The night in the southern woods was deep and cold, the silence broken only by the crackle of low-burning fires and the restless shuffling of men trying to stay warm. Gregor's orders had been followed to the letter; extra lookouts were posted, their shadowy forms barely visible amongst the dark pines at the edge of the camp, their breath pluming in the frigid air. The atmosphere was a tense mix of boredom and simmering frustration.
Inside his tent, a space slightly larger and better furnished than the others, Captain Gregor was alone, cleaning his heavy cudgel with an oiled rag. His movements were sharp and irritable. The forced inaction grated on him. He preferred the straightforwardness of a city brawl or a smash-and-grab job, not this delicate, waiting game in the frozen wilderness.
Suddenly, a sharp gasp from a nearby tent cut through the quiet.
Gregor's hands stilled, his head snapping up. The sound had come from the small, tattered tent set slightly apart from the others—the one belonging to Lyra, their hedge-sorcerer. Cursing under his breath, he dropped the rag and pushed his way out into the biting cold, striding over to her tent.
He pulled back the flap without ceremony. Inside, the tent was a cluttered mess, a chaotic collection of mystical paraphernalia that made most men uneasy. Bunches of strange-smelling dried herbs and small animal skulls hung from the tent poles, while the floor was a minefield of marked stones, cracked pottery shards, and rolled-up charts depicting constellations none of them recognized. In the center of this clutter sat Lyra. She was a thin, pale woman with dark, intense eyes, and her ink-stained fingers were hovering over a shallow bowl of dark, murky water, where a pinch of silver dust swirled listlessly. She had clearly been in the middle of a scrying attempt.
"What is it?" Gregor demanded, his voice a low growl. "Don't be having fits in there."
Lyra looked up, her face paler than usual, her intense eyes wide with a mixture of shock and professional focus. She pushed the scrying bowl away; the silver dust had settled into a useless grey sludge at the bottom. "It wasn't a fit, Captain. It was a… backlash. A surge."
She took a shaky breath, struggling to articulate the sensation. "The flow of power in this whole area... it felt like a silent scream. A huge, sudden spike of energy, coming from the direction of that village."
Gregor scowled. "A storm? Is that all?"
"No," Lyra said, shaking her head firmly. Her voice was quiet but carried a chilling certainty. "This wasn't wild magic, Captain. It was focused. All frost-aspected, and intensely concentrated, like someone just opened a tap to the heart of winter itself." She met his impatient gaze, her mind clearly racing through the possibilities. "That much power, that focused? The only thing that makes sense is an advancement. A powerful one. Could be a Tier 1 Mage breaking through to Tier 2. Either way," she concluded, her eyes dark with the implication, "our intel might be wrong. Someone up there just got a whole lot more dangerous than they were this morning."
The scowl on Gregor's face deepened, the lines around his eyes tightening not with simple anger, but with the unwelcome burden of calculation. A potential Tier 2 Mage appearing out of nowhere complicated things immensely. He opened his mouth to bark out a new set of orders, but a calm voice from the tent's entrance cut him off.
"Your deduction is logical, Lyra, but crude." Valerius stepped inside, brushing a non-existent piece of lint from his neat tunic, his demeanor utterly untroubled by the news. "An advancement from Tier 1 to Tier 2 lacks this… singular purity. It is a chaotic, messy affair. This was a clean elemental resonance. Either a powerful, nature-focused spell, or something far more obscure."
Gregor's brow furrowed in confusion. "Obscure?"
Valerius gave a slight, dismissive wave of his hand. "A bloodline activation. An inherited quirk flaring to life. It means they have potential, nothing more." He fixed his sharp gaze on Gregor. "A talented fledgling is still just a fledgling, Captain. It does not alter the larger plan. See that you remember that."
Gregor, though chastened, was still a practical man. "Should I send Roric and a few others to scout it out, then? See what's what?"
Valerius's lips curved into a faint, predatory smile. "An excellent suggestion, Captain. Yes, do that." He paused, a thoughtful glint in his eye. "If it's merely one of the villagers, it confirms our intel that they have some hidden talent among them, and we simply prepare accordingly. But..." he let the word hang in the air, "...if, by some stroke of luck, this resonance comes not from a human, but from a magical beast undergoing a bloodline activation... then our mission has a new, very profitable secondary objective. Capture such a creature alive and present it to the Master... and the bonus he would provide would be most substantial indeed."
A greedy glint flashed in Gregor's eyes at the mention of a "substantial bonus," but he quickly suppressed it, adopting a professional, no-nonsense demeanor under Valerius's watchful gaze. He turned, his voice once again the gruff bark of a commander. "Roric!" he called out, though his second was just outside the tent flap. "Grab one of the thieves. You two head up the slope, find the source of that… disturbance. Be my eyes and ears." He leveled a stern finger at his second-in-command. "No contact unless you're attacked first. You can defend yourselves, you can retaliate, but do not start a brawl. I want a report, not a war. Now get going."
Roric gave a single, sharp nod of understanding. He turned and gestured to a small, wiry man whose dark furs blended almost perfectly with the shadows between the pines. The thief acknowledged the summons with an equally brief nod, and without another word, the pair of them melted into the treeline, moving away from the relative light of the campfires and into the absolute cold and oppressive dark of the forest.
They moved with a practiced economy of motion, flitting from shadow to shadow, their steps nearly silent on the fresh snow. They weren't tracking footprints or following a light, but rather a feeling—a strange pressure in the air, a vibration that hummed just at the edge of hearing. It was an unnatural concentration of cold that grew more intense the further north they pushed. After several minutes of this swift, silent progress, Roric raised a hand, bringing them to an instant halt. They were still a good three hundred yards from the pine grove near the village border, yet the low hum was now a palpable roar in the air around them, and the unnatural chill had become a biting, magical frost that clung to their clothes.