The longhouse was still when Valtor returned.
The fire had burned low, its light painting the stone floor in restless shadows. Outside, morning labored to lift the mist from the village walls, but inside, the air remained thick — not with smoke, but with something heavier. Something that did not burn away.
Lilith stood by the high windows, arms folded, her cloak trailing like ink across the worn stone. Her crimson eyes watched the haze beyond without blinking.
Lysanthir remained seated, unmoving, as if carved from the very air he commanded.
Valtor crossed the hall with slow, deliberate steps, his tail curling once behind him before falling still. He stopped a few paces from the hearth, the tension in his frame barely restrained.
"It is still here," Valtor said.
Lilith turned slightly, her gaze sharp. "You feel it too."
Valtor's jaw flexed, but he nodded.
"Since last night. It hasn't touched the walls again. But it lingers."
He glanced toward the far end of the hall, where the great doors remained barred. His voice lowered.
"I saw it. Before. Near the training yard."
Lilith's brow tightened.
"A shape?"
"A presence," Valtor said. "It had form… only long enough to be noticed."
"And then gone," Lilith finished.
The elf stirred at last. His eyes opened fully — pale, cutting, ancient.
"You believe it was not one of ours," Lysanthir said. Not a question. A statement.
Valtor inclined his head. His hand brushed the hilt of the blade at his side — instinct, not threat.
"It moved like no beast," he said. "And no spirit from the woods would dare cross our wards so easily."
Silence gathered again.
Lilith shifted her weight, one hand resting lightly against the stone window frame. The fire's low breath curled around her like mist.
"If it sought to strike," she said carefully, "it had its chance. It didn't."
Valtor's tail flicked once, sharply.
"That is what concerns me."
Lysanthir's gaze drifted past them both, to the far doors. To the unseen world beyond.
"It learns," he said softly. "It listens."
Lilith's fingers tapped once against her elbow, thoughtful.
"And we wait," she said.
"We observe," Lysanthir agreed. "Until it reveals its hunger."
The fire cracked, spitting a single ember into the gloom.
Angela's laughter echoed faintly outside — bright, innocent, unknowing.
Valtor turned his head slightly toward the sound, the weight in his chest growing heavier.
He looked back to the elf.
"And if it waits too long?"
Lysanthir's lips curved — not into a smile, but into something far colder.
"Then we remind it," he said, "that silence cuts deeper than steel."
Angela moved through the morning haze again, a basket tucked against her hip, the weight of it strangely heavy for the few roots and herbs it carried.
The mist hadn't lifted.
It clung low to the earth, curling around her ankles like something half-awake. Villagers passed with soft greetings and half-smiles, but their eyes were distant, their steps slower than usual — as if the dawn itself had pressed its hand against their backs and whispered, wait.
Angela frowned.
She hadn't slept well. Dreams, she thought. Stupid dreams.
But even now, the memory of them clung to her mind — smoke without fire, voices without mouths. She remembered standing at the village gates, and the stone walls crumbling into ash under her fingertips. She remembered hearing her own name whispered from somewhere she couldn't reach. And when she turned — there was nothing. Only the certainty that something had been waiting for her to look away.
She shook her head sharply, pushing the thoughts aside. Her braid slapped lightly against her back with the movement.
Get it together.
By the well, an elder woman knelt, wringing water from a cloth. Angela hesitated, forcing a smile as she passed. But the elder did not lift her head.
She just muttered — soft, broken words — as if arguing with something no one else could hear.
Angela tightened her grip on the basket.
The village felt… wrong.
Not broken. Not wounded. But stretched thin. Like fabric pulled too far over an unseen wound.
She passed the forge.
The rhythmic clang of hammer on anvil echoed through the square — but it was slow, uncertain. Not the steady, living beat it should have been. A missed note here. A falter there.
Her footsteps slowed.
Angela glanced over her shoulder, heart thudding harder than it should. Nothing followed. No one watched.
And yet the feeling remained.
She remembered her mother once telling her — in the soft twilight hours between chores and prayer —If you ever feel the world holding its breath, child, don't ask why. Move.
Angela moved.
She pulled the basket closer to her chest, the weight of it grounding her, and quickened her steps toward the safety of the longhouse, where laughter and warmth still lived.
Behind her, the mist thickened — just for a moment.
And something unseen smiled without teeth.
Above the courtyard, among the thick beams and high walkways, the foxling moved.
Silent. Low to the wood. Every step placed with a precision born not of training, but of instinct — the old kind, the kind the forest taught.
The mist blurred the world below into half-shapes. Voices floated up — muffled, fragmented. The clang of the forge, now sparse and wrong, beat against her ears like a limp drum.
She paused at the northern ridge, crouching near the eaves where stone met timber.
Her nose twitched.
Smoke. Iron. And something else.
Not rot. Not blood.
Something thinner. Sharper.
She shifted, tail coiling low, ears flattening for a breath. Eyes narrowed into golden slits.
It had been here.
She felt it like a pressure just beneath her skin — a breath drawn too close, a gaze not fully gone.
Below her, near the forge's rear wall, something pulsed at the edge of her senses. A distortion. A ripple in the rhythm of the morning.
She dropped lower, slinking along the beam, her fingers brushing lightly against the old timber for balance.
The humans wouldn't notice.Their senses dulled by habit, by routine, by the lie of safety.
But she was not human.
She was born to notice.
The foxling crouched at the end of the walkway, peering down.
Near the base of the forge wall — hidden behind stacked firewood — the air shimmered faintly. Not light. Not heat.
Something unseen… marking where it had brushed too close to the waking world.
She watched for long minutes, body taut, breath shallow.
Nothing moved.
No scent of magic thickened. No shadow stirred.
But the mark was there — a wrongness pressed against the stones, like a wound scabbing over without bleeding.
She didn't approach.
Not yet.
Instead, she slipped back into the rafters, melting into the shadowed beams like a wraith.
Her ears twitched once.
She would tell Lilith.
And then they would wait.
Because sometimes — she knew — the hunter was the one who stood still longest.