A tremor ran through the ebonwood earpiece, Lord Montaigne’s voice clipped and distant. “Thank you, Chirurgeon. Your swift report is noted.” Chirurgeon Gareth lowered the speaking horn. He stared at its polished surface, a frown deepening across his brow. He could not shake the peculiar shift in Montaigne’s tone—a sudden, unsettling lightness that belied the gravity of their conversation. His patient, Lord Varden, had been a ghost in his own flesh for two years. Then, a miracle. A waking. Gentle care had kept his joints pliant, his muscles from seizing. He possessed a natural resilience, a robust frame beneath the long slumber, and his rehabilitation progressed with unusual speed. For one brief, impossible week, the manor had held a flicker of hope. Then, darkness again. Twelve days had passed since Varden last stirred, a deep, unsettling stupor that mimicked his former vegetative state, yet felt profoundly different. Memory had been a phantom even before his collapse. Gareth had held no illusions of full recovery. He’d pondered the persistent lethargy, the distant gaze, the curious disassociation. A head injury, severe as Varden’s, always left its mark. Perhaps these were merely its latest manifestations. Yet, something bothered him. A prickle of unease, a cold sensation at the nape of his neck. He had bent close to the unresponsive form yesterday, a final, desperate query. “Can you speak your name, Lord Varden?” No response. Only the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Gareth leaned closer still, his voice hushed. “Can you hear me? Any thought at all, speak it.” A breath ghosted across his ear. “S…sleep…” A faint, fleeting smile had touched Gareth’s lips. “Yes, good. Like that. Just a sound.” He remembered the next words with chilling clarity. Even now, the memory made his skin crawl. “Please… don’t wake.” Varden had murmured the phrase countless times, a half-formed plea from the edge of consciousness. Gareth walked down the empty corridor of the infirmary wing, rubbing his chin. His eyebrows knitted into a tight knot. Montaigne, Varden’s elder brother, must be distraught. Yet, his instructions had been perplexing. Varden could have received far superior care in the Grand Hospital of Oakhaven. Instead, Montaigne had insisted he remain at Blackwood Keep, a crumbling pile of stone haunted by forgotten generations. It was not Gareth’s place to question. His stipend for tending to Montaigne’s peculiar affairs was exorbitant, enough to buy his silence, his complicity in this remote, forgotten corner of the Crimson Duchies. A sudden snap of his fingers echoed in the silence. “Ah,” he muttered, pausing mid-stride. “The Lady Elara. I forgot to inform her.” Varden’s sequelae were not confined to mere oversleeping. This was the Torpor of the Sleeper, a rare affliction known for its cycles of profound slumber and aberrant awakening. Its symptoms included severe behavioral abnormalities: an uncontrollable compulsion to gorge oneself, aggressive outbursts, and a disturbing surge of primal desires. “Still,” Gareth yawned, stretching his back until it cracked. “He will be inert for another night. One more day. Nothing could happen.” --- Elara hummed a tuneless, breathy melody as she walked, the sound barely audible above the whisper of the wind through the gnarled oaks. Relief, sharp and exhilarating, thrummed beneath her ribs. She had escaped Lord Montaigne’s venomous scrutiny, had navigated his treacherous parlor games, and returned to the relative sanctuary of Blackwood Keep. A miraculous rescue, she called it, from the jaws of a viper. Her boot met the worn cobblestones leading to the kitchen entrance, the hidden path she preferred. The heavy oak door loomed, scarred and ancient. She drew a small, intricately carved bone key from her belt pouch, inserted it into the lock, and turned the mechanism. As the latch clicked, a chilling sense of foreboding settled over her. A phantom chill, a whisper of events already transpired. *Dang. Dang. Dang.