The red velvet curtain was not a hiding place, but a distraction. At the very moment the sorcerer's hands ignited, Geneviève severed the cord holding the heavy drape with a sharp flick of her dagger. Kilograms of dusty fabric collapsed over the hooded figure just as the spell was unleashed.
The bolt of magical energy—a projectile of pure darkness that hissed like a serpent—veered at the last second, striking a gilded mirror on the opposite wall. The glass did not shatter into shards; it pulverised into black sand, aged a thousand years in a single heartbeat. Geneviève sprinted forward. Captain Van der Decken, a veteran of a thousand harbour brawls, was fast. He drew a flintlock pistol from his belt and fired. BOOM.
The thunder of the shot was deafening in the confined space. The lead ball struck Geneviève in the left shoulder. Had she been wearing only leather, it would have shattered her collarbone. But the Gromril held. The bullet flattened against the spaulder, leaving a dent and forcing her half a step back from the sheer kinetic force.
"Damn it!" the Captain cursed, tossing the spent weapon aside and drawing a boardingsabrer. "He's armoured like a dwarf!"
Geneviève ignored the dull ache in her shoulder. She lunged toward the desk. With one hand, she snatched the black diary and shoved it into her doublet, beneath her breastplate. With the other, she overturned the heavy mahogany desk toward the two men with brutal strength. Van der Decken had to leap back to avoid having his legs crushed. The sorcerer, freeing himself from the curtain with a scream of frustration, uttered a word in a guttural, blasphemous tongue. The wood of the desk began to rot instantly, turning into black pulp and poisonous fungi before their eyes.
Genevièverealisedd that staying in that room meant death. Against that black magic, without revealing her divine nature, she was doomed. She couldn't go out the window—she was too slow. She charged the cabin door. She didn't open it; she went through it. She used her armoured shoulder as a battering ram. The oak wood exploded, and the hinges snapped. Geneviève landed on the quarterdeck in a rain of splinters, rolling to rise immediately into a guard stance.
"INTRUDER! AFT!" the boatswain bellowed.
The situation was desperate. The deck of the Lady of the Sea was lit as bright as day by lanterns. Twenty crossbowmen turned toward her. Sailors armed with boarding axes ran toward the stern, screaming. And from the destroyed cabin behind her, the sorcerer emerged, his feet not touching the ground, surrounded by shadows that moved like living tentacles.
"Kill him!" the sorcerer ordered, his voice echoing unnaturally. "But bring me the head intact! I want to see what he knows!"
Geneviève was trapped. A sailor lunged at her. She parried the axe blow with her common sword and delivered a kick to his knee, sending him collapsing with a scream. Then, she heard the hum of the air. The crossbowmen had fired. Geneviève crouched behind the shield she had recovered. Thud. Thud. Thud. The bolts hammered against the steel and reinforced wood. One grazed her helm, making the metal sing.
She had to get away. She sprinted toward the side railing.
"Stop him!" Van der Decken yelled, emerging from the cabin with a second pistol.
The sorcerer raised a hand. A tentacle of shadow shot out with lightning speed, snaring Geneviève's ankle. She felt a bone-deep chill, a grave-coldness, penetrate through her boot andparalysee her muscles. Geneviève stumbled. She fell onto the damp deck. The sailors were upon her, trying to pin her down under their weight.
Panic seized her. If they held her down, they would remove her helm. They would see. They would understand. She could no longer hold back. But she didn't use magic. She used everything she had: the strength of the Grail flowing in her veins and the rage of one backed into a corner. She let out a muffled cry and contracted every muscle in her body, releasing the energy in a violent physical explosion. It wasn't a spell; it was a shockwave of pure muscular power and will. The three men on top of her were tossed away like rag dolls. The shadow tentacle snapped like brittle glass.
The sorcerer staggered, surprised by that sudden strength. Geneviève didn't wait. She scrambled up and hurled herself over the railing, into the black void.
As she fell, Van der Decken fired. The bullet grazed her helm, shearing off a lock of wet hair. SPLASH.
The cold, filthy water welcomed her once more. Geneviève sank like a stone. Above the surface, she saw violet flashes hit the water, making the sea boil where she had fallen a moment before. The sorcerer was discharging his fury blindly. Geneviève held her breath until her lungs ached and walked along the silty bottom, dragging herself away from the ship, one heavy step at a time, toward the labyrinth of pilings beneath the warehouses.
