Fantasy RP The Last Hunt - (Chaotic & Froshi)

[Chaotic_Emerald]

“Don’t come home until after five. I have important matters to attend to and you cannot be here.”

That was the text Arthur sent his granddaughter, Evelyn, minutes before he knelt in the ritual circle he had prepared.

She couldn’t be here for this. He had promised her parents he would protect her. He’d spent the week preparing the ritual, he’d thought he had another month, but the air had been wrong all day. Subtle fluctuations only a witch or warlock could sense were everywhere. Arthur was trained, he knew the dangers of using magic recklessly. Evelyn did not. Her ability had been suppressed when she was seven, the night her parents noticed the changes and performed a binding to hide her power. The ritual had worked and Evelyn’s magic was undetectable. But her parents were found and murdered that same night. They spared Evelyn that night because they detected no magic in her blood. Now, the suppression was wearing off, and Arthur was running out of time.

He had promised to either train her or suppress the power further. He wanted to teach her, but the deadline was too close, and werewolves hunted by scent and could detect any use of magic. There was also the fact that over the years they had been hunting down many other witches in the Winslow family line for years, so they were learning other ways to detect magic easier.

The original binding had required both of her parents’ strength. Arthur had no guarantee he could complete the same work alone, but he had to try.
On his knees in the circle, his body protested. Age had taken its toll, his knees hurt more than they should. He checked the candles, lined and spaced along the circle, and smoothed the small veil before him. He closed his eyes and began the chant, focusing on his intention: to hide Evelyn’s abilities from both herself and the world.

The room answered. A breeze slid through the closed windows, candle flames quivered. Shadows gathered at the edges and inched toward him, some slipping under the veil and vanishing. Doubt crept in. Should he erase her chance to learn? What would she do alone, defenseless against the werewolves? His uncertainty shook his hands and clouded his focus. Pain followed: limbs tightened, breath shortened. The breeze built into a wind that nearly snuffed the candles and sent small objects clattering. He raised his voice, forcing the final verses to shape, but the spell fought him. The resistance seized his body and his mind in equal measure. As he reached the last line, agony ripped through him. He collapsed, face-first to the floor. Red tracks ran from his eyes like bloody tears. The ritual had proven more than his body could bear. He had failed.
He lay there stunned, knowing what that failure meant. They would come for Evelyn now. He could not summon the strength to rise. Minutes later his heart stilled, and the room fell silent.
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Evelyn’s day had gone through like it usually did, breakfast with a cup of tea while she went through the day’s inventories, cataloging archives, and researching her parents’ deaths right before lunch. Although she didn’t actually take her lunch, the text her grandfather sent her caused her to grow worried. There was concern for her grandfather, he never texted her to not come home. It was always the opposite, he constantly wanted her home when she wasn’t out doing anything important. She didn’t know what to do past 3pm, which is when she got off work. She wanted to go home before 5 and find out what was going on. But she didn’t, and instead went to have a late lunch with her best friend, June, who tried her best to reassure her that things were okay.

“I’m sure everything is alright…you have mentioned that he isn’t always as predictable as you think. So maybe this is one of those times!” June rubbed small circles on the back of Evelyn’s hand, the soothing motion was something that often calmed her. But it wasn’t working this time.

“You don’t know him like I do June! He always wants to make sure what I’m doing, where I’m doing it and when. Telling me to not come home until a certain time without questioning what I do in the meantime is so unlike him!” Evelyn whined, pulling her hand back from her friend’s touch and tapping her fingers on the table.

They’d been sitting there for an hour and a half when she got a call from a neighbor. They said they heard some yelling from her house and wanted to know if everything was okay. She stated she wasn’t home but would be heading back.

Though it wasn’t quite 5 and June grabbed her arm as Evelyn stood up, “Don’t! You don’t know what’ll happen if you go before he told you to go.” She tried to be sensible about it, she knew her friend’s grandfather was a bit strict. So going against him would cause not so great consequences. Yes, Evelyn was an adult, but she always obeyed her grandfather and there were always consequences for disobeying.

