Fiendhunter

**Moonlight glinted off Mourngrim's quillons as Bai Lang navigated northwest.** Duke Foltest's manse dissolved into the gloaming, its shadowy intrigues replaced by rooftop serenades from calico sentinels. 

**"Your stealth honors the crown, Baron,"** the witcher spoke to cobblestones. **"Though royal concern reeks thicker than sewers."** 

Roper Hanke emerged from night's velvet folds, beard silvered by lunar caress. **"His Radiance merely safeguards investments. The herbalist's den lies yonder—prepare for... eccentricities."** 

The apothecary's door groaned like a tortured spirit. A hunched figure materialized, lamplight carving valleys into parchment skin. **"Vampire oil components,"** Bai Lang stated. **"Requiring wolfsbane, graveyard moss, and..."** 

**"...batrachian tallow,"** finished the crone, her voice spiderwebbed with centuries. **"You omit moonsteeped mercury, child of mutation."** 

Beneath abandoned wells where rat-kingdoms thrived, Bai Lang's Igni-lit torch revealed truths: skeletal fingers clutching a love letter petrified by tears, femur fractures whispering inquisitorial horrors. The Starving Time's final victims watched as silver parted necrophagic flesh, black blood crystallizing in phials. 

**"Aconitum grows where martyred hearts bled,"** the crone's bargain echoed through catacomb rivers. Bai Lang's dive breached lightless currents, lungs screaming until cathedral-like caverns unveiled their grim harvest—violet blossoms thriving on vampiric ichor. 

Dawn's first blush found him waist-deep in reeds, Mourngrim conducting its carnal symphony. Ghouls moved as rusted marionettes through Yrden's violet web, their death-throes fertilizing soil for tomorrow's aconitum. When the last abomination fell, Bai Lang knelt beside its half-consumed quarry—a farmer's gutted corpse clutching wheat sheaves. 

**"Rotspawn,"** he muttered, decanting tainted blood. Somewhere aboveground, a duke's laughter rattled chess pieces across a map of Lionthrone.