Fiendhunter

**"The duke's man,"** Bai Lang identified the corpse by its livery. No ghoul-teeth could carve such precise blade patterns in flesh. Blood-trails led him through dawn's pallor to Leechcraeft's smoldering apothecary—citizens clustering like carrion crows. 

**"Stand down,"** barked a guardsman, crimson tabard rippling. Bai Lang's rice-sheaf seal parted the mob, revealing Roper Hanke amid ash-choked ruins. 

**"Our would-be assassin escaped the pyre,"** the baron growled, tossing a fire-scorched vambrace. **"Found floating downriver with his throat slit."** 

Xigu lay shivering beneath a moth-eaten woolen shroud, his rheumy eyes tracking the witcher's approach. **"Who is Fei'a?"** 

The herbalist's breath hitched as Bai Lang produced the ring—its inner band etched with interlocked XG. **"She... was dawnlight piercing my eternal night."** 

Through choking sobs unfolded the tragedy: a vampire's forbidden love, Foltest's honeyed poison, royal purges veiled as mob justice. **"The princess's curse began when Fei'a's heart stopped,"** Xigu rasped, pressing a scroll into Bai Lang's palm. **"Her blood still screams in those tower stones."** 

As first light gilded the river, the old man waded into oblivion, Fei'a's letters clutched to his breast. Bai Lang watched the waters still, Mandrake Sage's final gift burning in his palm—formulae for refining vampire oil into something... hungrier. 

**"Black Blood's kiss awaits,"** he murmured, daubing Mourngrim's fuller with iridescent unguent. The elixir's stench—rotten elderberries steeped in strigoi bile—clung to his throat as Yrden's violet lattice armored his ascent. 

Spiral stairs groaned underfoot, their mortar weeping lichen tears. From the tower's crown came the wet symphony of rending flesh—and beneath it, a girl's whimper.