begin it.
The kitchen was cold. He stirred the embers in the small cooking hearth, coaxing a flame to life before turning to the pantry. The sight that greeted him was one of quiet, childish desperation. A jam jar, scraped clean, sat on a shelf with a sticky spoon still resting inside it. A large wheel of hard cheese had a ragged, hacked-out section missing, as if attacked by a small, hungry animal. He sighed. The boy had been alone for days. This was to be expected.
He began to gather ingredients for a simple porridge, then paused, his hand hovering over a small wooden canister. Tea. He needed tea. It was a small, civilized ritual, a bastion against the natural chaos. He opened the canister. Empty, not even dust. He checked his own travel pack, pulling out the small leather pouch he’d brought from the capital. He tipped it over his palm. A few stray leaves, enough for one last, weak cup. Nothing more.
A profound realization washed over him. He was facing a potential plague outbreak, nursing a dying Onari, responsible for a traumatized child, but in this very moment, the thing that truly felt like a crisis was the utter lack of tea. He would be trapped here for days, possibly weeks, without it.
He made the last cup with the reverence of a final rite, then sat at the small kitchen table with his meager breakfast. The lodge was quiet, settling into the rhythms of a new, grim day. Outside, the cheerful warble of robins mixed with the steady rhythm of an axe striking wood. He took the first sip of the precious, hot liquid, the warmth brought him a small comfort.The sounds were distant, muffled, both in the lodge and in his memory. He’d been born on a farm, a life he'd lost connection to decades ago. In the capital, a Master lived insulated from the labor that fueled the city: the cooking, the cleaning, the repairs, and other endless, simple tasks. It all happened somewhere else, hidden from view. He hadn’t realized he’d missed the simple rhythm of that work until now, hearing it in the background. That simple, mundane sound: chopping wood.
The mage froze. If the hunter was still unconscious, then who was chopping wood? His eyes widened.
Oh, no. The boy.
Crow bolted from the lodge, his own exhaustion forgotten, a healer's worst-case scenarios flashing through his mind. He followed the sound around the corner of the building toward a small, open-sided woodshed. He braced himself for the sight of a grisly accident.
He froze. The scene was not one of chaos, but of quiet, focused work.
Dagobert stood before a large chopping block, feet planted wide in the damp earth. He wasn't struggling with a felling axe, but wielding a small kindling hatchet. His movements were economical and controlled. He placed a piece of split wood on the block, his gray eyes fixed on a point in the grain. His swing was fluid and efficient, ending in a sharp thwack that sent two smaller pieces of kindling flying. Then the boy calmly set up the next piece.
There was no wasted motion, no jerky flailing that could lead to a miss. He was still a child, and any tool with an edge was inherently dangerous, but the immediate, catastrophic accident Crow had feared was nowhere in sight.
Then the second realization landed, colder and more humbling. He thought of his own state: sleep-deprived for days, his muscles stiff, his mind clouded with fatigue. He imagined himself picking up the hatchet. His hands, steady enough for a spell, would be clumsy with this kind of work. His arms weren’t used to heavy tools. A single lapse in focus... He had to admit, the boy was doing better than Crow would have at this moment. And they needed wood.
He stepped out from behind the corner of the lodge, his boots making a soft crunch on the damp ground. Dagobert looked up, startled, the hatchet held defensively for a moment before he recognized the mage and lowered it.
"Did Wolf teach you how to do this?" Crow asked, his voice softer than he’d intended.
The boy’s chest puffed out with a hint of pride. "Teach? No. But I help Wolf. A lot."
Crow stepped closer, his gaze taking in the neat pile of kindling that the boy had already produced. It was a significant amount of work for someone so small. He looked back at Dagobert, who was beaming with recently earned confidence. The boy had proven to his sick guardian, and to himself, that he was capable of taking care of the house.
"What else do you help him with?" Crow asked, his curiosity now piqued.
"Everything," Dagobert said simply, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.
The word hung in the cold spring air. Crow held the boy's earnest, gray-eyed stare, and a new, deeply unsettling thought surfaced, unbidden and sharp.
Not demon hunting, I hope, he thought.

The air in the lodge had shifted from crisis to a quiet, methodical assessment. After ensuring the boy had eaten something more substantial than hacked-off cheese, Crow led him to the massive dining table, now cleared and wiped down.
"I need to examine you, Dagobert," Crow said, his voice calm and professional, the tone he used with nervous initiates at the Infirmary. "It won't hurt. I just need to be thorough."
The boy nodded, his earlier confidence from the woodshed replaced by a child's quiet apprehension. He sat on the edge of the table as instructed, small and still in the vast, fire-lit hall.
Crow began, his hands moving with practiced, impersonal efficiency. He checked the boy's eyes, his throat, glands in his neck. He ran his fingers along the limbs, feeling the structure of the bone, the tone of the muscle beneath the skin. All the while, a delicate thread of his own magic extended, a healer's probe mapping the landscape within.
The first conclusion was immediate and absolute: the boy was human, his anatomy was perfectly normal, with a familiar flow of vitality. Yes, the boy was small for his ten years, resting on the lower edge of the expected range, but he was not stunted. Teeth were healthy, the enamel strong and unbroken—no tell-tale lines of malnutrition. Crow's magical sense traced the lines of his bones; they were well-developed, dense, with no residual scarring from past fractures or lines that would have marked periods of starvation. The boy had been consistently well-fed and kept relatively safe.
Crow moved his hands to the boy's back, ostensibly checking his posture, but in reality, his magical probe was searching for something else. He was looking for the faded, latticed patterns of old scars that spoke of a switch, or the thicker, linear marks left by a belt or a whip. In his experience, especially among commoners and those in harsh, disciplined environments, such marks were an unfortunate but common part of a boy's upbringing. A child raised by an aggressive, solitary hunter in the wilderness... he had expected to find a history written on the skin.
He found nothing.
Whoever this child was, and wherever he came from, for the past seven years under the hunter's care, he had not just survived, but had been safe not only from hunger, but from the casual cruelty that so often passed for discipline. It was a pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless.
Then Crow’s probe reached deeper, past the surface of health, into the very texture of the boy’s vitality. And there, his own breath caught in his chest.
Dagobert was already infected.
It was in the asymptomatic phase, a quiet, insidious presence he would never have detected without magical scrutiny. But he could feel it. A subtle distortion that clung to the muscle tissue, most concentrated in the arms and back. The plague was there, dormant, waiting. Crow’s mind raced, trying to calculate the progression, but he couldn't guess how soon the boy's own body would begin to unravel. A few days? A week?How long did it take the hunter to realize he was sick, before he cut himself off from the outside world?
He withdrew his magic, his hand dropping from the boy's shoulder. He kept his face a neutral mask, a healer's calm carefully constructed to hide the sudden, chilling weight of his new reality. His mission had just shifted catastrophically. To save this child, Crow couldn't just make the plague disappear; he had to give the boy's body the best chance to fight off the disease and mend what would be broken in the process.
And he had to do the same for the hunter. Two patients. Alone.
If only he could get enough sleep.

Around noon, the sun had broken through the heavy grey clouds for the first time in days. A mild, wet warmth filled the air, coaxing a scent of damp earth and new growth from the forest floor that drifted in through the open kitchen window.
Master Crow stood at the well-worn kitchen table, a space he had already converted into a makeshift alchemist's station. A thick, leather-bound apothecary's manual lay open, its pages weighted down with a river stone. He was meticulously arranging the tools of his trade: a small set of brass scales, a mortar and pestle of dark, polished stone, and a collection of glass vials he had cleaned and sterilized just an hour before. His mind was a quiet storm of calculations, cross-referencing the plague's progression with the limited reagents he had on hand.
It was then, from far away, that a sharp sound cut through the quiet. It was a small handbell, ringing with a clear, insistent tone
Crow paused, a vial held delicately between his thumb and forefinger. He listened. The bell rang again. He told Dagobert, who was meticulously cleaning the rest of the kitchen, to stay inside and lock the door behind him. He then walked out of the lodge, his boots sinking slightly into the soft, muddy ground.
He saw the clerk from yesterday, Igmar, standing just beyond the dilapidated fence line, a respectable and safe distance away. The man’s posture was stiff, a mixture of duty and apprehension. Crow stopped well short of the border, close enough that they could speak without shouting, but far enough that the space between them felt like a deliberate boundary.
"I would advise you to turn around," Crow said, his words calm but carrying a clear warning.
Igmar flinched but held his ground. "I know you threatened to disappear anyone who gets close," the clerk’s voice was tight with nervous resolve, "but if I don’t return to the judge with answers, disappearing me would only spare me a great deal of trouble."
Crow felt a flicker of respect for the man’s dry, bureaucratic courage, and something resembling humor. He realized his earlier words at the town gate had been too intimidating, colored by his own urgency and grim expectations.
"I did not mean it as a threat," he clarified, his tone softening slightly. "The hunter is sick. I don’t want anyone else to get infected." He deliberately said nothing about the child. "You can tell the judge that this property is now a quarantine zone. Whoever goes in, will not get out until the disease burns itself out. That includes animals as well. No exceptions for friends, family, lovers, or Keepers who might try to save his soul."
Igmar seemed to absorb this, the rigid set of his shoulders relaxing a fraction. "Don’t worry, Master. He has none of those. When it comes to the Keepers, they treat each other with contempt at the best of times."
"Good," Crow said simply.
"This disease…" Igmar continued, his gaze sharp and professional. "Should the magistrate prepare for an outbreak?"
"As long as no one comes here, the town will be safe."
"How long will the quarantine take? Do you need… supplies?"
The offer was practical, and surprisingly thoughtful. "I am fine for now," Crow replied. "If I need something, I will make a list and pin it to the fence post here." He indicated a sturdy pole near where he stood.
"Understood." Igmar nodded, looking as though he was about to head back to town. He took a half-step, then turned back, his expression shifting from professional duty to something closer to simple, human curiosity. "One more thing, Master. How is he? Is he dying?"
Crow met the clerk’s gaze across the muddy ground. There was no point in softening the truth, a gesture that the bureaucrat didn’t need. "Very close to it, yes," he said with a quiet finality.
The look on Igmar’s face was not relief. It was a kind of grim disappointment that Crow had seen a few times before. The look of a man who had lost a long-standing rival in a game of chess. For a moment, the clerk simply stared at the ground, chewing on his lip.
"For whatever it’s worth," he said finally, the words coming out slower this time, "he was good at his job."
Then, with a final, curt nod, Igmar turned and began the long walk back to Thornwick, leaving Crow alone with the battle ahead.

