I-

Vin-

Kit-

The abandoned village loomed above us. Thousands of steps uphill.

"You ready?" I asked Davian, just behind me.

"Yes. What about you, Kit?"

I licked my lips. "Guess we'll see."

We stood in a simple formation. Vin would push the cart, the horse would pull, the old Strain and I would clear the way, and everyone else would hope. We didn’t have time for anything fancier.

Tully whistled sharply. Davian and I broke into a sprint, followed by the beat of dozens of pairs of feet pounding atop the red dirt of the trail. Moments later, a group of three battered soldiers rounded the back of the farmstead. One was drenched in blood, yet bore no visible wounds. His eyes were wide and wild.

After they sighted us, a twang resounded from behind me as Davian loosed an arrow, taking one soldier in the thigh. The other two levelled their spears and charged, but before they could gain much momentum I slipped between their hafts, slitting one man’s throat and kicking the other in the back of the knee, forcing him to the ground. I continued onwards to execute the one nailed with an arrow, while the old Strain behind me stabbed the felled man with his short-sword.

“Move the bodies!” Whip called from the cart, yet that would have to be someone else’s job. We couldn’t turn from the road in front of us.

Another fifty steps passed before a group of eight emerged from the heartwoods beside the road. They were armed far more lightly than those that’d mustered outside our makeshift wall – their commander must’ve ordered them up the road earlier, knowing we’d run.

Two were immediately knocked over by the force of a pair of bolts flying into them. Twin thumps sounded as Tully and the guard tossed their crossbows in the cart to be reloaded by those within. Yet despite seeing their fellows felled, the remaining six calmly drew their bowstrings back.

“Down!” Whip yelled, and though I could’ve tried to bat a projectile away, some instinct drove me to follow her instructions. I heard a grunt as Davian did so beside me, and screams as they smashed into the group we led, but they were already readjusting their aim. I scrambled upright, barely managing to avoid cutting my own arm with my sword, and leapt into a mad dash. They loosed their arrows, and I desperately tried to judge distance and speed accurately enough to bat one away.

“Gast.” Whip’s voice was strangled.

Tully whistled sharply, high notes soaring then falling.

Then the three arrows heading towards me glowed purple and rammed themselves into the dirt. An unnatural malaise dogged their hands as the six prepared for a third shot, and most of the rangers were too sluggish to respond to my approach. One managed to call “Owl; Dolphin!” and reach for a sword, but by the time he’d raised it my blade had already swept through the neck, armpit, and ribs of three of his weary-eyed comrades. Then Davian shot him in the chest and I hacked at the other two, their lagging speed and dazed eyes little competition for my blade. The eight were left in pools of blood.

The road ahead seemed clear enough to spare a glance backwards. My eyes picked out the important parts of the situation immediately.

The uglier one of the two remaining quiet men berated the other. A glow faded from Gast’s slab of runes, strapped to her arm. Jana kept the children’s heads down, her one-eyed gaze seeking the road ahead. The one remaining guard had a new dent in his armour. The man leading the horse had an arrow in his shoulder. And Laja – the nomad woman – her brother Malee, and Willow – Aron’s wife – had disappeared.

I found them down the road. Malee was hauling the two women upright, his sister bearing an arrow in her gut and Willow a gash across her hip.

The soldiers were steps away.

My teeth clenched, but I turned my eyes back-

-to the scene behind, even as every muscle and tendon within my limbs throbbed with the effort of keeping the cart and everyone within it speeding up the hill, every step strenuous enough to send a new pulse of exhaustion and nausea through my system.

But I did not look away. If there would be nothing left of them but a memory, then I would save it.

The male nomad’s thickset form shoved the two others backwards. Laja’s attempts to return to him were conquered by Willow’s graceful arms pulling her away.

“Wil,” I muttered to the man leading the horse, “keep the cart moving.”

"Vin- " he shouted, but the rest of his response was drowned by the beat of my pulse as I gave the cart one mighty shove and began sprinting back down.

Then a mass of a dozen Baylarian soldiers, bristling with bronze and hatred, fell around Malee. His dark skin stood perfectly still, a silhouette against the fury of the warriors; the sharp grief twisting their faces into something animal.

