Light was emerging over the horizon, and the influence of the full moon was rapidly fading, as evidenced by the silence that replaced the howls that had accompanied their entire trip back.
When they reached the walls, Nick started feeling the shifts take hold. As the sun’s light grew stronger, the trigger for the curse of lycanthropy went dormant again, and the werewolves’ bodies responded, twisting in pain as their bones cracked loudly and wetly until only humans remained.
The change was so sudden and violent that the town militia could only watch in horror, and Nick seized the opportunity to slip through their cordon and reach where the prisoners were held.
The tall, mustachioed figure of Captain Blunderbuss was easily recognizable, and he sidled up to the man before anyone could think to block his path.
“Was there any problem while I was gone?” he asked, drawing a strangled half-gasp from the surrounding soldiers, who had been far too busy with the horrific spectacle to notice his approach.
Blunderbuss was not so easily distracted, however, and merely side-eyed him in calculation. He was probably the only man in the whole town who knew exactly what kind of person Lord Rohm was, and why he didn’t send reinforcements despite having men to spare, so Nick’s relatively quick trip to the castle and back had to be raising some questions.
“Hey, you can’t be here!” one of the soldiers said, moving to push Nick back, but the captain raised a hand and stopped him.
“Leave us,” Blunderbuss ordered.
There was some shuffling as the men obeyed, though reluctantly. Some did so out of confusion, likely because they were probably too far from the frontlines while Nick was fighting to recognize him, while others out of curiosity.
Still, they obeyed, and soon Nick was left with Blunderbuss, Monte, and Terence. The latter was shifting nervously, aware that his family was in a risky position, but he couldn’t think of a way to help that wouldn’t cause more problems later.
“No further issues, aside from a few recruits getting a bit too relaxed around the wolves,” Blunderbuss said, eyeing the unconscious man who had been a monster just moments ago. “What did the old snake want?”
“Oh, the usual. Blustering, intimidation, and information. I handled it,” Nick replied, intentionally vague.
The Captain sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose but gave a short nod. “Alright, we’ve had three more deaths since you left, and the overall losses now total twenty-seven. Casualties are higher, and we still don’t know if the curse has spread to them.”
Nick smiled as if to a dog that had just performed a trick. “That’s better than I expected. I might be able to do something about the injured, though I won’t promise anything. As for Rohm, he will be very busy for the foreseeable future. His contact with the Hones was burned, and he’s now under new management.”
Blunderbuss’s eyes widened, the first genuine sign of shock to slip through his military composure. He was sharp enough to understand what that signified, and he turned back to Terence, who gave a startled little yelp at the intensity of the gaze he was under.
“Who is in charge of the town?” He growled, eyes burning.
Terence grimaced as he looked back at Nick. Technically, the Rohms’ control had never been in doubt, but since Tholm’s presence had been so overwhelming, it was understandable he was wrestling with what the future might bring.
Nick smiled peacefully, then turned back to the captain. “For the moment? Lord Rohm. In the future..." He shrugged. “Let’s just say the town has gained a new supervisory authority.”
Blunderbuss didn’t like that answer; it showed in the way his mustache bristled, and his jaw clenched, but he also wasn’t stupid. Nick was far too confident, and after seeing him hold back the monster tide on his own, he knew better than to argue.
“So some big shot is pulling the strings.” His tone was flat.
“You’ll get more details soon. For now, I need to see the injured,” Nick said, deliberately not giving more.
Blunderbuss grunted. “We moved them away from the main camp once they started twitching.” His eyes narrowed. “You think you can do something for them?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t,” Nick replied. “Come on.”
The barracks reeked of sweat, metal, and blood. Cots were arranged in rows, with every bed occupied. Men groaned and muttered in restless half-sleep, their skin glistening with fever, bandages already soaked through with a dark, disturbing stain streaked with faint silver threads.
Two local healers—one a middle-aged woman with streaks of gray in her braid, the other a sharp-eyed man in his thirties—hovered between the beds, their hands faintly glowing with exhausted light. Both seemed to have pushed themselves to their limits long ago but refused to abandon their patients.
“It’s not taking,” the woman hissed as her spell sank into a soldier’s torn shoulder and fizzled out.
“It’s not the flesh,” the man muttered back. “Something’s keeping the wound open—” He cut off as Blunderbuss stomped in.
“Report,” the captain barked.
The woman straightened up, rubbing her hands on her apron. “We’re keeping them stable, sir, but their fever’s up, and the wounds aren’t closing. They’re not getting worse, but I don’t know how long we can keep them there.”
