Brann rode until the last rim of light bled from the world and the stars took their cold watch overhead. Westmere lay somewhere ahead, unseen but felt, a weight upon the land like a held breath. The horse labored now, each stride shorter than the last, and Brann could not blame the beast. The fever gnawed at him, a living thing beneath his skin, clawing for purchase, there would be no further progress today, he would have to make camp for the night.

  Brann sat hunched beside the small fire, its flames low and careful, as if they too feared drawing notice. The fever pressed harder now, a hammering heat that tried to drive him into delirium. He answered it with ice, drawing the cold from deep within, wrapping it around his blood and bone with practiced care. Frost kissed his skin, invisible but felt, holding the fever at bay but draining his power.

  It worked for now, that was all that mattered.

  Each breath left him more hollow than the last, as though something vital was being poured into the dirt at his feet. If a creature came now, drawn by firelight or scent, he would be hard pressed to rise, let alone fight. He knew that as surely as he knew the names of his own scars.

  There was no choice. The horse needed rest, its head low, sides rising and falling in weary rhythm. His stomach growled, a dull and angry sound, and the mist in his thoughts thickened, blurring edges, stealing sharpness. Even the moonlight stabbed at his eyes like needles of glass.

  Sleep loomed before him like a cliff edge.

  He feared it.

  In sleep, his grip on the ice would loosen. Dreams had a way of pulling at his power, of letting it slip free and wander. If the fever surged while he slept, it might take him. Yet without sleep, he would fail all the same.

  Kassyn’s voice came to him, uninvited, smooth and mocking.

  “Good luck.”

  Brann’s jaw tightened and Dorian’s voice followed, quieter, steadier.

  “Don’t get into any more trouble.”

  A short, broken laugh escaped him, and turned at once into a harsh cough that bent him double. Pain flared in his chest, and for a heartbeat the ice faltered. He forced it back into place, teeth clenched until his jaw ached.

  Trouble had always found him…Or perhaps he had simply never learned to turn away from it.

  For a moment, the thought came unbidden, dark and heavy. This could be his end…A lonely fire, a sick man, and a road that would never be finished.

  “No,” he whispered, the word scraped raw from his throat.

  Westmere waited. People waited. Kett waited. Even if warning them changed nothing, even if it only bought a single hour, it was an hour Kassyn did not deserve.

  Brann fed a final sliver of wood to the fire, than dragged his cloak tighter around himself. He banked the flames until they were little more than glowing coals and settled back against a stone, one hand resting on the cold thread of power within him.

  If sleep came, it would come on his terms.

  He closed his eyes, breath shallow, ice humming faintly through his veins, and kept his will fixed on one simple truth.

  He would reach Westmere, or he would freeze the night itself before he let it claim him.

  Torvil’s lessons rose to meet him through the haze. Meditation, the old druid had said, was not rest but order. Set the bones and organs in ice, let the muscles slacken, let the body borrow strength from stillness. Brann clung to that memory like a rope cast into deep water. He drew the cold inward, shaping it carefully, shielding what mattered most, easing the strain from flesh that had been pushed too far.

  For a time, it worked.

  His breathing slowed. The fever dulled to a distant roar, held back behind walls of frost and will. The ache in his limbs softened, and the ground beneath him felt less like it was tilting toward some unseen abyss.

  Then the thoughts returned.

  Fear, sharp and insistent…Revenge, coiled tight as a spring. Kassyn’s smile, the tunnels beneath the kingdom, twisted bodies fed into something vast and waiting. Meditation demanded a clear mind, and his was a battlefield. He drifted, half lost, only to wrench himself awake again, heart pounding, terrified of what might take hold if he slipped too far.

  The fire shrank to a handful of coals, their glow weak and sullen. Brann watched them fade, knowing better than to rise. Standing now would cost him more than he could afford.

  A sound reached him…soft.

  Almost nothing.

  His eyes snapped open.

  Shadows stretched long and crooked beyond the dim firelight, trees leaning in like silent judges. He listened, breath held, every nerve screaming. Nothing moved. The fever whispered that it was imagination, that his mind was turning on him.

  Another sound answered that lie.

  A careful step, snow compressed slowly, deliberately.

  Brann’s hand closed around his sword. It trembled, not from fear alone but from the strain of holding the fever at bay. He did not rise. He could not. He waited, eyes fixed on the dark, listening past the hammering of his own blood.

  Then came the howl…long and low.

  Lifted to the moon with ancient hunger woven through it.

  Wolves…

  The word struck like a blow. A pack, judging by the increasing sounds. If they scented him, if they circled wide, it would be over. Worse still, they would go for the horse, and if that happened he would not reach Westmere at all.

