The clinical photo of the dismantled Ward post burned in Alex's mind. It was a chess move, audacious and contemptuous. The Covenant wasn't hiding their work; they were flaunting it. Look what we can do. Look how we unravel your ancient magic with our cold science. The email was both a warning and an invitation to a war he hadn't formally declared.
Sleep was impossible. Adrenaline and a simmering anger chased away fatigue. He spent the pre-dawn hours cross-referencing Kiera's list with the map, marking the locations on a modern topographic app. The Ward posts formed a fractured, symbolic barrier. Were they mystical anchors, or did they work on some biological principle—a frequency, a scent, a mineral emission that repelled the cursed? The Covenant's note suggested they viewed it as a "thaumaturgic field," a term blending occultism with lab-report jargon that was deeply unsettling.
As the first grey light touched the sky, he knew his first move. He couldn't assault a lab or confront the mayor. But he could be a journalist. He could follow the most mundane trail of all: money and strangers.
Millfield's economy was a mix of modest tourism, small-scale agriculture, and a few artisanal shops. Large financial transactions would stand out. He started with the county's publicly accessible property and business registries, a tedious but fruitful digital dig.
Within two hours, he found it. A shell company named "Veritas Holdings" had purchased the defunct "Millfield Mineral & Gas" office on the town's outskirts six months ago. The company was a Russian doll of offshore registrations, but the paper trail, once you knew where to look, led back to a biomedical research foundation based in Delaware—a known, if respectable, front for speculative venture capital in cutting-edge biology.
Veritas. Latin for truth. The Covenant's mocking sense of humor.
The old MMG office was a low, windowless cinderblock building near the abandoned railway spur. He drove past it mid-morning, pretending to be lost. The building looked dormant, weeds cracking the asphalt of its small parking lot. But there were signs: fresh tire tracks in the dew, a pristine, high-security deadbolt on the reinforced front door, and the faint, almost imperceptible hum of industrial climate control—a building preserving something that needed a constant temperature.
They were here. This was their local beachhead.
His next stop was the Millfield Chronicle, the weekly newspaper operating out of a converted Victorian house. The editor, a weary man named Ben Collins with ink-stained fingers, was initially suspicious of the "city journalist" but softened when Alex asked to browse back issues for "local color."
Alex focused on the last six months. He looked for subtle changes: announcements of "generous grants" for the school's science lab or the clinic's new "diagnostic equipment." He found one: a $250,000 donation from the "Blackwood Family Foundation" for "historical preservation and ecological studies." The timing coincided with Veritas's purchase. Was it a payoff? A diversion?
More interesting were the social pages. He pored over photos of town council meetings, charity auctions, harvest festivals. He was looking for new faces. In a picture from the July 4th picnic, he found one. A man standing at the periphery of a group surrounding Mayor Vance. He was in his late forties, with a neatly trimmed beard and sharp, attentive eyes. He wore expensive but understated outdoor clothing. The caption listed attendees but not his name. He was a ghost at the feast.
Alex took a covert photo of the newsprint image with his phone. He then spent an hour in the Chronicle's morgue, a room smelling of dust and yellowed paper, looking for any mention of "Lily Greene" prior to her disappearance. He found a handful of pieces: her flower shop opening, her winning a prize for roses at the county fair. One small article from eight months ago caught his eye: "Local Florist Partners with Historical Society." It mentioned Lily providing period-accurate floral arrangements for a reenactment at the town museum. The head of the historical society was Thomas Jenkins.
Another thread. Lily hadn't just been randomly curious. She'd been actively digging, with Jenkins as a possible guide or source. Was that why she'd been targeted? Not just for stumbling, but for knowing?
As he left the Chronicle, his phone vibrated. A text from Sheriff Elena Walker.
"Mr. Reed. Have a moment to stop by the station? Need to clarify a few points about your statement the other night."
The tone was neutral, professional. But the timing felt intentional. Had Mabel at the town hall called her? Had his visit to the archives tripped a silent alarm?
The Millfield Sheriff's station was a small, modern building attached to the town garage. It smelled of coffee and floor cleaner. Deputy Miller nodded at him from behind a dispatch console. Sheriff Walker's office was glass-walled, looking out onto the main room. She waved him in.
"Alex. Thanks for coming." She gestured to a chair, closing the door. She looked tired, the fine lines around her eyes more pronounced. "Just tying up loose ends on the Greene missing persons file. Your statement said you thought you saw a 'flash of color' before you got lost. Can you describe that again?"
He repeated his fabricated story, adding vague details about "maybe pink or red" to match Lily's known clothing. Walker listened, her pen tapping a slow rhythm on her notepad.
"And you're sure it was a bear?" she asked, looking up, her gaze direct.
"It was big, dark, and loud. What else could it be?" He held her look, willing his face to remain blank.
She leaned back, the chair creaking. "Blackwood forest has a lot of stories, Alex. People hear things. See things. Especially when they're scared and alone in the dark." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Sometimes, it's better for everyone if what they saw stays in the woods. This town… it runs on peace and quiet. We look after our own. We handle our own… problems."
It was a softer, more official version of Sebastian Blackwood's warning. A reminder that the law here served the Compact.
"I understand, Sheriff," Alex said, modulating his voice to sound convinced. "I'm just trying to help find Lily."
