As the men approached the tavern, Garric appeared out of the darkness of the streets, after making sure all of his men were dismissed and everyone safely reached their home:

"You seem to be tired from the journey. Take a rest; I will take care of your horses. There is an empty room in The White Raven, our humble tavern."

"Agreed," Luthor replied as he handed the reins of his horse to the watchmaster, and his apprentice followed. The men entered a tavern through its large wooden door that led straight to the mead hall. Its tables were broad, and the whole room was dimly lit by the lanterns and the fireplace.

They walked upstairs and entered an empty room at the end of the hall. It smelled of dust and old wooden furniture. The room was cold, and so were the woolen sheets, and Eldon could feel the shivers go down his body as he rested beneath the blanket, its coarse fibers doing little to block the chill.

The time has passed as he fiddled with an iron cross on his necklace, thinking about his life back in the temple and his journey ahead. He simply could not fall asleep; his thoughts just spiraled around, and he found himself in the state of delirium. He could hear the faint sound of singing in the background, playing with his mind.

"Who sings in this hour?" he wondered, and there was nothing but silence. "I must be imagining things," he thought as the tiredness prevailed and he rolled over to his side to sleep, but then it came back.

He heard the sound of a chant in the distance, so faint that it lingered between the observed and imagined.

As he slowly drifted into sleep, he could see himself standing in the middle of the village, and the night was strangely dark. The shadows seemed to dance around him, unusual and surreal, and every light was in a strange shade of pale, from the torches and windows to the moon and the stars. He could hear the mass of whispers talking to him, and he could see the dark energy radiating from everything around him, and as he looked down the road, he saw a figure standing in front of him, all dark, pitch black, lacking any depth, as if it was made from a tear in the fabric of reality, and the corridor seemed to narrow and wobble before his eyes.

He walked towards the figure, barely ignoring the whispers in his mind, and as he approached closer, his vision seemed to dance more and more, and soon enough, he was filled with immeasurable dread; it seemed to swallow his soul, a sudden fear and nothing that stands behind it.

He could feel his soul leap in his chest as he looked around, and in the shadows he could see many faces, and not a moment had passed before they rushed at him, charred bodies, as black as coal, burning in black flames and screaming in dreadful screams that haunted his mind, just like the ones that had been burned at the stake.

Before he could fight, he thought to himself,

"Am I guilty of their deaths?" Yet he had no choice but to pull out his sword and face them, and as he cut through them, he could see their faces, talking not of the thrill of battle nor the grim warrior's face invoking intimidation and fear, but of fright and dread, the existential fear, the same expression he could see on the burning bodies as they disappeared into nothingness. As he cleaved through them, the whispers grew louder, and as they lay slain at his feet, he saw the dark figure grow, ascend, and loom over him, its whispers taking a deep and intimidating tone, and as he charged at it with a sword in his hand, he woke up in the room, covered in sweat. He did not spring up from the bed, nor inhale deeply; all that he saw was the reality appearing in front of his eyes, as he found himself lying in a cold, dark room.

Yet the feeling of dread that he felt in his dream remained, as well as the eerie hum that he could still hear, almost as if the feeling from the dream still lingered in his wakeful mind. As he looked around, his eyes could see the traces of magic, a dark ectoplasm that lingered around the room, and observe its flows.

He stood up and looked through the window, and he spotted the traces everywhere; the whole village was enchanted, and its dark tendrils led to a certain spot in the mountains, and they seemed to radiate from it.

"Wake up!" He whispered and pushed Luthor, and as soon as his eyes opened, he was fully awake. The young acolyte never behaved in such a manner, so his mentor was surprised.

"What is it?"

"I have our clue; I saw it in a dream," the acolyte responded.

"Elaborate," The older witch-hunter demanded.

"Do you see this?" Young man asked as he leaned against the window.

His mentor stood up without a moment to hesitate or brush off his tiredness and looked through towards the village.

"See what?"

"I can see magic! The entire village seems to be engulfed in it!"

As soon as he heard that, Luthor focused his eyes, and they turned crimson red, allowing him to see the magic, and in his eyes, the village looked normal beside a faint eerie glow.

"Just a glow, the place seems to be enchanted indeed."

"No, I can see its flows and where it comes from!" The young acolyte clearly saw what even the master witch-hunter's eyes could not.

"Interesting." Luthor mumbled to his chin and looked towards the acolyte, and the young man's eyes seemed to be ablaze in the white glow of magic.