“I don’t care. Something’s wrong, I feel it. I’ll call you later.” She yanked her arm back and June looked shook at the sudden change in her friend. Evelyn was usually soft and calmer than she was now. Perhaps it was because of the worry that flooded her body at the thought of something happening to her grandfather. He was the one to raise her after all.

She immediately exited the diner they were in and started running towards her house. It was normally a 10 minute walk, but she could shave off a few minutes if she was hurrying. Which now she was.

Once she got there she saw the door was ajar, but her neighbors would never go in without consent. And since they didn’t know where my grandfather was in the house, they would’ve asked her. But no one did. So she pushed the door open, “дедушка (grandfather)?” She called out as she entered the front door. It was a mess, things were knocked over, like a tornado came through the house. But there was no sign of her grandfather. Walking towards his room, that door was also open, she saw him on the ground and a figure looming over him. Instinctively she let out a sharp gasp, but immediately she covered her mouth and hid behind the nearest corner.

What the hell was going on?

 

[Froshimaru]

The human world had been burning through Kieran for three days now. Not the acute agony that came with fresh crossing, but a constant low-grade wrongness that settled into his bones and made everything feel slightly off-kilter. Like existing somewhere his body knew he shouldn't be. The beast had been cooperative enough, focused on the mission, on the target. On ending this.

Arthur Winslow had been dying when Kieran found him.

The old warlock lay collapsed in the center of a ritual circle, blood trailing from his eyes like tears, his breathing shallow and erratic. Candles guttered around him, their flames casting unstable shadows across walls lined with books and artifacts. The air itself felt wrong, thick with magic that had gone catastrophically sideways.

Kieran had stood in the doorway, watching the man's chest rise and fall with increasing difficulty. The beast wanted to finish it, to lunge forward and end what the failed ritual had started. But there was no point. Arthur Winslow was already dead. Just taking his time about it.

He'd crossed the threshold slowly, boots silent on worn floorboards, and knelt just outside the ritual circle. Close enough to see the man's face clearly. Close enough to be heard if Arthur had any awareness left.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way," Kieran said quietly. Not because he felt particularly guilty about it. Just acknowledgment of fact. Arthur Winslow hadn't asked to be born into a bloodline that had cursed an entire species. Hadn't chosen to be a target. But choice didn't matter much when seven generations of suffering needed answering for.

The old man's eyes had flickered toward him once, briefly, before glazing over. His heart stuttered. Then stopped.

Kieran stayed crouched there, perfectly still.

Waiting.

This was it. The moment seven generations had been working toward. Arthur Winslow was dead. The last warlock the Council had identified as holding the curse in place. If the theory was correct, if all the suffering and sacrifice and systematic elimination of entire bloodlines had actually meant something, then the curse should break now.

He waited for the burning to stop. For the wrongness to ease. For the human world to stop rejecting his existence like a body fighting off infection.

Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty.

Nothing changed.

The low-grade agony in his bones remained exactly the same. The beast still whined with discomfort, still wanted to leave, still felt the fundamental wrongness of being here. The air still pressed against him like he was something that shouldn't exist in this space.

Kieran's jaw tightened. He rose slowly to his feet, gaze dropping back to Arthur's body. Then to the ritual circle surrounding it. The candles, still burning. The symbols drawn in what looked like salt and ash. The small veil placed deliberately at the circle's edge.

This hadn't been a curse-maintenance ritual. The setup was all wrong for that. Too personal. Too desperate. The blood from Arthur's eyes suggested the old man had pushed himself beyond his limits trying to accomplish something.

But what?

Kieran's eyes tracked over the ritual components again, cataloging details his training had taught him to notice. The way the candles were spaced. The specific symbols used. The veil, which suggested concealment or binding rather than reinforcement.

Arthur hadn't been maintaining the curse. He'd been trying to hide something.

The realization settled cold in Kieran's gut. Seven generations. Hundreds of deaths. Twelve years of his life spent hunting, killing, crossing into a world that actively rejected him. All based on the theory that eliminating the witch bloodlines would break the curse.

