Raven Hill Cemetery lay just north of town. An abandoned road overgrown with weeds led directly to the cemetery's tightly shut iron gates.

The metalwork adorning the gates and railings was remarkably elaborate and beautiful. The place might once have been bustling. Jess could even imagine how it had looked before the great explosion at Karazhan.

This vast cemetery held countless veterans and nobles who had died in earlier wars. Family members of fallen heroes—and noble lords putting on a show—must often have arrived in splendid carriages to pay their respects. Raven Hill had prospered by serving those visitors and caring meticulously for the dead. The great cemetery had been the town's gold mine.

Of course, the explosion, the spreading darkness, and a succession of half-believed horror stories had destroyed all of that.

Jess approached the iron fence and peered inside. Rows of gravestones in every size and style stood together, with the occasional family crypt rising among them.

A small house stood on the most distant hill. It had probably once belonged to the cemetery keeper or an embalmer who prepared the dead for burial.

Judging by the house's dilapidated state, no one had entered it for a very long time.

In the game, the final target of a quest chain here was Mor'Ladim, a skeletal warrior capable of casting spells of the Holy Light. He was exceptionally powerful.

In the early version of the game, players leveling here were only in their twenties and had not yet reached level thirty. Mor'Ladim was a level-thirty-five elite who patrolled the area, and low-level players doing quests could easily draw his attention by accident.

Once someone drew his aggro, he would charge into the crowd and cut down a low-level player every two swings. Before long, bodies would cover the ground.

Mor'Ladim had an extraordinarily tragic past. He had originally been a heroic paladin and would take part in the war against the Scourge invasion more than a decade from now. After the war, he returned home to discover that his wife and two children were dead, while his last daughter had vanished.

After searching everywhere without success, he lost his mind before his wife's gravestone and accidentally killed several members of the Night Watch who had kindly tried to comfort him. Once he realized what his madness had driven him to do, he ended his own life in remorse and despair. He became an embodiment of vengeance with no enemy left to punish, wandering without purpose and making the already terrifying Raven Hill even more dreadful.

He never learned that his daughter Sarah Ladimore had left Raven Hill and gone to Grand Hamlet—later known as Darkshire—where she joined Duskwood's self-defense organization, the Night Watch. Father and daughter never met again.

Thinking about the story, Jess suddenly sensed something strange.

"Gred."

"Hmm?" The dwarf, who had been carefully examining the soil and weeds, looked up. "Did you find an herb?"

"No." Jess asked, "Do you remember the name of that guard last night?"

"Morgan something... Mor? Who can remember all these strange human names?"

"Morgan Ladimore," Jess said.

"Close enough." Gred had no interest in the subject. He wandered off along the edge of a puddle, leaving Jess alone to stare at the solitary old house inside the cemetery.

Yes. That boy, who looked about Jess's age, was the future Mor'Ladim.

In Jess's memories of the terrifying undead warrior, Morgan already had three children and had been dead for a long time. Even his wife had become a gravestone years ago, while his only surviving daughter had grown into a graceful young woman.

By ordinary reasoning, Jess had always imagined him as a middle-aged man. He had never connected Mor'Ladim with an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old youth.

"Over here!" Gred suddenly shouted.

The call jolted Jess back to reality. He hurried after the dwarf and reached a hollow tangled with tree roots.

Standing on a thick root that extended over the hollow, Gred blocked Jess's path. "Don't go down there. See it? This is probably a resting place for wolves or bears."

"A resting place?" Jess did not quite understand. "Isn't that just a den?"

"They're different," Gred said. "Wolf dens and bear dens are often caves. Wolves like natural caves and hollows in rock, while some bears prefer digging their own... In any case, those animals live in caves. But they sometimes travel a long way while hunting, so they find concealed or comfortable places far from their dens where they can rest. Something like a way station."

He pointed into the hollow. "Look at the wolf fur down there. I can even smell the stink of wolves from here. There should be droppings nearby too. In any case, we'll set the trap here. That means we won't even need bait."

