I look into the fire that Briar started, its glow pushing back the morning fog.
The world around me is waking up, and I cannot stop thinking about the years I spent studying why it stopped in the first place.
We tried everything before we found Sahora.
Every spell.
Every herb.
Every dusty legend I could dig out of a forgotten archive.
Nothing worked.
Until now.
I was comfortable losing myself in maps and myths. But now it is real. The Forest of the Forgotten is within a day’s walk, and all I can think about is what waits for us inside it.
I shiver, though there is no breeze to cause it.
How is it that Sahora is simply… here, and the earth seems to move beneath her feet?
How has there not been a price to pay yet?
As I look toward the marshline, I see it: faint movement. Something approaching.
Ami, I send sharply. Someone has found us.
She is at my side in an instant. What did you see?
“There,” I whisper aloud, pointing just beyond the ridge. A figure shifts between the trees.
“I will tell everyone. We will be prepared,” she says.
“Good.”
While she gathers the group, I keep my eyes locked on the treeline. Another flicker of movement. Unmistakable.
“Where?”
Sahora’s voice slices through the fog behind me, cold and sharp.
I jump. “Do not do that,” I hiss, my heart pounding against my ribs.
She smiles — a wicked, feral thing that cuts across her face. It makes my heart stop.
“Where?” she repeats.
“There.” I point as the figure passes through a darker patch of forest.
“Let them come,” she whispers. “I have been dying for something to hit.”
Chills crawl up my arms.
How can someone so broken and violent be Kathera’s soul carrier?
We wait.
Silent.
Still.
Like a cat waiting for a mouse.
The air grows heavier, as if it can feel what is coming.
Just as the figure breaches the hillside leading to our camp, Sahora moves, almost like she is part of the darkness. The stranger climbs the hill, and Sahora creeps behind him, the shadows swallowing her whole.
Right as he enters the camp, the firelight catches his scarred, tattered face. Sahora is on him in an instant. She presses a knife to his throat; not enough to cut, but enough to feel.
He freezes, the blood draining from his already pale face. “Please, I will leave.”
“I do believe in fighting chances,” she murmurs. “So I will give you a chance.”
She releases him like a predator playing with its food.
The man stands there, shock carved across his features.
“Well? Are you going to turn and fight me?”
He lunges, kicking at her chest. She steps back easily and chuckles. “Always with the kick first.”
He grabs a knife from his pocket.
She cocks her head and rolls her shoulders. “Say it. I dare you.”
“Celentra must stay frozen!” he roars, charging with the knife raised.
Her smile widens. The campfire flickers once.
She dodges his attack and drives her blade through the bottom of his jaw.
A gargling sound, and he goes slack.
“I am really getting tired of hearing that,” she says to no one.