The forest was wrong.
Nyxia felt it before she saw it. A weight in the air, heavy as breath held too long. Branches no longer whispered—they stood stiff and still, their limbs crooked like the fingers of corpses buried upright. The moonlight, once a silver comfort in Ashenvale, now bled weakly through fog thick as wool. It clung to her skin, moist and sour, like the breath of something unseen.
She moved like shadow, barefoot and bow drawn, her body a low glide through bramble and vine. Her tattoos pulsed dimly beneath the surface of her skin, their glow barely perceptible, like veins lit from beneath with forgotten starlight.
Loque'nahak followed just behind—silent, spectral, and alert. The great silver beast flowed across the forest floor like a spirit through mist. His fur shimmered faintly, half-there, and his paws made no sound. Only his breath, slow and deliberate, broke the hush.
There were no birds. No insects. No night creatures calling to the stars.
Only scent.
The scent of rot, blood, and ash. Of void magic that didn't belong.
Nyxia knelt beside a deep impression in the soil. A hoofprint. Heavy. Fresh. Still steaming.
The stag was near.
She brushed two fingers across the edges of the mark, then pressed them to her nose. Not just blood—burnt marrow. The thing was unraveling. Everything it touched would too.
She rose without sound. Notched a rune-etched arrow. Loque'nahak froze, his tail flicking once. She followed his gaze through the thick mist and spotted it—just beyond the skeletal remains of a crumbled tree.
The stag.
It was monstrous. Eight feet at the shoulder, its antlers branched out like the cracked spines of dead trees. Its once-beautiful fur had sloughed off in places, revealing glistening muscle webbed with dark filaments. The black veins that bulged beneath its hide pulsed like a second heart, glowing faintly violet. Patches of its skin twitched as though something inside was struggling to escape.
Its mouth hung open slightly. A tongue lolled out, blistered and leaking black ichor.
And yet it breathed.
Alive. Barely.
"Loque," she whispered.
The beast gave a low growl and crouched.
Nyxia exhaled slowly, the way her father once taught her—through the gut, not the lungs. She raised her bow. Sighted along the arrow.
And released.
The arrow cut through fog and silence like judgment.
It hit the stag in the throat.
The beast recoiled, then snapped its head toward her. Its eyes were pits of molten coal. It shrieked—a noise that had never belonged in any forest, a sound shaped like a wound.
Then it charged.
The forest erupted.
Nyxia moved.
She leapt backward as the stag rammed through a copse of thin trees, obliterating bark and trunk like they were mist. Splinters flew. One sliced her cheek. Another embedded itself in her shoulder. Pain bloomed, but she didn't stop.
She twisted sideways, spun around a trunk, and fired again—this time into the beast's left shoulder.
The arrow buried deep.
The stag shrieked and turned, slamming its antlers into the tree beside her. Bark exploded. She ducked, rolled beneath its belly, and slashed upward with her hunting dagger, slicing across its underbelly. The wound opened—flesh falling away in folds—but the stag didn't slow.
It kicked backward. A hoof struck her ribs.
The blow knocked her six feet through the air.
She hit the ground hard, breath stolen from her chest, stars dancing in her eyes.
Loque'nahak roared.
The spirit beast hurled himself forward, claws raking across the creature's spine. The stag thrashed violently, but Loque moved with inhuman precision, his body a blur of moonlight and shadow. He bit down on the stag's neck, shook, and tore.
Chunks of corrupted flesh fell to the ground and began to smoke.
The stag screamed.
But it wasn't dying.
It was changing.
Nyxia rose unsteadily, blood in her mouth, ribs aching. Her tattoos flared briefly—recognizing what the beast was becoming.
She'd seen this before.
Void-warped life. A stage before something worse. Before it ceased to be life at all.
She drew another arrow, gritted her teeth, and ran forward.
As Loque distracted the beast, Nyxia launched herself off a fallen trunk and landed on the stag's back. She drove her dagger into the base of its skull and held on as it reared and bucked.