Malee’s arms extended, as if to stop or embrace them. Then countless spearheads emerged from his back amidst a mist of gore and blood. They drew their swords and hacked at his arms, blades catching on bone before emerging to sever them at the joints. A dull sickness filled me.

He had died the instant the spears had ran him through, but they kept trying to sever Malee from his body, weapons swinging wildly amidst faces afire with frozen grief.

Laja and Willow limped towards the cart, far too slow to outrun those behind. I grabbed each and threw them upon my shoulders, then thundered back towards the cart. Seconds later, I arrived, dumping the two on my shoulders inside and returned to my desperate pushing, knowing that one of the women the man had died to save couldn’t survive her wound.

Even as I strained, my head unwittingly turned backwards. The thin trail behind was full, lousy with even more soldiers rushing upwards. A handful of those that had killed Malee tore themselves away, creating a small gap and revealing what was left of Laja and Taja’s brother.

Nothing that looked like anything.

Tully let loose three sharp whistles.

Within the cart, the Owlblood’s lifeforce flared.

The road erupted-

-and dirt and bodies flew upwards, thrown by some massive percussion of force that had risen from just beneath the road. Tully’s flickering eyes had already turned away, but my own could not.

“Kit!” Whip called, barely audible above the ringing. “Right!”

Instinctively, my gait staggered in that direction, trained by hundreds of similar calls over my few months of monster-hunting. A stinging took residence in my ear, and as I revisited my memory of the past few moments I realised an arrow had nearly taken me in the forehead.

Fifty paces up the trail, another eight stood, having rushed through the wilderness to cut us off. Yet this time, a woman possessing a vicious sneer stood before them, her eye’s orange sclera reflecting the light of the moon like a cat’s. She said something to those behind, equipped with bows, and eight arrows were nocked and fired in an instant. None of them were aimed for me.

Five glowed purple, their route through the air fouling, yet three did not, and flashed past me unobstructed-

-and though one missed the cart, nearly taking me in the head, two found their way inside and caught Tully’s one remaining Owlblood in the throat. The other came close to hitting Maddie, but the Dolphinblood placed his own body in front of her and the arrow sunk into the meat of his back.

“Holt?” the young scion screamed.

The man scowled. “I won’t let anyone say the last Heltian died on my watch.”

I growled, and peered around the cart. My eyes widened. Kit, clad in her furs and helm while wielding only a sword, sprinted towards a Foxblood-

-and drove my legs further forward, but the soldier’s training was damnably good. Despite loosing their payload barely moments before, they’d already plucked more arrows from their quiver. Davian slowed to fire, only for the sneering woman to snatch the projectile from the air.

More arrows thrummed past, and though I was forced to dive in order to avoid several, one to my right shone purple and spun wildly. The woman shouted something, pointing-

-towards Odrin, his face red and legs flagging. The arrow flying towards his wife spun into the night, the Owlblooded smith’s hand feebly raised in its direction. I watched as another eight headed towards him, taking both him and Miriel, who ran beside him, in a maelstrom of blurring lines. Then they stalled, embedded in the bodies of the pair. They fell backwards with a crack, and I caught a glimpse of their expressions.

Odrin looked at his wife, realisation sparking into horror behind his shattered glasses. Miriel looked at her husband, and though she tried to smile but could not. Then they rolled down the hill, into the stretch of upturned earth. I watched them, then clenched my eyes shut and kept pushing.

In my perception, they flickered and died. In their wake rose a hoarse, desperate cry as Atifi’s wrinkled body erupted into a scream. Snapper’s feeble body surged from the cart, only for Gast to pull him back into its bed. It rocked slightly as she continually pressed him down.

“Vin,” she said. “I’m out of blood.”

There would be no more intervention from Yoot’s powers until I could refill her runestone. I looked ahead. Kit-

-arrived in front of the woman, and a grin stretched beneath her orange eyes as if it were all some great game. In that moment loathing burned through my stiff body, consuming the fatigue creeping into me. I didn’t know why it existed, or who it was directed at.

My sword arced towards her in an upward slash that would tear open her face, and predictably she leaned backwards, allowing me to transfer the momentum into a downward blow that aimed to cleave her arrogantly unhelmed head in two. Yet she simply turned her body to the side, allowing it to slip past.