"Let's go! There isn't a single moment to waste!" The mentor proclaimed. The acolyte brimmed with potential, yet the powers acquired in a dream were often of a short breath, so indeed, they couldn't waste a single moment.

The men picked up their equipment and stormed out of the tavern into the dark streets of Brynmire, and as the hefty wooden tavern's door was pushed open and the men walked out into the town square, they saw the priest's apprentice dig through the ashes in front of the church, and the drunk man was sitting next to a church wall, leaning his back against its cold stones and drinking wine from a bottle, raising its bottom up, and the bottle was almost empty.

"There are no honest folks on the streets in this time," Luthor said silently, and the priest's apprentice looked at the two and waved with his hands, dark from the ash of the burned witches:

"Oh, good evening, witch-hunters!" his voice nervous.

"Good evening," Luthor replied.

"I was just digging through the ashes for the nails! Yes!" As he spoke, the drunk man lifted his head, his glare landing on the two.

"Freaks," Luthor mumbled, and continued walking towards the gate, and his apprentice followed.

"The scriptures state that the nails that were used to crucify a witch can be used to forge weapons of great power against the creatures of darkness!" The acolyte stated as he followed the master-hunter.

"Those weapons also come with a great price; that's why we trust nothing but silver," Luthor replied.

"A price?" The acolyte asked curiously.

"They are the reason why most of the earliest witch-hunters went insane."

"They did what?" The acolyte grew more and more curious as the two passed through the wooden gate and walked out to the road that led towards the forest and the mountains.

"In earliest days, our orders were just like them, the Hogwatch, be it slightly more hand-picked for our qualities, by the paladins, of course. We relied on holy crucifixes, oak stakes and fire to destroy witches."

"So why did they go insane?"

"They forged witchblades, the weapons made of the witches nails, they could cut through magic and no creature was immune to them, they could harm everything but the gods, but the price was even greater than their power; the screams could turn even the sanest man insane."

"The screams?"

"Souls of the witches were trapped in the nails, and you could always hear the screams, sometimes they would come, sometimes they would go, and sometimes they would return as faint whispers in the night, slowly gnawing at your sanity, drop by drop at a time."

"So that's why we use silver?"

"Most of us."

As they walked, the duo slowly approached the cold and dark forest. The mist was thick, and they could barely see ahead of them. The moonlight was bright, and they needed no lanterns, not that a witch-hunter would need one in any case, for they could see in the dark, unlike their acolytes, who were almost nothing more than the common men.

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"I don't like this feeling," the acolyte spoke, as the dread slowly went down his spine, or was it the cold? He could barely tell them apart, yet he felt the same heavy, burdensome dread as he felt in his dream, and the whole world around him felt surreal. "The dark magic is all around us, this place might be far worse than we expected." he spoke, and the master-hunter replied;

"It all depends on what you expected to find, make no mistake boy, Aryon would not send us here if he thought it's just a curse that caused the plague.". Luthor clearly grew more and more cautious as they walked towards the mountains.

"Why didn't we alert the hogwatch?"

"This can be a mere distraction; now be silent!".

The two continued walking towards the mountain, and they could see something on the road, a shape in a fog. As they approached, they saw the remains of two dead horses and a wooden cart, and the trails of blood leading towards the woods, and the traces of magic were scattered around the place. "This looks fresh; no doubt hogwatch has passed here tonight, so it must have happened after they returned to the village, It is so fresh it may still be breathing." The older witch-hunter spoke as his eyes locked onto something in the forest down the trail of blood.

He walked into the darkness, and the acolyte followed. At the end of the blood trail there was an old peasant man lying on the forest ground, his linen clothes soaked in the blood that gushed from his chest, clearly inflicted by a blade, and there were still a couple of words left in him.

Luthor rushed towards the man and asked, "Who did this?"

"They... killed the rest *cough*, beasts unseen! The r-rotten and forlorn!" The man spoke with his dying breath, and his face lost all expression, almost as if he was frozen in time, and his eyes were wide open, and they blankly stared into the darkness above.

Luthor closed now dead man's eyes with his dark leather glove, and as he looked around, he saw pieces of human bodies torn and scattered around, strips of skin still hanging with coagulated blood cloths as they were dragged through the leaves, not far from their mangled bodies, and in the distance they saw a creature feasting on the torn abdomen of one of the fresh corpses.

Its skin was of a sickly gangrenous green color, full of plagued blisters and covered by the vile pox and rancid pus, and as it turned towards them, screaming a piercing shriek before it charged the witch-hunters.

