Alastor’s boots crunched softly against the fallen leaves, the rifle in his hands a natural extension of his form. The night was quiet save for the rhythmic chitter of insects and the faint rustle of some distant animal retreating into the underbrush. He wasn’t in any hurry. These hunts were never rushed. The night belonged to him here, unchallenged and eternal.

But then his foot caught on something soft, and his forward momentum faltered. He stumbled briefly before regaining his balance. His immediate reaction was irritation, the kind that bubbled up when his careful rhythm was disrupted. Alastor turned sharply, expecting to see a root or a discarded animal carcass.

Instead, he saw her.

At first, she was just an object in the periphery of his vision: a pale form half-submerged in the small puddle of water. Blood pooled beneath her, dark and viscous, soaking into the forest floor like ink. A faint trail stretched out behind her, leading back to some unseen point of origin. She had dragged herself here, Alastor realized, though how far she had come was impossible to guess.

He crouched, rifle resting against his knees, and tilted his head as he studied her. She was still alive—barely. Her chest rose and fell in uneven, shallow breaths, each one slower than the last. Her back was marred with jagged stab wounds, some clotted with drying blood, others still oozing slowly. Her hands, curled weakly against the dirt, trembled, as if clinging to the remnants of her will to survive.

“Huh,” he muttered, his voice breaking the silence with casual indifference. “Another killer on the loose?”

It took a moment to place her face without the warm glow of candlelight and the clink of glass in the background. She was from the bar. That quaint little spot in town he liked to frequent, not for the company but for the way it felt untouched by the rest of the world. She had been the waitress—a quiet, kind thing who moved with a practiced grace, her smile polite but never forced.

“Well this is unexpected..”