A plenty of time has passed as the hunters recovered from their encounter by the help of witch-doctor and his arts.

The word about what they have witnessed has spread among the village, reaching the Hogwatch in no time. Tales turned out to be true; many words were spoken about the undead, yet many more believed them to be nothing more than a myth; however, the truth surfaced, and it spread quickly among the entirety of the kingdom. The adventurers of all realms gathered at Aerinthorn together with the plague doctors and inquisitors of many knightly orders.

As the day dawned, the church bell rang out of the ordinary, summoning peasants to a gathering in the halls of the church. The white-bearded priest in dark robes stood on the altar and awaited in silence as the men and women poured into the hall, and then he spoke:

"With sorrow in my heart, I need to inform you that the king has placed a quarantine upon our lands; there will be no passage through the Oldwood, also known as the Weeping Woods." The murmur of words has filled the air, and the concern could be felt in the walls of the church.

"Now let us participate in the prayer for our souls." The priest continued, and the prayer was held.

The duo sat in "The White Raven," and as Luthor slowly drank red wine and thought, his sharp eyes staring blankly into the void, Eldon interrupted,

"So what are we to do now? Nobody can leave Aerinthorn, not even the goods! You know the situation is dire when not even the tax will be collected."

"We will strike the problem at its core."

"Do you really think we can stop the plague?" The acolyte asked,

"If we find its source, we can behead it."

"Behead the plague?"

"Do you think a spell of this magnitude could linger for so long?" The seasoned witch-hunter replied.

"What are you talking about? What do you mean exactly?" After a moment of silence, Eldon answered his own question: "You think it's a continuous incantation? Yes! I heard it in my dream! I heard a faint voice singing! It must be under that mountain!"

As he spoke, a man in his mid-forties approached the table and sat among the witch-hunters. He wore tattered brown leather clothes, old leather boots that saw ages, and even his belt was eaten by the buckle. He smelled of rain and wine, and his face was unshaven; his hair was messy and greasy. His leather hat was weathered down by countless rains, yet it spoke of prestige lost through time.

It was the same drunk man they saw leaning against the church not long ago.

"Who would you be?" Luthor questioned, and the man placed a bronze medallion on the table, a mundane trinket of a sort, of almost no value at all.

Eldon was confused, not being able to see magic anymore since the power from his dream had faded; for him, the gesture meant nothing, but Luthor's eyes could see an invisible mark on the medallion, drawn by the magic, and it was a mark of the witch-hunter.

"So you are one of us," Luthor mumbled.

"Exactly." Both of the men seemed serious and stoic, and Eldon wondered if it was caused by the mugwort-infused wine the witch-hunters often drank in the temple or something else.

"Be careful; do not break your disguise; you managed to convince me you are nothing but a drunkard on the street."

"There is no disguise; people know who I was."

"Was?"

"I have decided to retire." The man spoke, and the barmaid brought him a copper chalice of wine. "It's on the house! just don't get used to it." She added with disgust in her voice and left, minding her own business.

As she walked away, he continued, "I have decided to retire."

"To retire? You are oath-bound to the temple for life; we retire only when we are dead."

"Then call me an oathbreaker."

"Did you come here to admit a treason?" Luthor asked, as his hand clenched a dagger at his belt.

"I am here to help." The ragged man answered before chugging half of his wine.

"Forgive me, I do not understand why you would take our cause if you just mentioned you would like to retire, and how can we trust you, Oathbreaker?"

"I have retired because I have realized that what we do is not always right."

"Morality is a luxury we can't afford," Luthor answered, and in an instant, the man pulled a dagger from his boot and stabbed it right into the wooden table in front of Luthor.

"What do you know of morality?" He yelled, Luthor's dagger resting hairwidth away from his throat, and the whole tavern stared at the two as silence filled the room.

The man left the grip of his dagger, and Luthor returned his knife to the leather sheath, but the people still stared in silence, and a couple of moments later, the tavern's bard played a tune on his wooden lute, and the men cheered, and the attention was quickly diverted from the witch-hunters.

