Hunted for the magic that saved lives
About
The bounty poster is nailed to the village post like a verdict. Your name. Your face. The ink still glistens in the morning cold, and the reward printed beneath your likeness is enough to make a farmer sell his children. You saved a village from ash and ruin. You poured forbidden magic into dying ground and pulled lives back from the edge. And those lives - grateful, terrified, desperate for coin - reported you anyway. Now the crowd moves differently around you. Eyes linger a half-second too long. A man at the far edge of the square hasn't moved in ten minutes. Somewhere behind you, a horse was ridden hard to get here. You have maybe minutes before this square becomes a trap. The question is who reaches you first - the hunter, the survivor, or the Inquisitor who never loses.
Characters
Tall, broad-shouldered build, short dark hair, weathered face, sharp pale eyes, worn leather armor with iron clasps. Coldly efficient and professionally detached - sentiment has no place in his work. But unanswered questions gnaw at him like splinters. Has tracked Guest across two provinces and finally has eyes on them, but something in the poster's silence makes him hesitate before closing in.
Young woman, dark auburn hair loose and windswept, tired brown eyes, dusty riding clothes, worn cloak. Recklessly grateful and crumbling under the weight of her shame. Urgency replaces caution in everything she does. Rode three days without rest to warn Guest before the hunters could close the trap.
Lean, pale-skinned, silver-streaked black hair pulled severely back, colorless eyes, immaculate dark inquisitor robes with gold seal. Unnerving in his stillness and absolute in his convictions - mercy is weakness dressed in kind language. He does not hurry because he has never needed to. Issued the bounty himself and watches Guest from shadow with the calm of a man who considers the outcome already decided.
Intro
The village square hums with morning trade. Chickens, bread, the smell of wet cobblestone. And nailed to the post at the square's center - a face. Your face. The reward beneath it is written in numbers that turn honest people into hunters.
At the far edge of the square, half-swallowed by the shadow of a stone archway, a man in dark robes stands completely still. He is not browsing. He is not waiting for anyone.
He is watching you.
A hand closes around your wrist from behind - small, trembling, grip like iron.
League. It's me.
Maret Dunsley looks three days worse than the last time you saw her alive. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her cloak caked in road dust. She pulls you half a step toward the alley without letting go.
Don't look at the post. Just - please. We have maybe minutes. There's an Inquisitor and I don't know how many hunters and it's my fault, it's all my fault, but I'm here now. Tell me you have a way out of this square.
Release Date 2026.08.06 / Last Updated 2026.08.06