The fire in the hearth had burned down to a bed of orange embers, doing little to ward off the evening chill seeping through the lodge's log walls. Crow knelt by the sickbed, the weariness of the day a heavy cloak on his shoulders. He had just finished the turning of the hunter's inert frame, and now came the part that required more than just physical stamina. He placed a hand on Wolf's chest and closed his eyes, sending a delicate, probing thread of magic back into the ravaged body. He braced himself for the familiar landscape of decay, and for a moment, there was a flicker of hope. The liver he had mended yesterday was holding its form, the discordance in it lessened. The sharp scent of ammonia on the hunter's breath had diminished. Crow’s magic was working. The dam was holding.
But then he extended his senses further, seeking the deep wellspring of vitality that fueled the body's own fight. And the hope turned to ash.
It was weaker than the day before. Fainter. Despite all Crow’s efforts, Wolf’s life was falling away little by little, like sand in an hourglass. The regenerated liver, the clearing of blood, these repairs meant nothing. Without vitality to run the system, he might as well be putting stitches on a corpse. The truth settled cold upon him. He wasn't healing him. He was just making the man die slower.
Crow remained kneeling by the sickbed, his mind gone quiet and sharp. He had reached the limit of his own art. He shook his head faintly. No. Not true. He could, hypothetically, go further. Find vitality elsewhere, a donor of a sort. No animal would provide enough, and the mismatch between human and Onari life force meant he would waste much of it in the transfer. If he tried it, it would be a life for a life.
He had reached the line that the Guild, and his own conscience, had drawn long ago. He will go no further. He will make sure that the man dies without pain, but tomorrow the Immortals will have one servant less. Some would say that was a good thing.
Not for the boy, he thought, looking at Dagobert, who had just come to put more wood on the dying fire.
As the logs started to burn, the great hall of the lodge was steeped in a profound, watchful quiet. With a heavy sigh, Crow rose, his joints protesting. He moved to the medical pack where he’d stowed the small wooden box, a gift from the Grandmaster. He’d set it aside upon arrival, focusing on the immediate crisis. Now, with the slow march of death echoing in the hunter's shallow breaths, it was time to address it.
He lifted the lid. Inside lay two items nestled on dark velvet: the unsettling, eight-sided crystal he had promised himself not to use, and a flat, sealed envelope. The crystal was intended for the hunter if he were found alive; the letter, if he were not. He picked up the envelope, the parchment stiff and cold between his fingers. He broke the seal. The paper inside was crisp, the ink a sharp, severe black with a silver gloss, the letters beautiful and intricate, like everything that Gray Cat produced. It was not a eulogy. There were no words of condolence, no formal commendation of service for a fallen operative. It was simply a list, instructions for the final rite.
Interesting. Crow’s academic curiosity, a reflex honed over decades of study, flickered to life. He began to read, expecting unfamiliar prayers, perhaps instructions for specific herbs or burial alignments. But as he started to read, the curiosity curdled into a cold knot of dread in his stomach.
He studied the first line again, certain he had misunderstood. But the language was precise, clinical, leaving no room for interpretation. The body is to be washed in fresh water and laid upon a bed of stone. The skin of the torso is to be flayed in a single piece...
Crow’s breath hitched. A cold sweat prickled at the back of his neck. His gaze jumped further down the page, his healer’s mind, so intimately familiar with the body, still recoiled from the description of a sheer, methodical desecration. The head is to be severed and burned in a fire until only the skull remains... The flayed skin is to be cured and given to the youngest child in the family, the skull to the oldest.
He dropped the parchment onto the floor as if it had burned his hand. It landed with a soft, obscene rustle. Given to the youngest child. He saw it in his mind's eye: Dagobert, his small frame trembling, being forced to accept the cured, leathery hide of the man who had raised him. He could picture the horror in the boy’s eyes.
This wasn't a funeral. It was a desecration so profane that if any Keeper, any guard, any sane person in Trakar were to witness this, they would not see a cultural ceremony. They would see a necromancer at his darkest work.
Gray Cat couldn't possibly expect him to do this. Even in the isolation of this lodge, even if it wasn't technically a crime, Crow would become his own witness.
His gaze snapped back to the other item in the box. The crystal. Cold, alien, humming with an unknown Onari spell he couldn't read, couldn't trust. Whatever shady ritual was used to create it, the cost had already been paid, the damage was already done. A tool forged by methods he did not approve of.
He remembered the Grandmaster's words, his smooth, empty smile: "It won’t heal him, but it may keep him alive just long enough."
Time. It was meant to buy him time. A thing he had just run out of.
In light of the letter, the crystal no longer seemed like the most dangerous option. It seemed like the only one. The choice was no longer between his principles and letting a man die a peaceful death.It was between a peaceful death, the desecration of a corpse, and defying an order from the Grandmaster.
The crystal was a risk. The letter was a defilement. The last one: a death wish.
He looked from the horrific instructions on the table to the unknown magic in the box, and he finally understood. This was the Grandmaster’s power on display. He hadn't just been given orders; he'd been trapped. This was the Grandmaster’s power on display: not magic, but the move of a politician.
Gray Cat, that cunning, soulless bastard, had left him no choice at all.
Crow’s decision settled not with peace, but with the grim resolve of a man choosing the hangman’s noose over being burned at the stake. He picked up the eight-sided crystal; it felt slightly warm, like something barely alive. Crow knelt again, the floorboards groaning under his weight. With a steady hand he pressed the flat base of the crystal against the center of Wolf’s chest, directly over the heart. He took a deep, steadying breath, gathering the smallest possible thread of his own magic, just enough to act as a key, and pushed it into the crystal.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
A burst of raw, alien magic erupted from the crystal, rushed into him, and invaded his mind. A flash of alien imagery seared across his consciousness: a sky choked with a billion unfamiliar stars, the taste of salt in the air, the echo of a language made of growls and whistles. Words and symbols he couldn't understand were forced upon him, not as knowledge, but as raw, indigestible data.
The crystal wasn't asking for his cooperation; it was hijacking his mind, forcing it to form the shape of the spell within. He felt the structure of it, an alien, brute force solution to the art. His own magic was a continuous, flowing thread, a weaver’s art. This was a pattern of short, jagged, pointy lines, like knife cuts carved into the bark.
A spark of power surged from his own reserves and arced between the jagged lines of the spell-form. It wasn't lightning, but it felt like it, a cascade of activation that leaped from point to point. The pattern blazed into existence for a single, blinding instant.
Then, the spell activated.
The energy stored within the crystal, a vast, potent reservoir, disgorged itself into the hunter’s body. It didn’t seep in gently like a healing balm; it penetrated, flooding the dying man with a force that made his muscles twitch and his back arch slightly off the furs. Crow could feel the vitality pouring into Wolf, a raw, powerful life force perfectly attuned to his Onari physiology. It was a deluge where Crow could only offer a trickle. There was so much of it. Enough to restart a failing heart, to kickstart a dormant immune system, enough to fuel the body to pick up a fight again.
He could feel the source of it, too. A fleeting, horrifying echo of the "cost" Gray Cat had mentioned. This wasn't the gathered, ambient magic of the world. This was the stolen vitality of another living being. More than one person needed. More than one person could give.
The torrent ceased as abruptly as it began. The cuts in the ambient blurred out like smoke, leaving only a subtle stain in the magical field. The crystal, now just a piece of cold, empty mass, deactivated.
Crow slumped back on his heels, a wave of nausea and vertigo washing over him. The magical backlash of hosting such a violent, alien magic left his own senses ringing. He took a ragged breath. The spell's violent nature, the sheer amount of energy it commanded at once, was a testament to the true power of its crafter. If the Gray Cat was the one who made it, then it wasn’t just a tool, but also a show of power. Now Crow felt not only violated, but also vaguely threatened.
He closed his eyes. What was done, was done. He had crossed a line, not of his own making, but he had crossed it nonetheless. He sent a silent hope toward the Divine Council, if they were ever listening, that the result would be worth it.

Hollowed out, Crow returned to the kitchen. The brief, violent magic of the crystal had left an unnerving echo in his senses, but the practicalities of healing could not wait. Now that the fight would continue, he needed to prepare the next round of treatments.
He reached for the thick, leather-bound apothecary's manual he’d left on the table, but it wasn’t there. He paused, a flicker of irritation cutting through his exhaustion. He was meticulous. He did not misplace his tools, at least not when he was well-rested. He ran a hand over the wooden table, then bent to look under it, his back protesting with a sharp twinge. Nothing. It was a minor inconvenience, but in his current state, it felt like a monumental disruption.
With a weary sigh, he walked back into the great hall. The boy was where he’d left him, curled on the fur rug near the hearth, a small, still shape in the dim, flickering light. As Crow approached, he saw that Dagobert wasn't asleep. Propped up on his elbows, with a look of intense concentration, he was staring down at a large, open book. Crow’s book.
"Is it the book from the kitchen?" Crow asked, his tone, rough with fatigue, came out sharper than he’d intended.
Dagobert flinched as if struck, scrambling to sit up, his eyes wide and alarmed. He hugged the heavy manual to his chest like a shield. "Are you mad?" he asked, his voice a panicked whisper.
The boy’s immediate fear took Crow aback, softening the edge of his own frustration. "No, I’m not mad," he said, his voice gentler now. "I was just worried I lost it."
The tension in the boy’s small shoulders visibly eased. A wave of relieved happiness washed over his face. "Oh! It’s here!" he exclaimed, holding the book out with both hands as if presenting a prize.
Crow crossed the space in a few long strides and took the manual. He immediately began to flip through the pages, his professional instincts expecting the worst: torn paper, childish scribbles, sticky fingerprints. But the book was untouched, save for being read.
"What were you doing with it?" Crow asked, his gaze still on the pages.
A moment of hesitation. "...reading," Dagobert said, the word barely audible.
Crow’s hands stilled. He looked up from the book, his gaze skeptical. "You can read?"
"Duh!" The response was indignant, a flash of child’s pride. "Keeper Calia teaches us."
So the Keepers teach commoners to read now? How the times have changed.
"Really?" He kept his tone neutral, a healer testing a patient’s claim. He opened the manual to a random page, a detailed botanical illustration with a block of text beneath it, and pointed. "What do you think it says here?"
Dagobert leaned in, his brow furrowed in concentration. He traced the letters with a small, hesitant finger, sounding them out slowly. "Tu-sher-bo… Ko-mu-na." The ancient words were clumsy on his tongue, but he got them right. "What’s that?"
A flicker of surprise cut through Crow’s weary professionalism. The boy wasn't just guessing. "A medicinal plant. Its leaves help cure a fever."
"Yay!" The boy beamed, a small, genuine smile that briefly lit up the dim hall. His finger darted to another word on the page. "What’s di-u-re-tic?"
"It means it makes you pee a lot," Crow said plainly.
Dagobert let out a snort that turned into a half-suppressed giggle, the kind of pure, silly joy only a child can find in a dirty joke. The boy's eyes, bright with newfound curiosity, were already scanning the page again. "And this one? A-na-lep-ic?"
"Analeptic. It helps you to wake up." Crow gently closed the book and tucked it under his arm. The lesson was over; the crisis was still here. "I’m sorry, but I need this."
"Okay," the boy said, not looking disappointed, just accepting. "Can I have it later?"
"Aren’t books like this too boring for you?"
Dagobert shrugged, the motion simple and profoundly honest. "All books are boring."
The following days were a grueling slog.
On the first, Crow poured his magic into the failing architecture of the man’s body. He mended the liver, bolstered the kidneys. By noon, a violent fever took hold; it was a good sign, as he explained to the frightened boy. Wolf was fighting back. Crow ended the day with the dregs of his power, hollowed out, but the ninety-minute cycle of turning and tending continued.
On the second, the fever raged. The hunter thrashed weakly, lost between coma and sleep.
On the third, it broke. The fever vanished in the afternoon, leaving behind a profound stillness, and a body drenched in sweat, limp, but stable. With the last flicker of his power, Crow offered a final guide to the hunter’s vitality, then felt the well inside him run completely dry. A heavy curtain fell across his arcane senses. From that moment, he was no longer a mage.
The fourth day was grueling, humble work. No longer a master healer, just an old, tired nurse. Turning dead weight. Wiping a fevered brow. Forcing broth between cracked lips. He moved through the motions, a ghost in his own skin, sustained by grim duty. The silence was broken only by the fire and the steady presence of the boy, his small hands helping change a soiled linen, his wide gray eyes watching everything. The patient was getting better as the healer faded away: an equation Crow had accepted a long time ago.

