The razed winter air bit at Doctor Watters’ exposed skin as Grimm’s horse thuhrough Barrowham’s empty, cobblestoreets. Silence g to Watters, a heavy cloak woven from ret trauma. He repyed the events in his mind, a maelstrom of unanswered questions swirlih the surface. Grimm had spoken, yes, but his words were fragments tossed into a void, leaving more shadow than light. Grimm's impassive stillness, an almost gcial reserve, made Watters cautious, hesitant to breach the frozen surface, yet the unanswered questions, like splinters beh his skin, dematention.

  “Uh, Grimm,” Watters begaantly, the words catg in the frigid air, “you… you seem to possess a rather… detailed uanding of magid your… bat skills are extraordinary. Were you, perhaps… involved in the great crusades? A Bishop, even?”

  “Battles aplenty, Drimm grunted, his voice edged with impatience, “but never have I borhe mantle of Bishop.” His tone brushed off the title like an irritating fly.

  “But your strength…” Watters persisted, his curiosity outweighing his apprehension, “It’s… unfathomable. Almost… inhuman. How do you…”

  “The soury strength,” Grimm interrupted, his voice hardening, a low growl rumblih the words, “is utterly irrelevant to you. The mission at hand is all that s us both. Maintain your focus upon it, Doctor, if you value seeing the dawn.” Grimm’s voice dropped, a veiled threat underlining the dismissal.

  Not a Bishop. Not the Crusades. What, then, was Grimm? Watters wohe rhythmic thud of hooves a terpoint to his rag thoughts. He remained a cipher, ed in yers of shadow and unspoken power. The horse ate up the distance, Barrowham reg behind them.

  “This Warlock,” Watters began, the question emerging as if pulled from the frigid air, “did he… divulge anything of significe? An… endgame, perhaps?”

  “The warlock spoke of a master,” Grimm stated, his tone unwavering, each word a precisely pced stone in a wall of gravity. “A hierarchy is… unon among warlocks. They are creatures of solitary ambition, self-made power. For oo submit to a master… it implies a power structure, Doctor, a magnitude we have yet to prehend.”

  “Fasating,” Watters murmured, his mind rag to keep pace with Grimm’s pronous, “And these… mutations in the Lys? The Order’s texts… they meticulously detail a weako Wolfsbane, ainct bloom… not silver.”

  “Transmutation,” Grimm stated, his voice eve carrying an undercurrent of grim knowledge. “The taint of a witchcraft. One skilled in such wicked art must magically bind the essence of their creation to another. Ly essence… interwoven with that of some parasitic blight, I would surmise.”

  “Incredible!” Watters excimed, a pure, stific awe momentarily eclipsing the dread.

  “Hardly the word I would choose, Drimm retorted, his tone sharply pulling Watters back to reality. “Transmutation in the physical realm… it demands a living po.” Grimm fell silent, his brow furrowing, not in fusion, but dawning realizatiouro Watters, his gaze suddenly inteell me, Doctor,” he tinued, his voice dropping, taking on a chilli, “have there been any... unexpined disappearances in Barrowham of te?”

  “Well… yes,” Watters breathed, the eming into him with the force of a physical blow. “Yes, disappearahe stables are baffled. And… and there was an attack just this m. A child, they said!” The blood drained from his face as the full horror coalesced.

  From the inky bess beyond the flickering firelight, a chorus of howls erupted, eaote a serrated edge against the silence, sending a frigid wave of dread crashing down Watters’ spine.

  “No more time for questions,” Grimm stated, his voice clipped, devoid of its usual gravel, now hoo a sharp edge of and. He she reins, the sound whip-like and immediate, and the horse leaped into motion, accelerating into a franti.

  The bloodcurdling howls lunged closer as the duo burst from the town's edge, plunging into a forest suffogly dense. Watters' heart hammered a frantic tattoo against his ribs, a desperate drumbeat eg the relentless pound of the horse's hooves on the unfiving dirt path.