* The alarm bell in the west tower, rarely rung, tolled a single, hollow note. Midnight. The sound vibrated through the stone, through her bones. Her breath caught. The back gate, a heavy iron grate she herself had secured this morning, hung askew. One of its thick hinges had been ripped from the stone, the other bent into a grotesque twist of metal. It looked as though a siege engine had struck it, or a beast of immense power. “Varden…” The name was a fragile whisper on her tongue. “Where did he go?” For nearly half an hour, Elara paced the muddy track that wound through the skeletal trees bordering the Keep’s perimeter. Moon-shadows stretched long and distorted. A few ancient street lamps flickered, casting a sickly yellow glow. Should she contact Montaigne? He, the architect of her current prison, the ‘A’ who held her, the ‘B’, in his manipulative grip. Her thumb stroked the smooth surface of her calling device, then halted. She would offer him no excuse, no weakness to exploit, no reason to tighten his hold. She secured her unbound hair, a thick braid hastily coiled and pinned. She quickened her pace, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. “Lord Varden!” From the shadowed kennels, a chorus of barks erupted. The usually placid mastiffs, heavy with sleep, erupted in alarm. Elara swept her gaze across the narrow, overgrown paths, her eyes scanning for any disturbance. Then she saw it. A trail. Wide and irregular, as if something immense had dragged itself through the mud, leaving a furrowed path. It looked like the track of a colossal serpent, or perhaps a body, too heavy to be carried. “He truly is… beyond words,” she breathed, a dry, humorless laugh escaping her lips. The absurdity of it, a nobleman crawling like a brute. She began to follow the disturbed earth, her boots sinking slightly into the churned mud. A fluttering sound, soft and desperate, reached her ears as she moved closer to the edge of the ancient orchards. Her heart hammered. Fear, cold and sharp, lodged itself in her throat. The ominous situation, the unnatural silence of the night broken only by the fluttering. “Lord Varden! Put that down!” she shouted, the words tearing from her throat, a raw, shocked sound. He stood hunched beneath a twisted elder tree, its branches skeletal in the moonlight. His eyes were utterly vacant, black holes in his pale face. The rhythmic clench and release of his jaw muscles was sickening. He chewed, slowly, deliberately. A guttural groan rumbled in his chest, then he spat a glistening wad of raw flesh onto the ground. Elara’s stomach churned. She clamped a hand over her mouth, fighting a wave of nausea. The creature at his feet, a plump, crested orchard fowl, lay mangled, its neck brutally snapped. Blood, dark and viscous, matted its feathers. Her hands trembled. Varden, oblivious, simply stood there, a crimson smear at the corner of his mouth, the moonlight glinting off the blood. He was a creature of nightmare, and Elara, despite her carefully cultivated resolve, felt a terror that threatened to unhinge her. This was one of the symptoms. The Torpor of the Sleeper. This feral hunger, this blankness. He was not himself. He was out of touch with reality, a puppet to instinct. “It must be difficult for you to move,” Elara said, her voice strained but level. She took a step closer, adopting a tone of feigned worry. “Why did you venture out, Lord Varden?” She needed to gauge his mood, to ensure her earlier desperate lie – that she was his betrothed, that she held a claim to Blackwood Keep – remained unchallengeable. “Let us return,” she continued, extending a hand she forced not to shake. “This place is not safe.” Varden dropped the mangled fowl. He turned his head slowly, his blank gaze falling upon her. It was cold, devoid of recognition, yet held a predatory stillness that made Elara profoundly uneasy. He stood in the deepest shadow cast by the elder tree, where the moon’s silver light did not touch him. He seemed taller than she remembered, his frame more gaunt, more powerful. He began to move towards her, not walking upright, but a low, lurching crawl, his limbs scaping the earth like a beast. His sleeves, the knees of his breeches, his chest – all were caked with mud and dust. A gust of wind swept through the orchard, rustling the dead leaves. His mud-stained linen shirt, rent in places, fluttered, revealing the hard, lean planes of his torso. A fleeting image flashed through Elara’s mind: the ancient Sanguine Bark tree that grew in the deepest, most cursed reaches of the Gloomwood, a tree whose veins flowed with thick, blood-red sap, its branches twisted like severed limbs. Two years past, she had first seen Lord Varden, a ghost in his bed. A month ago, he had woken, only to fall into this waking nightmare. Even then, he had seemed covered in the shadow of blood. Now, truly, crimson stained his lips. “Lord Varden…” Elara whispered, the name a plea. “Name…” His voice, when it came, was a raspy growl. “What?” “Your name. What is it?” His cold, unreadable gaze fixed upon her. It was a terrifying challenge. Elara’s mind raced, desperate for an answer, a path. *Think, Elara, think.* But no words came. Only the chilling emptiness of his eyes.

Chapter 9: Sanguine Trail