The greenish glow filtering through the thick branches had guided them like a bad omen. The air, already heavy, was now laden with a pressure almost physical, a dull throbbing that resonated in their chests and hammered against their temples. It was the aura Zirel had sensed before—multiplied. It did not emanate from a single point, but from the whole hamlet, as if the very earth itself had been poisoned.

They had crawled to a ridge overlooking a natural clearing turned nightmare. This was no village, but a sordid makeshift camp, a lattice of low huts built from dried mud, bones, and twisted branches. Campfires crackled, casting grotesque, dancing shadows across a chaotic, teeming crowd. Goblins, lizard-men, kobolds, and other shapes harder to identify mingled in noisy disorder, bickering over scraps of meat or shoving each other for a place near the flames. The coexistence was tense, snarling, yet real. They were not killing each other. They obeyed a higher law: fear.

And at the center of this chaos, raised like an offering or a warning, stood two poles.

Zirel held his breath, his fingers clenched against the rough bark of the tree shielding him. This was not what he had expected. Not at all.

Bound to those poles, bare-chested, smeared with mud and streaks that might have been blood or sweat, were two men. Their heads sagged against their chests, but one of them stirred, weakly shrugging his shoulders as if to chase away an insect or to seek a less painful position. A weary, exasperated movement that spoke volumes about the time spent confined this way.

Renn and Kael. Two of the scouts who had gone missing.

The shock instantly turned into cold calculation in Zirel's mind. The joy of finding them alive flared briefly, only to be smothered at once by icy suspicion. Why here? Why alive, when all signs pointed to slaughter? A trap. It stank of a trap. Too blatant, too grotesque a lure.

But where were the others? Where were the bodies? Pilaf's soldiers did not take prisoners—certainly not to display them in some monstrous zoo. His gaze swept the clearing, searching feverishly for uniforms, standardized weapons, any trace of military order. Nothing. Only the wild, chaotic menagerie.

And that aura. That crushing, vile presence, seeping from the very trees. It was the glue holding this assembly together, curbing the natural savagery of the beasts and redirecting it toward… what? Toward them? Toward something else?

If he gave the order to descend—if they crossed the edge of the clearing—their energy, the anima concentrated in their gems and their very lifeforce, would shine like torches in the dark. That entity, whatever it was, would sense them instantly. They would be overwhelmed, not by a pack, but by a flood.

The risk was too great. The mission came first. The mission was to understand, not to play the hero.

With a sharp gesture of his hand, he signaled his men to retreat. They slipped back in silence, shadows among shadows, moving away from the ridge until the pressure in their chests eased and the mental buzzing dwindled to a distant echo. They regrouped in a dry ravine, hidden from prying eyes.

Zirel turned to them. The scant light revealed tense faces, marked by fatigue and unease. They had seen the same thing he had.

"Renn and Kael," one of them breathed, pale-faced. "By the gods, they're… alive."

"Yes," Zirel cut in, his voice a low, sharp hiss. "And that may very well be the problem."

He let the words hang heavy in the silence.

"Why them? Why only them? Where are the others? It's bait. Too obvious."

"But… they're our own, chief," the soldier with the wounded arm protested weakly. "We can't just—"

"We can, and we will," Zirel interrupted, his gaze piercing the darkness to lock eyes with each of them in turn. "Look around you. That's not a garrison of Pilaf. That's a menagerie. And something is holding it together. Something powerful. If we set foot in there, it will sense us. And we'll die. Them too."

He paused, letting the weight of reality crush them.

"They're alive. That's crucial. They may know what happened to the others. They may have seen what rules that place. Our mission hasn't changed: observe, understand, report. Not get ourselves killed for some noble, stupid gesture."

"So what do we do?" asked the slinger, pragmatic. "We can't stay here forever."

Zirel slipped a hand into his belt pouch, drawing out the anima gems they had harvested. They pulsed faintly, like beating hearts.

"We wait. We watch. We look for a pattern, a weakness, a moment when the guard drops. Maybe this… thing… that holds them all in check has lapses. Deep night, maybe."

He raised his eyes toward the canopy, where the first traces of dusk seeped through.

"We hide. We stay quiet. We listen. And we learn. Renn and Kael's lives now depend on our patience, not on our impulse. If we act like brutes, they're dead. If we act like scouts, they have a chance."

His men nodded slowly, doubt and loyalty waging a silent war in their eyes. But Zirel's cold logic, forged in the furnace of countless perilous missions, gradually prevailed. He was not proposing cowardice. He was proposing strategy. The only strategy with even the faintest chance of bringing them all out of this forest alive.

"We scatter," he ordered at last. "Find high, hidden vantage points. We regroup here at the next watch. Not a sound. Not a stir. You are stone. Understood?"

They answered with silent nods, fading into the vegetation, leaving Zirel alone with the crushing weight of the decision. He cast one last glance toward the monstrous hamlet, his stomach knotted tight.

They were alive. But in that hell, was that truly good news?

The wind had died. In the silence, every crack of a branch beneath their steps resounded like a clap of thunder. Zirel moved ahead alone toward a cluster of moss-covered rocks that overlooked the clearing, leaving his men to melt into their own hiding spots. Their discipline was solid, but he had sensed the hesitation in their movements: that fear born when hope appears—yet one dares not reach for it, afraid it might only be a cruel mirage.

He crouched behind a twisted root. From there, the monstrous camp stretched out before him, seething with unnatural life. The fires cast their intermittent glow on warped silhouettes. One goblin cackled as he tore the leg off a giant rat, gnawing at it like overripe fruit. A lizard-man passed, dragging a crude weapon made of bone, and no one dared to challenge him. This chaos carried its own hierarchy: fear itself, raised high like an invisible crown.

Zirel closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the aura even at this distance: a heavy tide, rising and ebbing at irregular intervals. As if some vast beast were breathing beneath the earth. With every surge, his heart skipped a beat. With every retreat, he could finally inhale again, drenched in cold sweat.

He studied Renn and Kael. Still there, heads bowed, sometimes shuddering with a spasm. Yet the longer he watched, the more something unsettled him. Their stillness was not simply that of exhausted captives. It was… something else. A strange rigidity, almost unnatural. His fingers clenched around the damp stone. Were they still truly themselves? Or puppets, waiting for a command?

He did not dare answer that thought.

Behind him, a faint rustle signaled that one of his men was shifting position, sliding between two trunks. Zirel did not turn his head. He trusted their training: they knew what to do. They also knew that the slightest misstep, the faintest flicker of energy, and it would all be over.

The hours stretched on. The sky, black as spilled ink, flickered at times with green reflections, as if the aura itself were taking form above the camp. Zirel noted the cycles in his mind. Three long breaths, then a lull. Again three, then a lull. A rhythm. A flaw, perhaps.

He thought of Élisa, of Tonar, of the orders they had been given. Report. Observe. Survive. Everything boiled down to that. Yet his eyes kept drifting back to the two bound silhouettes, and a bite of helplessness twisted in his gut.

For a brief instant, Kael lifted his head. His eyes glimmered in the firelight. And Zirel thought he saw… a foreign gleam, a sickly phosphorescence that had nothing human in it.

He turned away, chilled to the bone.

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