The contract said: hunt the werewolf, collect the bounty, move on. Simple. Clean. It never is.
They tracked the beast three nights through the Ashwood, following a trail of shredded chainmail and scorched holy symbols. The trail ended in a moonlit clearing — and so did the easy part.
Kneeling in the dirt was a paladin. Old. Broken. His armor was tarnished silver, his holy symbol shattered in pieces around him like a fallen halo. When he looked up, his eyes held the particular grief of a man who had finally gotten what he’d prayed for — and wished he hadn’t.
“I’ve been hunting it for thirty years,” he said quietly. “Tonight I finally caught it.”
The ranger noticed the claw marks on the paladin’s arms — too fresh. Too deep. Then the cleric checked the bounty contract one more time. The family name of the werewolf they’d been hired to kill matched the paladin’s own.
The beast wasn’t his prey. It was his son — and the paladin had spent three decades hunting the curse, not the boy. Now he’d found both.
💬 Does your party complete the contract, help the paladin find a cure, or walk away? What would you do? 👇