Isabella Solder
The house wouldn't stop shaking.
It wasn't violent — not yet — but constant, like the world outside had begun to breathe. Every few seconds, the walls creaked, the windows rattled, and dust floated from the ceiling beams. It was as if the entire layer exhaled with the Red Moon.
I sat by the fireplace even though there was no fire, just a pile of dead embers that refused to burn. Marissa sat across from me, her hands wrapped around a teacup that had long gone cold. She didn't speak, didn't fidget. Just stared at the floor as if she could hear something I couldn't.
The silence between us wasn't comforting. It was the kind that pressed against your ears, too heavy to ignore.
Then came the first scream.
It carried from somewhere far down the street — faint at first, then cut short by a sharp, wet sound. I froze, eyes darting to the window. Marissa didn't move. She only said, softly, "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't look."
I hesitated. The curiosity burned stronger than the fear. I crawled to the curtain and pulled it open an inch.
Outside, Evervale didn't look like the same town.
The Red Moon drenched everything in a bloody haze. The cobblestones gleamed like they were wet, the rooftops seemed sharper, and the air shimmered faintly with red dust that drifted like snow. Shapes moved in the fog — people running, shadows sprinting after them, flashes of light from hunter weapons cutting through the darkness.
It was chaos wrapped in silence. Every sound — every scream, every crash — felt swallowed by the fog.
"What's happening out there?" I whispered.
Marissa's voice was calm, but thin. "The Hunt."
She said it like a prayer, or maybe a curse.
"Is it always like this?"
"It's quieter this time," she said. "You should've seen the Death Hunt. Two months of this. Streets piled high with corpses. Red rain. The kind that burns your skin."
I turned toward her, eyes wide. "You've lived through that?"
She gave a small nod. "Most people in Evervale have. Those who didn't… you'll find their bones powering your lamps."
The words made me shiver. I'd seen how the bones of beasts were used for energy here, but the idea that people could meet the same fate — that was new.
"Dagian—" I started.
Marissa cut me off. "He'll be fine… he always is."
Her certainty didn't sound convincing.
I turned back toward the window, peeking again. The streets were mostly empty now, littered with debris and overturned carts. In the distance, a flare shot into the sky — blue light bursting before fading into the red mist.
I remembered Dagian explaining those once. Blue meant rescue.
Someone had found a civilian.
As I watched, another flare went up, this one red. It didn't fade. It lingered, bleeding into the sky like a wound.
"What's the red one mean?" I asked.
Marissa's face tightened. "That the Ravorns are moving."
She stood abruptly, setting her cup down, and crossed to the door, checking the lock twice before sliding a metal bolt into place. "Don't open this for anyone. Not even if you think it's a hunter."
Her words sounded strange. "What do you mean?"
She hesitated, staring at the door. "You'll see why if you listen long enough."
Then she went quiet again, only the faint hum of the moon filling the silence.
I didn't want to "listen long enough." I wanted to believe Dagian would walk through the door and tell us it was over. I wanted this to feel like a nightmare, not reality.
But the Red Moon didn't care what I wanted.
Minutes crawled by — or maybe hours. I couldn't tell anymore. The glow from the window shifted faintly as the fog thickened. Every sound outside became sharper. The crunch of gravel. The scrape of claws. Once, I thought I heard someone laughing, but it ended too abruptly to be real.
Marissa had stopped sitting. She stood near the window now, watching the streets through the narrow cracks in the curtains, lips moving silently — a prayer, maybe.
I couldn't stay still. I got up and joined her.
From here, I could see better — and what I saw didn't feel like anything human.
Something crawled on all fours across the street, its limbs too long, its body shivering like smoke. A hunter sprinted past it, but before he could turn, the creature lunged and pulled him down. I bit my lip to stop the sound from leaving my throat.
Marissa's hand gripped my shoulder. "Don't pity them," she said quietly. "Pity's what gets you killed here."
I nodded, forcing myself to look away.
Then — knock, knock, knock.
Three soft taps at the door.
Marissa stiffened instantly. The sound shouldn't have been possible; no one would knock during a Hunt.
A pause. Then a voice.
"It's me. Open up."
The words made my chest loosen for a second. Dagian.
He must've come to check on us, I thought. He came back.
"Dagian!" I moved toward the door, but Marissa's hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.
"Don't."
"But it's him—"
Her tone sharpened. "He wouldn't come back this early."
The voice came again, gentler this time. "Please, Isabella. It's cold out here."
My throat went dry. "Marissa… it sounds just like him."
"That's because it's supposed to."
Her voice cracked at the end, and that scared me more than the knocking.