Their own supplies of fresh food had dwindled, leaving them with pickles, hard bread, flour and salted meat. Crow scrawled a short, desperate list and pinned it to the fence post. Hours later, Dagobert returned, his arms laden with life-saving provisions left by the clerk: fresh bread, oats, raw eggs, and a heavy jug of milk. Tucked into the wrapping cloth was a small, folded note. Crow opened it, a flicker of hope warring with his exhaustion. The note was brief, written in Igmar's neat, bureaucratic hand. It read simply: "Sorry, no tea." Crow let out a quiet, humorless breath, a bitter summary of his new reality. He was a master of healing and high magic, esteemed scholar in the Guild of Sorcistor, and he could not get a simple cup of tea.
The previous evening, Crow had set the timing crystal for six hours, a desperate gamble between the patient's state and the attrition grinding down on the healer. When its chime cut through a heavy, dreamless sleep, the effort to sit up was still immense, but the world no longer wobbled before his eyes. Waking up to the pale light of a new day was a decadent luxury at this point.
The familiar ache in his back was present but lessened. More importantly, a small part of his power had returned, not a flame, not even a proper ember, but a discernible warmth. With it, his senses reopened, he could feel the low, ambient magic of the lodge again, and the discordant Onari aura from the main hall.
The routine with the hunter was the same. Wolf was stable but still lost in the deep sleep of a body focused solely on its own internal war. Crow performed the familiar, humbling tasks: turning the skeletal frame, cleaning him, forcing a thin, nutrient-rich broth between his lips. The magic, however, could wait. Wolf was climbing out of the crisis on his own, and Crow would preserve his own, fragile power for a time when no other solution remained.
He found Dagobert by the kitchen hearth. The boy was listlessly stirring a pot of porridge, his shoulders hunched with a new stiffness.
"Good day, Dago." Crow gave him a nod. "How are you feeling?"
"My arms hurt," Dagobert's voice was quiet, almost apologetic. He turned, revealing faint, dark circles under his eyes. "And my back. Sore."
A cold, clinical dread settled in Crow's stomach. It eclipsed the small hope his morning rest had offered. He set his own bowl down. "Come here," he asked the boy, his voice deliberately calm. "Let's see."
His fingers, firm and practiced, ran down Dagobert's arm. The boy winced. Crow didn't need magic to feel the unnatural tension, the deep, unyielding ache of muscle tissue beginning its surrender. The plague had declared itself. The second front had opened.
He stood for a long, quiet moment, the gentle bubbling of the porridge the only sound. Two patients. One, a man clawing his way back from the brink. The other, a child just beginning his descent. The magic he held was a single cup of water meant for two fires. To split it was to fail both. The choice was brutal, but it was not difficult. His duty was to the immediate, active threat.
"You need to rest, Dagobert," he said, his voice gentle but leaving no room for argument. "Take your bedding to the main hall, where Wolf is. It will be warmer there, and I can watch over you both."
Fear and confusion warred in the boy's gray eyes, but he obeyed. Crow watched him go, then followed, the fragile spark of his magic already gathering in his palm. The work on Dagobert was quicker and easier. The boy was small, his human vitality familiar, accepting the magic without resistance. Crow poured everything he had into the small frame, all of his newly recovered power. He focused on the aching muscles, reinforcing the tissue to fight back the tide of dissolution. He bolstered the liver, a preemptive strike against the inevitable toxins. The magic flowed from him in a swift, clean current until the well ran dry, leaving the familiar, hollow silence in his senses.
"You need to drink a lot," Crow said, offering Dagobert an herbal brew to help flush the toxins.
The boy looked at the cup, smelling the unfamiliar herbs. "Diuretic?" he asked.
A faint smile touched the mage's lips. "Actually, yes."
Dagobert giggled, then drank the herbs without protest.
By evening, the boy had developed a fever. Dagobert's skin was hot to the touch, his earlier aches replaced by a restless, fevered energy. He tossed under the furs, muttering things Crow couldn't understand. He sat between the two beds, a silent vigil in the flickering firelight, listening to the labored breathing of two separate battles.
Later, in the dead of night, he rose to check on the boy. He was still, his breathing deep and even. The thrashing had ceased. He was asleep, his small body now fully engaged in the fight. Crow placed a hand on his forehead. The heat was still there, but it was a steady, purposeful burn. It was a good sign. For now.

Next day, another six hours of sleep, enough to recover a semblance of power. Crow pushed himself up, the world holding steady, the profound exhaustion replaced by a familiar, manageable ache.
The routine with the hunter was unchanged. Wolf lay still, his recovery having stalled without the constant push of magical mending. Crow performed the familiar, mundane tasks.
He found Dagobert sitting up on his makeshift bed, watching him with clear, fever-free eyes.
"Good morning," he murmured, still half asleep.
"Good morning." Crow nodded. "How are you today?"
"I'm fine," the boy announced, a little too brightly, as if trying to will it into truth. "Just... a little sore still."
A flicker of cautious hope sparked in Crow's chest, warring with an ingrained skepticism. Healed already? "Is that so?" he said gently.
He placed a hand on the boy's forehead. Cool. He extended his magic, a delicate probe, searching for any lingering texture of the illness.
He found it. Not gone. Coiled.
The active infection had retreated, pulling back from the system like a receding tide. But deep within the muscle, his magic sensed it: tiny, malignant seeds, dormant pockets where the plague was gathering its strength, walling itself off in cysts to germinate, unbothered. He had seen this pattern before in other insidious diseases. It wasn't a wildfire that burned itself out at once; it was a patient, insidious weed.Lying in wait, multiplying, to later burst forth in a synchronized, overwhelming assault.
It brought the chilling realization of how Wolf had ended up in his current state. A seasoned demon hunter with his pain threshold would have dismissed the first wave of aches. The second, he'd have written off as soreness from the job. The third, a simple cold. He wouldn't have known something was truly wrong until the final, catastrophic assault. By that point, it was already too late.
But Dagobert's remission, however temporary, was a window. A precious, limited opportunity.
He turned from the boy, his gaze settling on the still form of the hunter. The fragile spark of his magic, all that had returned to him with sleep, was gathered in his palm as he knelt by Wolf's side. It wasn't enough to heal, not truly, but it was enough to reinforce. For three days, the man's body had fought alone. Now, it would have some help. It had to be enough. For now.

The next two days settled into a grueling rhythm. Wolf's recovery was measured in increments, a steadier heartbeat, a deeper breath. Crow spent his recovered magic mending the man's failing architecture, a slow retreat from the abyss. Thankfully, the plague in Dagobert remained a coiled serpent. The boy was back on his feet, a quiet, purposeful shadow helping with the endless tasks of their shared survival.

On the third morning after the fever broke, Crow stood on the dilapidated porch, watching the treeline. A few days of weak, watery sun had finally won their battle against the clouds, and the ground was beginning to thaw. The mild, wet warmth coaxed a scent of budding spring from the forest floor, a clean promise of new growth that drifted through the still, cold air.
Inside, Dagobert was methodically sweeping the hearth, his small, focused movements a familiar part of their new, quiet rhythm. Crow contemplated the outside a moment longer, then made a decision. The lodge had been a sickroom for too long, its air thick with the ghosts of fever and stale remedies. The man, and the space, needed cleansing.
"Dagobert," he called, his voice echoing slightly in the great hall. "The sun is out. Let’s move him."
The boy looked up, his expression immediately shifting from quiet chore-minding to bright-eyed understanding. He set the broom aside without a word. Together, they retrieved two low-slung hauling sleds from a back storage room, simple wooden frames with worn runners perfectly suited for the task. The work was slow and gentle. Anticipating Crow’s needs, Dagobert had the thickest furs ready, and together they bundled Wolf’s fragile, unresisting weight into a cocoon of hide and wool. It was a silent, coordinated dance, lifting him onto the sled and dragging him from the hall’s oppressive dimness. Out on the veranda, they positioned him where the morning sun fell in a golden patch. Crow knelt and tilted Wolf's face to the light, rewarded a moment later by the faintest reflexive flicker of an eyelid.
"Good," Crow murmured, more to himself than to the boy.
With the patient settled, the second phase of the operation began. They threw open the lodge’s main doors and every window in the great hall, letting the clean, spring-scented air rush in. It was a tangible thing, a cool tide that swept through the stale space, chasing the lingering scent of sickness out into the light. Then came the cleaning. Dagobert stripped the soiled linens from the sickbed while Crow wiped down the floor and nearby surfaces with a cloth soaked in a sharp, antiseptic herbal solution. It was a quiet, determined campaign against the lingering shadow of the plague..
"The weather. Bad," Dagobert said, as he was returning from the woodshed, his arms loaded with freshly split kindling. His voice held a worried tremor.
Crow was outside, checking on the patient. His gaze followed the clear, blue sky. "Why bad, Dagobert?"
The boy finally looked at him, shifting the wood in his arms. "No rain. Wolf says avoid woods when it is dry. The forest goes angry."
The words, simple and childish, landed with an unexpected weight. Crow looked past the boy, his gaze settling on the silent, unmoving wall of skeletal trees that marked the edge of the wildlands. The lodge was a guild outpost for a reason. He, a scholar of high magic and healing, understood the flow of vitality, the architecture of spells, but here the demon hunter was the master, and Crow was the novice. He would defer to that expertise.

