Pearls of sweat ran across Ravonja’s face when she awakened from a nightmare so cruel that even her immortal eyes that had seen so much madness felt like never recovering from the sight again. A loss so grave, it would have changed her life forever. More than that. It would have destroyed Gardyan in a way words could not fathom.

       “Where did you come from?” she whispered, panting and in shock about it all.

       Such dreams rarely were coincidental. No, someone must have caused it to crawl into her mind. By accident, on purpose—whatever it was, something had happened between now and then. Hastily, she got up from her bed, putting on the cape of night and rushing down the stairs. On her way to the kitchen, she overheard a conversation that had become a reoccurring play in Baba Cloanta’s hut. The countess of Spiritwaters was arguing with her Blade Supreme. Her labour pain stripped the Nemesian matriarch of any coping mechanisms to calm down her temper, so she yelled and screamed and suffered. Baba was about to brew some fresh tea in the kitchen, unphased by the repetitive scenery the twisted timeline had bestowed upon her house. All her wisdom and knowledge of the ages did not help Ravonja’s matron to find a solution to this temporal loop.

       “How long has this been going on now?” the Raji’Rav’s lady general asked her crone as she entered the kitchen.

       “Do you mean how long it has been going on this time? Or how long they keep appearing on my doorstep like this?” Cloanta asked in return, exhausted.

       “I mean when has all this started to happen?” Ravonja rephrased her question.

       “It started when they both got married,” Cloanta responded. “And it has been like this every single blood moon since then, with little variation in their behaviour until recently.” Upon Baba’s words, the countess’ yelling died down in the other room and gave way to a more quiet tone. “It is her rage and the pain of betrayal.” Sighing, the crone filtered some herbal tea through a sieve.

       The Raji’Rav lady general  sat down on a kitchen chair, still dizzy from her nightmare. “I wouldn’t react any different if my man was about to have a child with another woman.”

       Ravonja’s words made Cloanta utter a bitter cackle. “You know I would not demand it if it wasn’t for…”

       “Radu.” Ravonja ended her sentence.

       “Indeed,” Cloanta confirmed. “He might be the only one able to put an end to this.” And she wasn’t speaking of that tragic fallout between two lovers in her living room. What Cloanta was referring to be the not so dead Ashen Host. While Gardyan thought itself saved after the Battle of Zakuray, the raven witch knew that this escalation was just the beginning. “Firav will not stop until he wears that Rayan crown,” she said. “And it is your bloodline’s duty to prevent it, no matter what the nightmares tell you.” A serious gaze fell upon Ravonja. “Child, you haven’t slept much the past few days. Go to bed. You will soon need all energies you can muster.” It would only escalate the situation further if Azana recognised the Draculesti in her kitchen.

       “I can’t,” Ravonja refused. “Every time I close my eyes, I see it happening again, and every time I see it happening, I can’t help but think that she needs to know, has a right to know it.” The back of her head bumped against the kitchen wall, her eyes studying the wooden panels at the ceiling.

       Cloanta shook her head. “You know these nightmares are the sole burden of a raven blood, child,” she reminded Ravonja. “We can’t run around telling everyone about the future. This is not how things are meant to be.”

       As if her words had woken a shadow from his sleep, a crimson cloud seeped in from the kitchen window. “Di future does not exist,” it mumbled with bassy voice, releasing an infamous patriarchal figure into the open. “We alone forge our destiny.”

       Ravonja called back her gaze from the ceiling, watching Zazan materialise out of the crimson fog instead. Who promptly gave the Raven Blade’s lady general an honest nod for greeting. She nodded back, out of reflex sitting a bit more upright than before.

       “That is solely the conviction of House Zamedi,” Cloanta replied to his claims with a strict undertone. “It is the reason why we have three Houses of the Raven instead of one.”

       Zazan had always refused the concept of a future, which led to him often taking more radical and risky measures if things were about to go wrong. Yet the law of House Zamedi was not the law he and Cloanta agreed upon for the House of Raji’Rav to abide by.

