Zariel Arrives with the Captured Hunter

Morning at Stonehill Inn should have smelled of bread, smoke, spilled ale, and the ordinary relief of having survived one more night. Instead it carried the sour edge of blood cleaned too quickly and questions nobody had finished asking.

Then Zariel arrived.

Those who saw her enter describe a figure marked by the road, accompanied by the presence of a wolf and the practical silence of someone who has already done the hard part before breakfast. With her came the hunter who had fled the night’s violence, no longer running, no longer boasting, and very much alive.

The trail had begun in the confusion after the attack. While Phandalin slept poorly and the inn tried to understand what had happened inside its own walls, Zariel followed the shape of escape: disturbed ground, hurried passage, the faint cowardice of a man who thought distance could become mercy. Her wolf helped close the night around him.

The fight, by all accounts, was brief. The hunter was taken alive, which is more consideration than his employer’s coin deserved. Dragged or driven back toward town, he became the morning’s most unwelcome proof that the attack was not random. A dead man leaves questions. A prisoner leaves answers, excuses, and fear.

In the common room, the company gained more than a captive. They gained a new presence beside them, one whose arrival tied the previous night’s violence to the road beyond town. Zariel did not enter as rumor. She entered with evidence.

Phandalin has a habit of measuring people by what follows them through the door. Some bring mud. Some bring debts. Zariel brought back the man who ran, and with him another piece of the shadow reaching for Noctara. The Orb marks her name among the company’s six.