  The faint glow of Barrowham’s inferno vanished behind them, swallowed by the trees. Moonlight, fractured and ierced the imperable opy, their path now a custrophobinel carved through the suffog darkness of the thickets.

  Ragged panting and frenzied howls, the thundering ch of paws tearing through the forest floor, erupted around Watters, a cacophony of chaos that shattered his fragile posure and plunged him into a spiraling panic. “Grimm!” Watters cried out, his voice crag with fear. He gestured wildly towards the dehicket, where shadow-beasts flickered and daheir forms twisted by the spectral moonlight.

  “I see them,” Grimm aowledged, his voice a low, steady anchor iorm of sound. He unleashed the pistol from his coat, the movement fluid and devoid of any tremor. “Reins,” he ahe word clipped, authority absolute, thrusting the thick leather straps into Watters’ trembling reach.

  Grimm’s thumb clicked against a cat the revolver, the on hinging open with a metalliap. The snarls tighteheir noose around them, drawing clrimm!” Watters stammered, his voice fraying at the edges of panic.

  “Drive!” Grimm barked, each sylble a sharp and, his movements a blur of practiced speed as he smmed cartridges into the revolver’s der.

  Abruptly, the brush exploded outwards. A Ly, still streaking on all fours in its wolfen guise, vaulted from the thickets, a nightmare unleashed running ned-neck with Grimm’s warhorse. Watters’ gaze froze on the monster's face. The creature twisted its head, its pawavering. Then its maw ripped open, a siing unhinging of bone and flesh, unleashing a guttural shriek that hrough the doctor's skull. Even as it shrieked, its jaws unlocked further, dist into a grotesque chasm, lined with needle-poih. Then, writhing tendrils, pale and fleshy, spewed forth from the abyss, thrashing blindly.

  “GRIMM!” Watters screamed, a raw, involuntary sound, recoiling violently.

  In a lightning fsh, a monstrous tendril uncoiled from the creature’s depths, hurtling towards the Doctor.

  “Duck!” Grimm roared, his voice a thundercp. Watters crumpled instinctively. BOOM! The pistol erupted, the bullet tearing through the Ly’s skull in a spray of gore and shadow, sending the creature filing backwards into the undergrowth.

  More Lys poured from the forest depths, running with rabid desperation. “Watters!” Grimm she word ripped from his throat, “Too many! Bee useful, Doctor, or we are both dead!”

  “Useful? And how, exactly? Recite medical theory at them until they expire from boredom?” Watters snapped back, his sarcasm a thin shield against his terror.

  A jarring thump drove the air from Watters' lungs as Grimm shoved the silver bde into his chest. “When they are upon us, use this, Doctor. Kill them,” Grimm anded, his gaze fixed, unwavering, on the encroag tide of creatures.

  “Kill them?” Watters muttered, the words barely audible above the rising chaos, his frail hands vibrating untrolbly.

  BOOM! Another bullet tore through the night, ripping into one of the swarmis. Then, a blur of fur ah, a smaller Ly exploded from the undergrowth, a living projectile aimed at the horse’s head. Its vile and noxious breath, misted Watters’ lenses, blurring his vision further. “Shit!” he choked out, his cry lost in the frenzy, sawing wildly at the reins, the horse’s pahrashing mirr his own.

  “KILL IT!” Grimm bellowed, his voice a physical force that jolted Watters’ trembling frame, the and a brutal whip crack against his paralysis.

  The Ly’s face split open, the flesh tearing apart to expose a nightmarish of slick, pulsating tendrils. They shed across Watters’ face, each strike a brand of agonizing fire. Blinding pain exploded behind his cmped eyelids, his heart a trapped bird hammering against his ribs. Even as Watters fought his own agony, Grimm remained a whirlwind of motion and gunfire, shots ripping through the night as he held back the remaining Lys surging from the darkness. A choked roar of pain and fury tore from Watters’ throat, and he rammed the silver letter opener deep into the creature’s gaping, abhorrent maw.