       The raven shaman got tired of his host’s presence shortly after his arrival. Her preachings on the timeline exhausted his patience as usual. Rolling his eyes, he sat next to Ravonja at the kitchen table, playing with his walking stick as he questioned her. “Tell me, Ravonja. Does di timeline change afta or before a manipulation?” Pure rhetoric.

       Ravonja answered anyways. “After, of course.”

       “Dat is right,” Zazan confirmed. “Actions in di present shape di future, an’ derefore, di future does not exist. It is fluid, neva certain.”

       It would have been confusing theories for many. But Ravonja understood Zazan’s point of view. “What if a brave decision in the present was all it needed to prevent a nightmare to happen?” she asked Cloanta, who did not enjoy such theories while an all too obvious future was repeating itself just next door.

       “You two will leave now, while I deal with a future that allegedly does not exist,” she hissed at Zazan, picking up her tea tray and heading for the living room where Azana was about to give birth to Arayon’s daughter for the felt hundredth time.

       Zazan and Ravonja did as Cloanta told them and took the backdoor to not cross paths with Arayon’s fellowship of tainted Red Rangers in front of the house. Walking around Baba’s hut often was like walking on eggshells when a sudden interference of the timelines washed over it. The two went for a walk into the calmer depths of Ghostglade. Foul creatures wouldn’t have dared to approach this dangerous duo anyways.

       “What do ya intend to do ‘bout dis nightmare, young Draculesti?” Zazan inquired, directing his walking stick along their path. All of them had suffered from dark visions at least once since Azana had poured the phial with Radu’s blood gift into the kettle. The boy’s life essence ran through the raven bloods’ veins now and Ravonja as his closest relative felt it the most.

       “I can’t do anything,” Ravonja answered. “Cloanta will never give her blessing to any action taken in that regard.” Her crone had been clear about it and the Raji’Rav’s lady general was bound to her oath. It was the only reason the raven witch allowed for the Raven Blades to have their own house. Which was more of a figurative house to begin with.

       “What if ya ‘ad mine? Blessing dat is…” The raven shaman observed the ever-fading seasons of Ghostglade. Eternal autumn, eternal decay of leaves and life. It was a part of the past that connected the present of Gardyan’s three realms. A single moment in fall, where silence crept over the glades and mist took all that was of form and shape away. Endless grey with golden hues in the ghost birches’ crowns.

       “She would not allow it,” Ravonja said sullenly. For some reason, Cloanta was overprotective when it came to Azana. She didn’t wish for any manipulations of the countess’ decisions. Not even when Nemesava’s matriarch exchanged the phials for the Raven Blades’ potion did she intervene. It had made their task far more difficult, with Radu’s shadow shaking them all to the core. How had Countess Azana even gotten hold of Radu’s blood gift?

       Side-eyeing Ravonja, Zazan lifted an eyebrow. “Azana is ma niece, A do ‘ave a saying in dis matter.” Surely, his family had no sympathies towards him anymore. But that didn’t necessarily go both ways. “She is a capable leader an ‘er Raji’Draq is a capable commander. Ya can trust dem, Rav.”

       Ravonja smiled. Despite his dark reputation, Zazan sometimes really managed to sound like a parent of sorts. “I never asked you…” she hesitated. “Why did you sacrifice the owl ghost for the blood  raven, Zazan?” She looked up to the tall Nemesian with the antagonising grey chin beard. He always appeared more gentle when he wasn’t around men.

       “A did not sacrifice di owl ghost, young Draculesti,” he corrected her. “It is still di source of my power. But dere are monsters in di dark dat no body can contain but mine.” He had absorbed some of the most sinister energies when he became a raven shaman of the veil. A dark guard for its darkest regions.

       “There must always be a sacrifice,” Ravonja frowned. “No raven blood is inherited without it.” May it be an ancestral sacrifice or one given throughout one’s own lifetime. Cloanta sacrificed her old life, Ravonja’s family on mother’s side lost an heir to the Hungarian throne. And Arayon would have to sacrifice an oath of loyalty soon that was more precious to him than his own life. They were always painful, those sacrifices, physically or mentally or both.

