Magna bent down and picked up the shining object hidden among the bushes.
It looked like a ring, made of what seemed to be silver, with a striking red gem set right in the center, sparkling with a light of its own.
It also looked fairly dirty, like it had been sitting there for quite a while.
’Wonder if this is worth anything.’
It didn’t look like something a villager or hunter would own. It had the look of jewelry meant only for nobles.
He slipped it into his pocket, planning to check its value later, then kept searching the area for anything else.
Before long, something else in the bushes caught his eye.
"Hey, isn’t that..." He bent down and pulled a large piece of fine red cloth out from the bushes, and what he saw left him stunned.
What he was holding in his hands was a Witch Hat.
He already knew enough to understand just how important a hat like this was to a Witch. Even Faye had to survive a dangerous, potentially fatal trial just to earn hers.
So unless this was some kind of fake, there was no way a Witch would just carelessly lose something like this.
’Should I tell Harlan about this?’ He turned to look for the man, who was supposed to be keeping watch a little way behind them.
But Harlan was nowhere in sight anymore, not where he had last been standing.
He turned to check on Faye next, but he couldn’t spot her either.
"Where did they go?" He muttered, a bad feeling starting to creep up inside him.
He also realized he couldn’t sense any presences nearby anymore, not even the hunters who had been trailing them earlier.
Even the chirping of the birds had seemed to disappear, and the entire forest had suddenly fallen silent.
He immediately dropped the hat back onto the ground, wondering if it had something to do with it, and started walking back toward where the others should have been.
But no matter how far he walked, or how much he searched, he couldn’t find anyone at all.
He even started to wonder if he was the one who had gotten lost, wandering too far off without realizing it, drifting away from the group.
’I’ve kept my awareness sharp the whole time. That’s not possible.’ He quickly dismissed the thought.
Besides, he was still standing right in the area where the sunberries grew.
A moment later, he flinched at a sound echoing through the forest, not too far away.
It was a woman screaming.
It couldn’t be Faye. He would have recognized her voice instantly.
’One of the hunters, maybe?’ He thought.
He had every reason not to head toward that scream, but wanting to understand exactly what kind of situation he had walked into, he started moving toward it anyway, staying as quiet and hidden as he could manage.
As he moved closer, the screams kept coming, one after another, sounding full of pain.
Following the sound, he got closer and closer, until he finally ducked behind a tree and caught sight of where it was coming from.
’What kind of sick joke is this?’
He looked ahead and saw a body hanging by its arms from a thick tree branch.
The screams were still echoing through the air, coming straight from that body.
But what truly shocked Magna, leaving him completely confused, was the fact that the body was nothing but a skeleton, no flesh left at all, just bones.
It was moving, its jaw opening wide as it screamed, thrashing desperately as if trying to break free.
Draped over its bony frame was an old, worn, torn Witch’s robe, red in color.
Magna connected the dots instantly. The red Witch Hat he had found earlier must have belonged to this very skeleton.
’I am not staying here one more second.’ With that thought, he decided to retreat the way he came, moving as quietly and carefully as he possibly could.
But before he could even take a step, he heard another sound, footsteps approaching this time.
Not wanting to be found out, he dropped down and crouched low.
From where he crouched, he watched the direction the footsteps were coming from, keeping his head low as he tried to see.
It was a woman, walking slowly toward the screaming skeleton hanging from the tree.
Her hair was impossibly long, dragging along the ground, filthy and black, with leaves tangled throughout it.
She wore a black robe just as filthy, covered in holes and tears.
But what stood out most, the reason Magna couldn’t see her face at all, was her strange hat.
It was entirely black, worn and dirty, shaped like a pointed Witch Hat, but its wide brim hung low, completely covering the upper half of her face.
The only small mercy in all this was that the woman didn’t seem to have noticed Magna at all. She simply walked beneath the hanging skeleton and tilted her head up to look at it.
Magna started weighing his options again, calculating whether he could make a run for it, or if staying hidden was safer, until he heard her begin to speak.
"Screaming, screaming, screaming..." She was talking to the skeleton.
Her voice sounded impossibly old, barely even recognizable as a woman’s voice at all, trembling slightly in a way that made her sound completely unhinged.
The skeleton began screaming again, this time without stopping, thrashing even harder, as if it were truly terrified of her.
It terrified Magna too.
This time, he made up his mind, using the screams as cover while he slowly rose to his feet and began backing away, step by careful step.
Whoever that suffering, screaming skeleton was, he had no intention of trying to help it. And whatever that strange Witch was, he didn’t even want her showing up in his nightmares.
But it was already too late.
’’There... Someone there? ’’
As soon as Magna heard her speaking, this time the sound directly coming toward his direction, he instantly shot up and ran, not even daring to look back, sprinting with everything he had.
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