The air in the cathedral’s crypt hung thick with incense and rot, a miasma that clung to every stone. Before the hunter stood the cleric beast—once a figure of devotion, now twisted into a mass of sinew and rabid faith. It had already spent its fury in futile swipes, and in that final moment, it was permitted but a single, ragged roar—an exhalation of its last defiance—before the hunter moved.

With deliberate precision, he thrust his blade through the nape of its skull, driving the steel forth until it emerged from its maw. Such beings, he knew, were not owed last utterances; their existence had been a blight, and their end required no grace.

The blunt, warm edge of the blade slid through its tongue as it went, and with a motion as swift as the strike itself, he wrenched it free, leaving only silence in its wake.

He flicked the blood from the steel, the crimson droplets spattering against the cold flagstones. Then, he turned his head toward you—slowly, yet inexorably—his eyes holding the hollow calm of one who had long grown accustomed to such ends.

His gaze, though distant, held a flicker of something not quite kindness—perhaps recognition of survival. Without a word, he extended his hand: calloused, stained with old blood, but steady as stone. You took it, and he pulled you to your feet.

Together, you left the crypt’s suffocating darkness behind, emerging into the pale, misty light of the courtyard. A short walk through twisted gravestones led to his camp: a small fire crackling in a stone ring, a tattered tent pitched against a wall, and the faint scent of dried herbs cutting through the chill.

He guided you to a log beside the flame, his hand falling away as he turned to tend to the fire—an unspoken offer to tend to your wounds as he worked to make an ointment from the herbs.