       Zazan stopped his movement. “Di sacrifice you are speaking of was taken from me. A did not offer it… yet demanded sometin’ in return from di veil.”

       Her face… His wife’s face. For a short moment, he thought to glimpse her silhouette running through the fog. Red hair, knotted to thick dreadlocks and decorated with a hundred clinking silver beads. Her ritual dances were a sight to behold. Clan Sion would never see such a mighty druidesse again. With her died a part of the fox clan’s very soul.

       “How did she die?” Ravonja asked carefully. She knew Zazan did not like talking about it.

       Heavy felt the breath he took in before answering. “She was slain by a Dragovaste assassin during di Second War.” Zazan found her head spiked on a spear at the crossing between the Rakatan Steppes and Redbranch, withered, swarmed by flies and gnawed at by vultures. That’s where his animalis took a dark turn. He explicitly demanded the veil make him into a monster greater than any Witcher King. He demanded the power of the Red Raven to avenge his wife. His vengeance hadn’t stopped ever since.

       “I am deeply sorry for it.” Ravonja sounded ashamed. “Please, accept the Draculesti’s apology for our vassals’ involvement in it…” It all had become so much worse with Dragovaste maidens birthing those half-bloods that should carry out the Witcher Kings’ most cruel executions. “Did you know him?” she inquired, pondering. “My father, I mean…”

       Again, that eyebrow of Zazan was raised. “Who on di dark side of di veil does not no di dragon of Wallachia?” he grinned. “Di devil ‘imself might fear ‘im.”

       Ravonja smiled slightly. “I guess, Zakane could say the same about his father.” A quick side-eye waved over to Zazan. She knew that his relationship with his son wasn’t less complicated than that between her and her father.

       “Ha.” Zazan uttered a bitter laugh. “A don’t tink ma whelp is eva goin’ to speak as ‘ighly of ‘is old man as you speak of yours, raven daughter.” The fracture running through Zazan’s and Zakane’s family bond was simply too deep.

       Ravonja observed Zazan’s mimic. The patriarch of House Zamedi might have been a feared entity to many. But to her, he had become some sort of unwilful mentor after she had taken her place among the guardians of the veil. She trusted him for some odd reason which was why she dared to consult him about her nightmare’s peculiarities once more. “Zazan…” her pace became slower as she tried to find the right words. “I was wondering, what exactly is Qlippothar?” She had seen a distorted version of it during the Battle of Zakuray—a vile, maddening life form that appeared like a tree but had more in common with… living vines of thorns or thorny tentacles.

       Zazan slowed down as well. Her question was rather specific. But the raven shaman would not inquire about her reasons for asking. He would simply answer. “Qlippothar is not a tree in di common sense,” he explained. “It does not strive exposed to light an’ liquid. It feeds upon darkness an’ discord.”

       Ravonja began to understand. The disputes, the rivalries, the hatred among Gardyan’s people, and the unspeakable acts of cruelty that had happened around Zakuray’s roots had strengthened the Tree of Impurity. So much so that it had become strong enough to breach the dark side of the veil. “But how was it created?” she wanted to know. “There must have been some sort of origin to it.”

       Shrugging his shoulders, Zazan did not seem to either know or be willing to tell her the answer to this question. “Not every creation ‘as a creator, Ravonja. Di seeds of some tings simply grow unintended but aggressively—like parasites or an infection.”

       “An infection…” Ravonja repeated. “You mean that Qlippothar once was a normal tree or even a world tree that got infected?”

       The pebbly forest path became foggier as they progressed. A thick layer of grey creeped down the escarpment to their right, crawling forward to reach the other side of the trail. Intuitively, they halted, letting it cross their way. Loud trampling of deer, chased by wild screams of hunters on horses rumbled through the mist which would not clear up until that tumult had passed by. Only then, would the veil give way again to Ravonja and Zazan, revealing a glade both of them deemed familiar. In its mid stood tall a giant oak of old. Lanterns illuminated its branches, an altar with an ever-burning flame lit up its stem. They both had taken their oath beneath this tree, yet their tasks were different.

