Far beyond south-east of Whitehold
The forest changed around Gunthar but he did not slow to acknowledge it. Ground rose and fell beneath his stride...roots pushing through soil, stone breaking the surface in uneven slabs. He simply continued, adjusting without hesitation, without loss of rhythm.
Time passed.
Branches struck against his shoulders and slid past. Thorned growth caught briefly at his clothing before tearing away. The terrain narrowed, widened, shifted...but none of it held him.
He moved as though the land had already been crossed.
By the fifth day, the forest had grown denser.
The air held more moisture, carrying the faint trace of decay that lived beneath all growing things.
Still...
he did not slow.
The voice came without warning.
"You've passed the ridge."
Gunthar adjusted his direction slightly...no pause, no glance, just a shift in trajectory that cut through the trees at a sharper angle.
"Oleg's last position?" he asked.
"Ahead of you. West of your current path."
A pause.
"He has not reported."
Gunthar's stride lengthened.
"How long?"
"Long enough to matter."
That was all the explanation given.
The forest began to thin in places...not visibly at first, but in the way, sound moved through it.
Gunthar slowed.
The scent reached him then…faint, carried low against the ground, burnt wood.
He stepped forward.
Darkened patches spread unevenly across the floor, where the soil had been scorched but not consumed. Ash clung to the edges of roots and stone, disturbed only slightly by whatever wind had passed since.
Gunthar crouched,
He pressed his fingers lightly against the earth. Dry
Not recently burned.
"Weeks," he said.
Gunthar rose.
"More than a month or two."
"The fire didn't hold long enough to spread naturally."
The remains of the outpost revealed themselves slowly, emerging through the trees in fragments of blackened timber and collapsed structure.
What had once stood was no longer recognizable as a whole.
Only pieces remained.
The outer edge told more.
Burn patterns marked the perimeter unevenly...some areas scorched deep into the soil; others only touched at the surface. The fire had not spread uniformly.
It had started in multiple places.
His gaze moved across the ground. Footing.
"They moved before the fire," he said.
"Fighting?"
Gunthar shook his head slightly.
He stepped over a fallen beam.
Then...
he saw the first body.
It lay partially beneath the collapsed structure; its form reduced to bone and darkened fragments where flesh had once been.
Gunthar stepped past it.
This one had not collapsed the same way.
The ribcage remained intact...blackened, but holding shape. The bones were thicker, denser, not warped in the same pattern as the others.
Gunthar crouched. He studied it in silence.
Then...
he reached out.
"The structure held," he said.
"Oleg."
Gunthar inclined his head slightly.
"The fire moved around him," he continued. "It burned what it could. Left what it couldn't."
His gaze narrowed.
"Mutation reinforced the bone."
"He was already dead."
The words came without uncertainty.
"How can you tell?"
Gunthar shifted his position slightly, angling his view.
"No displacement," he said. "No collapse pattern consistent with movement."
He pointed...subtly, precisely.
"The body didn't resist the fire."
A brief silence followed.
"Cause?"
Gunthar stood.
"Not the fire."
His gaze moved toward the centre of the structure.
"Something else ended it first."
The interior held more signs.
The ground bore impact marks...splintered wood, fractured stone, surfaces broken by force that had not been random. Movement had occurred here, but it had not dissolved into chaos.
Gunthar walked slowly now.
Each step measured against what remained.
"Multiple fighters," he said.
"How many?"
"Enough to surround."
A pause.
"They coordinated."
He stopped near a section where the floor had collapsed inward.
"The strikes were controlled. No wasted motion."
His gaze hardened slightly.
"They knew what they were doing."
Silence.
Then...
"And they won."
Gunthar did not answer immediately, he looked again at the pattern.
The positions. The damage.
"Yes," he said.
A pause followed.
"No."
The word settled differently.
Gunthar turned his head slightly.
The smell had changed.
It no longer carried only ash.
Something heavier had begun to seep through it.
He stood still for a moment. Then spoke...
"This wasn't the end of it."
Gunthar's gaze shifted toward the trees beyond the outpost.
The wind did not move there.
But something had passed through.
"There's another site," he said.
Silence.
Then...
"Southeast."
A pause.
"There were others. Mercenaries. They were meant to regroup here."
Gunthar turned.
And moved.
Faster.
Gunthar did not need direction after that.
The scent was enough.
It reached him before the clearing did...thick, damp, and heavy in a way that clung to the back of the throat. Not the dry bitterness of ash, but something denser, something that lingered closer to the ground and did not disperse easily.
Rot.
He slowed as he approached.
