They left Frostmarch under a low stretch of gray sky, the three suns little more than pale discs behind the clouds. The mercenary escort—hardened men who’d survived everything from prison breaks to bounty wars—didn’t waste time talking. Frostmarch criminals weren’t easily intimidated; most of them had stared death in the face more than once. Velrin rode inside the carriage with the entitled posture of a man used to ordering people around, not a man who feared danger. If anything bothered him, he hid it well. Raizō and Taren walked at the rear of the formation, quiet as always. They didn’t blend in with the mercenaries, but they didn’t need to. They watched. They listened. They waited.

  For the first few days, nothing happened. They camped at dusk, rose at dawn, and traveled through frost-heavy forests and narrow paths where the snow sat in deep pockets. The mercenaries grumbled about food and pay, Velrin complained about the cold ruining his clothes, and the carriage wheels hit every buried stone with enough force to annoy everyone except Raizō. He stayed alert. Taren stayed tense. On the fourth day, the road narrowed into a shallow ravine where the forest pulled back. Snow clung thickly to the rocky walls. The mercenary captain called for a temporary stop to adjust one of the carriage’s bindings. That was when the bandits appeared.

  Six of them slid down the ledges with practiced coordination, blades drawn. These weren’t starving thieves, they moved like trained men. Their boots were clean, their weapons well-maintained, and their eyes hard. Before anyone reacted, one bandit fired an arrow straight into the harness of the lead horse, forcing it to rear. Another swung a blade toward the carriage wheel, aiming to break it. They weren’t trying to kill the mercenaries, they were trying to stop the carriage.

  Taren’s eyes narrowed. “They’re cutting our mobility.”

  Raizō said nothing, but he saw it too. The mercenaries surged into action. Steel clashed against steel. One of the bandits drove his dagger into a mercenary’s throat before a counter-strike cut him down. Blood sprayed across the snow in a bright arc.

  “Not amateurs,” the captain growled.

  The fighting was brutal and close. Two bandits pinned a mercenary against a rock, forcing him to his knees before one stabbed him between the ribs. The mercenary collapsed in a choking heap. The survivors roared, surging forward to avenge him. One bandit lunged for the second horse, carving deep into its flank. It whinnied and stumbled, nearly toppling the carriage. Velrin cursed from inside.

  “Protect the horses, damn it!”

  Raizō stepped forward to intercept a bandit rushing for Taren, slipping sideways and driving his elbow into the man’s jaw with a crack. He didn’t draw his weapon. He didn’t need to. Taren finished the man with a sharp kick to the temple. Moments later, the last of the bandits fell. Their bodies littered the ravine, strong, skilled, and dead. The mercenaries breathed heavily, some spitting blood, some wiping blades clean. One knelt beside the mercenary who’d died, muttering something under his breath.

  Velrin emerged from the carriage, annoyed but not shaken. “Criminals. Pathetic. If that’s the worst Frostmarch has to offer, this will be a short trip.”

  The mercenaries chuckled darkly, returning to their formation, the earlier tension dissolving into bravado. Raizō and Taren exchanged a glance.

  “It was too organized,” Raizō murmured.

  Taren nodded. “And they aimed for the wheels. The horses. They wanted us slowed down.”

  They didn’t say more. They didn’t need to. Three suns rose and fell again as they continued onward, their pale light shifting positions across the sky. Sometimes one hid behind the clouds while the other two bled faint color into the gray horizon. At night, the three moons took their place, one bright and whole, one dim and distant, one a broken crescent that hung like a cracked tooth.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  On the evening of the sixth day, the first disappearance happened. They made camp under a ring of tall pines. The mercenaries, tough men used to surviving ambushes and riots, relaxed enough to sharpen weapons and trade jokes. Velrin insisted on a larger fire and more wood, claiming cold offended him. Raizō and Taren stayed a little apart, observing in silence.

  The watch was set.

