Fiendhunter

Tallow flames danced their death throes as Bai Lang made his demand. "Your ancestral crypts hold Kyaeth's salvation."

Grand Voivode Andrei's fist shook the solar. "You dare suggest defiling my bloodline's sanctum?"

"Precisely," the witcher replied, unblinking. "And you shall not witness the rites."

The warlord's breath fogged the lunar-chased crypt key he surrendered. "Let Vistandyn's pleas burn with his failures," he growled, casting the royal missive into the hearth.

Three paths diverged beyond Sievehold's walls. Bai Lang chose the nekker-blooded trail. Mourngrim cleaved a nekkar scout mid-leap, its brethren scattering through moon-dappled birches. A youth's cry pierced the gloom—"Damned troglodytes!"—as Yrden's violet lattice ensnared the pack.

"Black iron," the rescued merchant's son gasped, pressing a void-dark ingot into Bai Lang's palm. "Forge-fang of the Wolf School."

Midnight found the witcher in Andrei's mausoleum, where Béthune awaited amidst ossuary shadows. "A love letter from our viper-queen," the vampire purred, tendering smoke-stained parchment.

Dearest Foltest—

The stench of my decaying flesh mocks these perfumed veils. Send more gnome-marrow ere the witcher unravels our son's inheritance.

—Your Thorned Rose

"Delightfully treasonous, no?" Béthune's fangs glinted. "Plucked from a handmaiden's half-eaten corpse near the northwest tower."

The witcher's medallion hummed as the vampire produced a phial of mercury-thick elixir. "Syderite's blood-oil," Béthune explained. "My erstwhile savior turned kinslayer. Only silver and star-metal now bind him."

As dawn's first blush crept through arrow slits, the Higher Vampire dissolved into a sanguine mist. "Seek me when your mortal games pale, Wolf Cub," his echo taunted. "True monsters always dance beyond the firelight."

Bai Lang pocketed the damning correspondence. Somewhere in Lionthrone's bowels, a Carrion Sovereign's claws scraped stone—counting hours until the feast.