Though we finally had the answers I had so desperately sought, the satisfaction was hollow. The clarity I had yearned for only deepened the weight in my chest. I now knew who had taken someone precious from me, but I still had no idea how to kill that wretched worm — truly, effectively, and finally. The mage had vanished before we could even draw our blades.

  There was no time to waste—every second brought the dawn closer, and with it, the tightening grip of the enemy’s corruption. Markus took it upon himself to trace the movements of the elusive mage, hoping to find clues in their absence, while I turned my attention to something a little more… hands-on.

  My task was far more visceral.

  I prowled through the quiet tents like a shadow, selecting a few possessed soldiers randomly. Abducting them was easy. A soft whisper, a flicker of movement in the dark, a well-placed cloth over the mouth. Soon, I had them out in the forest, away from any wandering eyes, their senses shut out to the best of my ability.

  The hard part was figuring out what to do with them.

  My first experiment was crude—desperation disguised as curiosity. I bound one of them to a flat slab of rock and began cutting, opening him up layer by layer to see if the parasite had altered anything inside. It hadn’t. At least, not in a way that helped me. He bled like a man, screamed like a man, and died like a man. Not exactly revolutionary science. I left his body cooling in the underbrush, frustrated and no closer to understanding.

  For the second subject, I took a more measured approach. I slit a shallow wound in the thigh and began examining his blood flow. Slower than a normal human’s, yes. The veins pulsed sluggishly, like thick syrup coursing through narrow tunnels. Was it the parasite’s influence? Most likely. But how did that help me? I couldn’t exactly go around bleeding every soldier dry—too messy, too slow.

  Then came the third.

  And that was the breakthrough.

  I dragged him, groggy and half-conscious, to the edge of a small, murky pond nestled between gnarled trees. It was unassuming at first glance—nothing more than a stagnant pool of water no deeper than my waist. But I had a theory. And I was dying to test it.

  With little ceremony, I shoved him in.

  The reaction was immediate.

  The soldier thrashed wildly, limbs flailing in a panicked blur. His eyes bulged, mouth agape in a silent scream that gurgled and broke beneath the surface. His struggle lasted seconds—seconds—before his body went limp, sinking slowly into the darkness.

  I stood there, stunned. The pond had barely reached his chest, and yet it had overwhelmed him completely. He didn’t even try to stand—didn’t know how to.

  They couldn’t swim.

  And more than that—they died in water.

  I knelt by the bank, gripping the rope I’d thoughtfully tied around his ankle before the experiment began. Hauling the body out was a grim, soggy task, but the results were well worth the effort. Once I had him stretched out on the forest floor, I took my blade and opened him up carefully.

  The parasite—that writhing, coiled worm that usually clung to the spine—was still.

  Utterly lifeless.

  Water, it seemed, was their undoing.

  Just like it was mine.

  I stared down at the corpse, soaked to the bone, the hollow eyes staring upward as if even in death, he couldn’t comprehend what had happened. A slow grin crept across my face. Finally. Something usable. Something lethal.

  And I already had a brilliant idea how to use this new knowledge to my advantage.

  By the time I returned to the edge of the camp, the horizon was beginning to pale with the first signs of dawn. Markus stood beneath a lonely tree, arms crossed and a grim look on his face.

  He found nothing. Not a single thread to pull, not a footprint to follow. The mage was gone — no, she had hidden herself, and far too well. She knew we were coming. And she was already playing her next move.

  Tom hadn’t been invited to the search for one very simple reason: he was Tom. Ten minutes into the hunt, his presence had become more hindrance than help — too loud, too clumsy, too oblivious. I gave him a task I didn’t expect him to complete, just to get him out of our way. Arthur, however, had been deliberately excluded for an entirely different reason. We needed the Devourer to believe he didn′t think she was real. Any sign of deviation from his usual behavior might provoke a reaction from her — a reaction we couldn’t control.

  She was most certainly expanding her influence beyond our field of vision. I could feel it — like a rot spreading through the soil beneath our feet, just beyond reach but growing ever closer. The situation was already perilous. Any rash move would only make it worse.

  The temptation to burn the supply unit to the ground clawed at me more than once that night. But reason won out. Such an act would destroy everything — our rations, our leverage, our fragile position in enemy territory. And worse still, it would provoke the Devourer. I feared a scenario in which ordinary soldiers, unaware of the infection within their ranks, would ally with the puppets she controlled — uniting against the one person who could still lead this army: Arthur. That would be the death of everything.