That night, the chime of the timing crystal pulled him from a shallow sleep. He rose, the familiar aches settling into his bones as he made his way to the great hall. He tended to Wolf, a routine that had become second nature by now. But as he stood, listening to the hunter’s steady breathing, he felt it.
It was less of a sound, more a change in the silence. A faint, high ringing at the very edge of his magical senses. He tilted his head, concentrating, pushing past his own fatigue. The ambient magic of the forest, usually a still, placid pool, had begun to move. It wasn’t a storm, not a surge, but a slow, wide, inexorable flow, like a lazy river beginning its long journey to the sea. The current was flowing past the lodge, towards the town, and to the wider world beyond.
He stood frozen in the center of the dark, fire-lit hall, his senses stretched taut. There, far away, deeper in the wildlands than any sane person would travel, he felt the source.
The void was bleeding into the world.

In the morning, the chime was a familiar, unwelcome summon. Crow rose in the pre-dawn dark, the knowledge of the rift a cold stone in his gut. But he pushed the thought aside. The duty came first.
The routine was the same, a grim liturgy of care. Wolf’s breathing was deeper, the rasp gone, a good sign. Crow took his own meagerly recovered magic and poured it into the hunter’s kidneys, reinforcing them against the lingering toxins. The work was slow, precise, and it left him almost hollowed again. Almost. Out of caution Crow decided to conserve the last spark, just enough to remain sensitive to magic. The open rift, while a temporary phenomenon, was still a potential danger. ...or opportunity?
Used wisely, it was a wild spring of raw magic. A place where the veil between worlds was pierced and the power bled through, chaotic and pure. He could go there. He could stand at its edge and drink from that torrent, replenishing his own reserves in a single, glorious rush. It would be such a relief, to feel the full weight of his power again, to not be this tired, frail old man rationing out sparks of magic like a castaway.
But those waves of power often carried other things with them. Alien things. Things with their own kind of magic. Things that the demon hunter was hired to kill.

"You leaving?"
Crow paused, his hand halfway into a small sack he was packing with a waterskin, bread, and a medical kit. He looked up to see the boy standing in the kitchen doorway, his expression clouded with a worry that, over the last few days, had become achingly familiar.
"Only for a few hours," Crow said, the promise as much for himself as for the child. "I will be back before sundown." The rift was still out there, a silent thrum at the edge of his senses, and he'd decided on a careful approach.
"Bad day to travel," Dagobert warned him again.
"I know. I will be careful." He saw the fear and disappointment in the boy's eyes and sighed. "In the forest, there is something I need for your..." he began, then paused, the simple words catching in his throat. What was Wolf to this child? Guardian? Father? Master? The titles felt clumsy, inadequate. "...to help heal Wolf," he finished instead.
The boy’s expression shifted to understanding, or at least acceptance. He nodded once, then turned and ran toward the back rooms of the lodge.
Crow returned to his task, lacing up the small pack. It wasn't a complete lie, but it felt like one. There was a chance he could heal them both without an additional source of magic, but that chance was slim. What if he ran out of power at the critical moment? What if he failed them both because he was a coward, afraid to seize the power offered by the rift? He would never forgive himself.
As quickly as he’d vanished, Dagobert reappeared. He marched forward, his face set with fierce determination, and held out a short wooden sword. A toy, or a practice weapon. Or both.
"I’m coming!" the boy proclaimed proudly.
Crow straightened up in shock. "You can’t!" he protested. He would not allow a child to become a liability. Demons or no demons, the forest itself was dangerous enough.
"I can!" Dagobert insisted. "I help! For Wolf!" His courage didn't falter, and Crow couldn't blame him. The boy's caregiver was dying, and a stranger had just announced he was going for a cure. A simple "no" wouldn't work. Why would a child listen in a moment like this?
"Dagobert, this is important. I need you to stay." He said carefully, hoping the boy would take him seriously. "Wolf is sleeping now, but the fever might return. I need someone here to watch him." It was - again - not a complete lie. "You know what to do?"
Understanding dawned on Dagobert’s face. He gave a single, solemn nod, his own mission now clear. "Linen in fresh water, from the well," he recited. "Put on the head."
A flicker of pride cut through Crow’s exhaustion. The boy had been watching. Learning. "Yes," he said with a softer voice. "Wolf needs you. Until I return."
Dagobert's chest puffed out, the weight of the mission settling on his small shoulders not as a burden, but as a mantle of profound importance. His gaze was now firm, focused. He held out the wooden sword.
"Take it," he insisted. "For protection."
Crow couldn't help but smile. He nodded, accepting the toy. It wouldn't help him, but if it made the boy worry less, he would gladly ease that burden.
He raised the sword to tuck it behind his belt, only now noticing something. There were carvings on one side of the blade. The mage looked closer. Runes. Not the modern script designed by the Guild, but the old system, used by the Ancients during the demonic invasion. It was clunky and antiquated magic, now practiced only by the Keepers. Then he realized: this was a copy of the wards from the temple’s entrance, albeit with an insignificant typo, of the wards from the temple’s entrance, something Dagobert must have seen hundreds of times by now.
"To fight demons!" the boy explained, noticing Crow's surprise. He had probably carved them in play, pretending to be a demon hunter like Wolf.
The mage chuckled. Even if properly activated, the runes were an annoyance to demons at best. They couldn't protect him. He looked again. But they could give him a warning.
"I see." Crow nodded and brought the toy to the alchemical set on the table. "Let’s make them a little stronger," he said, watching a credulous smile rise on Dagobert’s face.
Stronger was an overstatement; the symbols did nothing by themselves. He picked up a small ceramic dish and tipped a measure of powdered silver into it. From a pouch, he added a pinch of dried resin, then mixed in a few drops of clear spirits from a vial. The scent of sharp alcohol filled the air as he worked the mixture with the flat end of a metal stylus, grinding the silver and resin together until it formed a thick, glistening grey paste, perfect for filling in the carvings.
"For runes to work," he explained while applying a thin layer to the blade, "they need to conduct magic much better than the material they are carved into, so the magic will flow through them."
The boy watched the work with fascination. "Like water? In a valley?"
"Exactly." Crow nodded, admiring the analogy. "In this case, it’s silver. The Keepers use it too." He wiped away the excess, leaving the paste only in the carvings. It was a simple, makeshift solution, but it should work for a day or two.
"Can I make more of it?" Dagobert asked in awe.
Crow nodded. "Anyone can, if they know how."
"The Keepers don’t teach this!" the boy complained, watching as the mage stood up, now ready for his journey with the new magical tool.
"Well, it is much more complicated than letters. And you need to get very good at normal reading first."
"I can!" the boy promised. "I will!"
Crow finished securing the sword to his belt and looked down at the boy's earnest, upturned face. A rare, genuine smile touched his lips. "I have no doubt that you will, with time," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "For now, remember what I told you. Wolf needs you."
"Yes!" Dagobert agreed and followed Crow to the door. "Have luck!" he said, then watched until the mage disappeared among the trees.