  The man on watch blinked and in the next heartbeat, he was gone. Not silently. Not cleanly. A pool of blood stained the snow where he had stood.

  “What—?” one mercenary choked, stumbling back.

  Another knelt beside the stain, hand shaking as he touched the still-warm blood. No body. No tracks. Just red melting into white.

  “The hell…?”

  Torches came alive instantly. Hardened criminals or not, the escort didn’t ignore blood.

  Velrin peered out of the carriage, irritated rather than frightened. “What now? Wolves?”

  “No wolf does that,” someone muttered.

  Raizō scanned the trees. Taren sniffed the air, face tightening. They said nothing. No one slept well. The next day, they moved faster. No one joked. Velrin’s arrogant posture had softened, though he hid it beneath annoyance. That night, another man vanished. This time there was a splash of blood across his bedroll and a smear in the dirt where something, or someone, had dragged him for a few steps before the trail simply stopped. A mercenary gagged. Another swore. The captain tensed, staring into the woods.

  Velrin stepped forward this time, voice lower than before. “This is not an animal. This is… calculated.”

  No one disagreed. The third night, the third disappearance came early. The man was yanked from the edge of camp, dragged into the dark so violently that a streak of blood smeared across the snowy ground like a brushstroke. That broke the escort.

  “Hells—this is a demon—”

  “No demon,” Velrin said hoarsely. “I… I recognize the pattern.”

  Every head turned toward him. Velrin swallowed hard. Not fear. Recognition of the pattern.

  “There’s only one person who kills like this in Frostmarch.”

  Silence swallowed the camp. Velrin’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  “The Ebon Needle… of the Black Sigil.”

  Every mercenary went pale.

  Taren’s eyes widened. “Her?”

  Raizō looked between them. “You know her?”

  Taren exhaled shakily. “Everyone knows her. Assassins fear her. Hunters refuse contracts on her territory. If she’s tracking us…”

  He swallowed once.

  “This is what I meant,” he said quietly, “when I said extremely bad.”

  Raizō didn’t respond. Because the forest did. A shadow slipped between the trees. The captain raised his sword, only for that same shadow to blur forward, faster than torchlight could catch. Steel met steel. A spray of blood hit the snow. The captain’s blade clattered uselessly from his hand. She stepped fully into view for the first time. Just for a breath. A small, masked figure. A blade dripping red. A presence so sharp it felt like the temperature dropped. Then she was gone again, dissolving into the dark as if she had never existed. Velrin stumbled backward, breath catching. Taren crouched low, instincts flaring so hard his fingers nearly shifted into claws.

  Raizō didn’t blink. The pressure around him shifted less like a hunter stalking prey, more like a predator evaluating a rival. She waited until the camp had gone still again before attacking. Raizō sensed the intent a heartbeat before it became motion. His body moved before his thoughts. He rolled aside just as steel whispered past his neck. Her blade cut the air so cleanly he felt the wind of it. He pushed off the ground, sweeping his leg toward her ribs. She bent backward with impossible control. The strike missed, but lightning didn’t.

  A snap of static leapt from his shin, catching her wrist. She jolted, out of shock, before sliding back into the shadows with a precision that didn’t disturb a single snowflake. Taren lunged after her, stopping short of the dark when she vanished completely. Raizō rose slowly, sparks flickering faintly across his arm.

  Taren’s voice was tight. “You made her reveal herself. That doesn’t happen.”

  Raizō kept his eyes on the tree line.

  “She wasn’t trying to kill me.”

  Taren shook his head. “If she was, you’d be dead.”

  Raizō didn’t argue.

  Out in the treetops, she crouched low, shaking the faint sting from her hand. She stared at her fingers, then at Raizō. Lightning, unstable, raw, and dangerous. He had reacted fast enough to evade her first strike. He had thrown a counter fast enough to make her adjust. He had shocked her without meaning to. He was not what the Black Sigil had claimed. He was worse.

  Tomorrow, she would hunt him properly.