  So, the next morning, we gathered inside Arthur’s newly claimed command tent. A thick silence hung over us, broken only by scattered arguments and ideas that led nowhere. The map in the center of the table might as well have been blank.

  “And what if we just find her and threaten her?” Markus offered, leaning forward, eyes gleaming with the kind of desperation that masquerades as courage.

  I didn’t respond right away. I just stared at him, dead-eyed and exhausted, wondering how he could still propose something so staggeringly na?ve. My patience was fraying.

  “We have nothing to hold over her — nothing except torture,” I said eventually, my tone sharper than intended. “And even then, she’s not the one we should be afraid of. Her ‘children’ could still propagate, grow stronger, free her, retaliate. If we kill her without knowing how the infection spreads or reacts -and we won′t be able to achieve that level of understanding -, we might doom ourselves. Luna found a pattern — a thread we might follow. We cannot risk severing it with reckless violence.”.

  “So what you’re saying,” Arthur began, voice tight with frustration, “is that we have no plan. Not a single viable one.”

  I drummed my fingers against the wooden table, a hollow, rhythmic tap that betrayed my inner tension. “There must be something,” I muttered. “If we can’t strike back yet, we can at least stop others from being turned into her puppets.”

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  Tom blinked. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “I’m a vampire,” I lied smoothly. “I can smell the dead — the rot inside them — if I get close enough.”

  It was a gamble, but the truth served no purpose here. Telling them I had little idea who was infected would only sow more panic. And we couldn’t afford that. There were nearly twenty thousand soldiers in this army — too many for me to check one by one.

  Arthur’s voice cut through the room again, lower this time, tinged with unease. “How many are already infected?”

  I looked at him, at the tightness around his mouth, the way his fingers curled slightly against the edge of the table. He knew. Or at least, he feared the answer.

  “I didn’t spend the entire night chasing ghosts,” I said. “Once I realized we weren’t going to find her, I started searching for signs among the soldiers. Woke hundreds of them. And what I saw...” I trailed off, unable — or unwilling — to finish.

  The silence that followed was heavier than before. We all understood the truth, even if I hadn’t said it outright yet.

  We were already losing.

  “The number’s around a tenth,” I said, the words cold on my tongue. “Though there could be clusters I missed… hotspots hiding in plain sight.” I let the implication settle in the tent like fog. “How many would it take to start an insurrection, even if we did everything right?”

  It wasn’t a question about numbers. It was a question about time — how much of it we had left before the army fractured beyond salvation. Before this entire war effort unraveled in our hands.

  Arthur’s reply came slowly, as though each word had to be dragged out. “Possibly a quarter… if they coordinate, strike at the right moment. And the soldiers are already on edge — the murders, the disappearances, the corpses that never turn up…”

  His voice trailed off, and I knew why. He didn’t want to say it. But he didn’t need to. I already understood.

  If things kept accelerating at this pace, we wouldn’t make it to the week’s end before chaos erupted.

  “Five days. Five nights,” I said, more to myself than to them. “That’s what we have left. Does that sound plausible to you, Tom?”

  Tom didn’t hesitate. “If there are only five worms in a host,” he said, frowning. “But I’d guess the tipping point comes sooner — four days, maybe less.”

  He was right. Luna had been a child — her body small, fragile. Yet Markus claimed he’d seen five worms crawl out of her. There could’ve been more. There likely were. In a grown man? A soldier?

  Our margin for error was thinner than I dared admit aloud.

  “We need to kill all the worms — every last one — at the same time we kill their queen,” I said grimly. “And only four humans even know she exists.”

  “Then why don’t we just tell everyone?” Markus said. His voice was loud with frustration, but beneath it, I sensed desperation. “Spread the truth. Make the soldiers understand. Test them all — with fire.”

  The silence that followed was telling. Even Arthur’s face darkened.

  “There’d be panic,” Arthur finally said, voice heavy. “A complete breakdown of trust. If no one can be sure whether the man beside them is still… himself, then nothing holds anymore. Not this camp. Not this army. Not this war.”