"Stupidity is also a luxury we can't afford." Luthor spoke as soon as he noticed the attention had diverted from his table and the room was filled with bard's music and cheers.

He added, "Next time if you do something stupid, I won't hesitate to cut your throat."

"You know nothing of morality." The man retold, still exasperated by Luthor's words, as he yanked his dagger from the table.

"So what happened?" Eldon asked,

"What happened?" The man questioned.

"There must be something; I've never seen somebody react with such ire without a proper reason."

"Let me tell you, boy, the story is long, and I barely know you, let alone why such things would ever interest you."

"Well, the day is long." Eldon added and pulled a skin of wine from his belt, pouring it into the ragged man's chalice.

"Every day is long, yet I rarely speak of my troubles."

"Well, you used to be a witch-hunter?"

"As I said, yes."

"I am yet to become one; I'm an acolyte, as you were."

"Indeed."

"Is there anything you'd be happy to have known when you became one?"

The man thought for a couple of seconds, sipped the wine, and looked towards Luthor: "If you don't mind?"

"I don't," Luthor replied.

"Alright." The ragged man drank some wine again, slightly intoxicated from before, and he looked at Eldon:

"I was young just like you, and I excelled among our ranks, but those were different times. Our jobs were quite simple; we served to rid the kingdom of witches, especially the outer reaches, which Paladins rarely visited.

"Paladins?" The boy asked and sipped wine from his chalice.

"They created us." The man answered, "They are slightly less full of themselves than the rest of blue-blood kingsmen, and they cared about the outer reaches enough to create our first order in Duskmoor to do their job where they couldn't reach. Quickly our orders formed as far as Darstulia, Vikeron, and even the frozen kingdom in the north."

I understand about Aerinthorn and Darstulia, both belonging to the outer reaches of the Kingdom of Ventrius. The young man added, "But why would they care about the barbarians in the north? Let alone the traitors in Vikeron? the ones who betrayed the crown not by a hex or spell but by their own free will?"

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"The civil war was harsh." The old man said, fiddling with his chalice, "But Paladins are not like other Kingsmen; they serve the Church, and they fight forces of darkness wherever they may reside."

"I understand." The boy answered.

"Yet you may need to understand some other things too; what we call forces of darkness are simply the enemies of the church; some of them are not like the others."

"I understand that part as well; those herbalists shouldn't have been burned; they clearly aren't the cause of the affliction."

"It is not only about them, boy." The man answered, clenching the chalice in his shaky hand as the wine rippled and almost leaped over its rim.

"Then what is it about?"

"Do you think that's the only situation in which the innocent were burned?"

"Well, the only one that I knew about."

"They are all innocent."

"Come on, by the chance some of them had to be the real witches?"

"Indeed they were; most of them were, but they were innocent."

"How can they both be witches and innocent?" The acolyte wondered.

"You see, in old times, before Aroseth was defeated, witches used to be the practitioners of vile chaos magic, the power that could destroy existence itself and far beyond our comprehension."

"Chaos magic? Isn't it just another name for dark magic?"

"Chaos magic, void magic, and dark magic all had the same meaning, the last one being most commonly used today and misattributed."

"What do you mean?" The acolyte's curiosity grew.

"Before Aroseth was defeated, the witches were practitioners of truly evil arts, if left unchecked, it could tap into infinite potentials beyond existence and swallow the world entirely. After the fall of Aroseth, the word was thrown around haphazardly for thousands of years; the dragons were of far greater concern in that time, but after they were forced into oblivion and wiped away from the world, Monarch hungered for more."

"Hungered for more?"

"You see, King Ventrius the First was crowned a king of mankind in the time of need to unite humanity on Xorael's side with a purpose to defeat Aroseth."