The forest changed again. The trees grew closer together at the edge of the clearing, their branches overlapping just enough to dim the light that filtered through. Shadows gathered unevenly across the ground, broken only where the sun forced its way through.
The first body lay just beyond that threshold.
Gunthar stopped.
It was positioned on its back, one arm twisted beneath it, the other stretched outward as though it had reached for something that had never been there.
The torso...was open.
Forced.
The ribs had been bent outward from the centre, fractured unevenly, their shape distorted by pressure rather than precision. There were no clean edges, no signs of a blade having passed through.
Gunthar crouched.
His gaze moved slowly across the damage, tracing the breaks, the direction of force, the way the bone had yielded and where it had resisted.
"…Pulled apart," he said.
"By what?"
Gunthar did not answer immediately. He rose.
There were more.
The clearing revealed them gradually...not all at once, but in fragments that forced the eye to move, to adjust, to piece together what it was seeing.
A body lay near the roots of a tree, its spine bent at an angle that suggested it had not fallen naturally. The lower half had twisted away from the upper, not severed, but displaced.
Another lay face down, one leg missing entirely...the joint torn open, the bone exposed where it had been removed.
Gunthar stepped between them.
His pace remained slow.
The smell thickened as he moved deeper.
He stopped again.
This one had been cut.
Cleanly. From shoulder to waist.
A single line divided the body, the separation precise, controlled, the edges smooth where steel had passed through without hesitation.
Gunthar stood over it.
"…That's different," he said.
"Explain."
Gunthar's gaze shifted between the bodies.
"The force doesn't match," he said. "This one was killed with a blade. The others..."
He glanced back toward the torn remains.
"...were not."
A pause.
"Same time," he added.
"You're certain?"
Gunthar nodded once.
"No difference. No repositioning."
His gaze narrowed slightly.
"No prolonged fight either."
The clearing opened further ahead.
And the bodies...
became more numerous.
Not scattered without purpose.
Placed.
Thrown where they had landed, but forming something beneath the disorder.
Gunthar slowed.
His eyes tracked the positions.
The spacing. The direction each body faced.
A path.
Not where they had stood...But where something had moved through them.
He followed it.
A cluster of bodies lay ahead.
Close together. Their weapons remained in their hands.
Gunthar studied them longer.
"…They were ready," he said.
"And?"
"They didn't get the chance."
His gaze moved to the ground around them.
No defensive marks. No staggered movement.
"They saw it," he continued. "They just couldn't react."
The air held still around him. Gunthar stepped forward again.
The next body was not on the ground.
It hung.
Driven upward through a branch that had pierced through its torso, the body suspended at a height that no natural fall could have produced. The weight of it bent the wood slightly, the fibres strained but not broken.
Gunthar looked up at it.
"…That wasn't thrown," he said.
"No."
"It was placed."
A longer silence followed. Gunthar's gaze returned to the clearing.
Different methods. Tearing. Breaking. Cutting.
But all within the same space.
The same time. The same movement.
He spoke again, more quietly now.
"This doesn't match the first site."
"No."
"The first was controlled," Gunthar said. "Multiple fighters. Structured movement. They worked toward a result."
He turned slightly, looking back across the bodies.
"This…"
His gaze settled on the torn remains again.
"…wasn't a fight."
Not hesitation. Conclusion.
"A path," he said.
The word lingered.
Gunthar moved toward the end of it. The final body stood apart.
Hanging.
Not damaged further than necessary. Not disturbed.
A strip of cloth had been tied around its neck.
Clean.
Gunthar reached up and untied it.
The fabric came free without resistance.
He unfolded it slowly.
Two words.
Don't Follow.
Gunthar read it once.
Then again.
Behind him, the clearing remained unchanged.
The bodies held their positions.
The air did not move.
"…This was meant to be seen," he said.
"Yes."
Gunthar lowered the cloth slightly.
"The first site…" he began, his voice slower now, more deliberate, "was discipline."
A pause.
"This is something else."
His gaze moved across the clearing one last time.
"The same person could have done both."
Another pause.
"…but not like this."
Silence followed.
Gunthar folded the cloth once.
Carefully.
He did not discard it.
His gaze lifted.
Toward the direction the path continued.
"…He knew we would follow."
"Yes."
Gunthar stood there for a moment longer.
This was not the work of someone forced into survival. There was no urgency in it. No signs of desperation, no mistakes born from pressure. Every movement had carried space within it…room to choose, room to act without being driven.
"You knew we would come," he murmured under his breath.
Gunthar folded the cloth and kept it.
His eyes lifted, following the direction the path continued beyond the clearing, where the trees closed again and the marks of passage began to fade.
"I will find you...stranger."
"Soon."