It spun. Slammed into a tree.
She nearly lost her grip.
But she drove the blade deeper.
The creature shrieked one last time and—burst.
Not into gore.Into shadow.
A cloud of black mist exploded outward, devouring sound and light.
Nyxia was thrown back again, and this time she didn't get up right away.
Because the world around her was gone.
She stood somewhere else.
A grove, unfamiliar and bathed in red light. Trees stripped of leaves twisted toward a sky bleeding crimson. At the center stood a hooded figure beside a brazier of bone and smoke. The fire burned blue and cold.
He spoke to no one. Or maybe to her.
"She's close. But not ready. Not whole."
Nyxia stepped forward. She recognized the cadence.
The man turned slightly. His face was cloaked in shadow. But the voice…
"She will come. The Veil remembers its own."
Her father's voice.
Then the grove shattered.
She awoke on her hands and knees, coughing. Blood dripped from her nose. The stag's body—or what remained—was gone. In its place was a crater of burned soil and a strange sigil carved into the earth. It shimmered faintly. Familiar.
Loque'nahak padded to her side and sat silently, his eyes never leaving the mark.
Nyxia stared at it.
It was the same symbol etched into the stone beneath her childhood home. The one no one else ever saw.
She whispered, "He's alive."
The wind didn't answer.
But it didn't have to.
That night, they made camp beneath a fallen tree near a cold brook. The world felt like it was holding its breath.
Nyxia stripped off her torn armor and tended her wounds by firelight. Her tattoos glowed softly, their lines a quiet constellation across her skin. She could feel something different in them. A shift. A response.
Every time she crossed paths with the Veil, they changed.
Loque'nahak curled beside her, his flank pressed close. His body pulsed like slow lightning—alive and steady, a tether she didn't realize she needed.
Nyxia stared into the fire, ribs aching, cheek swollen.
The voice had been her father's.
Not a dream. Not a memory.
A message.
He was somewhere. Alive or something close.
And he was calling.
She didn't sleep.
The air was too still.
The silence too perfect.
Then came the whisper of footsteps that made no sound.
She stood.
Loque rose beside her, hackles up, tail stiff. He growled—but low, uncertain.
A shape stood at the edge of the firelight. Cloaked. Tall. Still.
Not a beast. Not voidspawn. Not cultist.
Something older.
Nyxia stepped forward, blade in hand.
"Show yourself," she said.
The figure didn't move.
The fire flickered.
She felt the pressure again—like during the Rite. Like when she reached beyond Elune's blessing and touched something older.
The trees seemed to bend away from the figure.
"She's found the first echo."
The voice came from behind her.
She spun.
No one.
She turned back.
The figure was gone.
Nyxia remained standing long after the figure vanished.
The mist didn't lift. The woods didn't relax. The fire, even sheltered, flickered as if breathing shallowly.
She lowered her blade, but her hand stayed tense on the hilt. Her skin felt too tight over her bones, her breath caught between fight and stillness. A thread inside her had been plucked, and it vibrated still, echoing through her ribs.
What she had felt wasn't just presence.
It was recognition.
Whatever stood outside that fire hadn't simply watched her—it had known her. Not in the way enemies know prey. In the way one half of a memory knows the other.
She glanced at Loque'nahak.
He watched her, head tilted slightly. Patient, as always. But his eyes weren't calm.
They were waiting.
She didn't return to sleep. Sleep, lately, had become a gamble. When she dreamed, she saw people she didn't know. A bloodied man with chains on his arms. A woman in red silk who smiled while she wept. A mage burning their own name into the air with every spell.
Dreams were supposed to be sanctuary.
Hers were maps.
Of somewhere she hadn't been yet.
By morning, the glade looked normal.
The crater was gone. No char. No blood. No sigil.
Only a slight dampness in the earth where the stag had ruptured—and even that faded by midday. As if the land, ashamed of what had happened, had tried to scrub the memory away.