  “And I already explained,” I added sharply, “these things aren’t just flammable — they’re explosive. You saw what happened to the guards near me. You saw the carts go up like powder kegs. If someone saw one of their comrades detonate because of a test, no one else would step forward. No one would volunteer. And I doubt we’d get a second chance. But even then, we don′t know if their hosts also go up in flames, or just them.”

  I let the silence stretch. It was the sound of a plan dying.

  “No,” I said, firmer now. “Just no. Arthur can’t make a move. We already agreed on that. He has to appear neutral — uninvolved — or she’ll changes plans.”

  Tom’s tone was smug. “Exactly. And that’s the end of that brilliant plan.” He didn’t need to add the insult directly — he made Markus feel like a fool, which, to be honest, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

  Markus’s jaw clenched. “And what do you two suggest then?” he snapped, eyes bouncing between me and Tom. “So far I haven’t heard a single idea that didn’t start with ‘no’ and end with ‘we’re all screwed.’”

  I leaned back slightly, then smiled. “Silence is golden, Markus… shhh.” I raised a finger to my lips theatrically.

  “What?” Markus said, caught off guard. His head turned slightly, trying to hear what I was hearing.

  “I think…” I said, standing up slowly, voice dropping into a whisper, “I think one of the trash cans in this room is overflowing.”

  I stepped closer to him, moving as if I were tracking something just beyond the edge of sound. He tilted his head, bewildered.

  The tension broke slightly — not with laughter, not with relief, but with the sharpness of shared exhaustion. We all knew I was mocking him. But none of us were brave enough to pretend the fear in the room was unwarranted.

  Because somewhere outside this tent, the worms were multiplying.

  “What are you talking about?” Markus asked, completely oblivious to the storm already brewing inside me. His casual tone was like a spark to dry tinder.

  Before he could finish his sentence, I slammed my boot down on his food, crushing it beneath my heel. I held his gaze, watching his reaction carefully—and it was exactly what I expected.

  “What the hell was that for?” he snapped, glaring at me.

  “That,” I said coldly, “was proof you’re nothing but a trash can. I step on your foot, and you open your stupid mouth. Is there anything inside you besides garbage?”

  Markus’s hand flew to his sword. He drew it with a sharp hiss, the blade glinting under the tent’s dim light. Yet I didn’t move. I just stood there, my foot still pressing down on his food, a slow grin creeping across my face as I savored his frustrated hesitation. He couldn’t make the first move—not with me standing so still, unyielding.

  “Markus, calm yourself,” Arthur interjected sharply, voice steady but laced with warning. “You know how explosive her temper is, and I doubt it’s gotten any better since—”

  I cut off his words with a hard glare, my eyelids twitching with barely contained rage. Arthur wisely held his tongue, and I finally withdrew from the standoff, turning away from them both to face Tom.

  “Do you have anything?” I asked him quietly, recalling the secret task I’d assigned. I wasn’t hopeful—this plan was born from desperation and something I’d read once in a dusty old book—but it was better than sitting idle.

  Tom’s answer was a subtle, almost imperceptible lift at the corner of his mouth. That small gesture was enough.

  “Alright,” I said, steeling myself. “I have an idea. Arthur, I need a hundred men. Tom, Markus—you’re coming with me.”

  Arthur’s brow furrowed. “What exactly are you planning?”

  “I can’t risk you becoming an even bigger target. Sorry, but I can’t tell you.” The risk was already high enough. If the Devourer caught wind of our plan—especially if it leaked through the soldiers’ memories—everything would be lost. Adding one more person who knew the details would be foolish beyond measure.

  “And you really think you can save this army with just a hundred knights?” Arthur’s tone was skeptical, but not as openly distrustful as before.

  “Better than that,” I said with a steady smile. “We’re going to save the world.”

  He hesitated a moment longer before nodding. “Alright. How long will you be gone?”

  “That’s a secret.” I glanced at the others. “But you know the deadline. If we don’t return in time… feel free to burn it all down.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” Arthur asked.

  I gave a dark smile. “How long does it take to gather the higher-ups? It’s time to weed out some worms.”

  The words dripped with cruel intent, revealing the bloodthirsty edge I rarely let show.

  Tom wasn’t amused. “Worms are good for the ground, though…”

  I shot him a look. “What are you, some kind of gardener now?” He shrugged, clearly wanting no part in this conversation, and that was the end of that.