She emerged ten minutes later in a secondary canal, far from the lights. She hoisted herself onto a stone quay, shivering violently. Hypothermia was setting in, and not even her blessed nature could entirely ignore it. She was alive. She had the book. But now they knew there was someone capable of breaking their magic.
She looked at the city lights reflecting in the water like gold coins stained with blood. She had to leave Marienburg. Immediately.
The escape from Marienburg was not heroic; it was miserable. Geneviève exited the city not through the gates, but by crawling with Duraz through the sewage outflows that emptied into the outer marshes, the Wasteland. When they emerged into the misty moor at dawn, they were covered in mud and filth, but they were free.
She stopped in a grove of weeping willows, far from the high road, to light a small, smokeless fire and dry the black diary. The pages were damp but still legible. She read with care while Duraz, nervous, grazed on the grey grass.
Captain Van der Decken's notes confirmed everything. There was an organised network. Marienburg provided the logistics and the ships. The Surgeons provided the human "raw material." Norsca provided the gold and the buyers for the war-beasts. But it was the connection to Altdorf that worried her most.
"The Grey Circle" was the final recipient. The note requested "Blood of a Saint" for a ritual planned for Geheimnisnacht, the Night of Mysteries, which was less than a month away. Geneviève closed the book with a sense of nausea. Blood of a Saint. Not from a dead relic, but living blood. Did they know about her? Or was there someone else, blessed as she was, who risked ending up on a sacrificial altar?
She resumed her journey southeast toward the Imperial capital, riding through the dense, dark forests of the Reikland. Here, the Emperor's law was stronger, but the shadows were also deeper. After four days of travel under an incessant rain, she came in sight of a fortified village called Untergard. There was tension in the air. The windows were shuttered, and there were no children on the streets. As she crossed the stone bridge, a voice halted her. "Halt! Who goes there?"
It was a patrol of Road Wardens. They wore tattered blue and yellow uniforms, stained with mud, and rode horses that looked as exhausted as they were. They were armed with pistols and lances, and their eyes were filled with suspicion and fear. The patrol's sergeant, a man with gray mustaches, levelled his pistol at her chest. "Honest travellers don't wear dwarvearmouror covered in rags," the sergeant said. "Show your face."
Geneviève hesitated. But killing representatives of the Imperial law was unthinkable. Slowly, she raised her helm's visor. The sergeant saw the dirty face, the grey eyes, the scar. He saw a weary warrior, not a mutant or a cultist. He lowered his pistol slightly, letting out a sigh of relief. "Forgive the rudeness, milady. But these are dark times. We found three bodies in the woods yesterday. Drained of blood."
Geneviève felt a shiver at the base of her neck. Not a magical power, but the instinct of a predator recognising the trail of another. "Wolves?" she asked.
"I wish," the sergeant spat. "Wolves tear the flesh. These were... empty. Like punctured wineskins. And they had this carved into their foreheads." He showed her a rough sketch on a piece of parchment. It was a circle with a broken line inside. Geneviève recognised the symbol. It was also drawn in the black diary. The seal of the Grey Circle.
"Vampires?" she asked, her voice low.
"We don't know. But whatever it is, it's moving toward Altdorf. Like all the trouble these days." The sergeant looked her in the eye with a grave expression. "If you're going to the capital, milady, be careful. They say Emperor Karl Franz is ill. No one has seen him in weeks. And when the lion is sick, the hyenas begin to laugh."
The Emperor is ill. That news hit her like a punch. If Karl Franz was out of the game, the Empire was vulnerable. And if the Grey Circle was harvesting sacred blood just as the throne wavered, the threat was not merely magical. It was a coup d'état.
"Thank you for the warning, Sergeant."
"May Sigmar protect you, stranger. You'll need it."
Geneviève spurred Duraz. The hyenas weren't just laughing. They were setting the table. She had to reach Altdorf. She had to enter a court full of spies, intrigue, and religious fanatics without being burned as a heretic. She looked at the ring with the lion of Bretonnia on her finger. It was no longer enough to be a knight. In Altdorf, she would have to learn to be a ghost.
Certainly. Here is the translation of Chapter 77, maintaining the dark, gritty atmosphere of the Reikwald and Geneviève's evolving struggle.
Chapter 77:
The Reikwald Forest was not a natural place. It was an ancient entity, resentful and vigilant, tolerating the Imperial road as a wounded animal tolerates a thorn in its side. The trees here were not the majestic, distant pines of the Grey Mountains, but gnarled oaks and black beeches that wove their branches over the highway, creating a perpetual tunnel of darkness and rotting leaves. It had been raining for three days. A thin, cold rain that seeped beneath the joints of her armour and turned the road into a swamp of clinging mud capable of swallowing a boot to the ankle.