"I know you are," she said, and for a moment, he saw genuine conflict in her eyes—the cop who wanted to solve a crime versus the town official sworn to uphold a darker order. "The best help right now is to let the official search continue. And to be careful. Outsiders asking too many questions can sometimes… complicate the search efforts."
A clear message: Back off.
He was about to leave when he glanced at her desk. Among the paperwork was a folded geological survey map. In the margin, written in quick pen, was a note: "Veritas – site survey requested for 'geological anomalies.' Coordinate with J. C." And next to it, a scrawled phone number with a 302 area code. Delaware.
His pulse jumped. J.C. Jenkins? Or someone else? He committed the number to memory.
"Anything else, Sheriff?" he asked, rising.
"Just be safe, Alex," she said, her tone final. "The woods aren't the only thing around here that can be dangerous if provoked."
He left the station, the autumn sun feeling cold on his skin. The lines were being drawn openly now. The Sheriff was in the know, likely part of the modern iteration of the Safety Committee, balancing her duty with the town's deadly secret.
Back at his cottage, he entered the 302 number into a reverse lookup. It came back to a "J. Carver" with an address in Wilmington. A quick search linked "Jason Carver" to the same biomedical foundation behind Veritas Holdings. J.C. The Covenant's point man. And Sheriff Walker was coordinating with him.
The enemy had a name.
As dusk fell, Alex made a decision. He couldn't check all the Ward posts, but he could check one—the one nearest to the trapper's cabin, the site of his first terror. It was on public land, just inside the forest edge. If the Covenant was actively dismantling them, he might catch them in the act, or at least see the evidence.
He drove to the trailhead, his toolkit in the trunk now supplemented with a hunting knife and a high-powered flashlight he'd bought at Gardner's. The forest at dusk was a different entity than in full dark or daylight. It was a place of transition, shadows stretching long, the diurnal creatures retreating, the nocturnal ones not yet emerged. The silence was watchful.
Using GPS, he found the approximate location of the Ward post from the map. It wasn't marked on any trail. He had to push through thick undergrowth for a hundred yards. And then he saw it.
Or rather, he saw what was left.
A circle of ground about ten feet across was scorched black, the vegetation reduced to brittle, carbonized stalks. In the center, a small crater marked where the post had been. But it wasn't a simple excavation. The earth was fused into a glassy slag. The air smelled of ozone and hot metal, with an underlying, sickly-sweet scent that reminded him of burnt hair. This wasn't a backhoe job. This was a precision strike. An "electromagnetic pulse," just as the photo had suggested. They hadn't dug it up; they had sterilized the site, overloading and destroying whatever energy pattern the ward used.
He was photographing the scene when a twig snapped behind him.
He spun, flashlight beam slicing through the gloom.
Thomas Jenkins stood there, his grizzled face grim in the harsh light. He wasn't holding his walking stick like a support, but like a quarterstaff.
"Didn't take you for a good listener, boy," Jenkins grunted, his eyes scanning the scorched earth. "But I see you found it. Or what's left of it."
"What did this, Thomas?" Alex asked, lowering the light.
"Something new. Something that doesn't respect the old rules." Jenkins spat into the blackened circle. "The Covenant's toys. They think they can unmake the world with a zap and a spreadsheet."
"You knew about them. You warned me."
"I warned you about stirring the pot. You went and kicked the damn stove over." Jenkins stepped closer, his pale eyes boring into Alex. "Lily came to me. Asked about the old plants, the ones mentioned in the diaries of the first Blackwood women. Plants that could 'calm a fevered spirit.' She was a good soul, trying to find a gentler way. She thought she was helping Kiera." His face twisted. "Someone must have seen her with me. Or followed her. She went to the stones to gather nightshade under a gibbous moon. She never came back."
"And you think the Covenant took her? To experiment on?"
"Or one of the Moon-Touched got her first, driven to a frenzy by these bastards poking holes in the Wards," Jenkins said, his voice thick with fury and guilt. "The boundary is weakening. Can't you feel it? The forest is getting… hungry."
As if on cue, a howl erupted from the deep woods. It was the same guttural, anguished cry Alex had heard from his cottage, but closer. Much closer. And it was answered by another, from a different direction.
Jenkins's hand shot out, gripping Alex's arm with surprising strength. "Out. Now. The Beast isn't the only thing out tonight. The strays are getting bold."
They moved fast, Jenkins leading the way with an uncanny knowledge of the terrain despite the fading light. The howls didn't pursue, but they didn't fade either. They echoed around them, a moving perimeter.
As they broke through the tree line to the open field near the trailhead, Jenkins stopped, panting slightly. "The game's changed, Reed. It's not just about a missing girl anymore. It's about whether this town, and everything in these woods, gets erased or turned into a lab rat. You want to help Lily? Find the leak. Find the person in this town who's selling us out to the Covenant. It ain't me. And it ain't the Blackwoods, not directly. It's someone who thinks they can get rich or save their own skin by handing over the keys."
He turned to go, then looked back, his silhouette black against the twilight. "And watch your back. You're not hiding as well as you think you are."
Alex watched the old man disappear into the gloom. He was alone again, the howls of the forest at his back, the scorched earth of a broken ward before him, and in his pocket, the name of the enemy's agent: J. Carver.
The unseen front of the war had just become terrifyingly visible. And he was standing right in the middle of it.