The Hunter's Lament

Night fell over the lower wards like a dying breath. The fog rolled in thick and unnatural, swallowing everything in its path lamps, voices, even the air itself. It pressed down on the streets, dense with mana, twisted mana.

Leon emerged from the metro stairwell, his coat catching faint droplets in the air, barely making a sound. But something was wrong.

The fog felt wrong.

It wasn't just the oppressive weight of mana; there was something corrupted about it, like it had been twisted to serve an unseen master.

A scream pierced the night.

Not distant this time. Close.

Leon's senses sharpened.

He turned sharply.

Ahead, the small plaza was silent too silent. Citizens scattered, rushing to flee as something hulking loomed from the mist: an aberration. Its limbs were misshapen, half-skinned muscle visible beneath stretched skin, and its jaw was far too wide for its skull. Its eyes burned like molten glass, glowing in the fog.

A mutation.

The Guild should have caught this should have raised the alarm. No warnings had gone out. No restrictions.

Which meant… someone let it through. Or worse, created it.

The creature lunged toward a mother clutching her child.

Leon moved without thought.

His blade was in his hand before the mist could settle. It gleamed black, sharp as death itself. Shadows coiled around his boots, launching him forward with the speed of a striking serpent. With a single upward slash, the blade tore through the creature's shoulder. As it staggered back, he twisted mid-air and threw a burst of shadow chains from his off-hand.

The chains wrapped around the beast's legs and impaled it into the ground.

Before it could even twitch, Leon whispered a word in the old tongue soft but ancient. His blade pulsed with dark energy.

"Consume."

The shadows surged.

The creature's body began to unravel, torn apart and absorbed into the blade like smoke through a vacuum. Its glowing eyes flickered one last time before it shrieked into nothingness, devoured by Leon's shadow, as if it had never existed.

Gasps rose from the onlookers. Civilians murmured, some recording, others frozen in shock.

Leon didn't stay to listen.

He turned, but the fog pulsed again.

Another presence. Smaller. Faster. Skittering limbs on metal.

He spun just in time to deflect a strike from a spider-like beast, its gleaming black plating reflecting the surrounding fog. It was quick but not strong still dangerous in a crowd, especially with its venomous fangs.

It hissed and jumped again, this time toward a child who had tripped in the chaos.

Leon's hand shot out, and a shadowy beast materialized behind him the same one he had just consumed, reborn. Its tendrils lashed forward, crushing the spider mid-air, splattering ichor across the stone wall.

Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

"He summoned… that thing…"

"That wasn't from any Guild skill tree…"

Leon looked up.

Drones hovered at the edge of the mist, their red lights blinking silently. Watching.

Too exposed.

He turned to the shadow beast beside him, whispered a command, and watched as it dissolved back into the dark.

Then, before the drones could refocus, Leon vanished into the alleyways, his form swallowed by the fog.

Back in the Guild tower, alarms flared in the surveillance wing.

"Same energy signature as the alley incident," a tech barked. "Confirmed summoning of a dark-class entity. Unauthorized. No hunter registration detected."

Darius Vane stood in the control room, watching the replay. His jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing.

"He's not hiding anymore."

The gray-cloaked stranger spoke, his voice low but firm. "No. He's reminding the world of what it lost."