Geneviève rode in silence, her head bowed against the wind. Duraz, the dwarven horse, pressed on with his piston-like gait, snorting clouds of steam that dissolved instantly in the freezing air. The beast was nervous; his ears rotated constantly toward the thick of the brush, picking up sounds that the human ear ignored. Geneviève felt the pressure too. It wasn't the sharp itch of corrupted magic, but a more pervasive sense of unease. It was like walking into a room where a terrible violence had just occurred. The air tasted of stale ozone and old fear.
Two nights had passed since the encounter with the Road Wardens at Untergard, and the marks of the Grey Circle had become scars upon the landscape. She had passed two burned farmsteads. There were no corpses, only ash and that symbol—the broken circle—painted in blood on the doors left standing. Whoever they were, they left no witnesses, and they left no bodies to bury. They took everything.
As night fell, Geneviève saw a flickering glow through the trees, a few hundred yards off the main road. It was not the fire of a military camp—too disorganised—nor that of bandits—too visible. She approached with caution, dismounting and tying Duraz's reins to a low branch. She covered her armour with her muddy cloak and advanced into the undergrowth, her hand on the hilt of her common sword.
What she found in a muddy clearing gripped her heart. It was a group of pilgrims. Some thirty people—men, women, and children—huddled around three fires that hissed under the rain. They had no wagons, only bundles on their backs. Their clothes were rags, and many wore dirty bandages. At thecentrer of the camp, a fanatical preacher with a beard full of twigs was screaming prayers to Sigmar, lashing his own back with a cat-o'-nine-tails. But no one was truly listening. The pilgrims' eyes were hollow, fixed on the flames, lost in a catatonia of exhaustion and terror.
Geneviève made to leave—she could afford neither delay nor compassion—when a noise stopped her. A child was crying, and his mother was trying to silence him by placing a hand over his mouth, looking terrified toward the darkness beyond the firelight. That fear was specific. They did not fear the woods in general. They feared something that was following them.
Geneviève stepped out of the shadows, keeping her hands in view. "Peace," she said in her deep voice. Panic exploded. Tired men grabbed staves and kitchen knives. The preacher stopped lashing himself and pointed a bony finger at her. "A shadow demon! Back!"
"I am a traveller," Geneviève said, ignoring the madman and approaching the largest fire. The light illuminated her helm and imposing stature, but the cloak hid the quality of herarmourr. "And these woods are no place for the living tonight."
An elderly man, missing a l, eg replaced by a piece of wood, rose with effort. He wore the remnants of a State Troop military tunic. A veteran. "Lower your staff, Hans," the man ordered the others. He looked at Geneviève with eyes that had seen too many winters. "If he wanted to kill us, he would have done inrom the dark. Come to the fire, stranger. We have root soup and hot water. It is all we have left."
Geneviève accepted a bowl of tasteless broth. She sat on a rotting log, keeping her visor lowered. "Where are you headed?" she asked the veteran.
"Altdorf," the man replied, massaging the stump of his leg. "They say the Emperor is dying. We go to pray beneath the walls of the Palace. Perhaps Sigmar will listen to the poor if we scream loud enough."
"The Emperor is protected by the best physicians and wizards of the Colleges," Geneviève said.
The veteran laughed, a bitter, wheezing sound. "Physicians? Wizards? Those are vultures. The city is closed, stranger. No one enters, no one leaves without the stamp of the Templars. There is a 'blood plague,' they say. But we know the truth." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "It is not a disease. It is a theft. Someone is stealing the life from the people. We lost three of our own two nights ago. They went to gather wood and did not return. We heard only... a rustle. Like silk sliding over dry leaves."
Silk. Geneviève stiffened. The captain's diary had spoken of noble buyers. And the rustle of silk in the woods was the sound of predators that did not belong to the wild.
Suddenly, the fires dipped all at once, as if the air had been sucked out of the clearing. The forest went silent. No crickets, no wind. Only the rhythmic sound of padded hooves on the soft earth. Not horses. Something lighter.
"Put out the fires!" Geneviève ordered, leaping up and knocking over her soup.
"What?"
"PUT THEM OUT NOW!"
