Each breath he took was a ghostly exhalation, a thin plume of frost dissipating almost as soon as it formed, as if the air itself was conspiring to erase any evidence of his presence. The cold bit through every frayed seam, through every torn thread, gnawing past the feeble warmth his bloodied furs could offer. Yet he stood as though he alone could defy the merciless hunger of the mountains.
The peaks of the Bloodspires towered above him, lost in a shroud of churning, ominous grey clouds, and he found the silence oppressive in a way he could not quite understand. The stillness was broken only by the occasional whisper of wind through the rocks and an unseen bird's distant, mournful cry.
All around him, shadows lengthened as the sun dipped lower.
He stamped his feet, a futile attempt to summon warmth, the ground beneath him shifting with each movement—a precarious blend of loose stones and ice that clung to shadowed crevices, resisting even the feeble daylight that dared touch it.
His steps echoed hollowly in the silence, and each stamp sent tiny fractures rippling across the frosted stones, as though they too were warning him of their treacherous hold. The cold crept upward, biting through his worn boots and into his bones, a silent adversary.
The man shifted again, feeling the rawness of the barely-cured furs against his skin. Something had happened to his previous attire. He just could not remember what. But it was more than that, was it not?
He could not even remember his name.
Once, he had been someone. Someone of consequence, maybe—a father, perhaps a husband.
Flickers of fractured memories haunted the edges of his mind, faint and disjointed, mere wisps of grey against the deep shadows cast by the Skuggaseier's dark influence. Fleeting visions of small hands grasping his own, a voice calling his name, the warmth of a hearth—each one surfaced like phantoms in a fog, only to be swallowed once more into the abyss. He strained to remember, but each recollection unravelled, slipping away like sand through his fingers, leaving nothing but a hollow ache in its wake.
The man grasped the haft of his spear, knuckles turning white. The Dark God’s curse was a heavy blanket over his mind, muffling his thoughts, feelings, and memories. It was a horrifying experience to both forget and yet constantly be reminded of what was lost. He could understand why so many of his brothers had taken their own lives.
The man—if that’s what he still was—had resolved to end it that very evening: to hurl himself from the narrow pass into the embrace of the river far below. He had been ready to surrender to the cold void, to let the icy water swallow his worn bones and strip away the last shreds of whatever he had once been.
But just as he stepped to the edge, the final ray of sun slipped through a break in the iron-grey clouds, cutting through the desolation with a golden blade. For one fragile, stolen moment, he felt the warmth touch his skin, a sliver of clarity piercing the dark mire that had overtaken his mind.
Memories—clearer than they had been in years—rose to the surface, and he stood, transfixed, as though the light itself were calling him back from the brink.
There had been a woman, had there not? Her face a blur, her voice a distant echo. Children, perhaps? Or was that just a cruel trick of the Skuggaseier, false memories to torment him in his few lucid moments? He did not know. For most of the time, he did not care.
He only knew the hunger, the endless gnawing hunger that had driven his people to madness, to unspeakable acts. Cannibalistic feasts in the darkness, eyes gleaming with a feral light.
He shifted his weight once more, eyes scanning the shadowed path ahead. Something terrible was coming, he knew. He could feel it, a dread that clung to his bones, a whisper in the wind that set his teeth on edge. And yet he struggled to care.
The warband’s camp sprawled behind him—a chaotic jumble of twisted huts and sagging tents, their shadows stretching across the ground like dark fingers clutching at the earth. It was less a camp and more a realm of nightmare, a place where whispers of violence and despair lingered long after the sun had set.
Once, he had taken pride in his role as their guardian, their watchful sentinel against the encroaching dangers of the Bloodspires. But now, as he stood at the edge of the pass, he was left wondering who could possibly guard him from the madness gnawing at his own mind, from the voices and fractured memories that clawed at him in the quiet moments, breaking him from within.
In the failing light, his mind drifted, wavering between resolve and resignation. And with each breath, he felt himself slipping further from the man he had once been, grasping at the thin thread of himself with the weary desperation of someone holding onto the last frayed edge of sanity.
Fragments of memory clawed at his sanity: a bright and carefree woman’s laughter, children's tiny hands warm in his own, flashes of light in the darkness almost more painful than the cloying emptiness. They spoke of a life stolen, of warmth and love now replaced by the cold, relentlessly grasping hold of the Dark God.
But now was not the time for such thoughts. The man had a duty, even if he couldn't remember why it mattered. His grip tightened on the spear as a sound echoed through the pass—a distant footfall, a rustle of movement. He tensed, muscles coiling.
What came next was a blur of movement and shadow—a shape that seemed to meld with the encroaching darkness, sliding forward with the lethal grace of a predator. There was a whisper, almost tender, of steel slicing the air, and then a sudden, icy pressure, like winter’s bite, at his neck.
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In a heartbeat, his world tilted, his vision shuddering with the disorienting realisation that his head had left his shoulders. He was weightless, detached, his sight spinning in a slow, final arc. As the ground rose to meet him, the last image that filled his fading vision was of the Bloodspires: stark, eternal, and as coldly indifferent to his end as they had been to his life. Then, the world faded to black, leaving only silence.
*
"I think we can assume whatever the Dark God has done to these poor people, a huge increase in their Intelligence was not it."
Daine glanced back to where Donal was following behind her on the narrow track. "He was looking right at me as I climbed," she said, wiping the blade of her greatsword on the fallen man's cloak.