       “How come that there is peace between you and Cloanta, Zazan?” Ravonja asked as they were nearing the oak. “I still wonder, isn’t the dark side of the veil bound to swallow its counterpart and vice versa?”

       A raven shaman mused. The young Draculesti had a bright mind—her questions were proof of it. “Dat is why dere always must be a guardian to both sides,” he answered. “Balance is di essence of every power dynamic. I am not naïve about dat.” And after all, he still had family sworn to the other side of the veil which his counterpart Cloanta protected. With his free hand in his pocket, the shaman strutted towards the oak, Ravonja following him.

       Zak’u’Rav stood silent as always. A crossways within the veil, connecting two worlds in particular within the Forest Beyond. It was an odd connection. A dimensional shift, most likely. Nobody ever discovered how this link came to be. On Gardyan maps, Zak’u’Rav would have appeared to be located in the east, deep within the thicket of Ghostglade, yet from the veil’s point of view, its location was identical with that of Zakuray. Maybe, this oddity was owed to the maple goddess’ creation of the Raji’Rav. But no one knew for certain.

       Zazan picked up on Ravonja’s triste mood while they were making their way toward Zak’u’Rav. “Why don’t ya tell ya worries to Madda Oak?” he proposed as they reached the raven tree. “A mantra never did any harm to di timeline.” And maybe it would resonate with the right people.

       “We’re too close to Forest’s Chant, Zazan…” Ravonja uttered her concern. The Eastern Veil reached deep into the borderlands of both, Rayan and Nemesava. Forest’s Chant marked the closest outpost to Ghostglade. And it had been frequented by Arayon a lot recently. Raven Blades usually did not mingle with each other’s territories.

       “Too close or close enough?” Zazan asked, laying his hand on Ravonja’s shoulder. “Ya can trust dem,” he assured her once more, encouraging the Draculesti heir to send a subtle message in order to find a solution against her dangerous visions.

       After a while of hesitation and thorough consideration, Ravonja should follow Zazan’s suggestion. She sat down in front of the raven shrine’s eternal flame, closed her eyes and began to meditate. Uncommon sounds for a female voice some might have deemed the throaty chants Ravonja sang in front of the flame. It sounded like a raven singing a monotonous mantra in bassy notes. Any mortal approaching the raven oak during that moment would’ve been scared to death by such spooky sounds coming from a woman. But Zazan was no mortal, and so he stood behind Ravonja like a watchguard, overseeing her disciplined spiritual practice. He could not prevent wasting a thought on the unlikely scenario of Cloanta one day not being around anymore. Should that have ever been the case, the raven shaman would have wanted nobody else as his new colleague in preserving the balance than the young Draculesti. A realisation that should overcome him in that very moment. It was only understood by a third pair of eyes observing the two from the safety of shadows behind the first row of trees surrounding the raven oak shrine.

       Ruadhan often found his way to this sacred place whilst roaming the dark side of the veil. He had seen priestesses arriving from all kinds of foreign lands. Sometimes they came by themselves, speaking secret prayers to Mother Oak. Sometimes there were entire processions making their way before the shrine fires, celebrating seasonal feasts or the initiation of a young maiden. Tonight, however, there were only Ravonja and Zazan to observe—two people he deemed family by now. For they were the only one’s crossing his path regularly during his ominous quest to find the source of origin that had caused the interference within the eternal timeline. And he had a feeling, that if he just followed those two further down the line, he would come to find said source. Of that, he was certain. One of them might have even been directly involved in the escalation, which would have made them prime suspects in his investigation. But for now, Ruadhan decided to just take this scene for what it was: a student and her mentor beneath the branches of Mother Oak.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

End of Chapter 2: Haunting Times