Outside, the footsteps shifted — slow, dragging movements across the porch. I could see a shadow pass by the window, tall and familiar.
"Dagian?" I whispered again.
The figure stopped. Turned.
Through the curtain's thin slit, I caught a glimpse of him — or what looked like him. His hair, his coat, the faint glint of Vireth across his back.
Then he smiled.
It wasn't the tired, half-smirk I'd seen before. It was wide. Too wide.
"It's me," the voice said again, calm and steady. "Let me in."
Marissa moved fast. She yanked me away from the window and pushed me toward the corner of the room. Her face had gone completely pale.
"That's not Dagian," she whispered.
The air grew colder.
The voice came again, but this time, it sounded wrong. The words were slower, uneven — like whoever spoke them was still learning how to use their mouth.
"Please… let me in… I'm hurt."
Marissa grabbed a small carving knife from the table and held it close, though her hands shook too much for it to matter.
Then — the whisper.
Closer.
"I can see you."
It came from the window now, directly beside us.
I turned just enough to see his face — pressed against the glass, pale and still, the eyes nothing but empty white orbs. I gasped, stumbling backward, but Marissa covered my mouth with her hand.
"Don't move," she mouthed.
The thing outside tilted its head, the motion jerky, almost curious. Then it began circling the house. The floorboards creaked beneath its slow steps, the sound shifting from one wall to the next.
"Dagian…" it called again, this time mimicking my own voice.
Hearing my voice made my skin crawl.
Marissa's breathing was ragged now. She let go of me just long enough to form a shape with her fingers — the same sign I'd seen her use before. Her lips moved in silent prayer.
The thing outside stopped moving.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then, with no warning —
THUD.
The door jumped in its frame.
I flinched.
Another hit — THUD! — harder, shaking the floor. Dust rained down from the rafters.
Marissa pulled me close to the wall, whispering fast under her breath, forming the sign again and again.
Between the strikes, the voice returned — louder now, distorted.
"Please… let me in. It's me…"
THUD.
The hinges cracked.
"Marissa," I choked out. "It's going to break—"
"Don't speak."
THUD.
The door flew from the doorframe.
The voice changed — deeper, hollow. Like two people speaking at once.
"I'm right here," it said. "I'm home."
Dagian
My boots hammered against wet stone, each step splashing up cold gutter water that bit into my ankles. The air tasted like metal and mold — typical Duskfall. The kind of air that clings to your teeth if you breathe too hard. I kept my breathing steady. Controlled. Too much noise, and you lose the rhythm. Lose the rhythm, and you die.
I didn't look back.
That's rule one when something faster than you wants your spine. The instinct to glance over your shoulder is poison. It slows you. Distracts you. Makes you think you need visual confirmation of death closing in, when every sound already tells you enough.
And the Ravorn wasn't subtle.
The thing's pursuit echoed through the cramped alleyway — claws skittering on brick, bone scraping mortar. It wasn't running on the ground. Ravorns rarely do.
The walls give them more angles, more leverage, more ways to collapse the distance without warning.
Every second step hit the stone with a wet, meaty thud, like its limbs weren't meant to support anything at all. Like gravity was a suggestion it hadn't fully accepted.
It vaulted between the walls with unnatural rhythm: thud—scrape—thud—scrape, the sound snapping across the alley behind me in a jagged zigzag pattern. Twice on my right, once on my left, back to my right, each impact getting a hair closer.
Left turn ahead. Three strides out.
I clocked the details automatically — the broken lantern hanging by a single chain, flickering like it was drowning in its own flame. The puddle beneath it spread thin and shallow across slick stone. The alley narrowed by half a foot right before the corner. I filed all of it away without slowing.
My boots struck once, twice—
I dropped my weight to my hips and carved into the turn, shoulder grazing the wall as I slid around it. A clean angle. No wasted motion.
Behind me, the Ravorn hit the corner wrong.
A screech of claws. A heavy impact. Wet stone cracking under force. A warped, guttural rasp that didn't sound like a normal creature trying to catch itself. Its momentum carried it past the turn, and for one heartbeat, it lost the rhythm of its crawl.
Good. One second gained.
I didn't kid myself. One second wasn't safety. It was a breath. A heartbeat. Enough to not die during the next ten steps.
The alley stretched ahead in a long, uneven corridor of broken shutters, piled crates soaked through with rain, and washed-out chalk sigils half-collapsed into pale smears along the walls. The ceiling of the city closed in overhead — wooden bridges, pipes, laundry lines sagging like vines. This part of Duskfall always felt like running through a throat.
I knew every inch of it.