Somehow, she had known where my blade would fall without ever looking at it. When her hands dropped to the daggers upon her belt and she simultaneously dodged my swing and flipped them in a flourish, clarity seeped into my mind. I’d sorely miscalculated. Her grin widened as fear flashed across my face, and then she struck.

Immediately, the Foxblood attempted to hammer a knife into my heart. I slipped my sword into an underhanded grip to trap the blade, only for her to transform the stab into a punch that slammed into my kidney. I winced, lowering my head slightly, and spurred by tens of thousands of hours training swung my skull to the side, barely managing to avoid the other knife piercing through my helmet and into my brain.

Instinct told me to retreat and recover from the shocking pain of her punch, but doing so would allow the archers a clear shot. Instead, I read the muscles in her arms and crouched beneath two rapid swings, tempting another pair of downwards stabs which I avoided in the same way she had mine: by turning slightly to the side. I grabbed one arm, now extended away from her body, and used her momentum to throw her over my head…

…And somehow, she twisted mid-air, managing to land on her feet. I was unprepared for the resistance her acrobatics forced upon me. It threw my footing off.

I stumbled, and knew that my blood would be the next to water the dirt. Her manic smile dominated my vision.

A Foxblood couldn’t resist such an opening. In the shifting of her feet I read what would happen next.

One dagger flew towards my exposed gut. I dropped my sword to catch her arm with both of my own, barely managing to arrest it. The other blade went towards my neck. In the moment before it pierced my throat, I lowered my head and opened my jaw as wide as possible.

The knife slid through one of my cheeks, then erupted from the other. I bit down on the cold bone of the blade, feeling blood drip down my face and fill my mouth as it sliced my tongue. When the Foxblood tried to pull it out, my teeth held it in place. In the instant she spent making that attempt, I adjusted my grip on the arm I held and snapped her elbow like a dry twig. Then I broke her nose with my own helmeted head. And then I wrenched the dagger from my face, stuck it in her gut, and kicked her downhill.

A pause. Gasps escaped me, releasing the breath held within. I touched the side of my cheeks, alight with pain, and my hand came away wet.

Even when the wheels of the cart crushed her skull into bloody pieces, the Foxblood laughed.

The sight arrested me. Footsteps resounded from behind, yet tearing my eyes away felt like cowardice. When I finally turned, four of the seven remaining archers had drawn short-swords. The others held their bowstrings to their cheeks, each aimed so perfectly towards me that the profile of their arrowheads concealed their shafts entirely. Fletching seemed to ring each arrowhead like the maw of some unknown creature.

I couldn’t move.

Then the horse and cart smashed into those about to kill me, Ronnie and-

-myself pushed from behind, lifting its entire weight onto my arms to avoid catching the wheels on their bodies even as my boots slammed on top of them. Ronnie’s shoulder strained against its back, cradling their ruined arm against their chest. My head was lowered, and the strain within my body had risen past fatigue and into agony.

One of the archers died, neck broken underneath my feet. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, spittle bubbling from his mouth. She was the twenty-fifth dead by my hands. Then Tully shot one that remained standing and Davian fell upon the other five with his short-sword, and I wondered what my counting meant.

That was seven. My head flicked towards the last one. They found Kit remaining entirely still, her dark eyes trembling in their sockets, while barely feet behind her a panicked archer prepared to release his lethal payload. I lunged sideways, yanking her aside an instant before the arrow would have penetrated her back. Moments later, one of Whip’s bolts thundered through the archer’s skull soundlessly. His body staggered and mumbled something, as if unaware of the life seized from its flesh. Or the hole in his head. Then the cart passed him.

Whip groaned from atop the cart.

Kit was dragged alongside me, and I swore as my vision seized upon the wreck her cheeks had become. They bled incessantly, trickling down her face and neck to stain the furs she wore.

“You alright?” I yelled over wails and screams of those in the cart – the sounds worn and ragged by their constant presence.

“Yeah,” she answered quickly. Her voice was warped by the holes in her face. “Flesh wound.”

A familiar body slipped beneath my feet, and I released my grip on Kit to yank the person upright. It was Wil, the tired man’s leg pierced with an arrow. Amidst his protests, I grabbed his shoulder and the top of his pants to hurl him into the cart’s bed, then continued shoving.

