A chilling frost clung to the towering pines of the Białowieża forest as dawn broke over the Wyrm-Breakers’ camp.
Inside Garrik Vane’s command tent, the atmosphere was even colder.
Leon stood near the wooden map table, his blue eyes scanning the detailed Arithmancy calculations and territorial maps scattered across the surface.
Across from him, Garrik’s burnt face twisted as he traced a finger over the glowing dark runes on his arm.
His veins bled a sickly black beneath his flesh—a side effect of his ceaseless obsession with the sharkskin codex.
“You’re being too cautious, Leon,” Garrik growled, his voice a gravelly rasp.
“Your calculations are slowing down the raids. We need human blood to feed the matrix before the moon wanes.”
“I am optimizing our approach, Garrik,” Leon replied calmly, keeping his posture relaxed and his expression impassive.
“Rushing the ancient wards surrounding the Polish sanctuary without pinpointing their resonant pulse will cost us half a strike team. A slow approach yields better results than raw force.”
Garrik narrowed his one good eye, searching Leon’s face.
For weeks, the leader’s paranoia had been festering like an open wound.
He had noticed Leon’s subtle moderations—how the young lieutenant redirected patrols, spared unnecessary civilian casualties during raids, and kept his distance from the sacrificial rites.
“Or perhaps,” Garrik said softly, leaning over the table, “your edge is softening, Lieutenant. You spend too much time in your tent… and too much time near the silver-haired brat’s cage.”
Leon didn’t flinch.
“My duty is to the cartel’s efficiency. Liliana’s soul-bound oath prevents her from speaking. I am simply keeping her alive so we can break the oath’s magic later if we can.”
Garrik stared at him for a long, suffocating moment before letting out a harsh, dry chuckle.
“Right. Dismissed, Leon. Go review the eastern perimeter patrols with Vanya.”
Leon gave a tight nod and stepped out into the crisp morning air.
As he walked toward his quarters, his instincts screamed at him.
Garrik is sidelining me, Leon thought, his mind sifting through the leader’s subtle body language, shifts in guard rotations, and hushed meetings with the Old Guard.
He doesn’t trust me anymore.
The madness is consuming him faster than anticipated.
What Leon did not know was that as soon as the tent flap fell shut, Silas Vance stepped out from behind a heavy tapestry.
“He’s filtering the intel, Garrik,” Silas whispered coldly, adjusting his high collar.
“He’s too smart, too independent. If he realizes we’ve already found the sanctuary, he’ll intervene.”
Garrik’s hand slammed onto the map, pinning a thick red marker right over a hidden valley deep within the ancient forest.
“Then we move without him. Assemble Torstein, Klara, and thirty of our most ruthless veterans. Leon and Vanya stay behind on base defense. They don’t hear a word of this until the prize is already in chains.”
Three days later, deep within the primeval, magic-drenched heart of Białowieża, the assault began.
The sanctuary was a hidden haven, cradled in a natural amphitheater of ancient oaks and veiled by layers of ancestral illusion wards.
For generations, the guardians had protected this sacred glade.
Though Liliana’s parents had fallen weeks ago, the remaining community—a small, resilient enclave of two dozen witches, wizards, and elders—refused to yield.
A sudden, deafening crack shattered the tranquil afternoon.
“REDUCTO MAXIMA!”
The sky turned a violent shade of crimson as Klara’s vanguard blew through the outer illusion barrier.
A shockwave tore through the ancient trees, sending splinters and scorched leaves flying like shrapnel.
“Forward! Leave none standing except the captives!” Torstein roared, his blonde braided beard bristling as he charged into the glade, his wand spewing torrents of dark, incendiary fire.
The sanctuary exploded into chaos.
Witches in embroidered traditional robes rushed from wooden cottages, pulling their wands and casting defensive shields.
“PROTEGO TOTALUM!” an elderly wizard screamed, erecting a shimmering dome over a group of crying children.
“Hold the line! For the sacred soil!” shouted a senior guardian, drawing a silver-ingrained bastard sword that burst into brilliant white flame.
He parried a lethal Severing Charm from a wyrm-breaker with a shower of blinding sparks, then sliced the attacker’s throat in a single fluid arc of light.
The battle was brutal and tragic.
The sanctuary residents fought with desperate bravery, but they were peaceful scholars, herbalists, and ritualists—not hardened mercenaries hardened by years of killing.
Suddenly, a piercing, ethereal cry echoed from the surrounding cliffs.
Out from the deep shadows of the ancient grove bounded a herd of majestic Unicorns.
Their pearlescent coats gleamed like polished starlight, their spiraled horns radiating pure, blinding magic.
Driven by instinct and their ancient bond with the land, the noble beasts charged into the fray.
A massive stallion jumped over a fallen tree, its horn glowing with searing radiant magic that pierced through a poacher’s chest, killing him instantly.
Another unicorn reared up, its hooves shattering the magical shields of two mercenaries.
“Use the heavy suppression chains! Target their legs!” Klara commanded coldly from the ridge.
She swept her wand in wide, sweeping arcs, unleashing thick, barbed steel cables infused with dark suppression runes.
The cables wrapped around the stallion’s legs with a sickening crunch.
The magnificent creature let out an agonized, tragic whine as it crashed to the dirt.
“Get the nets on them! Don’t damage the blood or horns!” Torstein barked, swinging his heavy fists to knock out a young witch who tried to defend the fallen stallion.
Despite their fierce resistance, the sanctuary dwellers were overwhelmed.
Killing curses flashed green through the smoke, cutting down young and old alike.
The smell of burning wood, blood, and ozone filled the valley.
Cottages collapsed in flames.
Within two hours, the sacred silence of the sanctuary was replaced by the groans of the dying and the crackle of burning ruins.