  A larger fire might have driven them back, but the night offered no such mercy. There was no time to gather wood, no strength left for desperate gambits.

  One choice remained.

  Brann forced himself to his feet, teeth clenched against the surge of pain, and stumbled toward the horse. The animal lifted its head at once, ears pricked, nostrils flaring. It had heard the howl too.

  “Easy,” Brann whispered, though his own voice shook.

  He swung into the saddle in one rough motion and turned the horse toward the open ground beyond the trees. The fire died behind him, the last ember winking out like a closing eye.

  Another howl sounded, closer now, answered by others.

  Brann kicked the horse into motion and leaned low over its neck as it broke into a gallop, hooves striking sparks from frozen earth. The cold wind tore at him, feeding the fever, and the forest blurred into dark streaks on either side.

  He did not look back.

  If the horse had strength left, it would carry him through.

  If not, then the night would have its due.

  Brann approached the treeline at a dead run, the forest thinning just enough to show him the way out, and then the night betrayed him.

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  They stepped into his path as if summoned by the thought itself.

  Dire wolves…

  Not the lean hunters of the high passes or the gray shadows that skirted villages in hard winters. These were giants, shoulders near the height of a man’s chest, fur black as a starless sky, eyes burning amber with a cruel and knowing light. Their breath steamed in the cold, each exhale slow and patient, as if they already owned the moment to come. Fangs like curved blades showed beneath lifted lips.

  The horse screamed.

  Brann hauled on the reins and turned it hard, heart sinking as the truth struck him. There was no breaking through that wall of muscle and hunger. Even if he forced the horse forward, it would be torn down in seconds.

  Only one path remained, and he hated it.

  He wheeled the horse back toward the forest, toward the dying campfire and the enemy camp that waited beyond it. Being taken was better than being ripped apart. Chains could be escaped. Death could not. Kassyn did not know all his tricks yet. Brann clung to that thought as he drove the horse into the tangled dark.

  The wolves came at once.

  They poured through the trees from all sides, shapes flickering between trunks, their howls rising and falling like a chant older than speech. It crawled along Brann’s spine, a promise of pursuit, of inevitability. Branches whipped at his face as the horse ran blind, guided more by instinct than sight. His eyes burned, fever turning the world into smears of light and shadow, tears streaming not from fear but from pain.

  He leaned low, gripping the saddle with numb fingers.

  A shape leapt from the right.

  Brann barely had time to react. His sword came up on instinct adrenaline guiding it, steel flashing in moonlight as he slashed at the snapping jaws. The blade struck the wolf’s snout with a wet crack. The beast hit the ground hard, screeching in rage and agony, rolling through the snow.

  “That one’s done,” Brann thought dimly, though he knew better.

  There were always more.

  He tried to read them as he rode, to see the pattern in their movements, where the next strike would come from. Left, then right, pressing, herding. They were not mindless. They were driving him into an ambush , he turned left thinking he could confuse them, buy some more time.

  Then the ground vanished.

  The horse plunged forward with a broken cry, and the world turned upside down. Brann felt weightless for a heartbeat, then the impact slammed the breath from his lungs as horse and rider tumbled together, rolling hard over frozen earth and stone.

  Pain flared white.

  The pit…

  He knew it the instant he struck the ground. The place where he had faced the stag abomination, where blood and horror had once ruled the land…they had fallen straight into it.

  The horse lay screaming, its leg twisted at a wrong angle, bone pressing against hide. Even without the injury, there was no saving it. The wolves were already dropping into the pit, teeth flashing, bodies colliding in a frenzy of fur and hunger.

  Brann did not watch.

  He scrambled for the edge, fingers clawing at frozen soil, ice flaring around his hands just enough to give him purchase. Behind him, the horse’s screams cut short.

  He hauled himself up and over the rim and staggered back, chest heaving, sword slick in his grip.

  There were no body parts anywhere…

  No writhing tentacles. No remains of the thing he had slain. Nothing but churned earth, blood already darkening the snow, and the wolves tearing into what little was left. That was why they were so massive, he realized with a sick twist in his gut. They had fed here. They had grown on corruption.

  Is that my future?

  The thought stabbed deep, but there was no time to dwell on it.

  Brann turned and ran.

  Not toward any clear goal, not toward safety or shelter, but simply away from the pit. The fall had stolen his bearings, and the forest offered no guidance. Every direction looked the same, trees crowding close, shadows shifting with each step. His legs burned, fever roaring now that the ice faltered, and his breath rasped in his chest.

  Behind him, howls rose again.

  Brann ran on, lost, hunted, and burning from the inside out, with only the thin promise of survival and adrenaline driving his feet through the frozen night.

