Seraph's Hollow was a war zone.
The once-silent meadow now screamed with chaos—steel clashing, magic cracking like thunder, and the unholy shrieks of things that shouldn't exist. Spells lit the battlefield in bursts of color, casting brief snapshots of carnage before vanishing into the crushing blackness. And through it all, the fog crept and curled like it had a mind of its own.
They were surrounded.
Spectral warriors rose from the mist like nightmares born from smoke—half-formed figures with flickering limbs, their eyes glowing faintly through the haze. They didn't speak. They didn't breathe. They just attacked.
A small pocket of relative safety remained—silver grass beneath them, the worn bones of a stone road behind. Around it, the fog pressed in, forming a silent, malevolent ring.
Then the silence broke.
One of them lunged—its scream distorted, human-shaped but wrong in every possible way. It charged Lucy, arms twisted like melted wax.
He didn't flinch.