Arthur Winslow was dead, and nothing had changed.

Which meant either the theory was incomplete, or they'd been wrong from the start.

He pulled out the small leather journal from his jacket, flipped to the next blank page, and wrote with mechanical precision: Arthur Winslow. November 4, 2025. Natural death during failed ritual.

Forty-four names now. Forty-four witches and warlocks dead by his hand or because of his presence. And the curse still held.

He was closing the journal when he heard it.

Footsteps. Quick, urgent, moving through the house toward this room. Then the front door, already ajar from Kieran's entry, being pushed wider.

A voice called out something in Russian. Grandfather.

Kieran's head snapped up, every sense suddenly sharp and focused. Someone else was here. Someone who lived here, based on the familiarity in that call. The beast, which had been quietly agitated with the mission's apparent failure, suddenly went alert.

He could smell her now. Female. Young. The scent carried traces of tea and lavender and old paper, underlaid with something else. Something the beast recognized even if Kieran's conscious mind took a second longer to place it.

Witch.

But that was impossible. Arthur Winslow had been alone. The Council's information said he had a granddaughter, but she'd been tested years ago and shown no magical ability. Suppressed so thoroughly she didn't even register as a potential threat. That's why Kieran had never bothered tracking her down. What was the point of killing someone who couldn't use magic, who didn't contribute to maintaining the curse?

Except the air in this room was saturated with failed ritual magic, thick and chaotic and active, and something about it was changing. Kieran could feel it. The way pressure changes before a storm breaks.

Something Arthur had been hiding. Something he'd died trying to keep concealed.

The footsteps stopped. A sharp gasp, quickly muffled.

She'd seen something. Probably Arthur's body. Probably the ritual circle. Probably the aftermath of whatever the old man had been attempting before his body gave out.

Kieran rose slowly to his feet, every movement deliberate and controlled despite the way the beast was suddenly pushing harder against his control. The wrongness of the human world was getting worse. The pain was getting worse. And now there was magic everywhere, pressing against his senses, and the beast was screaming that there was a threat, there was a hunt, finish it finish it finish it.

He turned toward where he'd heard her hide, toward the corner just outside the doorway. She couldn't see him clearly yet. He'd positioned himself in the shadows near Arthur's body, and the guttering candlelight only reached so far. But he could see her.

Young. Mid-twenties maybe. Pale and slight, with ash-blonde hair coming loose from a braid. One hand pressed over her mouth where she'd gasped. The other braced against the wall like she needed the support.

And she was blazing with magic.

Not subtle. Not suppressed. Not hidden. Whatever Arthur had been doing in that ritual circle, whatever had killed him, had broken something. Shattered whatever bindings had kept this girl invisible to Kieran's senses, to the Council's tracking, to seven generations of hunters.

The beast wanted her. Wanted to hunt, wanted to chase, wanted to end the threat. Because that's what she was now. A witch. Active magic. Another piece of the curse that needed eliminating.

His amber eyes flooded with red, that telltale glow reflecting back from the darkness. Like an animal caught in low light. Predator recognizing prey.

His hands flexed once at his sides. The silver knife, Mira's knife, pressed against his ribs where he kept it sheathed. The beast was loud now. Louder than it had been in months. The combination of the human world's rejection, the saturation of magic in the air, and a viable target right there was pushing his control hard.

He should think about this. Should assess whether she actually posed a threat or if this was just residual magic from Arthur's death. Should consider that killing someone who'd just watched their grandfather die might be cruel even by his standards.

But the beast didn't care about assessment or consideration. It cared about the mission. It cared about the hunt. And she had magic, which meant she was part of the problem, which meant she needed to die.

Kieran's breathing slowed. His weight shifted forward slightly, balanced on the balls of his feet. Calculating distance, angle, the fastest route to end this cleanly.

One second. Two.

Then he moved.

Time seemed to slow as he lunged from the shadows, still human-shaped but moving with speed and precision that wasn't entirely human anymore. The beast lending him its instincts, its strength, its single-minded focus on the target.

Red eyes locked on sea-glass blue. Hunter closing on prey.​