The wind howled, a thin, razor edge against exposed skin. It tasted of ice and distance, carrying the faint, sharp tang of metal dust from long-abandoned workings deep within these forbidding peaks. Mercia’s spine revealed itself not as rolling hills, but as jagged, broken mountains thrusting towards a bruised sky. Gone were the whispering reeds and fen-rot of East Anglia; here, the ground crunched underfoot, a shifting carpet of shale and frost-shattered rock. Skeletal pines, their needles fused into blackened claws by Blight, clung to slopes that seemed too steep for life of any kind.

  Edmund adjusted the worn strap of his shield, his gaze sweeping the desolate landscape. Every shadow seemed deeper here, every gust of wind a potential warning. He glanced back. Isolde moved slowly, leaning heavily on her rowan staff, her grey cloak snapping around her like a banner of weariness. Her face, usually pale, held an almost translucent quality in the harsh mountain light, and her breathing was shallow, visible puffs in the frigid air even with the slow pace. The vibrant energy that usually surrounded her felt muted, banked low like embers struggling against a downpour.

  Further ahead, Borin Stonehand moved with the relentless, ground-eating gait of his people, yet even his silhouette seemed heavier than before. Oakhaven had cost him more than just companions; it had cost him his home, the repository of generations of Duergar lore, consumed in the fire and madness of the Shepherd's final act. He paused occasionally, not to rest, but to run a thick, gloved hand over an outcrop of rock, his head tilted as if listening to secrets only stone could tell.

  Isolde faltered, her boot slipping on a patch of ice hidden beneath loose scree. She caught herself with her staff, a sharp intake of breath the only sound betraying the jolt of pain. Edmund was beside her in an instant, his hand automatically reaching for her elbow.

  "Careful, Ms. Isa!"

  She pulled her arm away, irritation flashing in her eyes before being masked by weariness. "I'm watching my step, Edmund." Her voice was quiet, clipped.

  He drew back, his own concern momentarily stung by her sharpness. Kaelen's Deep, he reminded himself, looking towards the forbidding peaks. The Duergar runes Borin promised. We have to get her there. The memory of her collapse after the ritual in Oakhaven Vale, the horrifying flare of the taint consuming her magic, was a cold weight in his gut. He wouldn't let her fall again.

  Borin eventually signaled a halt beneath a wide slab of granite that jutted from the mountainside, offering meager shelter from the keening wind. Isolde sank onto a patch of stony ground immediately, leaning back against the cold rock, her eyes closing for a moment. Edmund fussed, shrugging off his own pack to rummage inside, pulling out their waterskin and a small, carefully wrapped bundle of dried rations.

  "Here," he urged, pressing the waterskin into her hand, his gaze scanning her face for any sign of increased pallor or fever. "Drink. You need it more than I do."

  She took it without argument this time, her fingers fumbling slightly with the stopper. He noticed the way she kept her left arm tucked close, the one wrapped in scarred leather beneath her cloak. He’d seen the dark lines pulse after Oakhaven, more livid, more extensive than before.

  Borin ignored them both, finding his own spot further under the overhang. He pulled out his heavy war pick, inspecting the rune-etched head with a focused intensity, then produced a whetstone, the rhythmic scrape-scrape filling the tense silence. His grief was a wall around him, deflecting sympathy, offering only cynical sparks.

  Isolde took a small sip of water, the cold liquid doing little to ease the dull, throbbing ache beneath the wrappings on her arm. "This land…" she murmured, her gaze fixed on the swirling grey clouds, "…it resists. The Essence is thin, yes, but it's more than that. It’s guarded. Wary." She touched the cold stone beside her. "Trying to sense anything here feels like pulling teeth from a slumbering bear."

  "Then don't try," Edmund said quickly, perhaps too quickly. "Just rest. Conserve your… energy."

  Her eyes snapped open, meeting his. The familiar spark of frustration was there, sharp and clear. "My 'energy,' as you call it, Edmund, is precisely the problem," she stated, her voice low but edged with steel. "Resting doesn't mend a fractured well. It simply stops you from drawing poisoned water for a time." She looked away again, her jaw tight.

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  Borin paused in his sharpening, his gaze flicking towards Isolde's wrapped arm, then back to his pick. "Magic," he grunted, the word thick with bitterness. "Surface magic, anyway. Burns bright, burns fast. Then it eats you from the inside out. Duergar craft is built on stone, on permanence. Not… fading light." He resumed his scraping with renewed vigor, shutting them out again.