But the birds didn't return.
The insects didn't buzz.
The silence lingered.
Nyxia knelt where the corpse had fallen. She drew her fingertips across the moss and whispered something in Darnassian—not a prayer, but a challenge.
"I see you now."
Loque'nahak pressed his nose to the spot and growled once.
Then turned.
They moved.
The trail led deeper into the wilds—past where the last border wards had failed. These lands had no watchtowers, no patrols, no druids.
Only the lost, the broken, and the hunted.
The trees grew tighter, branches tangled as if trying to hold each other upright. Nyxia pushed through briars that bit like teeth and thorns that wept black when cut. Loque scouted ahead, pausing often to sniff the air, hackles twitching.
Hours passed. Light never changed. The sun had no place here.
They reached a clearing where the stone had cracked open—like the forest itself had suffered a wound. Ruins lay in scattered pieces: old Elven markers, overgrown statues of owls and sabers, moonstones blackened by time or something worse.
She recognized none of it.
But her bones did.
At the center of the ruin stood a stone pillar. Half-shattered, moss-choked, and humming faintly. She stepped closer and saw runes along its base—scorched but familiar.
The same markings etched into her spine.
She reached for them.
And heard footsteps.
Not one pair. Several. Slow. Crunching.
She drew her bow.
Loque emerged from the mist and stopped, growling low.
Shapes appeared beyond the stones—figures draped in cloaks of bark and bone, skin streaked with blackened vines. Their faces were wrong. Their eyes had no light. They moved like puppets jerked by distant strings.
One raised its arm and pointed at her.
"She bears the Veil," it rasped. "Unfold her."
The others surged forward.
Nyxia fired.
The arrow hit the first creature in the throat, but it didn't stop. It staggered, twisted its head unnaturally, and kept walking—bloodless and smiling.
She fired again.
And again.
Still they came.
Loque leapt into their ranks, claws glowing, tearing through the unnatural flesh with ferocity. He gutted one, then another—but the third latched onto his flank with a gnarled hand that hissed with shadow.
Nyxia dropped her bow and drew her blades.
She met the rush head-on.
Steel met bone. Flesh parted. One creature screamed in a dozen voices and shattered like glass. Another bit her forearm—she drove a blade through its skull and ripped it free.
They bled shadow.
They bled memory.
She began to see things—glimpses with every strike.
A child crying beneath a burning sky.A man in chains singing to the stars.A woman vomiting blood into an empty cauldron.
Each fragment burned behind her eyes.
The fight lasted minutes but carved years from her soul.
When it ended, she stood in the silence again, chest heaving, arms trembling.
The creatures had vanished. Not collapsed—vanished. As if they were never fully here.
Loque was bleeding faintly, silver light leaking from his flank, but he stood.
Nyxia knelt beside him, hand pressed to his fur.
"Still with me?"
He nuzzled her gently.
Then turned toward the pillar.
The runes were now fully aglow.
She stood. Walked to them. Placed her palm against the surface.
The stone pulsed once.
And then shattered—silently—into dust that drifted upward, suspended in the air like ash held in time.
Beneath where it had stood was a staircase.
Spiraling down.
Carved with her name.
Nyxia didn't move.
Loque'nahak limped beside her, his form still dimming. The fight had taken its toll, and the Veil left a residue in his breath.
She knelt beside him, resting her hand over his ribs.
He was still here.
But barely.
Her gaze returned to the stairs.
They breathed.
A steady inhale, as if the world beneath waited to be drawn.
Her hand tightened on the hilt of her blade.
Not yet.
She couldn't go in—not without answers. Not without knowing what she was walking into. The Veil had marked her, yes, but it wasn't done shaping her.
She had to be stronger.
And she knew where to begin.
She whispered to Loque, "We need the druids."
Even if they feared her. Even if their circles were broken. There were still places older than the Veil's corruption—places that remembered what it tried to erase.
Places like the Carrion Circle.
She looked north.
And walked.