You don't hunt in Duskfall without memorizing the layout faster than the back of your own hand. The city will kill you if the monsters don't.
I kept my stride long but not reckless. Running full-speed early is how Hunters get caught. You burn out your legs, lose your footing, or hit a blind corner too fast to adjust. Ravorns push you to do that. They want you desperate. Sloppy.
Not tonight.
I paced myself, counting the rhythm of my steps. I could still hear the Ravorn behind me, reorienting, crawling up the wall before dropping into motion again. Its claws dug into the stone with aggressive, impatient cracks. Not a steady pursuit now — those bursts of speed meant something inside it was changing.
Of course it was.
It fed minutes ago. I saw the remains.
A low, vibrating snarl reverberated down the alley like a warning pulse. My skin prickled. The Ravorn had tasted fresh human, which meant the energy inside its corpse of a body was starting to mix with the stolen vitality it inhaled. It always made them more frantic, more unstable, more—
Fast.
I pushed harder.
The alley forked ahead — two branching paths, one narrow and dark, the other slightly wider with faint lamplight bleeding through. I went right. The wider lane.
Longer stretch. Better sight lines. That gave me space to react and, more importantly, forced the Ravorn to come at me without cover.
My boots slapped through a flooded trough, water exploding outward. I tightened my arms at my sides, keeping my frame narrow. Anything dangling, anything loose, anything that caught the corner of a crate could ruin everything.
The Ravorn shrieked behind me — a high, splintered cry that sliced through the wet air like it had been dragged through rusted metal on its way out of its throat. The pitch wasn't human, but the quiver beneath it was… almost familiar. Echoes of the victim it had consumed. Ravorns always mimic pieces of the last voice they hear when they feed. A dying imprint.
Some Hunters find that unnerving.
I just find it useful.
It told me exactly how long ago it fed. How much its stolen power had settled. How close it was to its next mutation spike.
Not great.
Not terrible.
Predictable.
The alley bent again, curving left around a cluster of leaning buildings that threatened to fall into each other. Planks hung like snapped ribs over the walkway. I dodged under them, slowing only half a step as I ducked through a narrow gap that most people wouldn't notice unless they lived here.
Behind me, the Ravorn didn't slow.
It barreled into the hanging planks, splintering them in a single swipe, the crash sending shards rattling across the stone. Fast recovery. Too fast. It was adapting its movement. Learning my pace.
All right. It wanted to press? Let it.
The sound of its claws shifted, turning sharper, quicker—less scrape, more precision. It was choosing surfaces now, not lunging at random. That meant its limbs were getting stronger. Energy settling. Muscles tightening. It had hit its early boost.
Which meant I was running from something about to get twice as fast.
I exhaled evenly and eased into the next stretch. Long alley. One lantern lit, one not. Dead sewer grate on the right. Small stairwell drop on the left. No civilians. Good.
My mind built the map as I ran, stitching each piece into a plan.
Two turns until the plaza.
Plaza means space.
Space means the Ravorn loses its wall-crawling advantage.
Open ground means I control the angles.
Control the angles, and I end the hunt on my terms.
The Ravorn screeched again, closing the gap.
Its shadow flickered in the corner of my eye — long, spined, too many joints bending the wrong direction as it crawled along the wall like a spider with human bones jammed inside it. I kept my gaze forward. Watching it wouldn't save me. Planning would.
I adjusted my stride, rolling my foot on the last step before the next turn so I could explode into a sharper angle. My shoulder brushed the wall again as I pivoted, keeping everything tight.
Behind me, the Ravorn hit the turn perfectly this time.
Fast learner.
Its claws slammed into the stone only a split-second after I rounded the corner. I heard the wet slap of its limbs, the scraping inhale it sucked through teeth that weren't meant to close fully.
It was close now—too close for comfort, not close enough to strike. Perfect pressure zone. That meant it wouldn't hesitate. It'd overcommit soon. Ravorns always lunge too early when they think they've "read" a pattern.
I angled my body like I was about to boost in a sprint, letting my steps quicken just slightly. Not enough to tire me. Enough to bait.
The Ravorn's weight shifted — I could hear it in the subtle change of rhythm, the way its limbs scraped more aggressively on the right side of the wall.
Good.
Take it.
Come on.
My heart stayed steady. My breath stayed smooth. Even with the creature so close I could feel the vibration of its steps through the stone, my mind stayed quiet.
The alleys finally widened, the suffocating walls peeling away as I stepped into the open stretch of the plaza. The shift was instant. Space. Room to breathe. The air didn't bounce off brick and choke itself anymore.