"Would wolves really establish a resting place this close to the cemetery?" Jess asked.

"That suggests the rumors you heard are probably true," Gred said. "The wolves here really do eat human flesh, so they've made the cemetery part of their hunting ground. If our trap works... our chances of finding one of those so-called Wicked Claws will be much higher."

"Then let's set it," Jess said.

The dwarf grunted in agreement, swung the iron trap from his back, and slid into the hollow. Once he had set it, he lightly concealed it with soil, weeds, and animal fur.

Jess asked, "Won't the wolf smell you and abandon this resting place?"

"You have the makings of a hunter, lad," Gred said. "In the Hinterlands, I'd cover myself in bear shit before doing this, but it shouldn't matter here. The wolves here probably don't know a dwarf's scent. If they smell something unfamiliar, they'll be suspicious for a short time at most. Once they observe the area and find no danger, they'll lower their guard. But if they smell a hunter who regularly preys on them—such as one of you humans—then they might do exactly what you said and abandon the resting place."

He climbed from the hollow and brushed dirt and filth from his clothes. "We can leave this alone now and search elsewhere for herbs. We can come back tomorrow. Have you found anything?"

"No." Jess braced himself against a protruding gray stone with the handle of his logging axe and caught his breath. "We're still too close to Raven Hill. The townspeople or passing travelers may have picked every herb here. Most amateurs don't understand that they need to leave the roots. They see an herb and pull up the whole plant. Year after year, even if herbs once grew here, they'd all be gone by now. In short, we probably won't find much here. We should look somewhere more remote."

Gred glanced at the cemetery fence, barely visible in the distance beneath the trees. "What about Grave Moss?"

Jess looked that way too and realized that, deep down, he still resisted the idea of entering the cemetery.

After discovering wolf tracks nearby, the cemetery felt even stranger to him.

Even if wolves gnawed bones, they would choose fresh bones with meat still on them, not the rotten remains that had spent years buried underground.

In other words, the cemetery contained a considerable amount of rotting flesh.

What could cause a cemetery to still contain meat that attracted wolves so many years after the war?

It could only mean that undead creatures existed inside—and perhaps a great many of them, enough for the forest's wolves to treat the cemetery as a hunting ground.

The good news was that predators generally avoided especially dangerous prey. Wolves enjoyed eating rabbits, for example, but would think twice about deer, because deer could still hurt them.

Carnivores sought food. They did not fight everything they saw, and they too had to consider the possibility of injury.

For an animal, a serious wound often meant death. Even if it was lucky enough to recover, the injury would still severely impair its ability to hunt.

If the wolf pack treated the cemetery as a hunting ground, then any undead creatures inside probably were not especially powerful. At the very least, they were not as terrifying as gnolls. No wild animal willingly made an enemy of gnolls.

"It's still morning," Gred said. "If we act immediately, we have at least six or seven hours before nightfall."

Gred was right. Jess looked up at the sky hidden by the branches. Once he adjusted to the darkness here, he could see that there was still some difference between day and night in Duskwood.

The previous night had been especially black. Without the town's lamps, which burned constantly, they would not have been able to see their hands before their faces. Now, at least a little sunlight-like glow penetrated the layers of darkness beneath the canopy and cast mottled patches across the gray-green grass.

Jess swung the axe in his hand. "Then let's go."

"Relax." Gred watched the axe head swaying back and forth. "Don't forget what you said yesterday. We're only gathering herbs. We won't seek a fight, and unless things get truly dangerous... don't provoke trouble."

"I remember," Jess said. "If even you remember it so clearly, how could someone like me forget?"

The dwarf laughed and took the lead toward the cemetery.

Jess followed. After returning to the fence, they walked alongside it for a long distance without reaching its end.

It truly deserved to be called the largest cemetery in the entire Kingdom of Stormwind. It might even have been the largest cemetery on the whole continent. At least Jess could not remember anywhere of this scale in Lordaeron.

