"The families of the victims all told the same story," Ava said, her expression grim. "Their husbands stood up to the mayor in some way—refused his 'arrangement,' questioned his authority, or tried to leave town. All disappeared without a trace."
"No bodies were ever found," I noted, connecting this to what the woman had told me.
"Because they're used in the ritual," Ava confirmed. "I spoke with an elderly man who's lived here his whole life. He showed me a journal his grandfather kept—records of disappearances going back nearly seventy years, all following the same pattern."
"Seventy years?" Cecilia looked shocked. "The same ritual for that long?"
"The journal mentioned that each mayor of Windmere has continued the tradition," Ava explained, her finger tracing lines in the old leather-bound book she'd brought with her. "Power passing from one to the next, along with the responsibility of maintaining what they call 'the barrier.'"
"Barrier against what?" I asked, my interest piqued.
Ava shook her head. "The journal doesn't say specifically. Just vague references to 'keeping it contained' and 'preventing the awakening.'"
"And now he's preparing for something big," I added, quickly filling them in on my confrontation with the enforcer and what I'd seen at the mansion. "He called it 'The Awakening' and mentioned a final sacrifice happening tonight."
I placed the key I'd taken from the enforcer on the table. "I found this on his body. It might be important."
The woman from the brothel made a small sound of distress when she saw it. "That's—I've seen that before. The mayor wears it around his neck when he performs the rituals."
She reached out hesitantly, fingers stopping just short of touching the key. "It opens the chamber beneath the mansion. The ritual chamber. I only saw it once, through the window... the walls were covered in symbols, like the ones carved on the victims."
"Then it's too late," I said grimly. "If the ritual is already beginning..."
"It's never too late," Cecilia replied firmly, placing her hand over mine. Her touch was warm, grounding. "Three Integration-rankers should be more than enough to stop one White-rank mayor, even without his enforcer."
"You don't understand," the woman insisted. "The enforcer isn't—wasn't—his only protection. There are others—creatures he's created through his rituals. I've seen them sometimes, at night, patrolling the woods around his mansion."
"What kind of creatures?" Ava asked, leaning forward.
The woman's eyes darted nervously to the cabin's windows, as if afraid of being overheard. "They look almost human, but wrong somehow. Too tall, too thin. Their movements are... jerky, like puppets. And their eyes..." She shuddered. "No light in them at all."
'Zombies,' Erebus whispered in my mind, his ancient voice unusually grave.
I remembered encountering them in Vryndall City when we were attacked by the Umbravale Covenant. Did this mean they were responsible for this? But this was the Eastern continent.
Cecilia's expression hardened as she deduced they were zombies as well, while Ava looked thoughtful, analyzing this new information.
"We didn't sense anything unusual during our dinner there," Cecilia pointed out. "And I would have noticed creatures like that."
"Because he wanted to appear normal," I suggested. "But now that the ritual is nearly complete, he's not bothering to hide anymore."
"Or perhaps they only emerge at night," Ava added. "Many ritual constructs are sensitive to sunlight."
'Master,' Erebus spoke suddenly in my mind. 'Ask about the basement.'
"Does the mansion have a basement?" I asked the woman. "Or some kind of underground chamber?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes. That's where I saw him... performing the ritual on Simon. Through a basement window. The entrance is hidden—behind a bookcase in his study, I think. I never saw the door itself, but that's where he always went before... before the screaming started."
A heavy silence fell over the cabin. Outside, the wind picked up, whistling through the trees with an eerie, mournful sound. The small fire in the hearth cast long, dancing shadows across the walls.
"Then that's where we'll find him tonight," I decided, standing up despite my fatigue. "And that's where we'll end this."
Cecilia moved to my side, her hand finding mine. "You're exhausted. You need to rest before we go charging into another fight." Her eyes, normally so fierce, now held genuine concern. "You killed the enforcer, Arthur. That's not something you just shake off."
"No time," I replied, though I appreciated her concern. "If the enforcer was telling the truth, the ritual happens tonight. We need to stop it before it's complete."
"I agree with Arthur," Ava said, rising from her chair. "But we need a plan. The mansion will be heavily guarded, and we don't know exactly what we're facing."
"I might be able to help with that," the woman offered hesitantly. "I know a way into the mansion grounds that the guards don't patrol. It's how I was able to see... what I saw that night."
She moved to the table, where Ava had spread out a rough map of Windmere. With a charcoal stick, she marked a winding path through the woods that bordered the mansion's western side.
"There's a small stream that runs under the wall here," she explained, her finger tapping a spot where the property's boundary met the forest. "The culvert is just wide enough for a person to crawl through. The guards never check it—I think they don't even know it exists. It will lead you to the gardens, near the service entrance."
For the next hour, we refined our strategy. Ava would create a diversion at the front gates—something big enough to draw attention but not so catastrophic as to trigger an immediate lockdown. Meanwhile, Cecilia and I would slip in through the culvert, locate the hidden entrance to the basement, and stop the ritual and deal with the mayor.
But as Ava pointed out, things rarely went according to plan.
"If we get separated," she said, marking rally points on the map, "we meet back here, at the edge of the woods. If any of us aren't out by dawn, the others don't wait—they go for help."
"What are we really walking into?" Cecilia asked quietly, joining me by the cabin's single window. "This feels bigger than a corrupt mayor."
"It is," I admitted. "The enforcer hinted that the mayor serves something else—something that's about to 'awaken' through this ritual."
"Like what? A Shadow Seeker?"
"Maybe," I said, though Erebus's troubled silence suggested something even worse. "Whatever it is, we stop it tonight."
I checked my weapons one last time—Evolvis at my hip, a silver dagger Ava had provided in my boot, a pouch of spell components secured to my belt. Cecilia was similarly equipped, her curved blade gleaming with freshly applied fire runes. Ava had prepared several explosive devices of her own design, small enough to hide in her palms but powerful enough to bring down a wall if needed.
The moon was rising as we left the cabin, casting silver light over the silent forest. The woman stayed behind at our insistence—she'd helped enough already, and we wouldn't risk her life further.
"Good luck," she said softly as we departed. "And... thank you. Whatever happens, thank you for trying."
Her words followed us into the night, a reminder of what was at stake. Not just our lives, but the freedom of an entire town that had suffered under the mayor's twisted rule for generations.
"Let's end this," I said to my companions as we moved through the moonlit forest toward the mansion on the hill. "Tonight, Windmere breaks its chains."