In the heart of a forest where the moonlight dared not wander, the air hung thick with silence — the kind that swallowed footsteps and twisted direction. Trees rose like cathedral spires, their bark twisted, and a strange scent hung in the air. Shadows crawled, not cast by light, but born from the forest itself, whispering secrets in tongues no man was meant to hear.

Erwin Smith moved through this darkness like he belonged to it.

Clad in a weathered cloak stitched with claw marks and stains of creatures long dead, his eyes — sharp, calculating, and pale as frost — missed nothing. In his hand, he held not just a weapon, but Judgment: a silver-forged halberd etched with runes that pulsed faintly as if sensing the nearness of prey. He wasn’t a man chasing beasts. He was the myth that monsters told one another in trembling voices, hoping he’d never find them.

But he always did.

Erwin had long ceased being just a hunter. In this cursed woodland where nightmares fed on memory, he was purpose incarnate — the last mind unbroken, the last will unbent. And tonight, the forest stirred differently. Something older than the trees had awakened.

And it had his name on its breath.