"Well, since you possess all the stealth capability of a carnival washerwoman, I'm not surprised. Such was the amount of noise you were making, I'm amazed the whole camp did not come out to watch the dancing bear attempt a sneak attack."
Not for the first time on this hunt, Daine profoundly wished her companion had chosen to follow Taelsin on his journey through the mountains.
Donal reached her and knelt, searching through the dead man's belongings. He pocketed a few coins and what looked to Daine like a necklace of teeth. "Seriously?"
"You never know, my Lady. You never know. Imagine that at some point in the near future, we will need some extra incisors. Think of how foolish we would feel if we remembered this moment and how we had left our foes unlooted."
Daine stood and, with her foot, nudged the corpse of the beheaded man off the side of the track. His body fell silently, end over end, before vanishing into the rushing stream below. "Find his head and send it down after him," she said, then paused as he began to walk away. "And, for the sake of clarity, I am certain we do not need any more scalps."
"As you wish, my Lady."
Daine watched him go, her face thoughtful and guarded. For nearly four relentless days, they had pursued the Skuggaseier's twisted trail through the mountains, marking their progress by bloodied landmarks and the remnants of shattered warbands.
Together, she and Donal had torn through three feral tribes, their violence barely abated by each successive clash, and they had even dispatched what Donal had casually labeled a MyrkrTr?ll—a name that rang with ancient menace.
And yet, for all they had endured and achieved side by side, despite the countless hours spent entrenched in close combat, Daine remained no closer to understanding the true nature of Donal’s new Class.
His powers were inconsistent and, at times, disturbingly potent, flowing between precise control and savage abandon with a fluidity that hinted at something beyond ordinary skill. He’d fought as if he carried the weight of old gods in his bones, the frenzy in his eyes betraying neither recklessness nor mercy.
It was a power both alien and familiar, and for all the bloodshed she had witnessed at his side, Daine was left with the gnawing suspicion that she hadn’t seen the half of it.
He has concerns as to how you will react, the Goddess had whispered, which hardly allayed her fears.
"From which I take it, I should be concerned?" she had asked.
The Goddess had sounded amused when she replied. You have ever been the most judgmental of my chosen. In a world of flickering shadows, you have always wanted the certainty of light and dark. Good and evil. I had hoped time and experience would allow you to appreciate that beauty can be found in the grey, but I was mistaken.
Daine had opened her mouth to protest indignantly, but the Goddess hushed her with laughter. Do not mistake my meaning. I would not have it any other way. But you must appreciate that, alongside your undoubted talents, there are times when I need the talents of those more comfortable with liminal space—now, more than ever.
Daine thought back to the siege of Swinford and the choices Donal had been required to make. She knew he still mourned the death of Angharad, the Archmage he had used to lure the Stonehand into an overreaching attack.
Could she—with her clear picture of right and wrong—have conceived, much less enacted such a plan? She doubted it. And without a willingness to make that sacrifice, would any of them have made it out of the City alive?
The Goddess's words had given Daine pause, and she had thus been doing her best to remain neutral about whatever Class Donal possessed. She trusted his choice would have been made for the best of all possible reasons. It would be much easier to do so, though, without the excessive gothic creepiness, she thought.
"MyrkrTr?ll ahead," Donal said, appearing at her shoulder without Daine hearing his approach. "Maybe two." All humour had vanished from his eyes as he unslung the second war axe he had appropriated.
"Two?" Daine puffed out her cheeks. Due to the increased Strength of Donal's new Class - as well as his
Two at once, however . . .
"I mean, if we want to take the positive out of it, I imagine this means something is taking notice of us. The creation of these things is hugely resource-heavy. If the Dark God has his Skuggaseier doubling them up, then I would suggest there cannot be too much attention being paid to Taelsin and the rest of the refugees. There are limits even to the Dark God's reach."
I am happy to confirm this is so, the Goddess added. My son's presence is troublingly powerful in these mountains, but his reserves are not unlimited. He will be paying a considerable price for his intervention here. In fact, the musical voice suddenly sounded distracted, this should lead to all sorts of opportunities elsewhere. Forgive me, I will return.
Daine felt a twinge of frustration as her patron withdrew from her mind.
If there truly were two MyrkrTr?ll in the camp at the end of this pass, she would have felt more confident confronting it with access to her full powers.
Glancing sidelong at Donal before replacing her dark helm, Daine couldn’t help but marvel—half in amusement, half in bewilderment—at the incongruity of his new form.
This Class had transformed him into a giant of a man, at least half a foot taller, with a build broad enough to suggest he could break rocks with his bare hands. And yet, despite the raw power that radiated from his expanded frame and the absurdity of the twin axes resting with casual menace on his shoulders, his face remained disconcertingly familiar.
His sharp eyes, glinting beneath the furrowed brow, retained that same dry, cutting intelligence she had known when he was the slightly irritable Secretary outside the village.
Of course, ignoring the massive weapons and the buffed physique took a sizable leap of imagination. He looked every bit the part of a warrior on a mythic battlefield, yet, somewhere beneath all that fury, Daine could almost still see the pen-pushing, agenda-toting administrator she had first met on the road.
."Well, shall we get on with this?" she said, hands closing around her own blade.
"It will, quite honestly, be a pleasure."
Trying to ignore the new, bloody scalp swinging from the belt at the man's waist, Daine led the way up the path.