Several hours passed.
The room had quieted. The oppressive presence of Oathcarver still lingered, but Ludwig had managed to focus. The books pulled from Van Dijk’s trove now lay opened and half-stacked on the old desk he’d commandeered. His eyes, void of fatigue yet somehow still strained, scanned lines of glyphs and runic script. He’d already finished studying three tomes, each offering subtle but potent magic, offensive, defensive, and one to distort and destabilize.
A knock echoed through the door—short, sharp, clipped. A soldier’s rhythm. It shook Ludwig from his study like a spear tapping a shield.
He rose, silently stowing the tomes within his Lantern’s inventory. “What is it?”
“Something’s up at the entrance,” Timur’s voice called back, tense. He didn’t sound panicked—but concern crept through his usual composed cadence.
Ludwig frowned. The chair creaked as he pushed back and stepped toward the door. He opened it, revealing Timur standing in the hallway with his arms crossed and his brow pinched.
“What do you mean, ‘something’s up’?” Ludwig asked.
Timur hesitated—not for lack of words, but because his eyes had shifted past Ludwig’s face. They were fixed on something behind him, inside the room. His mouth opened slightly.
“…Can that even be called a sword…,” Timur muttered.
Ludwig didn’t turn to look. “Focus.”
“Right,” Timur said, clearing his throat. “There’s something—some thing—wounded at the manor’s doorstep. The others are armed and ready. It’s… you should see it for yourself.”
Ludwig didn’t ask further.
He turned back, crossed the room in three measured steps, and grasped Oathcarver’s hilt.
The sword rose with a low groan of steel and wood. Ludwig hoisted it over his shoulder—one-handed—and stepped forward with calm, practiced grace.
Timur’s composure cracked for just a second. He wasn’t easily impressed. He wasn’t easily frightened. But the image of this pale, sharp-featured nobleman—dressed in pristine robes, moving like a dancer at court—casually carrying a monster-slayer of a weapon like it was an umbrella… it unsettled him more than any monster ever had.
They walked down the corridor, Ludwig silent, Timur glancing at him sideways more than once.
The rest of the party waited near the manor’s open doors, weapons drawn but not raised. Their expressions were grim, but alert. And when Ludwig stepped into view—with Oathcarver gleaming in the moonlight over his shoulder—all three of them stopped and stared.
Robin, who had regained some color in his face since earlier, blinked. Then looked at Gorak.
Gorak, massive and usually unbothered, grunted. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Even I wouldn’t try carrying something like that.”
Melisande blinked twice and then folded her arms. “Enough with the jokes. Young Master Davon—your earlier words might be truer than I gave them credit for.”
“All my words are true,” Ludwig replied, voice even. “So which ones are you referring to?”
“The Beast Lords,” she said, keeping pace beside him as he approached the doors. She deliberately walked on the opposite side of the weapon’s edge.
“There’s something wounded just outside,” Timur explained. “It’s no ordinary creature. I don’t know what qualifies something as a Beast Lord—but this thing? It’s close enough.”
“Oh?” Ludwig murmured. “Then it’s best we take a look then.”
They reached the doorway. Moonlight spilled in through the broken arch, casting long, twisting shadows across the stones. The air was colder outside—colder than it had been all night. Something had shifted. The energy wasn’t rising—it was waiting.
And then Ludwig saw it.
At the edge of the stairs leading into the ruined garden, a figure lay sprawled and heaving.
A monster.
A wolf-shaped man, or perhaps a man-shaped wolf, though neither form fit fully. It was a hulking mass of sinew and muscle, its blackened fur matted with blood and grime. It was easily twice Gorak’s size—possibly more. Its back was torn open in long, savage gashes, as if a dozen knives had raked it at once.
Its left arm was gone entirely, severed at the shoulder. The wound was raw and still weeping. The creature’s snout quivered as it tried to breathe, each intake a wet, rattling gurgle of blood. Every breath sounded like a death rattle held on pause.
It had an uncanny resemblance to what was described in Van Dijk’s journal about the Treacherous Fanged Apostle.
Looking just beyond it, Ludwig saw the culprits.
Three Moon Reavers among the many others in the distance. Their claws were wet, dark, gleaming. Blood—not human—dripped from their fingers. They weren’t attacking. They weren’t advancing.
They were watching.
The air grew heavier.
“…So this is how it ends,” Ludwig murmured, approaching the wolf.
He stepped calmly, placing one hand on Oathcarver’s hilt, the other guiding the massive blade to rest downward. The weapon’s weight made a soft cracking sound as its tip touched the stone—right at the base of the werewolf’s neck.
“What are you doing?” Timur asked sharply, stepping forward.
“Ending its misery,” Ludwig replied.
Melisande flinched, but didn’t speak.
“If that thing’s a Beast Lord,” Timur said, “and you kill it… then the Moon’s going to change again, isn’t it?”
Ludwig nodded. “Most likely.”
“Then we’re not ready,” Robin said from behind. “We’re not ready for that.”
“And you think we’re ready to let it live?” Ludwig countered. “Heal it? Let it get back up and rip through the manor while we sleep?”
“Not exactly that either,” Timur said carefully. “But maybe we can bind it. Restrain it. Figure out what it knows. Who it’s running from. Why it’s even here.”
“That’ll only be possible if it can be reasoned with,” Ludwig argued.
“I heard it utter speech,” Robin said. “It can reason.”
“But can it be reasoned with?” Ludwig asked, his words heavy but held a deeper meaning.
Robin chimed in, “If the final Lord dies, the constructs will go berserk. You said it yourself—this barrier might collapse.”
Ludwig frowned.
They were right.
He was poised to end it, but what would follow? Chaos. The loss of the one shelter they had. No time to rest. No way to assess. No information. Just more killing—and maybe not just from the Reavers this time.
“…Fine,” Ludwig said after a pause. “We bind it.”
Without a word, he reached into his inventory and pulled a length of heavy, tarnished chain. They glinted with faint runes—subtle, but sharp. His soul shackles were thankfully quite similar to any normal chain you can find anywhere so he wasn’t worried about being uncovered.
He moved quickly, efficiently, draping the first ring of the chain around the creature’s heaving shoulder, then the second around what remained of its torso. The iron tightened unnaturally as soon as he locked the clasps, sealing with a click that echoed faintly in the dead air.
“Melisande,” Ludwig said, placing Oathcarver down with a clang that rattled the stone beneath them. “Heal it.”
She blinked. “Are you sure?”
“You can’t reason with something dead, just pull it out of death’s doors.”
Melisande nodded and moved in carefully. Her hands shimmered with soft light as she laid them gently against the werewolf’s back. Holy light began to seep into its wounds, stifling the worst of the bleeding, stitching broken tissue.
All the while, the Moon Reavers simply stood there.
Watching.
Silent.
Motionless.
Unblinking.
Ludwig stared back at them.
Something about this felt wrong. Not immediately—but deeply. Ominously.
‘Why are they letting it live?’ he thought. ‘Why haven’t they attacked again? Why let it crawl here?’
The werewolf began to breathe more evenly. Its massive chest rising and falling in steadier rhythm. Its snout twitched once. Then again.
It was stabilizing.
But something about that made Ludwig’s instincts recoil.
The air was too still. The Reavers were too quiet.
And the blood on their claws wasn’t dry.