Luthor quickly unsheathed his sword and slashed it diagonally across the monster's chest, and the flesh of the creature was scorched by the silver blade, yet the creature only staggered and then swung its deformed claws towards the witch-hunter.

He managed to block the swing with a single cut of his sword, and the arm was severed, and the vile blood poured down the wounded monster and reeked of sulfur and decay.

Before the monster could recover, Eldon pierced it with his iron blade, and as the weapon stuck into the monster's back, it did little to no damage at all. The creature was clearly resistant to common weapons.

The sound of rumbling and growling, rattling and screeching came from deep in the forest as more of the monsters rushed out of the woods, some of them carrying crude cleavers and hatchets or simple iron knives, and there were four of them. As soon as Eldon saw them, he kicked the first fiend off his blade with his dark leather boot, and as the undead started falling, Luthor decapitated it with an upwards swing of his blade as the body fell limp on the ground.

"Run!" Luthor proclaimed, and the duo started sprinting down the road as fast as their legs could carry them, but the monsters chased after them tirelessly.

"They are closing in on us!" "I know!" The men exchanged words before Luthor turned around and threw two silver daggers at one of the chasing monsters, toppling it to the ground, but before he could slay the creature with his sword, the second monster lunged at him, and if he wasn't agile enough to dodge the leaping fiend in one quick motion, it might as well have tackled him to the ground.

As the lunging monster landed on the road, it rolled up in a quick motion, but as soon as the creature recovered, Eldon smashed its head with a vial of holy water. The glass shattered on impact against the skull, and the holy water covered the creature and started sizzling, burning its flesh away as the fiend wailed in agony before the acolyte pierced its skull with the tip of his sword, well-soaked in holy water, putting it to rest.

Even if not optimal, it was clear that even the common weapons could kill such creatures if used properly and in combination with other means such as the holy water.

"Three more to deal with!" Acolyte yelled as one of the putrid fiends swung its hatchet, all caked in worm-infested dried blood, towards Luthor, who managed to parry it with his silver sword and return a cut against its stomach, tearing the creature open as the decomposing guts poured out together with a pile of maggots and the smell of decomposing flesh. The second one swung its cleaver towards the master hunter, and Luthor managed to duck under the blade before running his blade through the attacker, and not a second later he tore the blade out of his victim in a quick spin and decapitated the monster in the same motion.

The third monster swung at the young acolyte with a butcher knife, and the young man parried it with his iron blade, but without a moment to return the attack, the monster slashed towards him again and again, and the young man moved backwards, parrying his swings and occasionally returning them, yet the beast cared little about the cuts, each one cutting its flesh open but with little to no response.

With no other option left, the acolyte kicked the monster and pulled out the linen pouch of glittering gold before throwing its contents against the monster.

The glowing golden petals made a burst of light on impact and flew everywhere, illuminating the fight with a brief flash of light and a dull resonant sound. The creature was blasted with its holy magic and completely blinded and scorched in a second, and as the man swung his blade with both his hands, cutting the rotten fiend diagonally, the creature's wound was aglow with the burst of holy power, burning it into nothing but a heap of seared flesh and coal.

As he turned towards the Luthor, he saw him blocking the wide swings from the fiend and landing a quick cut against its knee, and as the monster fell, the man plunged his blade straight through its neck and kicked it down to the ground.

"What a fight," Luthor commented as he caught his breath and wiped his sword clean before putting it back in its sheath.

"We should hurry towards the village; we made a huge discovery here," the master hunter added, and the men quickly rushed towards its wooden gates. After a short while, the men approached the gates, and the guards opened them ajar as soon as they spotted two tired witch-hunters in the distance, all bloody and exhausted from the battle.

They entered the tavern as the dawnbreak slipped through its curtains, and the barmaid already prepared a meal on its crackling warm fireplace.

"Come in! You must be the witch-hunters everyone tal..." The young woman started speaking before dropping a ceramic mug from her hands, shattering it against the wooden floor as she gasped for air and covered her mouth with her hand.

The witch-hunters were covered in blood and bile from the monsters they had slain, and the sight of them made the young woman rush upstairs to awake the plague doctor, and soon after, a man dressed in a black coat came down the stairs; he had a white mask with a beak and black round goggles, and his head was covered by a hat. Not even a slightest bit of his skin was seen, as he was completely covered in the attire.

He had a short scepter in his hand, and as he slowly inspected them, he carried a small round piece of glass in the other, framed by a bronze frame; it served to magnify as he observed the two, to notice any sign of the affliction taking hold.