Wake up.

Claudia came to slowly, face down on the ground, the wooden boards beneath her cold and stiff. Her head was throbbing, a tension pressing desperately to escape the confines of her skull. When she moved her hand to clutch her temple, she hit something–a chair leg–and winced more at the surprise than the pain. She rolled onto her side and blinked her eyes open wearily, taking in her surroundings. She was still in the tavern, still clothed and unbothered. The last thing she remembered was getting another drink from the bar and talking to some of the men to let them know they would hopefully be returning home soon. Rosa was nearby, talking with the giant–Taas, as Gideon called him–and it was something unusually quiet and low key for two strangers. Claudia motioned her over, but she couldn’t recall what they discussed. Did they even talk? Was that when she blacked out? Was she poisoned or drugged?

Clambering onto her hands and knees, she shook her head and blinked her eyes into focus. The pounding in her head continued, but seemed to ease up as she paced herself on this waking moment. Using the chair for support, she stood up, slightly dizzy, and took a few deep breaths to center herself, ignoring the stench that burned her nostrils. The fireplace was long snuffed out and cold, the ashes and remnants free of any heat, and Claudia found her arms clutched around herself reflexively in the cold room. Others were here, still asleep at the tables and floor all around, most everyone that she can recall. The giant, hard to miss, was gone, as was Rosa. Something about this was so very wrong, and the more she pieced things together, the worse it got.

Claudia moved to the closest table to rouse the man, one of the reformed Ravenguard soldiers she’d been riding with recently. He shifted in agreement with her shoving, but didn’t not wake. When she pulled him fully upright into the chair, that was when she saw that he was dead, a look of absolute horror forever frozen on his cold and pale face. She stepped back in shock, a sharp inhale filling her lungs, and took another look at him. There was no wound, no blood, to indicate what had killed him, only that he appeared to be alive when it did. As she looked around the room at the others, she found similar results with everyone in the room. Before she could ask anymore questions on what could do this, she thought of her brother.

“Gideon!” she shouted, loud as she could to carry through the building.

“Rosa!” Another call out with no response.

She hesitated on the third name. It came out noticeably weaker and more of a question. “Taas…?”

Claudia was alone in a building full of corpses, the sole survivor of whatever massacre had taken place. For all the years she spent keeping herself alive in whatever circumstance she landed in, she could never fully shake the fear that needled her body. Her heart beat faster, flushing blood through her body, her muscles almost twitching in anticipation for the next move. But this time, there was a strange, sickly feeling that twisted her stomach: the fear of loss. She needed to find Gideon. She wasn’t going to lose him again.

Making her way outside, Claudia found the air fresh and only slightly breezy. The overcast sky hid the midday sun behind a gray and white canvas of pillowy clouds. She had lost most of a day or more in whatever left her unconscious on the floor and killed the others. No other people were seen outside, but if whatever happened occurred last night, most people would be indoors. At the stables, the horses and the hounds were grounded, likely dead as well, the stench of their droppings masking any rot that might be present. “Where the fuck is he?” she muttered to herself with concern. The Other–the entity inside her–didn’t speak, but she felt her attention pulled in one direction, towards the far side of town.

As she continued along the dirt road between the buildings, she found more of the same: the few people out of their buildings face down in the dirt and the calm silence that is only familiar to graveyards and mausoleums. The wind blew a little harder for a moment, and Claudia heard the metallic clinking of chains from somewhere nearby. Following the sound around the corner of another building, she stopped in her tracks at the sight of Taas.

The dirt path led to a wooden archway at the edge of town, leading towards the nearby woods. Like other settlements in the area, the threshold was placed and adorned with carved glyphs to ward to and protect the people within. Hanging from the top of this hand-carved archway, was the desecrated body of Gideon’s companion. A black metal chain was wrapped around his neck and held him taught from the thick wooden log that bridged the top of the portal, while the loose remains of the chain rattled and swayed in the breeze. His head drooped and leaned to one side, the eyes open and vacant. The tattoos on his exposed upper torso were marred by bloody cuts. It took a moment for Claudia to see it, but the slashes were not random, but purposeful, specifically cutting across the original markings on his body, and an additional grouping of marks just below the metal collar that held him aloft.

The familiarity of those carvings was immediate, but Claudia fought against it. Rosa was involved somehow, and the fact that she was still missing wasn’t lost in the moment. Answers could come later, but right now, she continued to search for Gideon, who was also yet to be found. Her attention shifted, moving from the hanging body to a clearing in the distance. While the path led to the woods at nearly a straight way from the town, south of the path where the tree line receded farther out, there was feeling urging her to come closer. Claudia hesitated, the sensation felt like a mixture between curiosity and confrontation. No matter how much she wanted to ignore it, the Other was guiding her as necessary, but it would not say to what end.

After gathering what little equipment she could carry, she ventured towards the unknown pull at her being. The urgency wasn’t pressed by the unnatural calm of the town as much as it was to find her sibling. Whatever Rosa had done could be answered for, but she needed to make sure he was alive first, and safe. The rumors of the champion varied greatly, but by his own account, not all of them could be taken at face value. What she did know is that she held a power within herself, with a depth she had not yet begun to comprehend, and she would use it to whatever length to save her brother.

It was approaching evening by the time Claudia had come across the first signs of change. The air felt different, a harsh warmth blowing in the wind as ashes began to float and blow along the breeze. Gray skies grew darker with every minute, not with the red hues of sunset, but with the flat black of an unnatural shadow. The heat was steady for awhile, before distorting in some pockets as she approached the eye of this infernal storm. In the distance beyond the woods she traversed, Claudia could see the source of the heat, whole swaths of a field ablaze. The silhouette of a figure paced among the walls of fire, with strange energies surrounding them.

“He’d better be alive, Rosa,” she said to herself. Heart pounding in her chest, she stepped towards the spreading inferno.