Only six survivors were left alive, bound in heavy iron chains.
Alongside them, eleven noble unicorns—bruised, bleeding, and bound in runic cages—were dragged into captivity.
By dusk, the raiding party returned to the Wyrm-Breakers’ main camp in triumph.
Leon stood near the camp center beside Vanya and Finn, watching the heavy wooden wagons roll in.
His mind was racing, looking at the sheer scale of the plunder—and the implications of Garrik’s secrecy.
“They did this behind our backs,” Finn muttered quietly under his breath, his eyes wide with horror as he watched the poachers laugh and drag the heavy cages.
“Garrik bypassed us completely.”
Vanya leaned close to Leon, her hazel eyes dangerous and sharp.
“Garrik is cutting us out, Leon. He knows you’re questioning his crusade.”
Leon didn’t answer immediately.
His gaze shifted to the edge of the camp, where Liliana was kept in a reinforced iron cage.
She was staring at the incoming procession.
When her wide emerald eyes landed on the bloody, chained survivors of her sanctuary—and the captured, weeping unicorns—a sharp, strangled sob tore from her throat.
She collapsed to her knees in the dirt of her cage, clutching the iron bars, her slender body shaking uncontrollably.
“My people… my home…” she wept softly, her silver-ash hair falling in tangled strands around her dirt-streaked face.
“Forgive me… I failed you… I failed my duty…”
Leon felt a cold knot tighten in his chest.
He watched her for a long second before turning to Vanya.
“Stay quiet for now. The balance in this camp just shifted. We need to prepare.”
Night fell over the Białowieża forest, thick and suffocatingly dark.
Inside her cage, Liliana stopped weeping.
The grief in her chest burned away, leaving behind a cold, sharp resolve.
She looked at her hands, encased in her worn swordsman’s leather gloves.
During her weeks of captivity, while Leon had fed her and tended to her wounds, she hadn’t just been sitting passively.
Her sharp eyes had observed everything.
She had noticed that the lower hinge of her cage door was forged from a cheaper, iron-alloy blend, susceptible to rust when exposed to moisture.
Every night, under the cover of her oversized white shirt, she had used a tiny, concealed silver wire—hidden inside the lining of her leather belt pouch—to systematically scratch away at the weakened iron bolt, weakening the locking mechanism bit by bit.
Slowly, carefully, Liliana reached down.
She inserted the hidden wire into the weakened part.
Fueled by sheer, desperate determination, her latent magical instinct flared—a sudden, accidental surge of raw magic channeling from her fingertips into the metal to push the rusted hinge past its breaking point.
Click.
The heavy lock gave way with a barely audible snap.
Slipping out of the cage like a shadow, Liliana stayed low to the damp earth.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her movements were agile and silent.
She moved toward the stockades at the edge of the camp where the six surviving sanctuary wizards were bound.
“Shh… it’s me,” she whispered, slipping up behind an elder witch and using her hidden wire and a stolen poacher’s dagger to pick the iron manacles.
“Liliana… child, you’re alive,” the elder gasped softly.
“We don’t have time,” Liliana urged, her voice trembling but firm.
“We have to free the sacred beasts.”
Moving with desperate swiftness, the small group crept toward the heavy wooden transport wagons holding the eleven captured unicorns.
Liliana reached the first cage.
The majestic stallion inside looked at her with pained, intelligent eyes, letting out a soft, breathy huff.
“Hold still, my friend,” Liliana whispered, her heart aching as she pick-locked the cage door and sliced through the suppression ropes with the dagger.
The cage door swung open.
The stallion stepped out silently onto the mossy ground.
Moving quickly, they managed to unlock a second cage, freeing a younger mare, and then a third, releasing a terrified young filly into the shadows.
But as Liliana reached for the lock of the fourth cage, a floorboard on the transport wagon creaked loudly.
A heavy footstep echoed from the shadows of a nearby supply tent.
A burly poacher stepped out, holding a half-empty bottle of mead.
His eyes widened as he saw the silver-haired girl standing beside the open unicorn cages.
“What the— PRISONERS ESCAPING! ALARM!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, firing a red flare spell into the night sky.
BANG!
The crimson signal light burst overhead, illuminating the entire camp in a blood-red glare.
“Run! Go! Into the forest!” Liliana shouted to her people and the three freed unicorns, slapping the stallion’s flank to send it galloping into the dark woods.
Shouts and panicked orders erupted across the camp as poachers spilled out of their tents, wands drawn.
“Grab them! Don’t let the beasts get away!” Torstein’s voice boomed over the chaos.
Liliana and the surviving sanctuary members didn’t look back.
They sprinted wildly into the pitch-black tree line, the two freed unicorns crashing through the brush beside them as spells began to sing through the night air overhead.
Moments later, Garrik Vane stormed out of his tent, his face distorted with terrifying rage as he looked at the three empty unicorn cages and the broken stockades.
“FOOLS! INCOMPETENT SWINE!” Garrik roared, his dark veins bulging against his neck.
He turned his blazing, insane glare onto Klara.
“Klara! Take your fastest trackers! Hunt them down! Bring back those unicorns and cut the feet off anyone who tried to free them!”
“At once, Garrik,” Klara said coldly, already raising her wand to rally her fast-strike squad.
Standing near the shadows of his own tent, Leon watched Klara’s team vanish into the dark forest after the escapees.
Beside him, Vanya crossed her arms, a dark, knowing smirk playing on her lips, while Finn gripped his wand tightly.
Leon’s mind calculated the variables in milliseconds—the direction of the wind, the head start Liliana had, and the inevitable bloody collapse of the Wyrm-Breakers.
‘It’s the endgame,’ Leon thought, his eyes narrowing in the darkness.
‘It’s time to make our move.’