Chapter Text

The forest’s beauty was a ruse, and Crow felt it in his bones. The sun washed the woods in a honeyed light that should have been calming, but to him, it felt like a gilded cage. It muted the details, softened the edges, and laid long, deceptive shadows across the uneven ground that could easily trip a man not accustomed to pathless terrain. He pushed aside a low-hanging, budding branch, its sticky resin clinging to his sleeve, an unwelcome intimacy with a world he didn't fully trust.
The cheerful warble of a robin was a jarring distraction, a frivolous melody against the low, steady hum he tracked with his magical senses. Across his path, a small stream became just another obstacle to navigate, its coppery, sunlit surface hiding a slick, mossy bottom. He was a scholar of the arcane, a man of quiet and ordered rooms; here, he was an unwelcome guest, feeling his way through a place that operated by rules he had forgotten a long time ago.
Beneath it all: the sun, the birdsong, the budding spring, the void was bleeding magic, and every step he took through this deceptive peace was a step closer to its source. As he followed the magical flow upstream, the current gradually grew faster and stronger, what was once a ringing on the edge of his senses turned into a sound of a distant waterfall.
The path, if it could be called that, began to slope upward, just a long, gentle rise. A mere ripple in the landscape that for a younger man, it would have been a trivial climb. For Crow, it became a slow battle against his own failing stamina. Reaching the crest, he stopped, leaning against the trunk of a gnarled oak, his chest heaving.
What a sorry sight he should have been: a Master Mage, capable of reshaping vitality itself, yet a simple hill had left him winded and weak. The irony was not lost on him. As his breathing steadied, he looked out from his new vantage point, and the presence of the rift was stronger here.
He stretched out his hand, spreading his fingers into the flow. The magic here was not a placid pool but a rushing force. With a simple thought, he could seize a portion of it, twisting it into a single, cohesive string. But the thread held for less than a heartbeat before the relentless current tore it from his grasp, instantly shredding the delicate form. Any attempt to shape this power was like trying to build a sandcastle in a gale.
Crow looked down to the other side of the hill. There, near a fallen trunk, he could perceive what was, to his arcane senses, a single point of light. It was so intense, so blindingly bright, that if he were to look at it with his physical eyes, he would go blind in an instant.
Unfortunately, he was not the first to arrive.
There was... something, floating on the arcane current. It was a pattern of pure magic, threads woven upon threads to form not a single, fragile knot, but an entire fabric of countless dimensions, of which Crow could only perceive three. In a very technical sense, it was a spell, yet it was a thousand times more complex than anything ever created by the Guild or the Ancients themselves. It could only have come from the void, and it was—most likely—a demon. Not the horned abominations or corrupted spirits the Keepers preached about in their fearful sermons. Those were childish caricatures. The truth, as any true scholar of the arcane knew, was far more alien and indifferent.
There, on the other side of reality, only magic existed. It wove itself into impossible patterns, some stable, some moving, some even alive. It formed complex structures and unknowable ecosystems, filled with entities that had nothing to do with human understanding.
Some of them, still, were closer to what the Keepers warned about; beings that knew, by instinct or experience, how to interact with the physical world. They could cast their own spells, hide within living minds, control thoughts, and use living bodies (or fresh corpses) as temporary vessels, animal and human alike.
Crow stood observing, trying to understand the living pattern. It seemed positioned against the magical current, like a fish swimming tirelessly upstream just to remain in one place. He could see its internal structure shifting, propelled by the movement of magic like thousands of tiny, intricate waterwheels. It was feeding to do... what? Sustain itself? Grow? Gather power?
He had no way to know.
The demon seemed to be ignoring him so far, if it was even capable of perceiving his presence. He wondered how it would react if he got closer. If it could react at all. Was it a predator, waiting for him to step into range, or was his fear completely unfounded? Was he just staring at the alien equivalent of moss?
He took a cautious step forward, but the runes on the wooden blade reacted instantly, emitting a wave of unpleasant, discordant magic. He froze, then stepped back, unwilling to provoke the demon into action. Carefully, he returned to the crest of the hill and slowly sat down, his gaze still fixed on the alien creature. He drew the boy’s sword and laid it on the ground, on a direct path between himself and the entity.
Then, against his better judgment, he opened himself to the flow.
It was an impossibly deep roar of a waterfall that filled everything, and bleeded into other senses. His body, the forest, the cold earth beneath him, all of it got absorbed into a perfect white noise. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing of the trees or the sky. Within this infinite hum, he felt his own spirit, a small, quiet vessel, and the magic of the rift, a vast, steady ocean, pouring in to fill him. It wasn't fast or slow. It simply was. Time, like sight and touch, became an irrelevant concept, a forgotten sense from a world that no longer existed.
But a part of him, the old, disciplined core of the master, knew that a vessel can be overfilled. With a will forged over decades of intense focus, he fought to reclaim himself. It was an almost impossible act, like trying to lift a heavy box while still trapped inside it. He had to remember the feel of the cold earth, the scent of pine, the weight of his own tired bones. He pulled, not with magic, but with a stubborn, desperate memory of self, and of duties still in front of him. With a final, wrenching effort, he tore free.
The world crashed back in a dizzying rush of sensation. The roar of the rift receded to a deafening hum, and his vision snapped back into focus.
The first thing he saw was the demon.
It had drifted from its post, drawn in by his presence. Its silent, complex patterns now writhed barely an arm's length away.
Too close.
Crow’s hand, acting on pure instinct, shot out and slapped the flat of the wooden sword before him. He pushed a desperate, ragged thread of his newly acquired power into the runes. They shrieked. It was not a sound in the air, but a violent, discordant scream directly in his mind, a magical grating of nails on slate that made him recoil in agony. The simple ward, overcharged and unstable, flared with a sickly, white light. Along the blade, the silver-filled carvings hissed, and a thin curl of black smoke sizzled from the sap binding the paste. The wood around the runes darkened, scorched from within as the magic burned too hot for its simple vessel.
The demon recoiled as well. The complex fabric of its being seemed to unravel at the edges, repulsed by the ward's chaotic, dissonant cry. It shuddered, then flowed away with the startling speed of a spooked fish, a blur of dissipating light against the trees.
It did not return to the rift. Instead, it shot deeper into the forest, a ribbon of alien magic now cut loose from its anchor, a creature trapped on this side of reality.
Crow knelt, panting, a psychic echo of the ward's shriek still grating against his arcane senses. The immediate threat had vanished, but as he stared into the silent woods, a chilling certainty took its place. He hadn't banished the demon; he had merely set it loose. In that single, desperate act, he may have made everything worse.
He took a deep breath, and a cold pragmatism cut through the rising panic. The only recourse was to retrieve the sword and return to the lodge. He could only cling to the slim hope that the creature might calm down and find its way back to the void before the rift sealed itself for good.

He returned to the lodge, feeling ten years younger. His body already converted some of the magic into his own vitality, while his mind, sizzling with energy, temporarily forgot about the lack of sleep. But it was a deceptive relief, loan more than a gain. He knew he would pay for it later.
He pushed open the heavy lodge door, the scent of woodsmoke and old furs welcomed him at the threshold. Dagobert was where he’d left him, a small, still figure sitting on the rug by the hearth, keeping his solemn vigil over the sleeping hunter. The boy’s head snapped up at the sound of the door, his gray eyes widening.
For a heartbeat, the boy just stared. Then, relief, pure and overwhelming, broke across his small features. Before Crow could even close the door behind him, Dagobert scrambled to his feet and ran, with the desperate, single-minded purpose of someone reaching for a lifeline.
He didn’t stop until he collided with Crow’s legs, his arms locking around them in a fierce, clinging grip. He buried his face in the rough, damp fabric of the mage’s trousers, his small body wracked with a tremor that had nothing to do with the cold.
Crow froze, every muscle tensing in a jolt of pure shock. His mind went completely blank in confusion. A small, sobbing child was attached to him. That has not happened before. During his career, Master Crow has saved many lives, but he never received that kind of pure gratitude. Especially not for just showing up. And he had no idea what to do.
Unsure he raised a hand, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then settled for a series of cautious, rhythmic pats on the boy’s head. The motion was stiff, experimental.
"There, now," he murmured, the words feeling alien and clumsy in his own mouth. He tried again. "It is alright."
He kept patting, a slow, mechanical rhythm, hoping the gesture would be sufficient, that the child would calm down and simply… detach.
It seemed to work, though not the way he intended. The boy’s trembling subsided, the desperate sobs softening into ragged, hiccupping breaths. Slowly, he loosened his grip and leaned back, looking up at Crow with a tear-streaked face, his gray eyes huge and impossibly earnest.
"Fu 'khen," Dagobert whispered.
The words, thick with tears, were foreign, but not unfamiliar. The guild was hiring Onari long enough for Crow to hear now and then casual greetings and fragments of conversations. He could not speak a word, but he finally recognized the pattern. The boy wasn’t partially mute, or slow. He was bilingual.
Language barrier or not, the message was clear enough.
"I’m back. I’m fine." Crow looked down with a soft smile. "Let me see how Wolf is doing."
The hunter’s state had not changed in the few hours of his absence, but Crow’s had. Now, with a strength taken from the void, he could do more. He knelt beside the ravaged body, his magic once again sinking past skin and bone. He started with the familiar battleground of the liver and kidneys, bolstering their failing structures. But with power to spare, he turned his focus to the core architecture. He reinforced the heart muscle, a preemptive strike against its potential failure. He traced the fine intercostal muscles of the ribcage, easing the labor of each shallow breath. Finally, he addressed the very pillar of the man’s frame, weaving strength back into the deep muscles that held the spine, ensuring the hunter's powerful body would not collapse in on itself. The difference was profound relief. Before, he had only been patching the holes in a sinking ship; now, he could finally begin to mend the hull.

Later, Crow was sitting in the kitchen, trying to decide on the next move. The temporary mending of the hunter was done, but mending was not enough. He needed to take the fight to the plague itself. Otherwise any muscle he will regrow would just become food for the disease.
He unrolled his apothecary's manual on the well-worn table, the same spot where he’d found Dagobert reading just the night before. His mind, now clear and energized, began to strategize. He laid out a clean cloth and began arranging vials and reagents, his thoughts turning to tinctures, infusions, and alchemical purges. The boy was cooking, moving with a quiet competence that Crow was beginning to recognize as his natural state. The simple, rhythmic chop of winter roots against a wooden board provided a steady backdrop to his own silent planning.
"Dagobert," he began, his voice calm, still tracing a diagram in the book with his finger. "How well do you speak Onari?"
The chopping stopped. Dagobert’s small hand stilled on the handle of the knife. He didn’t look up from the cutting board, his shoulders tensing. He shook his head in a small, stubborn motion.
"I do not," he said, his Trakari clipped and careful, as if concentrating on each word.
Crow paused, surprised by the immediate denial. He had expected confusion, perhaps, or even pride. Not this. "Are you sure?" he pressed, keeping his voice soft.
Dagobert nodded, still looking down at the pile of diced roots. "No Onari. I'm sure."
The denial was so absolute, so flat, it felt less like a lie and more like a law he was reciting. Crow’s brow furrowed. This wasn't simple childish stubbornness. This was fear.
"Why not?" he asked.
Dagobert finally looked up, his gray eyes huge and serious, holding a weight of some painful experience.
"People get angry when I do."
The words were simple, stated as an undeniable fact of the world. Crow could imagine the cascade: the boy spoke a language no one understood; others reacted with suspicion and frustration; so he learned to stop. He made mistakes while using Trakari, and they made fun of him for it; so he learned to stay quiet.
It was a harsh and wrong lesson, a needless difficulty for the bilingual child. Many, uneducated people saw language, their language, as a gift from gods. They had no idea it was a skill, one that children had to acquire.
A profound, aching frustration settled in Crow’s chest. The boy’s primary tool for communication had been rendered useless by the circumstance, forcing him to operate at a fraction of his true capacity. Infuriating. Of all the world's squandered resources, none was more tragic than potential wasted.
"You can speak Onari around me," Crow said, his voice a low, firm promise. "I will not understand you, but I won’t get angry. This is your home, after all."
By evening the initial rush from his sudden acquisition of power started to recede. The sizzling clarity in his mind faded, leaving behind the dull, familiar ache of profound exhaustion he'd been holding at bay. Though the magic itself remained, a reservoir in him stopped swirling and settled into a dormant pool, leaving him with the bill for the day's efforts. Every muscle protested the memory of the walk through the woods. His mind was sluggish from diving into the rushing river of raw power. And beneath it all lay the bone-deep weariness from days of relentless ninety-minute sleep cycles.
When White Crow finally made his way to his small room and sank onto the hard mattress, he didn’t fall asleep. He crashed. The world simply ceased to exist, pulling him under into a deep, dreamless dark he hadn't touched in what felt like a lifetime.