"I know that much," Eldon mentioned, and the man continued:

"When Aroseth was defeated, humanity kept fighting Naldir's vile creation for thousands of years, the dragons, of course, and once we prevailed again, the feud grew between the realms. Why would they serve the king and obey? It was the end of history after all, the happy ever after for the world, or so they thought. Some may argue he was crowned by Xorael, the King of Gods, to rule the humanity, and that those that disagree only spite the Lord's word, yet the man he crowned was King Ventrius the First, and he died in the seventh century".

"Isn't the king, the Monarch of Mankind, deathless?"

"That's what they tell you; in reality, King Ventrius the First died 666 years after the fall of Aroseth, at the jaws of Gull, the destroyer, the greatest of the dragons, and ever since, every incarnation of Ventrius died at 666 years old except the last, the sixth king.

"Ugh." The acolyte groaned, "It always has to be that cursed number."

"The number is cursed only afterwards since it was used as a mockery, a proof of the mortality of the monarch and therefore his reign." The man sipped his wine and continued,

"After the war of the gods and after the dragons were defeated, to solidify his reign over loose regions such as Darstulia, or the far north, the King decided to rid their populace of their native religion and culture, and their priests, also known as Shamans and Druids, were hunted, and to invoke the evil the mankind has learned to fear, they used the word "witches' to describe them."

"But wouldn't that provoke a—"

"Yes, a war broke out, and Darstulia, due to its proximity to the heartlands, was conquered and assimilated, yet the war in the north was much slower due to the hard conditions of the region, harsh winters, and the northern mountains that block the logistics."

"Elaris Eldorath?" The acolyte asked, raising his brow.

"Yes, the name that roughly translates to The Mountains in the North."

"Most of us were told the world ends there, and beyond the mountains there is only an endless wasteland with no beginning nor end from which the winter comes." The acolyte claimed.

"The Winterwastes, indeed, they span for miles, and not many know what resides far beyond them, nor if there is an end to them, yet what we know is that the people live there, and that's where the northern raiders come from."

"This all reminds me of the Northland, the frozen land at the very tip of the world beyond which nothing exists." Eldon spoke, mentioning the similarity.

"Some people call the wastes Northland, yet some speak of some other place carrying that name."

"So what you are saying is that the people we dubbed witches are nothing but the priests of the native faiths of Darstulia and the land beyond the mountains?"

"That's exactly on point." The old man answered, "And that's why they are innocent."

"So why would you take our side in our quest to defeat them to end the curse?"

"The things I told you were true until now, boy, but what you fight against is far worse than the ordinary druids that the church has wrongfully dubbed witches. What you deal with are the real practitioners of dark magic; they have returned once again by whatever calamity has caused their return, but those things still remain for us to understand."

"It comes to my understanding that your disagreement with our order is caused by your understanding of the druids?" Luthor asked the ragged man, interrupting the lecture.

"Indeed."

"So in a fight against the evil greater than Druids, we have a common enemy."

"That's correct, and that is why you can consider me to be an ally."

"Due to the nature of our situation and the quarantine imposed by the king, I do not think we have more options, so please, introduce yourself."

"They call me Edgar Corvus."

"In that case, you are welcome to our squad, Edgar. We need to instruct Garric Thane that Hogwatch, from now on, should only serve the defensive purpose."

"Forgive my question, Master Luthor, but why would that be a good course of action considering the fact that we are in grave danger since the king's men won't bolster our ranks?" The young acolyte knew better than to question the master hunter's decisions, but this one seemed necessary.

"Because the kind of enemy we face now shouldn't be dealt with by untrained peasants."

"Do you think the old sergeant will listen to you?" Edgar has questioned.

"If he wants to keep his people safe, he'll have to.

"Don't be sure in the stubborn man's reasoning; he was a hard nut since the day he came here."

"It's still worth a try." Luthor proclaimed before he chugged his wine, left a handful of copper coins on the wooden table, and stood up to leave the tavern in search for Garric, and the acolyte soon followed, together with Edgar, since he was left with no other choice.