"Lord Seraph! Wait! Stay your path!" a voice bellowed from the rear.
Seraph checked his momentum and cast a glance over his shoulder. Discerning a group closing the distance with desperate haste, he came to a silent halt. It was a fair interval before they reached him—a band of a dozen hunters whose countenances were entirely foreign to him.
Once they stood before him, gasping for air, the young magis posed a blunt inquiry with clinical detachment.
"Who are you? And how do you know my name?"
"Wheeze... gasp! You... you surge like the ventus itself... as if you were truly soaring above the forest floor!" one warrior managed to rasp, his praise punctuated by laboured breathing.
"..."
Seraph merely returned the gaze, his expression a mask of clinical apathy.
Only a resounding silence served as his retort. The young man wasn't one to broadcast his prowess or surrender his secrets to the ears of strangers unless the situation demanded it.
As the warrior struggled to draw air into his lungs, the other members of the band appeared in a similar state of disarray. It was as if the mere act of shadowing the young magis for a short distance had nearly crushed them.
A distance born of silence stretched between them, rendering the atmosphere frigid. Myre, unable to endure the chilling indifference of the magis from Sanctus, felt compelled to shatter the suffocating quiet.
"I'm Myre! Don't tell me you've already forgotten me and our proposal!" the man named Myre reintroduced himself, his tone laced with a sharp edge of irritation. "We exchanged pleasantries but a sennight ago—and this is my demon-hunting cabal!"
Seraph swept his gaze over the assembled hunters, finding only a void within his memory. He harboured no desire to be unnecessarily boorish; yet, within the alcoves of his mind, there remained not a single trace of this warrior nor his companions.
The events following Captain Mordant's proclamation on that first night aboard the airship flooded back—once the announcement had concluded, a literal swarm of hunters had attempted to besiege him, desperate to entice him into their alliances.
Though the base instinct of a demon hunter was to sabotage rivals to seize primacy, they were well apprised of the reality: this mission offered a far greater harvest of death than survival. The more martial might they could muster, the better their prospects of enduring the lethal chain of subsequent ranks.
Practitioners of mageia and Healers, in particular, were a scarce commodity, rendering them the most coveted assets for every faction. Consequently, aspirants scrambled to bolster their martial might, seeking to sequester as many magis into their ranks as possible. Regardless of whether a magis possessed a frail spark or a formidable flame, within the protracted theatre of a demon hunt, the mageia arts invariably yielded a strategic advantage.
Yet the young magis standing before them remained the most enigmatic entity among the aspirants. On the first day of embarking upon the airship, not a soul had caught a glimpse of him for hours; even during the communal repasts, he was nowhere to be found.
The deeper the mystery, the more ferociously the flickers of rumour spread, failing to escape the scrutiny of those aboard the tenth vessel. At last, intelligence regarding the identity of the 'Magis of Sanctus' was unearthed and laid bare.
The revelation nearly drove the aspirants to a frenzy. Every cabal employed every stratagem to ensnare Seraph into their service, obsessively scrutinising whether the young magis had already pledged his steel to an alliance. Yet, every thread of data pointed to the same conclusion: this lone wolf held no allegiance and had never deigned to answer the summons of minor bands or grand associations even once.
And that was the very fuel that kept the embers of Myre's hope from ashing out.
Though Seraph remained unable to distinguish these strangers from the thousand other hunters, he could easily deduce the intent of the twelve souls who had pursued him. It was undoubtedly the same motive driving the nearly thousand others who were even now quickening their pace toward his position.
"I care nothing for the motives that spurred your pursuit... yet regardless of the inquiry you intend to pose, my solitary response remains—NO!" Seraph declared, his refusal devoid of a shred of sentiment.
"But I bear a proposal you cannot possibly spurn—" Myre countered with an air of misplaced conviction.
Without deigning to hear the offer to its conclusion, Seraph propelled himself backward with clinical precision. He harboured no desire to entertain the young man's rhetoric any longer; for behind them, hundreds of souls were already surging toward his position. Shouts invoking his name pierced the air, though their owners remained at a distance.
The young magis pivoted mid-air, his movements possessing the downy softness of silk yet infused with formidable power. He glided above the canopy like a massive avian of white and radiant gold, the hem of his cloak snapping against the wind as he crested the treeline. Before a single soul could hope to match his pace, he vanished into the onyx maw of the Darkwood.
[Fwip—woosh!]
The thunderous rhythm of boots and frantic bellows trailed in his wake, yet Seraph treated the cacophony as nothing more than a passing gale.
Previously, the aspirants had intended to glean clues and scrutinise the derelict hamlet before committing to a calculated advance. However, Seraph's sudden flight acted as a volatile catalyst, dragging the majority of the demon hunters headlong into the depths of the Darkwood, stripped of the luxury of preparation.
✧ . ✶ . ⛤ . ✶ . ✧
This year, the contingent of aspirants participating in the Bloody Hunting numbered in the tens of thousands. Though the Darkwood was an immeasurable expanse—a sylvan empire sprawling across a territory that could swallow multiple metropolises
The sheer density of ten thousand hunters, dispersed in an intricate web, ensured that the forest floor was being scoured with predatory speed. Furthermore, the terrain, characterised by its open, towering groves, lacked the claustrophobic labyrinthine complexity of the Capital.
Seraph's prior assignment had demanded the detection of demons amidst the stifling congestion of the entire city of Arkpolis! Though that task had been a shared burden among various mageia factions, the scale was incomparable; should every aspirant now divide their sectors with precision, the individual toll of surveying the Darkwood was significantly lightened.
The Darkwood was a realm of soaring giants, each tree ascending dozens of metres into the heavens. Their heartwood, as black as polished coal, seemed to drink the very light from the air. Though the woods appeared devoid of immediate peril, they exuded a leaden, suffocating atmosphere that pressed upon the mind.
The intervals between the shadow trunks were relatively sparse, offering a clear line of sight. Despite the jet-black foliage that sought to hoard the sun's radiance, the evening light still managed to pierce the canopy, casting long, spectral shafts down upon the earth.
Yet, a few glaring aberrations marred the stillness: the carpet of withered leaves upon the forest floor was unnaturally thick, a nameless stench of rot lingered in the stagnant air, and the silence of the timber was profoundly wrong.