The first thing Crow registered was the light. Not the pale, pre-dawn grey he had grown accustomed to, but a golden, late morning sun slanting through the bedroom window. For a disoriented moment, he didn't understand. Then, a cold, sickening jolt shot through him. He hadn't just rested. He had slept. Deeply. For hours.
He threw himself out of bed, his own body protesting the sudden movement, his mind already racing, calculating the missed cycles. Twelve hours? More? The ninety-minute rhythm of turning and tending, the fragile dam he'd built against the plague's tide, had been abandoned. What damage had his own weakness allowed to fester? He rushed into the great hall, his eyes immediately seeking the still form on the furs by the hearth, bracing himself for the worst.
He knelt, his hands moving with urgent and practiced speed. He felt the tell-tale heat of new fever or the dampness of labored breathing. The hunter's condition was unchanged, stable, but no better. Crow’s fingers traced the sharp line of a hip bone, pressing gently into the thin flesh. He found what he feared: the beginning of a pressure sore, a reddened patch of skin where the body’s weight had ground against the bone for too long. A healer’s failure. A novice’s mistake. Crow cursed himself inwardly at his own lapse, and got to work. It was damage that he mended quickly, but one that never should have occurred. Not under his watch.
Then a small figure of Dagobert caught his attention. The boy was moving from the pantry to the kitchen table, his steps slow, unnaturally deliberate. Every motion: lifting a small sack of oats, reaching for a bowl, was followed by a slight wince, a subtle tightening of his shoulders. It was the careful, guarded posture of someone trying to move without disturbing an injury. A body at war with itself.
"...morning." the boy said, his voice quiet and strained.
Crow rose, his own guilt overshadowed by a fresh wave of clinical concern. He watched the boy for another moment, the stiffness in his arms, the careful way he set a pot down on the hearth. "Dagobert," he said, his voice deliberately calm. "How are you feeling today?"
The boy looked up, and for a second, he tried to force a bright, dismissive smile. It faltered instantly. "It hurts," he admitted, his voice barely a whisper. "When I move."
"Then you should lay down and not move," Crow said, his voice leaving no room for argument. He turned from the boy, and brought back a stack of clean furs and linens. He began preparing a second bed on the floor, a space for Dagobert near the hearth. Two patients again. "You are spending this day in bed."
While the boy obeyed, moving with the same pained stiffness, Crow’s mind was already sifting through possibilities. He knelt beside the furs, waiting for Dagobert to settle before placing a hand on his arm. He closed his eyes, extending his senses.
He felt the boy's life force, a familiar, luminous web, and woven within it, the insidious, spreading shadow of the plague. But the shadow was just that, an absence. The microbes had no vitality of their own for his magic to grip, no arcane signature to unravel. They were a purely physical blight, as beyond his healing touch as the stone of the walls or the water in the well. He could mend the damage they caused, stitch the web of vitality back together where it frayed, but he could not target the weavers of that destruction. To fight a physical enemy, he needed a physical weapon.
Crow withdrew his hand, and moved to his medical kit, selecting a small, dark vial and a clean cup. He measured four drops into the cup, then added water, swirling the mixture. The liquid turned a murky, unappetizing green.
Just as the line between healing and necromancy was thin, so too was the one between medicine and poison. What he prepared was technically a poison, but one that the boy should withstand, one that Crow could easily manage.
He brought it to Dagobert. "Drink this," he instructed.
The boy took the cup, sniffed it cautiously, took a small sip and recoiled in immediate disgust. "It tastes terrible," he stated, his voice a grim pronouncement.
"That's good," Crow replied with an encouraging smile. "Let's hope that for the plague, it tastes even worse."
The boy, trusting but clearly dreading it, pinched his nose and drank the concoction down in a few quick, shuddering swallows. He handed the empty cup back and set it aside. Now, there was nothing to do but wait.

Crow worked at the massive dining table, the rhythmic scrape of a stone pestle against the mortar the only sound in the great hall. He was grinding dried feverfew into a fine, pale green powder, his movements methodical, his mind focused on the next alchemical step. He glanced at his own notes, a neat column of his remaining reagents. He was running low on silver salts and willow bark. He glanced at his notes, at the neat column of his remaining reagents. He was running low on silver salts and willow bark. Could he even trust the clerk to find the right ones? A question for later. He returned to his grinding.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Dagobert. The boy was trying, Crow had to give him that. He lay still under the furs for a while, then sat up, then lay back down. He fidgeted with the edge of a blanket, his fingers tracing patterns that weren't there. The boredom was a palpable force, radiating from the small, restless figure.
"...Crow?" The voice was quiet, hesitant.
"Yes, Dagobert?" Crow didn’t look up from his work.
"Are you… older than elder Egon?"
Crow paused, the pestle stilling in his hand. He had no idea who Elder Egon was, if he was even a real person and not part of some story. "I don’t know. How old is he?"
Dagobert was quiet for a moment, clearly trying to estimate something he had no data for. "…Old," he concluded, his tone full of profound certainty.
A dry chuckle escaped Crow. "Then yes," he said, resuming his grinding. "I am old as well." Considering the harsh life of peasants and commoners on this border, Crow was probably the oldest person in the vicinity.
The silence that followed was brief, a temporary peace before the next sortie. Dagobert shifted under the furs, the rustle of the bedding a prelude.
"How do you do magic?"
The question was so vast, so fundamental, it brought Crow’s work to a complete halt. He set the pestle down carefully, baffled by the sheer scope of it. He looked over at the boy, who was now propped up on his elbows, watching him with an expression of pure, unfiltered curiosity. "What do you mean by that?" he asked, trying to find a foothold. "How do I cast spells, or how do spells themselves work?"
Dagobert seemed to consider the distinction, then gave a small, careful nod. "…Yes?"
Crow let out a quiet sigh. How could he possibly begin to explain a field he had studied for decades to a ten-year-old child? He sought the simplest possible truth. "Magic is an energy that can become other things. Spells control what it becomes, and how."
The boy’s eyes lit up, his mind immediately leaping to the most obvious applications. "Like gold?"
"Technically, yes," Crow admitted. "But it is far cheaper to dig for gold than it would be to make it."
"Food?"
Again, he had to dispel the mystique. "It is much easier to cook it."
Dagobert’s face fell, his shoulders slumping with disappointment. "…Oh."
Crow felt a flicker of sympathy for the sudden loss of wonder. "Everything you can do without magic, you should," he said gently. "Magic is for the things you cannot do otherwise."
This time, the silence was shorter. He could practically see the next question forming on the child's face.
"Are you corrupted?"
Crow’s hands stilled over the powdered herbs. It was so direct, that it felt like a physical blow. He didn’t need to ask where the boy got this idea from. "Is that what the Keepers say?" he asked, his voice carefully neutral.
A small nod from the bed. "…Yes."
"No, Dagobert," Crow said, meeting the boy’s wide, searching gaze. "I am not corrupted."
A slow, brilliant smile spread across the boy's face. A simple, profound relief. "…Good." He said, and without waiting, asked another question. "Are you a bird?"
Crow actually chuckled at that one. Right. His name. "Is Swift Wolf a wolf?" he countered.
The child gave it a serious thought. "…No." He finally concluded. "But are you human?"
"Yes."
"Oh..." The answer, somehow, surprised him. "Wolf is not." He clarified.
"I know," Crow said softly.
"Why is he not human?"
Crow went still, surprised by the directness. He searched for a simple answer, but there was none. Was it the ancient bloodlines, the pacts with Immortals, or the very nature of gods and souls? He didn’t understand the topic well enough himself to even begin to explain it to a child. He looked at Dagobert’s expectant face and offered the only honest answer he had.
"…I don’t really know." He admitted.

The boy's questions tapered off into a weary silence, and soon after, his breathing deepened into the shallow, restless sleep of the sick. Crow returned to his work at the table, the rhythmic grinding of the pestle a familiar, grounding anchor. He had his own questions, about this child's past, about the hunter's true role in this land, how much Grandmaster Cat knew about any of this, but they were luxuries. The only question that mattered now was whether his gamble would pay off.
He didn't have to wait long for the answer. Two hours later, a choked, guttural sound from the sickbed snapped his attention from his work. Dagobert woke with a violent lurch, scrambling to his knees on the furs and vomiting onto the floorboards. Crow was there in an instant, a basin already in hand, his movements swift and practiced. He steadied the boy's trembling shoulders, murmuring quiet, meaningless reassurances as another wave of sickness wracked the small frame.
He had expected this. He had planned for it. He placed a hand on the boy's back, extending his magic to see the effects of his tactics. He traced the path of the poison through the system, the damage was minimal, and vomiting was a standard, healthy reaction. Good. The boy's body was strong.
The rest of the afternoon became a grim cycle. Dagobert would drift in a feverish doze, only to be wrenched awake by another bout of sickness. Between episodes, Crow was a steady, quiet presence, wiping the boy's face with a cool cloth, offering sips of a carefully prepared rehydration solution that was often rejected as soon as it was swallowed. The child was mostly quiet, too exhausted and miserable to speak.
All the while, the ninety-minute rhythm for the hunter continued, a silent, demanding clock in the back of Crow's mind. The timing crystal would chime, and he would leave the apothecary work or the retching child, to turn the dead weight of the man, to check his breathing, to administer his own slow, steady drip of fluids, before returning to a previous task. The two fronts of his war demanded a relentless juggling of two separate battles.
As evening bled into the great hall, casting long, somber shadows, the vomiting finally ceased, leaving Dagobert limp and hollowed out on the furs. The time was right. Crow retrieved another vial, this one containing a dark, herbal tincture designed to soothe the ravaged stomach and help the kidneys flush what remained of the poison. He helped the boy sit up and drink the new remedy, which was accepted this time with a weary resignation.
He waited another hour, letting the tincture work, before kneeling beside the sleeping child once more. He closed his eyes, extending his arcane senses into the now-familiar landscape of Dagobert's vitality. The active phase of the plague had vanished. He searched deeper, into the muscle tissue, and found them: the dormant cysts.The malignant seeds were there, but fewer in number. And with luck, some of them would die before hatching. Best outcome he had in days. The enemy was not defeated, but the poison proved itself to be an effective weapon.
Now the course was clear; he will keep reinforcing the hunter's body until it is strong enough to withstand the treatment. For the first time since he came to this lodge, Crow felt the grounding presence of a cohesive plan.