Her gaze slid past him and focused on Nick, and her mouth thinned.
“And what,” she asked in a steely tone, “is a boy doing in my infirmary? He doesn’t look injured.”
“The boy’s going to save them,” Nick replied mildly.
She snorted. “That’s nice, dear. These are curse wounds. You don’t fix those with flashy tricks.”
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Blunderbuss raised a hand. “He’s here on my order, Healer Risa. Let him work.”
“With respect, Captain, he’s barely old enough to shave!” the male healer protested. “If the curse fully takes them while he’s poking around, we’ll have lost them.”
Nick’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “If the curse takes them, I’ll put them down myself. Now step aside.”
The woman opened her mouth again, outraged at his callousness.
"Risa," Blunderbuss lowered his voice. “I know you’re at your limit, but this mage is going to keep working on saving them. You don’t need to like it; you just have to move.”
Her jaw clenched, but after a long moment, she stepped back. “Fine. Kill my patients, and we’ll see how you like it,” she snapped.
Blunderbuss ignored her parting shot and turned to Nick. “You said you might be able to help them. How sure are you?”
Nick walked to the nearest cot, ignoring the question for a moment. The man lying there was young, with freckles barely visible under the feverish flush, and a bandage wrapped around a ragged bite on his forearm. The skin around it pulsed faintly with that same silver sheen.
Nick placed a hand just above the cloth and let [Empyrean Intuition] unfurl.
The room fell away.
He sank past flesh and bone into the shimmering web of the man’s soul, ignoring the deep discomfort caused by such intrusion. There, coiled around the wound like barbed wire, lay the curse. It was not yet a complete chain, but dozens of glinting hooks sank into muscle and soul alike, pulsing with feral hunger and faintly echoing that same maddening pride he’d felt under the full moon.
It hasn’t been taken yet, but I don’t have much time.
He pulled back, eyes refocusing. “I can save them,” he said, glancing around the barracks. “But I’ll need time. And privacy.”
That set both healers off like kicked hornets.
“Privacy? Absolutely not!”
“We can’t leave you alone with them! They’re my patients, and if they—”
“Enough!” Blunderbuss roared, but this time it was so loud that it shook the walls. The healers shrank back.
Nick didn’t raise his voice. “If I get distracted, they die. If the curse reacts badly and I can’t react in time, they die. If you keep arguing at my shoulder while I’m elbow-deep in their guts…” He tilted his head. “Well. You get the idea.”
Blunderbuss stared directly into his eyes, weighing what he saw there. For a long moment, the only sounds were pained breaths.
“…If they die,” the captain finally said, voice low, “there will be consequences. I will not have my men used as experiments.”
Nick’s answering smile was brief, almost sharp. “Fair enough. I don’t intend to disappoint you.”
He turned his head. “Monte, Terence, go find Yvonne and Malik and take them to our lodgings. Tell them I’ll brief everyone once I’m done here.”
Monte nodded immediately. Terence hesitated just a moment before following.
Blunderbuss seemed like he wanted to stay, but ultimately, he jerked his chin toward the door. “Everyone out. Risa, Joren, you post up outside. Even if you hear screaming, don’t charge in swinging. Wait for my order. Understood?”
Their anger turned into reluctant obedience, and one by one, they left, until the last soldier closed the door behind him with a hesitant thud.
Silence settled.
Sheets of paper slid out from Nick’s spatial band—blank but already edged with faintly glowing lines, while the dagger of Akas flashed and drew blood from his fingers. He pressed his thumb to the first and drew a quick sigil, dark ink blooming along pre-laid channels, forming two straight lines connected by a diagonal one of binding and silence.
He slapped it onto the nearest wall, and Hagalaz, the rune of shadow and anger, lit up before fading away.
He moved around the room, painting and placing sealing ofudas on the walls, over the small window, and above the door. Layers of suppression, containment, and obfuscation built up until the outside world was distant and muffled.
When the last sigil was in place, he exhaled. “Right,” he muttered. “Now we can actually work.”
The injured men shifted and muttered, caught in fever dreams. A few tried to thrash, but chains at their ankles kept them still.
Nick moved to the first cot again and gently placed his hands on the man’s shoulders. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said softly. “But it’s not time to rest yet.”
The Shard lifted from its position beside him, floating to hover over the patient’s chest. Its orb pulsed once, then grew steady, casting a soft, golden glow that seeped into the air like a slow sunrise.