  Isolde bit back a retort. He doesn't understand. Or perhaps he understands too well, having seen his own craft twisted. But Edmund's smothering concern grated almost as much as Borin's dismissal. Does he think I don't know the danger? That I don't feel it crawling under my skin every moment? His constant vigilance, meant to protect, felt like a constant reminder of her own fragility, her failure to control the power that had once defined her.

  They climbed higher, the air thinning further, the wind finding new ways to pierce their cloaks. The narrow track, likely carved by Borin's ancestors, rounded a sharp bend and abruptly ended at a wall of debris. A recent rockfall, likely triggered by the Blight's insidious undermining of the mountain's integrity, choked the pass. Boulders the size of draft horses lay jumbled with loose earth and shale. Growing amongst them, thriving in the chaos, were thickets of blighted thorn bushes, their grey leaves edged with black, their thorns wickedly long and coated in something that looked disturbingly like dried blood.

  Isolde took a step forward, her gaze assessing the blockage. Logically, a controlled burst of kinetic energy, a precisely woven spell…

  Her breath hitched. A wave of nausea rolled through her, accompanied by a searing flash of pain behind her eyes. The dark lines on her arm pulsed beneath the leather, a silent, agonizing warning. She saw again the blinding eruption in the mine, felt the raw, uncontrolled Essence tearing through her… She stumbled back, hand flying to her temple, knuckles white. No. Absolutely not.

  Edmund was instantly at her side, steadying her, his eyes scanning the rockfall, then the steep cliff face beside it. "Easy, Ms. Isa." His voice was low, tight with concern. He glanced at the blockage, then up the near-vertical ridge. "We can't risk magic here." He didn’t ask; he stated it, his decision already made. "The ridge. It looks passable, just barely. We climb."

  Isolde straightened, pushing his hand away more forcefully this time. "I saw the path, Edmund." Her voice was clipped, tight with swallowed pain and resentment.

  The climb was hellish. The ridge was steeper, more exposed than it had looked. Edmund led, testing each hold, his movements economical and strong. Borin followed, his climbing surprising in its efficiency, occasionally pointing out hidden cracks or warning of unstable rock. Isolde struggled. Her limbs felt heavy, her balance compromised by fatigue and the constant, low-level thrum of pain from her arm. Twice, Edmund had to reach back, his hand clamping firmly around her wrist to haul her up a particularly difficult section. She hated the reliance, hated the feeling of his strength compensating for her weakness, even as she needed it.

  Yet, even exhausted, her mind worked. "The lichen," she gasped, pausing on a narrow shelf to catch her breath, pointing down at the rockfall. "See how it avoids the blighted thorns? And the crystalline structure of the fractures in that large boulder… it's consistent with Essence drain focused on silicate structures. This strain… it’s consuming the very stone." Her analysis was sharp, precise, a familiar shield against the physical vulnerability she despised.

  They summited the ridge, the wind tearing at them, threatening to pluck them from the narrow spine of rock. Far below, the choked path seemed insignificant. Ahead, perched precariously on another rise, were the dark, skeletal ruins of a Duergar watchtower. Hope, thin but welcome, spurred them onward.

  The tower offered respite, its thick stone walls blunting the wind's fury, though the collapsed upper levels left it open to the sky. Edmund cleared a space, his movements efficient, and soon had a small fire crackling, its warmth a blessing against the encroaching chill of dusk. Borin prowled the perimeter of the ruin, running his hands over the worn stonework, his expression lost in thoughts of his vanished kin and desecrated home.

  Isolde slumped near the fire, pulling her cloak tight. When she thought the others weren't looking, she eased the glove off her left hand, carefully unwinding the leather wrappings just enough to expose her forearm. The intricate network of dark, vein-like lines seemed darker, more pronounced than ever, etched deep beneath her skin, an angry counterpoint to the faint glow of the firelight. She traced one line with a trembling finger, her face tight with a mixture of fear and grim determination, before quickly covering it again.

  "How are you feeling?" Edmund asked later, his voice soft as he offered her a piece of dried meat.

  She accepted it, chewing slowly. "Tired." A simple truth that encompassed a world of pain and frustration. She looked around the ruined tower. "These mountains… they feel ancient. Wounded. Like they're holding their breath."

  Borin turned from the doorway, his eyes shadowed in the firelight. "Aye," he rasped. "Older than your surface kingdoms reckon. And they remember every wound." He looked pointedly at Isolde, at the arm she kept hidden beneath her cloak. "Especially wounds carved by careless magic."

  The air grew heavy again. They had shelter for the night, but Kaelen's Deep still felt impossibly far, the path fraught with known and unknown dangers. And the greatest danger, Isolde knew, wasn't the Blight outside, but the treacherous, unstable power coiled within her own flesh, waiting for the slightest misstep. Kaelen's Deep… the runes… I must reach them.