L — Ludo the Hunter

 

The woodsman whose reports first revealed Ubain’s terrible fate.

Ludo knew the woods the way sailors knew the sea: by instinct as much as experience.

A trapper and hunter by trade, he spent more nights under the trees than under a roof, moving through the forests around Padua with the quiet confidence of someone who understands its rhythms. He knew where the deer crossed the streams, where wolves made their winter dens, and which paths turned treacherous when the rains came. It was the kind of knowledge that kept a man alive in lonely places.

That’s why people listened when Ludo came back shaken.

He wasn’t a man given to exaggeration, and he certainly wasn’t the type to scare easily. But when he reported what he’d found near Ubain, broken ground, signs of struggle, and traces that suggested something far worse than bandits, his words carried weight. Hunters read the land the way scholars read books, and Ludo’s conclusion was simple: whatever happened there was unnaturally violent and recent.

Since the report, his reputation shifted slightly in Padua. Not quite fearful, but marked by the knowledge that he’d seen something most would rather not imagine. Ludo still walked the forests, still checked his traps and followed the old trails, but he watched the shadows more carefully after.

Because sometimes the woods change, and the people who notice first are the ones who survive long enough to tell the tale.