The forest was already bleeding into shadow when Alaric heard the screams.

They tore through the quiet like hooked blades—ragged, human, full of a pain no animal could make. He turned without hesitation, robes snapping against his legs as he pushed through undergrowth and roots, following the sound downhill toward a clearing drowned in dying light.

He arrived to the stench of iron.

Two men knelt in the dirt, their bodies contorted at impossible angles, muscles bulging and folding as if something inside them were trying to crawl out. Veins stood black and swollen beneath their skin. Blood streamed from their noses and mouths, lifting into the air in trembling strands, pulled by a will not their own.

She stood before them.

The blood sorceress was wrapped in dark crimson and black, a hood shadowing her pale face. Long, silver-white hair spilled loose over her shoulders, stark against the darkness like frost on a grave. Her skin was unnaturally light, almost porcelain, marred only by a thin cut at her temple where blood traced a slow line down her cheek. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, rimmed in deep red as if she had not slept in days—or centuries. They were beautiful, yes, but sharpened by something colder than cruelty.

Her hands were clasped loosely at her waist, fingers stained red, blood dripping steadily between them and soaking into the forest floor. The magic around her pulsed, thick and intimate, every heartbeat of the men echoed in the air like a drum.

“Stop,” Alaric said, breathless but steady. “You don’t have to do this.”

She did not turn at first.

“Let them go,” he continued, stepping closer despite the danger. “Whatever they did, it doesn’t end like this. Not here.”

Slowly, she lifted her head.

Their eyes met—and the world fractured.

Fear slammed into him without warning. Not the sharp panic of prey, but a deep, corrosive dread: of being cornered, of being hunted, of trusting once and paying for it forever. Beneath it lay mistrust, coiled tight as wire, and beneath that—loneliness so vast it hollowed his chest. A lifetime of being feared, of never being touched without intent, of knowing that mercy was never offered freely.

At the same time, she gasped.

She felt his fear—of losing himself, of waking one day to find her will tangled irrevocably with his own. His terror that compassion might become permission. His quiet, relentless guilt for still reaching for her despite everything she was said to be.

Her magic faltered.

The blood froze midair, then fell uselessly to the ground. The men collapsed forward, gasping, their bodies snapping back into human shape with wet, sickening sounds. They didn’t wait. Scrambling to their feet, they fled into the trees, sobbing, not daring to look back.

Silence followed, thick and trembling.

She swayed, just slightly, as if the absence of violence had taken something from her. Her hands shook, blood still dripping, no longer commanded.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered, though she did not look away.

“I see you,” Alaric replied softly.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The forest held its breath.