The wind whispered in broken tongues across the peaks, carrying with it the scent of rot and snow. The pale horse beneath Grimm's towering figure moved like a wraith, its hooves cracking the frost that had claimed the mountainside. Ahead, streaks of black blood trailed across the white — a frozen path leading him closer to Anabel's keep.
The harpy glided like a tattered kite, its frayed wings clawing through the storm. Each breath it took was a shriek swallowed by the wind. Its body was dying, every harrowing flap a labor against inevitability. Grimm followed without haste. It was only a matter of time now.
Then the creature fell — spinning wildly before striking the earth with a dull, violent thud. By the time he reached it, the harpy lay collapsed against a shattered stump half-buried in the ice. Its eyes, yellow and dimming, rolled toward him. Grimm watched the light bleed from them — the last flicker of something cruel and alive. Then silence.
But the stillness didn't last.
The corpse twitched — faintly, almost imperceptibly — and a pulse of black light rippled through the snow. Grimm froze, hand to his knife. Then came a voice — or many — whispering through the marrow of his skull.
G'norr.
The world melted away into visions: sharp, violent, and dripping in green. He saw Anabel, her body bathed in an emerald glow, hands slick with blood as she crowned herself queen of ruin. He saw Harrod hanging upside-down, mouth open in a silent plea beneath a bleeding moon. Gaunt fingers clawed at entrails; his mind seared in pain, the voices hammering nails into his consciousness.
"...Wendigo... WENDIGO..."
Then — stillness again. Grimm's belfry echoed faint cries of a doomed family, devoured by flame.
When he opened his eyes, the wind was dead. The harpy's body lay still, its mouth agape, frozen in the silence of death. His horse snorted, shaking snow from its pale mane. Grimm mounted once more, his eyes glinting faintly with G'norr's mark, his wrists snapping the leather reins.
Beyond the ridge, the Kingdom of the North emerged — a vast citadel of black ice and iron. Its towers loomed through a shroud of perpetual mist, the horizon dimmed beneath eternal twilight.
Grimm's steed clopped against the blackened cobblestone. The banners hung frozen mid-sway, and half-buried hands reached from the snow — outstretched, frozen in desperation. The fortress towered above, a monolith of grief. No sound but the wind. Then — faint, beneath it — the distant sobs of the damned.
The bridge was drawn. The moat black and still.
A gust whispered westward — an unseen breath guiding him. Grimm's coat bellowed. His eyes narrowed.
He followed the wind to the rear wall, dismounting to trace the impressions in the snow — long, wide strides ending at tall wooden gates lit by flickering torchlight.
"Harpy," he muttered.
His gloved hand brushed the grip of the Wraith-Breaker. The weapon trembled faintly — as if aware of what awaited.
He pushed the gate open.
Decay greeted him like an old friend. The narrow corridor beyond exhaled death — the air cloying, the stone slick. A single chandelier swung overhead, its flame exposing the ruin within.
Harrod's body hung there.
Crucified upside-down, skin split from navel to throat, entrails sculpted into a grotesque crown. Flies swarmed, feeding on what meat remained. Blood traced the stones beneath.
Grimm's gaze held no pity. Only acknowledgment — the quiet acceptance of a king abandoned by gods and men alike.
He turned and slipped through an archway. The air changed — thicker, humid, alive with screams.
The arch opened into a vast subterranean hall, the dungeon beneath the keep. The walls pulsed faintly with runes painted in old blood, as though the fortress itself still breathed.
Then he heard it — screams. Dozens. Hundreds.
He advanced, knuckles white around the Wraith-Breaker.
The gate ahead opened into hell.
Rows of wooden tables filled the chamber, each occupied by what had once been a person. Harpies carved the living, talons slick with red. Demons — wet, malformed, steaming with ichor — tended vast furnaces boiling their harvest. The scent was iron, bile, and something worse.
A harpy turned — its beak split wide in an ear-piercing hiss.
The Wraith-Breaker answered. A burst of black fire, skull shattering.
Then came the swarm.
The dungeon erupted into carnage. Grimm moved like a revenant — pistol roaring, blades flashing. Bone cracked beneath his boots. Flesh burst beneath his knife. Cultists screamed prayers to dead gods as he cut them down, his coat soaked in their blood.
A demon lunged — half stag, half serpent. Grimm drove a stake through its jaw and fired point-blank into its antlered skull.
Silence followed, broken only by dripping blood.
Then the walls began to breathe.
A deep, wet sound echoed — like something vast inhaling. The far wall split open, stone tearing like skin.
From the rupture sloughed a thing that should not exist — a mass of pulsing meat, crowned in rotted antlers. Its jaw sagged loose, black ichor dripping from rows of broken teeth. Two green fires flickered in its hollow eyes.
A Wendigo made flesh.
Grimm fired — the bullet punched through its chest, useless. The creature swung, tendrils cracking the air. Grimm was thrown into the wall, stone splintering around him.
He rose. Spat blood. Drew steel.
Lightning flared beyond the windows, thunder splitting the world.
Grimm roared — a sound more beast than man.
The Wendigo lunged. Grimm rolled beneath its claws, carving deep into its tendons. It howled, smashing through a pillar. Grimm fired again and again until the pistol clicked empty, then slammed a stake into its thigh and ripped upward. Black ichor sprayed.
The beast seized him by the ribs, slamming him into the stone. Bone cracked. Pain flared white-hot.
Its maw descended — rot and fangs.
Grimm thrust his knife upward, splitting the jaw to the nose. Blood drenched him.
The monster convulsed, crushing him beneath its bulk. Grimm's lungs screamed. His fingers dug into its face — into eye sockets — and ripped.
Bone split. Flesh tore. The Wendigo's scream broke into a wet gurgle as its skull came apart in his hands.
It collapsed, spasming.
Grimm staggered up, his body broken, vision dim. Slowly — impossibly — his flesh began to knit. Bone slid into place beneath torn skin. G'norr's curse whispered through his veins.
A dying cultist crawled from the shadows, dragging his broken legs. Grimm seized him by the throat.
"Where is the witch?"
The man wheezed blood. "N–Naboth... she will... become—"
Grimm slammed him against the wall. "TALK!"
The cultist coughed, grinning through shattered teeth. "He... will walk... among us..."
Then — a violent crack.
A surge of green light engulfed the dungeon, shaking the earth. The cultist began to laugh — high, hysterical — before a falling stone crushed his skull.
Grimm turned toward the stairwell. Through the fractured wall, he saw the sky ignite.
Above Naboth, the heavens had turned blood-red. Black clouds spiraled, swallowing the horizon.
His eyes flared white. His breath came slow and heavy.
Wrath burned through him like a storm given form.
And as the light seared the heavens, Grimm vanished into the castle.