Nick closed his eyes and reached inward, drawing up spiritual mana and allowing it to flow around his hands in a cool, steady current. He gently directed it into the wound, aiming only to soothe it.
The curse responded instantly, uncaring that he wasn’t yet attempting to eradicate it.
The hooks flared, a snarl of wild power ripping through his channels, trying to bite, infect, and drag him into the same beast-madness it promised its host. Emotion flooded over him—bloodlust, hunger, the thrill of the hunt under a cold sky.
Nick let [Blasphemy] handle that for him, and that tide of emotion hit a wall of utter negation and broke. “Not tonight,” he told it, and pushed back.
His power slid along the hooks, coating them and dulling their edges. He traced them deeper, following where they sank into muscle and marrow, snarling around the soldier’s soul.
The Shard hummed beside him, its inherent spatial stability anchoring his focus to the material plane. Any attempt by the curse to slip fully into the ether, to become something half-real and untouchable, met the staff’s field and bounced right back into Nick’s waiting grasp.
With the full moon gone, the curse’s connection to its source was weaker, and its pull less inescapable. The hooks still fought, but they no longer had an ocean behind them, only the fading echo of its divine power.
Slowly, carefully, he began to work them loose.
It wasn’t clean. Each mental “tooth” he pried free left a bloody psychic welt behind, and the soldier groaned softly, sweat again forming on his forehead. Nick fed more calming mana through the link: reassurance, safety, the quiet confidence of a predator choosing to lie down rather than bite.
That came surprisingly easily, since the [Stalking Gait]’s breathing exercise helped him along.
Under that steady pressure, the man’s soul stopped flinching and began to help, even unconsciously. The curse hissed and snapped, but it had nowhere to go; the ofudas sealed the room from outside interference, the Shard held it in place, and Nick refused to let go.
One hook came loose, then another. A cluster near the heart tried to burrow deeper, but he seized them and burned them out with a surge of pure, cold willpower that left him breathless.
Minutes dragged like hours. By the time he reached the last of the bindings at the edge of the man’s soul, Nick’s patience was wearing thin. But the structure of the curse within this host was clear to him now, its patterns mapped, and its tricks revealed.
He yanked the last hook free and pressed it down, crushing it into inert ether. The lingering taint scattered like smoke in the wind.
The man’s breath hitched, then evened out. The fever aura faded, the silver sheen around the wound shrinking to just a faint bruise in the spiritual spectrum.
A familiar chime rang in the back of Nick’s mind.
He exhaled slowly. “One down,” he murmured. “Let’s see if you’ve got any surprises left.”
The second patient was two cots away, an older woman with a scar along her jaw and her left leg wrapped from thigh to ankle. Nick repeated the process: [Empyrean Intuition] to map the curse, spiritual mana to soothe, [Blasphemy] to blunt its emotional claws, the Shard to keep everything grounded.
This time, he knew where to look.
The hooks were arranged differently, more clustered around joints and the spine, but they followed the same core logic.
He moved faster, scraping the curse’s influence off the woman’s soul like old tar. It fought just as fiercely, but he no longer bothered being slow, simply forcing his will on it and making it surrender.
Another chime. Another flood of Exp that barely registered, though he did note it was less than the first.
By the seventh patient, his hands trembled from exhaustion, but his mind burned with a strange, cold fascination. The more he explored the curse, the more its true nature became clear.
This really isn’t demonic, he thought, watching how it responded to different strands of emotion-colored mana. Demons reveled in their unnatural nature, destroying instead of transforming.
But it wasn't purely divine either. While higher emotions—reverence, awe, righteousness—didn’t physically destroy the flesh like this curse, they still existed. Instead, the curse warped these feelings, aiming to transform reverence into pack loyalty and righteousness into desperate obedience to the hunt.
He gradually recognized its natural pattern. A predatory ecosystem was layered over human souls, sharpening and weaponizing instincts that already existed. The “curse” was a structure, a framework, tied to a greater being, imprinting its qualities on the hosts.
Like what he’d felt during the battle.
That presence in the ether—vast, hungry, proud—hadn’t felt like a full god, no matter what the stories on Earth claimed. It had been too narrow in focus, too tied to just one expression of the wild.
His thoughts drifted back, unbidden, to the dungeon where Marthas had stood and exorcised the Feral Gods’ servants. Those had been similar to what he’d felt, too similar for it to be a coincidence.
“So,” Nick murmured under his breath as he pulled the last hook free from yet another soldier and felt the curse sputter out, “we’ve got another one of you running around.”
45+ chapters:
