So, here is the next chapter after a bit of a delay. I originally intended everything to happen in one chapter, but I prefer how this turned out. So this will be a two-part sequence with this chapter being a build up to the larger event in the next chapter. I hope you guys don't mind this chapter being more of a setup instead of a full-length chapter after the wait you've been through. I can guarantee though that the next chapter will be considerably more exciting than this one.

As always, leave any thoughts in a review as I always like hearing thoughts as well as any feedback people would like to give in regards to the story. Enjoy!

The three of them moved as silently as possible while still keeping a fast pace as they trudged through the foliage and snow in the direction that the villagers had come from. They knew that their only chance to minimize damage would be to move quickly rather than at the ideal pace to completely avoid detection, but they also knew that the Grimm were focused more on the town itself so there wouldn't be much if anything between them and the town. This didn't stop one member of the group from anxiously giving another the odd glance as they went.

"Cobalt." Neo stated simply as the three of them continued on, hoping he would stop when she spoke the name that not many referred to him by. To her disappointment however, he only tilted his head somewhat to glance in her direction as a sign to continue as they moved through the trees. Emerald glanced over as well, also curious as to the reasoning for Neo wanting his attention now of all times. Neo sighed briefly before continuing anyways, as the thought was still on her mind. "Are you sure you're okay to fight right now? You know how your powers tend to get when you get emotional."

Frost grunted slightly, both in frustration at Neo's question and at the exertion he had to use to hoist himself quickly over a large fallen tree in their path while the other two were in a position to simply adjust their course slightly to move around it. "That's not exactly something we have time to deal with right now, do we?" He stated rather plainly but with a slightly harsh tone. He continued before Neo could say something in response though. "You saw the expressions on their faces, as well as how out of breath and tired they were. This is the only home they know and it very well could be gone if the Grimm have done enough damage. You know as well as I do how familiar that sounds."

"I know. And I know that when we were younger you always vowed to keep something like this from happening if you could. But is now really the best time to play hero with everything we saw happen in Vale and without any idea when it could happen next?"

"So you would rather we just leave them to fend for themselves without a home or proper supplies to travel, then? What kind of message would we be sending them about Huntsmen and Huntresses if they saw us and just left them alone? I know that none of us took any oaths since none of us got proper training, but I still made a vow when I was younger, like you said. I'm not going back on that regardless of the situation."

"Hold up you two," Emerald interjected as they moved, her voice coming from further back than they expected to which Frost and Neo both stopped and turned back to see why she was suddenly so far behind. When they both saw her knelt over the ground and glancing up at them with a beckoning look, they both moved back to see what she was looking at as she continued. "You should see this." Emerald then gestured with one hand towards some markings along the trees and snow that made both of their eyes widen in surprise. "I take it you both recognize those markings as Beowolves too, but notice how off they are. Up until now we didn't see any sign of Grimm movements or any signs of a struggle. And then all of a sudden these tracks and marks come out of nowhere? I'm not the biggest expert on Grimm or anything, but they don't usually come up out of nowhere like that unless something like that Dragon in Vale is involved." Emerald then looked up at the two of them as they also glanced around to see the different indentations and tracks. "What are we getting ourselves involved in?"

Frost's posture relaxed somewhat as he focused his attention more on his memory of what he read about Grimm when he was younger and wanted to know as much as possible rather than the anger and frustration he could feel bubbling inside of him. Neo turned to him hopefully as she had never taken the same devotion into reading up on the creatures of Grimm when they were younger, instead focusing more on helping the younger children in the orphanage when they had gotten older. Frost slowly moved around, touching and examining things more closely as he tried to piece things together from his scattered knowledge and readings that had also been improved from his time spent at Beacon.

After some time however, he shook his head in frustration as a fist bumped against the side of one of the larger trees in the immediate area. "I can honestly say that even I'm not sure what we're going up against here." He turned back with a hand to his chin in thought as Neo and Emerald gave each other a nervous look. "My first thought would have been something like a Geist, but there are too many marks to support that as usually they only ever appear one at a time and possessing large chunks of debris and landscape. Nothing here is disturbed as though forcibly moved like that so there goes that idea. The marks are identical to Beowolves, but they don't just appear out of nowhere like this. It's practically like they just rose out of the snow and started attacking the villagers that were out gathering materials."

"What if something like Vale happened, where someone transported Grimm and deployed them here like the White Fang did at Beacon?" Emerald asked, her first thought being to the Grimm that had been meant to distract many of the students and teachers from assisting the city itself.

"The villagers definitely couldn't have missed the sounds of transport ships through here; it's too isolated to be missed. No, something else is going on here, and I don't think we'll find out until we get to the village and investigate further." Frost turned back in the direction that they had originally been moving as he turned back and gestured to the other two. "Let's go."

The other two nodded as they both got up and they moved off once again, a new sense of urgency on their minds as they all thought about other ways that Grimm could just appear out of nowhere.

The three of them didn't have to travel much further before they came upon the edge of the town and saw the damage that had been exacted. However what they saw had all of them stood in confusion as they looked about for answers. It was obvious that the town had been attacked from the damage visible on various buildings and few small fires still smoldering on the edges of some buildings. It was what was not there that had all of them confused.

There was no sign of the Grimm themselves, tracks or otherwise saying that they had left the village boundaries. There was just…nothing.

The three of them slowly approached one of the houses that had been more heavily affected by the fighting, hoping to hear the sounds of any survivors or the family that the mayor had been speaking of that the retired Huntsman had belonged to. Neo motioned to the others to be silent as she carefully pushed on the door, expecting to find it unlocked, however it did not budge as the latch held tightly. Neo tilted her head in confusion as she moved over to one of the ground floor windows to look inside so that she could just transport inside and unlock the door for the other two rather than cause a large amount of noise.

After a brief flash of light and small click of the lock being opened, the three of them started investigating the house slowly in hopes of finding any signs of human life. Normally the fact that the house was still sealed would have put them at ease, but after seeing Grimm tracks appear out of nowhere they knew better than to assume a false sense of safety when they were caught up in the unknown. After going through every room on the ground floor and finding nothing out of the ordinary, they started moving up the stairs towards the second floor with Frost up front and Emerald bringing up the rear so that Neo could easily reach out and grab both of them to teleport if the need arose. Their search continued to prove fruitless as they went about, not finding any signs of anyone still in the building or of any signs of a fight aside from the odd mark of a gouge out of the walls going down the halls, the obvious signs of a fight.

Eventually they were left with only one room unchecked as the three stood outside the final closed door in the outside. They all looked at each other for a moment as they took time to compose themselves before signaling their readiness. With that, Frost started to turn the knob on the final door, only to find that this one door in the house happened to be locked from the inside. With a brief gesture to the other two they both made room as Frost stepped back from the door before one of his legs started to light up with the use of his Semblance. After a few well-placed kicks near the doorknob the wood splintered and broke away as Frost then reached in to turn the lock, expecting to meet some form of resistance in the form of a person stopping him from doing just that. However that did not happen as he opened the door with no additional difficulty and pushed open the door with a perplexed look on his face that did not go unnoticed by the other two.

The three of them all stood cautiously as Frost pushed the door open, yet it did not prepare any of them for the sight that was brought before their eyes after the door had finished opening in their direction and the frozen corpse of a man tumbled towards them and shattered on the wooden floor between all of them as Frost leapt to the side opposite the others. Neo let out a sudden shriek of surprise and fear while Emerald swore under her breath at the sudden sight. Frost however, was still and silently in shock as he had also caught a glimpse of something else as he had leapt away from the falling body.

It was obvious enough after they had all calmed down to an extent that from the size and stature that they had witnessed and from the large weapon littering the doorway that the body had likely been the Huntsman that the mayor had been speaking of. While Emerald continued to keep a comforting arm around Neo's shoulders to attempt to calm her down more, Frost slowly loved into the room itself to the sad sight that lay within.

The Huntsman's family, frozen in a final scene of solidarity as the mother reached protectively over the two children, the expressions of fear and terror forever the last expressions they would wear.

Frost sat in silence with his back pressed against the wall opposite the frozen bodies, one leg propped up as he rested an arm on it while Neo wiped a tear from her eye, the initial release spent when she had witnessed the scene of the dead family after Frost had gone in and not come back out without making a sound. To the two of them, the initial thought of a scene like this being their own demise when they were younger was an all too real thought before they moved on with the assurance that they had in fact survived. It was obvious to all now in the room however that Frost was not handling the situation well between the tenseness of his muscles and occasional twitch in one eye- specifically the one that had the signs of the black tendrils once again appearing. It was taking all of his effort to keep the feelings at bay for risk of bringing the Grimm back in case they were not far from the village still. The fact that they had seen no signs of them leaving or in the village still made no sense in any of their minds and that concern would not go away anytime soon.

Emerald sighed as she looked around the room, at the strained look on Frost's face; the forlorn look on Neo's face as she once again glanced between the shattered body of now melting ice outside the door and huddled family inside the room; then the room itself as she looked at the only signs of a struggle in the room. The one window in the room lay shattered and open as small gusts of wind and snow blew into the room and onto an already existing pile in the corner. However, as her eyes passed over the pile of snow, she noticed something she hadn't before as the snow shift slightly around something. As she stepped closer, her eyes widen as she brushed away some snow and noticed a dark powder mixed among the white flakes.

"Hey, guys. You need to look at this." Her simple statement had both Frost and Neo looking in her direction once again as they both moved from their positions to see what it was that Emerald had noticed. As they both approached, their eyes widened in surprise as well at the odd black substance lingered amongst the snow. None of them recognized it as a form of Dust as no reports had ever been made as to a black Dust ever being formed or found in existence. For all intents and purposes it seemed like gunpowder but when Emerald described the way it felt they knew it couldn't be that, especially since the discarded weapon seemed not to have been changed from its melee form since it still contained a full cartridge of ammunition and no spent cases lay in the room.

As Frost leant forward to examine the powder more closely himself, he felt his head throb somewhat to which he shook it off, likely just the lingering emotions from seeing the family frozen in the room. As his fingers skimmed the surface of the black powder he knew he was wrong however as he felt a burning sensation rush through his arm and burn in his skull as he snapped back from the substance and raised his other hand to his temple to attempt to relieve the pained headache he suddenly felt. However the feeling disappeared as quickly as it arrived, his head fine moments later but not without Emerald and Neo both looking to him to explanation for what had just happened since all they had witnessed was him suddenly reeling back as though hurt by the powder.

Before anyone could speak however, the black powder and pile of snow started moving as though generating its own wind and lifted outside of the open window of the house. The three looked at each other in shock before a sound pierced the air and sent a chill through all of them, and not from the cold.

The sound of a Beowolf's howl.