It spread out, thin and cold, brushing across my face like a reminder that I'd made it somewhere the Ravorn couldn't turn into a nest of angles.
My footsteps slowed across the stone, each one echoing in the emptiness. The lanterns on the far end flickered like dying eyes, barely awake. The puddles here were shallow, reflecting silhouettes of leaning buildings that watched silently from the boundary of the square.
This was where I wanted the fight to end.
I let my breathing settle. Not all the way—just enough to keep my hands steady. My fingers tightened around Vireth's hilt, and I slid it free with a familiar rasp of metal against sheath. The sound never failed to anchor me.
Behind me, the Ravorn screeched.
It came bounding out of the alley like it had been flung from a cannon—limbs thrashing, joints snapping back into place mid-air, jaw unhinged wider than it had any right to go. Four limbs stretched toward me, claws curved inward like hooks prepared to drag me into its chest and tear me apart before it swallowed what was left.
I didn't move.
Didn't flinch. Didn't think.
My body already knew the motion.
I drew the blade across my body, angled upward, breath steady as steel.
"Be split."
The words were quiet. The light wasn't.
A diagonal slash of gold tore out of Vireth's edge and carved through the Ravorn mid-flight. No resistance. No weight. It was like cutting fog. The beam split the creature in a clean, brutal line, slicing it from hip to shoulder in a single flash.
The Ravorn's body hit the ground in two separate pieces. One rolled twice before skidding to a stop near the cracked fountain. The other slapped against the stone like dead meat thrown onto a butcher's block.
Silence rushed in.
I kept my stance, blade raised, waiting for a twitch or a breath or anything that hinted at a second act. Ravorns sometimes spasmed after death—stolen human energy burning itself out in their limbs.
But there was nothing.
Just the gentle splash of water dripping from the fountain's broken mouth and the fading hum of the golden arc dissipating into the night.
After three slow breaths, I lowered the blade.
"That's done," I muttered, voice raspier than I expected. I slid Vireth back into its sheath. The faint warmth lingering on my palm told me the strike had been clean, efficient. "One less problem crawling around the district."
I stepped past the corpse, boots splashing lightly in blackened runoff. The smell of burnt tissue and wet stone mixed into something metallic and sharp.
"Alright," I exhaled, rubbing the back of my neck. "Time to get back. They're probably already setting up a sweep. Last thing we need is another Ravorn slipping past—"
The ground behind me throbbed.
Not shook.
Throbbed.
Like a heartbeat under the stone.
I stopped mid-step. My fingers hovered instinctively near Vireth's hilt even before I turned.
Then the world behind me exploded.
A pillar of energy shot upward from the shattered remains—violent, bright, tearing into the sky in a long, streaking column. Blue at first, then white, then a deep, ugly red that bled across the clouds. The air shook hard enough to rattle my teeth. The plaza lit up in colors that belonged nowhere near Duskfall.
I turned slowly.
The Ravorn's two halves weren't halves anymore.
They were convulsing, pulling toward each other like magnets locked on instinct. Flesh rippled, bones twisted back into shape, and the diagonal gash I'd carved into it sealed itself shut with a wet, squelching fold. The creature grew taller than before, its frame thickening as its spine cracked into a new alignment.
Then it stood.
Its arms—longer now, more structured, frighteningly human—lowered toward the ground as the energy crackled across its skin. In its hands, something took shape. Two curved sai, metal forming from raw light, forging itself in its grip with the same glow Vireth carried when awakened.
That stopped me cold.
Ravorns didn't do that.
They didn't summon weapons.
They didn't mimic awakened armaments.
Unless—
The blue light around the sai pulsed violently, flickering to violet, then bleeding into a deep, blood-red glow. The creature lifted the blades slowly, like testing new limbs it had stolen.
My chest tightened.
Hunters learn a lot about Ravorns during training.
Their mutations.
Their feeding sequences.
The burst of strength after consuming a human. How they adapt, grow, twist their bodies to suit the hunt.
But there's something they never tell us.
Something instructors skip.
Something older Hunters don't bring up unless they have no other choice.
The Ravorn's body convulsed again, its shoulders broadening as the red glow deepened into something dense enough to make the air feel thick.
Vireth hummed at my side, reacting on instinct.
I wrapped my fingers around the hilt.
My voice came out low. "You had to eat one huh?"
The Ravorn snapped its head toward me, eyes bright with a focus Ravorns should never have. It twirled its twin sai like a trained fighter. Not a beast. Not a monster.
A mirror.
Hunters are told Ravorns can grow stronger after feeding on humans.
But if a Ravorn ever eats a Hunter…
It doesn't just grow stronger.
It steals their eidolon.