The lodge settled into a new rhythm. The ninety-minute chimes of the crystal still punctuated Crow's waking hours, a grim metronome for his duties, though he now allowed himself two four-hour blocks of sleep each night. The frantic edge of the crisis had receded, replaced by the steady, grinding work of slow recovery. Wolf remained a silent presence, but his breathing was deeper now, a less ragged sound against the quiet beating of the hearth. His skin held its own warmth, and Crow's magic could sense the damaged liver beginning to stubbornly reclaim its function. And Dagobert, with the incredible, almost infuriating resilience of the young, was back on his feet.
He returned to his chores with a quiet determination, but his physical recovery had unlocked a new, relentless energy: a constant barrage of questions. They came at all hours, sparked by a word in a book, a dried herb on the table, or the faint silver shimmer of magic from Crow's hands. They were a child's questions; vast, unfiltered, and veering from the silly to the surprisingly insightful.
For Crow, it became a new kind of challenge. He found himself dissecting decades of accumulated knowledge, searching for the simplest possible analogy to offer in response. He had debated Grandmasters in Sorcistor and dissected ancient treatises, but explaining the fundamental rules of reality to a ten-year-old using a pot of soup and two spoons was an intellectual exercise of a completely different order. He had never expected to find a worthy opponent in a child's unwavering "Why?". It was a surprise, he had to admit, and a pleasant one. The sheer honesty of it made Crow realize just how weary he had grown of the unspoken suggestions and quiet challenges that defined his interactions with other masters.

The crystal's chime sliced through the heavy dark, pulling Crow from a sleep that felt more like a shallow grave. He pushed himself up, and made his way to the great hall. The fire had burned to embers, casting a faint, dying glow on the still form by the hearth.
He knelt, his movements automatic, and began the familiar, arduous task of turning the hunter's dead weight. He slid one arm under the skeletal shoulders, the other beneath the sharp hip bones, preparing to shift the unresisting frame.
Unexpectedly, a low, guttural moan, dredged up from the unconscious man.
Crow froze, his hands still in place, every sense snapping to full alert. The silence of the lodge rushed back in. He listened. Had he imagined it? He shifted Wolf's weight again, a deliberate, gentle pressure. Another sound. This one softer, a mere exhalation of breath, but undeniably a response. Interesting.
Crow placed a hand on Wolf's chest, sending a delicate probe. Good, the dreaded storm of seizures wasn’t coming. It was not an early warning, just a reaction to stimulus.
After days of treating a body that was little more than a failing ship, this was the first signal from the captain. The moan wasn't a sign of consciousness, not yet, but it was proof of something far more important - the brain was working.
Crow responded to the change with a tired smile. He had cleared the battlefield, and now, the patient's own war could truly begin. He did not go back to his bed. He moved to the kitchen, his mind already calculating, preparing. The fever would be next.
It started two hours later, just as he'd anticipated. A subtle shift at first: a faint warmth radiating from the hunter's skin, isolated shivers flickering beneath the surface. Within the hour, the heat spiked, climbing with a frightening speed from a mild warmth to a dry, burning heat.
Days before Crow had allowed the fever to run its course, to be the body’s own blunt, brutal weapon. But this was different. He knew the nature of this enemy now. If a simple fever could have defeated this plague, Wolf would have burned it out long ago, and Crow would never have been summoned. In the man’s current state, fever was not a weapon but a pointless waste of energy, a wildfire consuming the last of a forest's precious resources.
Crow worked with calm. From a small jar, he took a thick, white paste—a strong extract of willow bark he prepared earlier—and with a gentle touch, carefully applied a small amount to the inside of the hunter's nostrils, where it would get absorbed quickly into the bloodstream. He soaked clean linen cloths in cold water, and laid them across Wolf’s forehead, the back of his neck, and in his armpits, targeting the major arteries to cool the blood as it flowed.
Slowly, over the next hour, the fever's violent ascent was halted, then gradually brought under control, settling into a manageable, less destructive heat. The immediate crisis had been averted.
With the patient stabilized for the moment, Crow allowed himself a concession to his own profound fatigue. He retreated to his hard bed, setting the timing crystal not for ninety minutes, but for thirty. It was a meager reprieve, a series of shallow dives into a restless sleep, but it was better than nothing. He should never have come here by himself, he should have brought an assistant to share the heavy burden of care. But that was a selfish thought. He could not knowingly expose anyone to the plague. What if he cannot cure it? No, this was his fight alone.

Early in the morning, the unexpected happened. The hunter's eyelids fluttered, then opened. Crow leaned in instantly, searching for a sign of recognition. He found none. The golden irises were fixed, aimed at the ceiling but focused on nothing. When Crow moved into Wolf's line of sight, the gaze didn't follow. The pupils remained wide, sluggish. The eyes were functional, but the consciousness that directs them was absent. It was not the focused look of a lucid person, but the vacant stare of a lost mind.
A soft shuffling sound pulled Crow from his grim assessment. Dagobert was awake, sitting up on his furs. He saw the open eyes, and his face lightened up with an unadulterated hope.
"Shorg?" he whispered, scrambling from his bed and rushing to the hunter's side. He knelt, his small hands hovering just above Wolf's still form, afraid to touch something so fragile. A torrent of alien, Onari words spilled from him; a mixture of greeting, relief, and urgent questions. He waited, his entire being focused on the man's face, waiting for any kind of response.
It never came. The golden eyes stared past him, fixed on the timbered ceiling beyond. The flow of Onari faltered, then stopped. Dagobert's hopeful expression slowly crumbled, replaced by a dawning, horrified confusion. He leaned closer, peering into the vacant gaze.
"Crow...?" he whispered, turning a tear-streaked, panicked face to the mage. "His eyes, are wrong. Did he... did he lost his soul?"
The question, so rooted in a world of spirit and belief, gave Crow a familiar, weary headache. He had no answer for such things. The existence of a soul, its nature, its connection to the body, humans and Onari; these were matters for keepers with nothing better to do. A topic way beyond the scope of arcane knowledge.
He moved to kneel on the other side of the sickbed, placing a steadying hand on Dagobert's trembling shoulder.
"There is no illness that can do that," he said, trying to sound reassuring against the boy's rising panic. He chose his words with care, avoiding the unanswerable. "Wolf’s eyes are open, but he is not fully awake yet. It will happen slowly."
The boy calmed down. "Will he?" It sounded like a plea, not a question.
Crow nodded. "Most likely, yes. But he will be very weak, too weak to speak at first. He needs food, rest, and time to get well."
"Oh... ok." Dagobert responded, and with his hope now adjusted, he ran toward the kitchen to make a simple breakfast for all three of them.

Crow was tending to the hunter, the slow, methodical work having already consumed the morning, and he barely registered when the midday sun had broken through the southern window. He had just finished administering another rehydrating enema and was now preparing the man's nourishment. With a practiced, gentle hand, he guided the feeding tube through Wolf's nostril, down his throat, and into his stomach. He attached a small bladder filled with a warm bone broth to the end of the tube and began a slow, careful drip. It was the only way to feed someone too unconscious to swallow. Enemas, while ensuring hydration, were a poor method for feeding.
Then, a flicker. For a brief moment, Wolf’s eyes, so far fixed on the ceiling, seemed to sharpen and focus. The vacant stare was replaced by a glimmer of something more present before it clouded over again. Crow paused mid work. He had seen this before at the Infirmary: the first return of a mind climbing its way back from the abyss. Good sign, but not a breakthrough.
Later, during the routine turning of Wolf's frame, Crow noticed it again. Not in the eyes this time, but in the subtle, involuntary tensing of a muscle in the man’s back, a faint grimace that tightened the skin around his mouth for just an instant. The man's brain, no longer drowning in toxins, was rediscovering the rest of the body. Along with the pain.
A familiar, weary debate replayed in Crow’s mind. Some healers believed that pain is just a natural part of healing, or worse - a trial to be endured. But Crow had lived through rebellion. He has seen the pain. So much of it. It did not hone people; it broke them or made them cruel. And this man, even if not human, had suffered enough.
He moved to the small satchel where he kept his more esoteric notes, pulling out a slim binder. Illusions were not his specialty, but a few variations were essential to a healer’s craft. He found the diagram he was looking for: a spell designed not to numb but to separate the sensation from the suffering. The spell would not silence the pain, as it still provides a crucial insight, but would turn it into a neutral voice, stripped of its overwhelming power.
This magic required no great outpouring of power, but an intense focus and jeweler's precision. Illusion, for all its horrific potential, was a subtle craft. Crow sat on the floor beside Wolf, closed his eyes, and began. He gathered the threads of ambient magic, weaving them layer upon delicate layer, building an intricate structure of pure magic, so filigree that it could never exist as a physical object.
When the final thread was in place, he activated the spell but did not sever the connection. The shimmering, invisible construct now hovered near Wolf, tethered to the hunter’s mind, influencing his perception. Crow made a quick, tired calculation based on the local ambient field. It would hold for perhaps five hours before he would need to reinforce it. But for now, it was enough. He hoped it would grant the man some peace.
As evening settled, casting the hall in deep, warm shadows, the change was apparent. Wolf's eyes, when they opened, were no longer just focused, but mobile. They followed the slow dance of the firelight on the ceiling. They tracked the movement of a moth fluttering near a lantern.
Dagobert, overjoyed, pulled a stool to the hunter's side. "Shorg?" he whispered, his voice filled with a hopeful tremor.
The hunter's gaze slowly, deliberately, shifted to the boy. There was no recognition, not yet, but there was attention. For Dagobert, it was a miracle. A torrent of happy, one-sided conversation spilled from him, a seemingly chaotic mix of words and gestures. Crow listened from across the room, understanding none of the Onari, only that boy did not hesitate while speaking it. But profound relief in the boy’s tone was perfectly clear.

