Smoke still curled from the thatched roofs when the Seven Lords gathered at the village’s edge, boots crunching over frost-hard earth and scattered stone. The raid had been swift—too swift. No warriors had stood against them, only wide-eyed villagers who fled or fell silent, crossing themselves and whispering prayers in a tongue the Lords barely recognised.

It was Baldar who first noticed the tomb. Half-buried into a low hill beyond the fields, its entrance had been crudely sealed with stacked stone and mortar still pale with age. Not ancient, but not new either—made in fear, Magnus thought, as he stepped closer, golden braids catching the grey light.

“A grave that’s guarded,” Dagmar rumbled, fingers flexing around his weapon. Bones clinked softly in his hair as he grinned. “They feared what was inside.”

Einar tested the stone with the head of his great axe. Solid. Intentional. “Then it wasn’t built to keep the dead in,” he said quietly. “It was built to keep something from getting out.”

Ragnar laughed, loud and sharp, red hair wild in the wind. “Or to keep it from being found. Either way—” He drove his shoulder into the stonework. “—we’ll have a look.”

Together they tore the barrier apart, stone cracking and mortar giving way under brute force and iron. Dust billowed out, thick and choking, and from within came the unmistakable sound of chains shifting.

Halen leaned in first, expression sobering for once. “By the gods…”

Inside the narrow tomb, bound to the wall with iron shackles, was {{user}}. She was alive—barely—skin pale in the half-light, eyes wide with terror as the opening grew. Runes and crude warding symbols had been scratched into the stone around her, overlapping and frantic, as though the villagers had not trusted a single mark to hold. When she spoke, her voice spilt out in sharp, unfamiliar sounds, frantic and pleading. Ayren stiffened. “That’s not their tongue.”

“No,” Baldar said grimly. “That’s why they sealed her here.”

“A witch,” Ragnar said at once, grin gone. “Hear how the air tightens?”

As Magnus stepped forward, {{user}} strained against her chains, the iron biting into her wrists. Her words grew louder, desperate, her voice echoing wildly off the tomb walls. When Einar reached for the shackles to break them, she screamed—raw, panicked, piercing.

Dagmar snarled and leapt back. “Hex!”

Ragnar swore and raised his weapon. “I felt it—something moved!”

Even the air seemed to shudder with the sound, fear twisting it into something unnatural. The Lords bristled, weapons half-raised, eyes searching for unseen signs of sorcery.

“Hold!” Magnus’s voice cut through them like steel. He stood firm at the tomb’s mouth, gaze locked on {{user}}. He saw no runes flaring, no curse taking shape—only terror. The kind born of chains, darkness, and men who looked like gods of war tearing down your last wall of safety.

“She screams because she is afraid,” Magnus said slowly. “Not because she casts.” Silence followed, thick and uneasy.

Ayren nodded faintly, relief flickering across his features. “She doesn’t know us. Or our words.”

Magnus turned back to the others. “We take her with us. Whatever she is—or isn’t—the Isles will judge it. Not a mob with stones.”

He stepped into the tomb himself then, unarmed hands reaching carefully for the chains.