  Hope thinned with every step. Without the horse, Westmere was a dream already fading. Kassyn’s camp might as well have been on the far side of the world, and the morning, if it came at all, felt like a mercy meant for other men. The howls pressed closer, no longer distant calls but sharp promises cutting through the trees.

  Brann ran and prayed.

  Not to one god, but to all of them. To names he had learned as a child and to those Torvil had spoken only in half whispers. He offered no bargains, made no vows, only begged for a chance, a single turning of the wheel in his favor. Regret followed close on the prayer. If he had not gone searching for the camp, if he had trusted others to handle it, he would be behind walls now, warmed by fire, alive.

  No. That path was dust. He had chosen, and the choosing was all that mattered.

  The wolves were splitting. He saw it in flashes between trees. Some stayed behind, feeding, others pressed on, leaner shapes moving with relentless purpose. His mind raced, grasping for angles, for terrain, for anything that might let him face them without being torn apart. A narrow place. Stone. Something that denied numbers.

  Wishful thinking…

  Then the forest broke.

  Brann skidded to a halt so sudden it sent pain flaring up his legs.

  Before him lay a clearing, round as a bowl pressed into the forest’s flesh. Moonlight spilled into it in pale ribbons, revealing the thing at its heart, a stone dial rising from the earth like the crown of some buried giant. Moss clung to its edges, and old runes cut deep into its face caught the light with a dull, patient gleam. He knew it at once. The same make, the same ancient craft, as the dial they had used in the first incursion into Duskmire, the one that had guided them to the cursed grove and nearly to their deaths.

  Hope flared, sharp and desperate…

  He ran.

  His breath came in ragged pulls as he reached the dial just as the wolves burst into the clearing. They fanned out with terrible purpose, yellow eyes reflecting the moon, bodies low and ready.

  Brann laid his hands on the cold stone. The runes thrummed beneath his palms, waking as if they had been waiting for him alone. Words carved long ago revealed themselves, clearer now than memory.

  They were the same.

  Almost…

  His heart lurched. One name was missing. “River” Westmere’s path was closed to him, sealed by fate or cruelty or the simple indifference of old magic. There would be no easy flight, no warm walls, or familiar ground.

  Only three choices remained.

  Truth.

  Ashen Ground.

  Burrows.

  A snarl rippled through the clearing as the wolves advanced with speed. He had no time to weigh meanings or recall half remembered warnings. Thought fell away, leaving only instinct and the iron need to survive.

  “Truth,” he whispered, and struck the rune.

  The dial answered.

  Light surged from the carving, not bright but deep, a humming radiance that set his teeth on edge. The night buzzed with power, the air thickening as if the world itself had drawn a breath. The wolves recoiled, hackles raised, their snarls turning uncertain as the clearing warped and twisted around him.

  The forest screamed.

  Then the stone vanished beneath his hands, the ground fell away, and Brann was pulled into the rune’s promise, not knowing what truth awaited him.

  When his eyes adjusted before him rose stone, not fallen or scattered, but set with intent. Massive blocks stacked and interlocked, their edges worn by centuries, moss crawling thick and dark across their faces. Passages twisted between them, narrow and crooked, a maze half swallowed by the forest.

  A labyrinth…

  The entrance yawned just wide enough for a man to slip through.

  Brann hesitated. He span around, searching for another path, for some narrow mercy the world might yet offer him. Instead he found himself standing upon a stone terrace, its edge broken and uneven, as though a great bite had been torn from the mountain long ago. On three sides the land fell away into a steep ravine, its depths swallowed by rolling mist that shifted and curled like something half alive. Far below came no sound of water, no echo of wind, only a vast, waiting silence.

  There was no easy way back.

  He edged closer to the brink and peered down, though reason told him it was folly. The descent would be a brutal one even for a man whole and strong. For him, battered and drained, it would mean a slow end, or a broken body left to fade in the fog. Certain death waited there, patient and sure.

  Brann drew back, breath tight in his chest, and looked again at the narrow opening. The stone around it bore the same ancient cuts he had seen on the dial, lines worn smooth by time and by hands that had come this way before him. The labyrinth, then…

  Death below, or whatever waited within.

  He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, thinking of fires and walls, of roads he would never walk again. When he opened them, the hesitation was gone. He set his jaw, tightened his grip on what strength remained, and stepped toward the dark, knowing that the maze would take its due, but trusting that truth, once chosen, could not be avoided.

  The air felt colder here, older, carrying a weight that pressed against his thoughts.

  Whatever this place was, it felt ancient, undisturbed and his presence here felt wrong.

  Brann lowered his sword a fraction and turned deeper into the maze. There was no way back now. He stepped carefully, boots echoing softly against ancient stone as the darkness closed around him.