Every time Crow approached the stables, he felt the same familiar mix of professional regret and quiet helplessness. It had been a fine building once, the proud sweep of its roofline and the sturdy set of its stone foundations speaking of a time when Count Daren’s prize mounts were housed here in comfort. Now, it was a sorry sight. The roof sagged in the middle, a patchwork of missing and broken slates that let the grey sky peer through. Damp had crept into the main beams, leaving dark, spreading stains, and the air inside was thick with the scent of wet rot and old hay.
Crow had purchased the rovas in Wynford, a grimly practical decision made the moment he understood the nature of his mission. He couldn't rent animals he knew would be condemned to a long quarantine or death from the plague, and now they were his responsibility. He and Dago had fashioned a makeshift tent of tarp under the worst of the leaks in the stalls, a flimsy, inadequate patch against the encroaching decay. It was the best they could do. He lacked the strength and the skill for carpentry, and hiring a local to mend the roof was out of the question. So the stable remained a ruin, and Crow, a Master of the Guild, could do nothing but watch it slowly falling apart.
"I have food!" Dagobert announced to the birds after checking the empty feed trough. He grabbed a wooden bucket, his small frame straining with the effort, and began scooping a mix of oats and dried fish from a large sack. The rovas approached, their huge, intelligent eyes watching the boy with a calm, placid interest.
The rovas dipped their heads to the feed trough, the soft clatter of their massive beaks against the wood a rhythmic, contented sound. Crow turned, heading back into the stable's damp gloom to fetch a bale of fresh straw. He was halfway back to the stalls when a small, determined grunt made him pause. He looked up.
Dagobert, seizing the moment of distraction, was attempting to scale the larger brown rova. It was a futile effort. The bird’s feathers were slick, offering no purchase, and the boy’s small hands kept slipping. The rova, for its part, seemed not to notice, or perhaps not to care. It continued its meal, placidly ignoring the small, scrambling weight on its flank as if it were nothing more than a persistent fly.
A rare, genuine smile showed up on Crow’s face. It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated childhood ambition, a welcome sight after days full of grim duty. He watched one final, sliding failure before he spoke.
"Dago, what are you doing?"
The boy let go, landing with a soft thump in the dirt. He glared at the bird’s indifferent backside. "I want a ride!" He demanded.
Crow leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. "And how is that going?"
Dagobert looked back at the bird, his expression a perfect storm of frustration and a child’s grudge. "...Badly."
Crow nodded. "You will fall and hurt yourself. Let them finish eating."
An hour later, they stood outside in the damp, open grounds behind the lodge with a brown rova, while the gray one was observing them with placid curiosity. Crow stood back, patient instructor, as Dagobert wrestled with the heavy, specialized saddle. The boy grunted with effort, heaving the leather and wood frame onto the brown rova’s back, his small arms trembling with the strain. Crow offered only verbal guidance, correcting the angle, pointing out a twisted strap, reminding him which buckle went where. Finally, with a last, determined pull, Dagobert cinched the final strap.
Crow stepped in, his experienced hands running over the harness, checking the tension, ensuring it was secure but not chafing.
"Good," he said with a nod.
The rova, recognizing the familiar weight and feel of the saddle, lowered itself into a crouch with a soft groan of avian body. Dagobert scrambled up, his heart thumping with a mix of terror and triumph, and settled himself in the seat.
"Ready?" Crow asked.
Dagobert gave a wobbly thumbs-up. On command, the rova rose, a two-stage lurch of immense power. The back end came up first, tilting the saddle at a steep angle, and Dagobert, completely unprepared, slid right off, landing in a surprised heap on the soft grass. Outside was a wise choice. The ground was softer than the stable floor.
The gray rova let out a low cluck that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
"Try again," Crow encouraged the boy, though a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
The second time, Dagobert was ready. He leaned forward, gripping the pommel tightly, and managed to stay seated as the powerful creature rose to its full, towering height.
Crow took the reins, leading the bird in a slow, careful circle around the overgrown grounds.
"It’s like a swing!" Dagobert called out, his initial terror giving way to exhilaration as he adapted to the gentle, rocking-chair rhythm. But after a few more circles, his triumphant grin began to fade, replaced by a pale, queasy look. "I feel funny."
"Look at the horizon, not at the ground," Crow advised calmly. Motion sickness was a common thing for a novice rider.
Meanwhile, the gray rova, bored of watching, caught a flicker of movement near the stone wall. Its head snapped to attention, and with a predator’s focus, it bolted in pursuit of a rat.
Perhaps it was the other bird’s sudden dash, or perhaps it was just a surge of overconfidence, but Dagobert did the unthinkable. He leaned forward and, without warning, kicked his heels into the rova’s side, shouting the command he must have overheard somewhere.
"Kur-kur!"
The reaction was instantaneous. The placid walk exploded into a forward surge of power that yanked the reins from Crow’s hand. His heart leaped into his throat. The rova sprinted across the field, its massive strides eating up the ground, heading straight for the sunken line of the ha-ha. At the last possible second, it planted its powerful legs and executed a sharp, banking turn to avoid the ditch.
The turn was for the rova, not for the rider.
Dagobert sailed from the saddle in a clean, graceless arc, landing with a spectacular, full-body splat in the muddy bottom of the ditch.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the rova clucking to a halt and the soft sigh of the wind. Crow’s heart seized, a cold knot of panic that propelled him forward in a desperate run. He saw the boy push himself up, dazed and indignant, but that meant nothing. He’d seen men with shattered ribs and internal bleeding get to their feet, only to collapse moments later.
He reached the edge of the ditch in a few long strides, his healer’s eyes already performing a rapid, clinical assessment.
"Dagobert, don't move," he commanded, his voice sharp with an authority that cut through the boy's surprised indignation. He slid down the muddy bank, his own boots sinking into the wet earth.
He knelt, his hands immediately going to work with practiced, impersonal efficiency. He ran his fingers gently but firmly along the boy's neck and spine, checking for any unnatural alignment, examined ribcage, limbs, gaze sharp and focused, searching for any flicker of pain in the boy's eyes that went beyond simple humiliation.
Only after the swift, thorough examination revealed nothing more than bruises and a spectacular coating of mud, the cold knot of fear in Crow’s gut finally loosened. Dagobert wasn't hurt. He was just comprehensively and spectacularly muddy. The sight was so absurd, the contrast between the boy’s soaring ambition and his earthy landing so perfect, that the man allowed himself a genuine chuckle.
"Enough for one try?" He asked, not realizing he was smiling. The boy was fine, the sun was warm on his back, the air smelled of spring, and he wasn't currently managing a crisis. Just watching a ridiculous, resilient child be a child.
Simple joy. Crow had completely forgotten what it felt like.
Dagobert, still looking a little green from the motion sickness, spat out a mouthful of muddy water. "Yeah," he mumbled.
Crow offered a hand. "Go get yourself cleaned."

The great hall was quiet, steeped in the familiar rhythm of slow healing. Crow had just finished changing the soiled linens under Wolf's inert frame, a necessary work, a stark contrast to the arcane power he'd wielded days before. He was washing his hands when the main door creaked open.
Dagobert returned from his trip to the fence post, his arms laden with a fresh bundle of supplies. There, tucked into the wrapping cloth was a flat, green envelope. The boy, seeing Crow was occupied, took the provisions to the kitchen, and brought the letter over, handing it to him with a quiet reverence.
Crow dried his hands, his gaze fixed on the parcel. He saw the familiar, sharp green of the Guild's official stationery, the unbroken wax seal of the Infirmary. A familiar knot of weary dread tightened in his gut. What now? New orders? A demand for a full report on a mission he hadn't even finished? Bad news from the Council?
He broke the seal with his thumb, the wax cracking with a soft snap. He unfolded the crisp parchment, his eyes scanning the neat, familiar script of his deputy, Silver Willow.
The letter, sent five days after his departure, was not a request for help. It was a professional report and, Crow recognized with a flicker of grim amusement, a political necessity. The first paragraphs were a masterclass in covering one's own ass, a detailed accounting of command decisions made in his absence, a clear paper trail designed to protect Willow from any potential blame should a crisis erupt. A wise move.
The next section shifted to strategy, a concise summary of the political currents now flowing through the Infirmary's halls, a warning of which factions were making moves, which budgets were under review. It was a courtesy, a vital stream of information to keep him from walking back into a political ambush.
He skimmed the updates on long-term patients. Old Man Tomar's ulcers were holding steady with the new regimen, a testament to Willow's skill. He felt a quiet pang of professional pride in his subordinate's competence. Then, a key passage leaped from the page:
"…Grandmaster Sebasta paid us a visit to make sure everything works without you, Master. She left demanding no changes, so I think we are doing a good job."
A profound wave of relief washed over Crow. In the back of his mind he carried a constant worry for the institution and the people he had left behind. But the Infirmary was holding, they were managing. Grand Healer’s approval, even a tacit one, was a significant political victory.
He read to the end, his eyes lingering on the final lines, written in a slightly less formal hand.
"P.S. We don't know what you're dealing with out there, but we all know it can't be simple. The Infirmary will stand until you return. I know you don't hold with prayers, so I will simply wish you good luck."
Crow folded the letter slowly, the crisp parchment a tangible link to a world of order, competence, and quiet loyalty that felt a lifetime away from this dusty lodge. He looked from the letter to the still form of the hunter, then to the boy who was now carefully putting away the new supplies. Silver Willow had wished him good luck. He was going to need it.

The chime of the crystal was a familiar, unwelcome drill sergeant, hauling Crow from the depths of a four-hour sleep. He moved through the dark lodge, the only light a small oil lamp he carried, its flame casting long, dancing shadows. In the great hall, the fire had burned down to a deep, pulsing bed of embers.
He threw some firewood on the embers, and set the lamp down on the floor beside the sickbed, the low angle of the light illuminating the hunter's still form. The routine was second nature now. He knelt, preparing to check the man's breathing and begin the slow, careful process of turning him.
As he leaned in, the hunter's eyelids fluttered, then opened.
And two points of soft, golden light stared back at him from the darkness of Wolf's face.
Crow recoiled, a sharp gasp catching in his throat, his heart lurching with a sudden, primal shock. It wasn't the vacant stare of the past few days. This was a focused, animalistic gaze, the lamp's flame captured and reflected from the depths of the man's eyes with an unnerving intensity. For a single, terrifying beat, his mind, clouded with sleep, registered not a patient, but a predator.
He had met Onari before, examined them, treated their wounds. None had shown this. But then, all those encounters had been in the sterile daylight of the Infirmary. He had the rumors about their predatory traits, but dismissed them as such.
The initial shock gave way to a surge of professional curiosity. He leaned back in, moving his own head slightly. The golden points of light tracked his movement perfectly. This wasn't just a passive reflection. The eyes were seeing. This was a sign of returning consciousness, but also... something more. The hormonal cycle, he realized. Whatever complex system governed this trait, it was beginning to function again. It was a sign not just of recovery, but of a deep, systemic healing.
And the man was watching, seeing, really seeing Crow for the first time, too weak to do anything else than to stare. How clear were his thoughts? Was he analyzing him, or perceiving only as a threat?
He turned a knob on his lamp, dimming the bright flame, softening the harsh glare to accommodate the hunter.
"My name is White Crow." The mage felt like he should say something, even if the man cannot understand him right now. "I am here to help."