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  Bane trudged through the mud along the dirt path to a small house that lay outside the village. The house of Martha Gray.

  The house was small in comparison to those in the village. It has a single door which was made from wood and polished, it had little to no signs of wear, and the metal hinges showed little to no signs of rust. The window that was next to the door was made from simple glass, which was cleaned and had a small wooden holder under it filled with dirt for flowers. Though nothing grew at this time of the year. The thatched roof too was well maintained, the thatch having been recently done by the looks of it in preparation for the coming winter months. The House had a small stick fence going about it with large beds for flowers, herbs, and other things to grow, like the fields, which lay bare and dead with no signs of life. Bane noticed attached to the door a dream catcher woven from willow, a cloth pouch swinging undeniably in the cold breeze. A talisman he recognized to ward off evil.

  The witch hunter walked towards the door and, using the back of his hand, knocked loudly.

  There were the sounds of movement from within, rapid footsteps to the door, and it swung open to reveal a tall woman with long black hair falling around her face, shoulders, and back. She looked right into Bane's eyes, matching his stare. Bane could sense something was different about this woman than to the usual people he came across; he met her stare and felt something, not fear as he was so accustomed to, but instead worry. This woman was worried.

  Before Bane could speak, Martha was quick to say, “At last you are here, come inside quickly.” There was the sound of relief in her tone, but also that trickle of worry. Bane was usually the first to speak in his meetings, but it mattered not to him how things went so long as his job was completed by the end.

  She moved aside, letting Bane step inside the house. She quickly closed the door behind him, not before he noticed her glance outside, looking around, almost looking for something. The door closed and she walked over to the witch hunter.

  The inside of the house was smaller still, a large table lay in the middle of the room covered in bowls, utensils for crushing herbs, mixing bowls, and many square cloths and strings for making pouches. Large amounts of lavender, chickweed, and chamomile hung on the ceiling, dried and preserved, ready to be used throughout the cold winter days. A small fire lay in the corner of the room, crackling away with a pot above it boiling porridge, a hole in the roof allowed the smoke to escape and fly out into the world outside. A bed made from sheepskin fur and a large woolen blanket lay messy a little way from the fire.

  “You wrote to me, before even the priest did, you knew something before the rest of them” Banes's voice was stern; he wanted to know how this healer knew more then than even the priest, who was supposed to be trained to pick up on signs of the supernatural before anyone else.

  The healer was looking around for something moving large piles of dried substances off the chairs, moving charred grasses and herbs around the table, and off some rickety shelves. She did not waste any time stopping, searching, to looking at Bane as she said.

  “I live away from the rest of em, closer to the woods, and not so long ago I felt a change, saw shadows like I wrote in my note to you.” She was quick to speak getting no on her hands and knees looking under the table. She grabbed something and stood up a look of relief on her face.

  She held in her hand a talisman much like Bane's own with a string and crystal on the end, though this one was of a dark purple and was far more chipped than Bane's own. The string too was worn and thin. Marther quickly attached it to her waist, tying it onto the rope she used for a belt, which held her dress, which was made from simple woolen cloth dyed a light fraying blue around her waist slightly.

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  She continued as she adjusted her belt

  “Children snatched at night, disappearing in the shadows, it seemed. I saw one of them, it lurked at the edge of the forest as dusk came, seemingly forming from the shadows themselves a thin figure.” As she spoke, she seemed to be trying to distract herself with her belt, she was uncomfortable with what she said. She feared what she had seen.

  Bane listened ceafuly, creatures formed from shadows was not something he was accustomed to unless it was some kind of ghost manifesting itself using the shadows as a way to show itself, but then ghost cannot snatch and kill people bane had encountered many ghosts, all of which could rattle chains, make noises, and even sometimes touch the living but to kill he had never heard or seen of that.

  “Did you see it clearly?” asked Bane

  She shook her head slowly. “No,” murmured Martha, “It had no face, no features to tell it by, just darkness.”

  “Show me where you saw it,” it was an order that Bane gave directly to the woman, though his tone was softer than that he used on the priest. Something about this woman reminded him of himself, an outcast, feared, but she did not fear him; she treated him as though he were just a regular person.

  Martha looked at Bane directly, looking into his eyes, the black and the green. She was hesitant, the witch hunter did not scare her, she knew she was not innocent, she wanted him to help, she wanted the village to go back to normal, a boring, struggling homestead with these creatures being here everyone was uneas,y and she knew they were quick to blame her. The outcast. She trusted the witch hunter.

  “I’ll show you,” she said, walking to the door, grabbing a tattered cloak hanging on a beam holding up the rafters. “I haven't been back there since it happened. I don’t want to see what became of those children.”

  Bane followed Martha back out into the frosty morning. The bell at the church began to ring, making birds from the surrounding areas fly up into the sky, screeching as they did so. Something felt off to Bane, he sensed a darkness much like Martha had said in her letter. It felt too eerie even for a small village like this, placed where it was, It felt as though there was no safety here, almost as though something was broken.

  They walked across the muddy, dead fields, towards the dark pine forest that lay not far from the village and Martha's house. It was an old place that stretched deep and dark. It had no name; it was, for the most part, insignificant to the humans, as only this village lay near it, so it had no official name or was not on any maps. These woods, though, were home to many dark, horrible, evil creatures. Those that disliked the sun and would often sculk out at night, the Hobgoblins used to be the worst for it, coming to the village and raiding the stores for food, taking any stragglers who were not in the comfort of their homes. Not that this was the case, since the protection spells came about since then the creatures of the forest have had to go elsewhere for food. They learned the hard way not to come back to the village, for the protection spell would cast a great ball of light around the borders of the settlement whenever a creature of darkness should enter its perimeter, forcing them to run or be blinded forever back to the woods from which they came.

  A few hundred meters away from the woods, Martha stopped and pointed to a large tree that lay slightly away from the others, a broken stump next to it. She pointed.

  “It was there I saw it,” her voice was slightly shaken.

  Bane continued forward, he needed to see if anything had been left by the creature to explain what it might be. The woods creaked the trees swayed in the wind. The witch hunter expected to go alone, but the healer kept up with him, walking towards the edge of the woods. He was not used to people being around him while he worked usually, they wanted to be away from him as soon as possible. This woman was different in that regard. She was curious and worried about the people of her village.

  The grass was thick, wild, and tall; it came to Bane's knees, coating his boots with cold, wet droplets of water. The woods were quiet, no sounds of birds, as you might expect, instead just the trees, the crack of branches as things within went about their business. The forest floor was wild, with leaves, brambles, mushed-up leaves, and branches that had fallen. The place seemed ill at ease. Bane sensed the supernatural, he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as though he was being watched.