Reidar glanced at the treeline, the distant dam's silhouette mocking their uncertainty. There was something utterly wrong with Havenwood's silence.

"We need to go check it."

Reidar shook his head. "Martin made it clear. If I step one foot near the area, and he'll put a bolt through me. Or try anyway."

She stopped, eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms. "He'd be a fool to. You're level seventy-one with an army at your call. What can he do? Rally his archers? You've got summons that'd end them before they'd be able to knock their arrows."

Reidar's jaw clenched. She wasn't wrong, Martin's threats were nothing more than empty air against his strength. There was another problem, though.

"What if it's a trap?"

Lena stepped closer. "We can't just sit here blind, Reidar. Every hour we wait, people are in there: kids, fighters, and civilians who trusted Martin. They might be injured or worse. If it's the Church moving, or some other horror brewing behind those walls, hiding on this hill does nothing but make us complicit."

Her gaze flickered toward the dam in the distance, above the settlement, then back to him.

He exhaled. She was right.

…

…

…

They urged their mounts down the slope.

"What do you think happened?" Lena asked as they approached the perimeter.

"Nothing good." Reidar's eyes swept across the treeline. "Best case? Martin finally figured out what had happened and evacuated everyone the moment he realized the Church was behind everything. Got them all to some secondary location we don't know about."

He paused.

"Is there a place that could fit?" he asked.

Lena shook her head. "No."

"Then the worst case… it would be..."

"They are dead."

The timber station appeared first. Chopped logs lay everywhere, dropped right where they'd been cut.

Axes and saws were left behind like they didn't matter. A half-loaded cart tilted in the mud, like someone just walked away.

"They left in the middle of work," Lena said. "Whatever happened, it was sudden."

They passed the outer watch posts. It was empty. The guards' stations showed no signs of struggle.

"This is wrong," Lena said as her eyes went through the unnervingly tidy perimeter. "If the Church had launched some kind of attack, we'd be wading through bodies and rubble. And if our people had fled under attack, they'd have fought."

The main gates stood open. Beyond them, Havenwood's streets were empty. They could already see it.

A half-built barricade stood forgotten, tools and nails scattered in the dust nearby. Someone had knocked over a basket of roots by the mess hall, spilling them everywhere. A little farther on, a child's wooden doll lay facedown in the dirt.

Reidar dismounted and approached on foot.

"Hello?" Lena said. "Anyone there?"

Nothing answered except the wind through the empty structures.

"There is no barrier," Reidar said. It was weird as Martin struggled a lot to get the settkement crator token.

"I don't think Martin would have stopped me from coming," Lena said.

"Yeah, it wouldn't make sense," Reidar said. "But he should have blacklisted me. I shouldn't have been able to. So, there is no barrier."

They moved deeper into the settlement. Past the empty market square where people should have been hawking their wares. Past the silent workshops where hammers should have been ringing against anvils. Past the deserted common areas where children should have been playing.

Reidar's summons spread through the streets like a search party. They found doors standing ajar, meals half-finished on tables, and clothes hanging on lines as if their owners had simply vanished mid-task.

Reidar's summons kept searching around, but not even the myriad primal packs could find anything.

"He wouldn't have just left," Lena said. "Martin wouldn't have left without using the token. He was paranoid about defenses. A monster-repelling field was the one thing that could have given everyone a full night's sleep."

"Unless he couldn't," Reidar said. "The Token requires a minimum of twenty-five willing settlers to establish the initial population. What if he didn't have twenty-five people left who were willing to follow him?"

Lena stopped walking. "You think they turned on him? After everything?"

"I think folks are just desperate and scared. Mara's lies, Silas's power, all those attacks... It wouldn't take much to break their faith in one guy, no matter how convincing he seemed." He nodded toward the ranger station up ahead.

"Let's go check the ranger station."

A cold knot of dread tightened in Lena's stomach, twisting deeper as her mind went through the one remaining anomaly in this ghost town.

Reidar, instead, was thinking about something else.

If this was truly the Church's work, then what about the Thalassari Vendor? The church hated the system, and the merchant represented that very same system they apparently wanted to destroy. They would have tried to kill him if such a thing were even possible for beings like them.

"Morv'axil," Reidar said. "Do you think he's still alive?"

"Maybe… But…" Lena's gaze shifted toward the station. "His kind… they're bound to places where there are people, aren't they? No people means no customers. No purpose. Maybe he left already. "

It was possible. Regardless, Morv'axil was maybe the only one that would be able to tell them what was going on. They just hoped he was still here.

Reidar urged his wolf forward. Lena rode beside him. From their position, they could just see dark shapes in the distance, too far to make out any movement. Things were flickering at the edge of sight. It might have been people, or maybe just branches swaying in the wind.

They crested the last rise; the station finally came into view. No guards patrolled the perimeter as they did the walls. No smoke curled from the chimney. The door hung crooked on its hinges, like a broken jaw.

However, once they came close enough, Reidar froze, while Lena gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth, color draining from her face. She staggered back a step, eyes wide.

"What the hell..."

Lena's fingers clamped around his forearm, nails biting through his sleeve as they both stared, motionless, at the impossible scene laid out before them.

Martin was dead.

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