Gred grew impatient with walking. He seized the railing and shook it, but even after years of abandonment, the metal bars remained solid and sturdy. He could not move them easily.

"How are we supposed to get inside?"

"If the wolves can enter, we should be able to as well." Jess looked down. "Watch the ground. There might be a hole they dug or something..."

"Good point."

Gred nodded and continued forward. After another dozen minutes, Jess suddenly spotted a large cluster of unusual plants at the base of the low wall beneath the fence.

Their long stalks grew densely outward and ended in clusters of fine leaves. The leaves resembled coarse silver-white fur, while the gathered clusters looked like chrysanthemums pressed together into a fallen mass of silver that rippled in the breeze.

Was this... Silverleaf?

Almost everything Jess knew about Silverleaf came from the herbal guides he had read in the library. The game's crude, overlapping textures and dated models were little help in identifying most of this world's herbs.

"Wait." Jess called Gred back, pulled out the scroll, and found the simple drawing and description of Silverleaf. After comparing them, he thought it looked about right. "This is Silverleaf, isn't it?"

"Let me see." Gred plucked a small sprig, rubbed it between his fingers, and smelled it. "Very likely. I know a brother who likes drying Silverleaf and adding it to bitter ale for fragrance. I think this is the scent."

"A pound of Silverleaf can sell for more than two silver coins." Jess drew his knife. "How much do you think is here?"

"Hard to say." Gred sifted through the plant. "But it certainly weighs nowhere near a pound. Once we bring it back to Stormwind and the dew dries, it'll be lighter still."

"All right, but at least it's a start."

Jess bent down and prepared to cut a stalk. Something suddenly moved in the grass. His whole body jerked, and he shouted, "Fuck!" as he snatched his hand back and stumbled one step away.

"What did you say?" Gred, who had been watching their surroundings, turned around. "What happened?"

Jess swallowed. "Something moved inside just now."

"Are you sure?" Gred approached and slowly raised his sword, aiming its point at the patch of Silverleaf.

He looked back and forth without spotting anything unusual, then jerked his chin for Jess to inspect it again.

Jess nodded and slowly reached out. The edge of his knife had barely pushed one leaf aside when the grass within shuddered again.

Gred thrust his sword straight into the patch, striking something hard with a series of clacks. The thing in the grass began thrashing wildly. Gred heaved upward and flipped it into the air—it was a severed arm!

At the sight of the arm writhing like a giant insect, Gred's face instantly went white, and he dropped his sword in fright. When the arm flew from the blade and landed some distance away, he hurriedly retrieved the weapon.

He cursed several times in Dwarven, then said, "Quickly! Cut down the Silverleaf. We're leaving!"

Jess hurriedly crouched and began cutting. After harvesting the entire large cluster, he discovered an earthen hole in the wall behind it, just wide enough for a person to crawl through.

"Gred, there's a hole right here!"

"You go in first! I'll follow immediately!"

Gred held his sword toward the arm rolling back and forth on the ground. Jess glanced behind him. It looked like a tail shed by a large lizard.

But the comparison made him shudder. If the tail was here, where was the large lizard?

The thought had barely flashed through his mind before he crawled straight into the hole. Fortunately, his lean body slipped through easily. The barrel-shaped dwarf had a much harder time of it. Jess had to dig away a good deal of soil with his axe before hauling him through.

They stood and leaned against the wall for a moment to recover. Jess glanced sideways at the dwarf. "Why were you so frightened too?"

Gred said unhappily, "I wouldn't fear a complete zombie, but an arm twisting around by itself? Who could see that without their skin crawling?"

"You're the one who jumps like a kitten at the slightest movement. Utterly disgraceful. Hah, though I never expected much from humans to begin with."

With that, the dwarf took a deep breath and stood. He glanced back outside the fence, then looked at the sack in Jess's hand. "Well? How much do you think we have?"

Jess hefted it. "It feels lighter than the sack itself."

"As expected."