  A final, agonizing screech ripped from the Ly, then its head erupted in unholy fme, detag from its body and plummeting from the horse with a siing thud.

  Watters’ heart pounded a frantic rhythm against his sternum. The gruesome image burned behind his eyes, refusing to fade. “Watters!” Grimm roared, sharp and demanding, “Doctor Watters!” His voice, a jolt of stark reality, dragged the doctor back from the edge of oblivion.

  “Wha…?” Watters managed, his voice a dry rasp, his hand ched tight around the silver bde, his knuckles bone-white against the leather hilt.

  “TREE!” Grimm roared, his arm a blur, pointing at the looming pihat filled their path. Watters jerked back to awareness, still reeling, his hands fumbling for the reins, then violently hauling them back. The massive horse sheered sharply away, the tree trunk a dark shape fshing past its side, impossibly close. “Doctor, focus!” Grimm snapped, his voice a razor’s edge of impatience. “Not. Done. Look up!” Grimm anded, his voice tight with tained fury, gesturing sharply up the path.

  A brute of a Ly, a hulking monstrosity, filled the path ahead, an unyielding wall of muscle and fang. Watters reared ba the reins, his blood freezing in his veins, but Grimm’s hand cmped his, stopping the panicked motion in its tracks. “No,” Grimm said, his voice low, almost versational, yet edged with steel.

  The colossal Ly unleashed a deafening roar, a challenge and a promise of age as it braced for impact. Grimm snapped his pistol bato its holster, his hand already a blur towards his knife hilt. “What are you doing?!” Watters demanded, his voice rising to a shriek of disbelief. Grimm’s eyes ignited with a cold fire, his arm coiled back like a spring, “Fug…” Grimm began, a grim anticipation in his voice. “Grimm, we’re going to hit it!” Watters screamed, his voice raw with terror. “LYS!” Grimm exploded, his roar a terpoint to the beast's, as he hurled the kh impossible speed, the silver fshing in the moonlight as it found its mark in the giant creature’s skull.

  The massive creature crashed to its back, a lumbering giant colpsing into stillness. Grimm’s weight shifted almost imperceptibly, his powerful legs ag as living struts to stabilize the mount. Instantly, fire bloomed around the embedded silver, engulfing the beast’s carcass. With blurring speed, his hand cmped onto the knife hilt, extrag it with practiced ease as he seamlessly remounted, posture already re-aligned, ready for the hreat.

  ike scattered vermin, the remaining Lys melted back, disappearing into the imperable bck maw of the forest. “Is… is it finished?” Watters wheezed, each breath a ragged fight for air.

  Grimm swept his gaze across the shadowed trees, his movements sharp and vigint. “Appears so,” he ceded, the words clipped, sheathing his kh a decisive snick that echoed in the sudden quiet.

  Watters sagged in the saddle, a shuddering exhale esg his lips. “Thank… God,” he stammered, his voice still trembling, “For a moment… I truly believed we were lost.”

  “You did well, Drimm stated, his tone devoid of warmth, but edged with a curt aowledgment that raise enough.

  Watters’ gaze, fixed and strained, sed the path, when a faint glimmer ahead pricked his weary eyes. “There! Ahead!” he announced, his voice catg with fragile optimism.

  The trees parted, revealing the Mayor’s manor – a stately presence against the encroag darkness, a vast structure cradled by the mountain’s shadow. Windows emitted a soft, weling glow, promising warmth and sanctuary iing cold.

  “Sanctuary,” Watters exhaled, the word heavy with yearning, “He has to be able to help us… end this… finally.”

  But Grimm sat motionless, an unyielding figure of granite. A prig sense of unease sharpeo a cold dread that ched in his gut. The inviting glow of the manor windows seemed less like wele, and more like lure, drawing them into a deeper darkhan any they had yet faced.