Too late. From the vertical darkness of the trees, nets dropped. Heavy nets, weighted with lead, fell upon the pilgrims at the edges of the camp. The screaming began instantly. Figures emerged from the mist. They were not orcs or beasts. They were human silhouettes, slender, dressed in tight-fitting black leather suits and featureless white porcelain masks, smooth as eggs. They moved with an unnatural, acrobatic speed. The Harvesters.
One of them landed in front of the veteran, brandishing two curved hooks attached to chains. The old soldier tried to raise his staff, but the Harvester was faster. A spinning kick shattered the wooden leg, bringing the man down. The Harvester raised the hooks to snag the prey and drag him away.
Geneviève did not use the Light. She lunged. Her armoured body became a thirty-kilo battering ram launched at a frantic speed. A shoulder charge. She hit the Harvester in the flank with an impact that rang out like thunder. The dry crack of yielding ribs followed. The masked figure flew, slamming against a tree. Geneviève did not stop. She drew her bastard sword. "Behind me! Everyone to thecentrer!"
Three more Harvesters emerged from the dark, surrounding her. They did not speak. Their white masks reflected the last embers of the dying fires. They attacked together, coordinated as a single organism. The first threw a net. Geneviève intercepted it with her blade, cutting it mid-air, but the lead weights wrapped around her sword, weighing it down. The second slid low in the mud, trying to slice the tendons behind her knees with a long dagger. The third leapt from above, aiming for the neck joints with a stiletto.
Geneviève let go of the trapped sword. She was unarmed, surrounded. Time seemed to slow. The Grail pulsed in her chest, begging to be released. A burst of light would have incinerated these assassins in an instant. No, she commanded herself. If I use the light, I condemn myself and the mission.
She dropped to her knees, dodging the jumper's blow to the head. While down, she grabbed the wrist of the assassin aiming for her legs. She twisted. The arm snapped with a horrific pop. Geneviève used the man's body as a shield, hoisting him up just as the jumper landed. The companion's stiletto sank into the wounded Harvester's back instead of hers.
Geneviève rose roaring, shoving the corpse against the other assassin. With her free hand, she drew the dagger from her belt—a wide, heavy blade. The third Harvester, the one who had thrown the net, drew two short swords and attacked with a hypnotic dance of blades. He was fast, too fast for a normal human. Vampiric? Or alchemically enhanced?
Geneviève did not try to match his speed. She accepted the blow. A short sword struck her chest. It skated across the Gromril plate, finding a joint beneath the armpit. The tip penetrated two ccentimetresinto her flesh. The pain was a white jolt, but Geneviève used it. She trapped the enemy blade with her own body, contracting her muscles and twisting her torso. The Harvester, surprised by her lack of reaction to the pain, hesitated for a fraction of a second. It was enough. Geneviève drove her dagger under his chin, through the porcelain mask, into the brain. The figure slumped.
Silence returned to the clearing, broken only by the moans of the wounded pilgrims. Geneviève wrenched the sword from her own flesh, stifling a grunt. Warm blood trickled inside her armour. She turned toward the first Harvester, the one she had hit with the shoulder charge. He was trying to crawl away into the dark, breathing with difficulty. Geneviève reached him in two steps and placed anarmouredd boot on his back. She flipped him over and ripped away the white mask.
Beneath was no monster. There was a young man, beautiful, with pale skin and black veins prominent beneath his eyes. His pupils were dilated to the maximum, black as the abyss. A junkie. Or a mind-slave. The man looked at her, smiled, showing teeth filed to points, and died biting a capsule hidden in his mouth. Black foam seeped from his lips.
Geneviève stood, wiping the dagger on the assassin's cloak. The pilgrims stared at her. There was no gratitude in their eyes. There was terror. They had seen how she killed. Without hesitation, without fear, with an efficient brutality that did not belong to travellerler."
"Who... who are you?" the veteran stammered, clutching his mangled leg.
Geneviève picked up her bastard sword, freeing it from the cut net. "Someone going the same way," she replied, her voice metallic and cold. "But one who does not pray for salvation."
She did not wait for thanks. She returned to the darkness toward Duraz. As she mounted her saddle, she felt the blood pulsing in the wound under her armpit. The supernatural healing was already beginning, knitting the tissues, but the mental exhaustion remained. These Harvesters were not looking for loot. They were looking for people. Altdorf was not just sick. It was hungry.
She spurred the horse eastward. In the distance, through the rain and the trees, she saw an orange glow against the low clouds. The lights of the capital. They looked like the eyes of a feverish beast waiting in the dark. "I'm coming," Geneviève whispered to the night. "Set the table."