The warmth was a lie, and she knew it. The Essence she had taken from the wolf pack was a temporary reprieve, a thin, insulting trickle of life in the hollow cavern of her being. It was not the glorious, intoxicating flood of power she remembered from a poet's exquisite despair; it was a crude, bestial ration. For the first time since her exile began, the gnawing hunger of the curse was a distant ache instead of a shrieking torment, and the clarity it afforded was a cruel luxury.
Veridia pushed herself upright, a groan of pain escaping her lips. She was in a secluded, mossy thicket she had collapsed in hours ago. Her body was a canvas of ugly purples and blues, deep bruises blooming on her hips and thighs where claws had dug in. Her rags, once a gown, were shredded further, caked with a drying crust of mud that cracked as she moved. The musky scent of wolf was in her hair, on her skin, a perfume of her own debasement. She could still taste it on the back of her tongue—a faint, primal flavor of raw instinct and damp earth. This was survival. A quiet, ugly, and deeply unsatisfying state of being.
A shimmering light coalesced at the edge of the clearing. The intangible form of Seraphine appeared, her gown of woven starlight a pristine, insulting beacon in the gloom. Her smile was a surgically precise instrument of cruelty.
"Let's review the analytics, shall we, sister?" Seraphine's voice was the cheerful chime of a breaking heart. "The submission to the Alpha, Gravemaw? A ratings goldmine! The Patrons adored the raw, animalistic desperation. It had a fantastic emotional resonance that really popped with our key demographics."
As she spoke, Seraphine conjured a spectral replay in the air between them. It was Veridia's lowest moment, captured in shimmering, ethereal light: her proud head bowed, her gaze lowered to the filth of the forest floor, a perfect portrait of submission. A spectral comment box flickered into existence beside the image, a direct quote from a powerful Patron. *
The image was a phantom blade, and it found its mark. As Veridia watched her own degradation, she felt it—the first, familiar, cold pang of the Curse of the Sieve returning. It began as an icy needle in her core, then spread through her veins, a creeping frost stealing the pathetic warmth she had just purchased. The world seemed to lose a fraction of its color. The gnawing emptiness returned, the clock of her misery reset and ticking once more.
Seraphine's voice was a needle, piercing the moment. "That moment right there," she said, gesturing to the spectral Veridia with a manicured, illusory finger, "is when Lord Kasian doubled his wager on your eventual, spectacular demise. The man has an eye for chaos."
The combination of the curse's returning ache and her sister's venomous commentary was the only motivation she needed. Veridia forced herself to her feet, her muscles screaming in protest. The respite was over. The hunt was on again. She had to move, find another source, before the weakness became a terminal illness.
***
She moved through the blighted woodlands like a ghost, a predator hunting not for sport, but for the next few hours of existence. She deliberately avoided anything that looked like organized territory, any sign of walls or watchtowers. Civilization was a threat. She sought chaos, weakness, the festering sores of this miserable world where a creature like her might find a meal.
The gnawing emptiness in her core grew with every step, a constant, physical reminder of the ticking clock. She drank from a stagnant pool, the water tasting of rust and regret, but it was wet. Her senses, honed by a new and desperate paranoia, were on high alert, scanning the twisted trees for any sign of movement, her own ragged breathing loud in the oppressive silence.
*Gravemaw was a creature of brutal, simple hierarchy,* she thought, the analysis a cold comfort against the rising panic. *He was predictable. His actions were governed by a code of dominance I could understand, even as I submitted to it. He was strong, but his motives were transparent.*
That was the key. She needed another target whose motivations were simple. Not a thinking beast with a pack to protect, but something dumber. Something driven by pure, uncomplicated greed or simple, pointless cruelty. Those were motivations she understood intimately from her time in the Infernal Court. Those were weaknesses she could exploit. The thought was a flicker of her old self, the political maestro, now applying her skills to the base economy of survival. She was no longer just a victim. She was a strategist of her own ordeal.
She found it a mile later. A crude trail marked by discarded, gnawed bones and bits of rusted metal. A goblin footprint, clear in a patch of damp earth, confirmed her hopes. It was a scavenger's path, a line of filth cutting through the woods. It stank of rot and desperation. To the princess she had been, it would have been an offense to the senses. To the starving creature she was now, it smelled of opportunity.
Hope, she was learning, now looked and smelled like a garbage trail.
Following the path, she crested a low, rocky ridge. In the distance, a flicker of light. A small, pathetic encampment was huddled in a clearing below, a sputtering bonfire at its center. She had found her next potential source.
***
Veridia crept to the edge of the clearing, her movements slow and deliberate, and peered through a thicket of thorny bushes. The camp was every bit as squalid as the trail that led to it. A handful of crude tents, stitched together from mismatched hides, were clustered around the sputtering fire. Wiry, sallow-skinned goblins squabbled over scraps of some unidentifiable meat, their high-pitched chattering an irritating buzz in the lengthening shadows. It was perfect. A low-risk target, full of pathetic creatures she could easily manipulate or overpower.
The wind shifted.
A new scent cut through the stench of goblin filth and woodsmoke, and it hit her with the force of a physical blow. It was a smell she recognized with a jolt of both revulsion and strategic interest: the coppery tang of fresh human blood, laced with the acrid sweat of terror.
Her eyes, now sharp with purpose, scanned the camp again. And then she saw it. Partially hidden behind a pile of scavenged refuse was a crude wooden cage. Inside, bruised and bound with fraying ropes, was a human. A traveler, judging by his worn leather clothes. He was slumped against the bars, his head bowed, but she could see the slow rise and fall of his chest. He was alive. The goblins weren't just surviving. They had a high-value prisoner.
This complicated things immensely. A human was a far richer source of Essence than a goblin, but a captive meant witnesses, a story, a potential rescue. It was a higher reward, but a catastrophically higher risk.
Seraphine's voice purred with delight, so close to her ear it was as if she were breathing down her neck.
"Oh, this is delicious. A damsel in distress... and you're the monster at the gates. The moral quandary alone will make the Patrons salivate. Do you save him? Do you use the chaos of his predicament to feed on the goblins? Or do you try to take the prize for yourself? This, sister, is what we in the business call a ratings-multiplier."
Veridia's heart, which had been pounding with the thrill of the hunt, sank into a cold pit in her stomach. This wasn't a simple feeding opportunity anymore. An encounter with a few pathetic goblins was a squalid, forgettable affair she could control. But an encounter involving a captured human? That was a spectacle.
And spectacle, she was learning, always came with a terrible, unpredictable, and very public cost.