“Kit,” I panted, “you need to lead the horse.”

“W-what?” she stuttered. “I don’t know nothin’ about horses.”

“Just grab its reins and make sure it doesn’t overturn the cart. Like a donkey.”

“It’s a big donkey,” she protested. Then, she hissed to herself and ran in front of the cart.

I continued pressing my aching arms against the cart; Ronnie’s giant form next to mine red with exertion, gasping at the air. Yet for both of our labour, we were still slower than a running man – even one wearing full armour.

I twisted, jamming my shoulder against the cart and craning my neck around. The soldiers behind were gaining. But they were further back than they should’ve been.

Between the trunks of their legs were the ravished bodies of those that had been too slow. Our one remaining guard. Some of the Growers; the Smiths – each too slow to avoid hurled javelins. Aron barely outpaced the mass of furious soldiers.

I peeked over the lip of the cart, and an errant bump slammed it into my head. I tried again, and saw the walls of the derelict settlement, still at least a minute’s sprint ahead. Its gates were not open.

I looked back. I swore.

“Davian! Taja!” I screamed, calling the names of those still keeping pace. “Tully! You need to push!”

Tully immediately fell in beside me. “What- “

“Push, you rat,” I spat, shoving her into my place. Davian rounded the cart moments later and joined her without speaking.

Taja did not.

I released the back of the cart and pounded around its side, rapidly passing the back of the teenager. His eyes were fixed ahead, rolling like an animal’s. From that, I knew he’d watched his brother die.

“Do you want your sister to die?” I hissed in his ear. The demand was cruel, and no amount of bathing would wash the filth of it away. But we needed him. “Push the cart!”

There was no time to check whether he obeyed. Air rushed through my system; assorted pants and approaching bellows entered my ears; cold fell from the heat of my being; blood coursed deep within my veins.

I ran. And every step landed according to perfectly leveraged legs pushing away from the previous step while my open hands raised in front of my chin as my arms pumped in time and though limbs moved violently within a blur of motion my torso was fixed impeccably in stillness which drew in breath firmly like some graceful bird certain of its own position beneath the stars and made old and wise by the sediment of the oasis in which it lived and even the throb of abused muscles and the agony within my chest were divine within that moment and the walls grew closer and closer and suddenly it felt as if warmed water spread across my skin and a grin split from me. The smile dropped like a stone as the sounds of someone dying pierced me.

I-

-barely comprehended the image in-front of me. Vin was running. Away from us.

I knew that he would return, sprinting back to us having completed whatever gambit had arisen behind his grim face. Yet as I ran, hand wrapped around the lead of a frantic beast, I couldn’t help but feel the way its breath erupted from its snout, hot and fearful, while its body warped under its lungs, and its twisting muzzle, constantly bleeding sweat.

Laja seized within the cart, the sound of her gasps harsh and irregular. Her one remaining brother made demands and pleas to her, yet no reassurance or response returned to him. The large hunter slammed into the heavy gate set in the log walls around the village, heaving it open. Then, he disappeared within.

Some part of me knew he would return. But… he hadn’t wanted any part in this. But he had made his wishes clear. But he had tried to stop us, from the very beginning. And in a deafeningly quiet tone, another part of me understood he would never come back.

When he sprinted from the cavity the open gate had made, a lion-sized monster frothing at his heels, I felt no relief.

Only-

-the panting of a beast behind me. From what I could tell, it was some barnyard mouser that had somehow gotten its tongue into Oxblood – transforming it into something far more lethal. Beneath its pelt, its bulging muscles hinted at strangely potent power – the kind that could consume humans as easily as the cat used to eat mice. The moment I’d invaded its territory, briefly glimpsing the ruined town on the side of the hill, it had begun chasing me. My trespass was enough to incite its pursuit out the gate.

I was fast. The cart drew closer rapidly: the horse and Kit at its front, her teeth clenched together; Whip’s pale face peeking over its lip alongside Maddie, Yowler whining between them; Wil cradling two infants in his arms, Tippi, Crumpet, and his own child all jammed on top of him; Jana, working eye cold as it watched those that pursued, holding back Odrin and Atifi, whose horror could not cease; Willow, her daughter clinging to her, pressing down on Laja’s gut, the woman’s dark skin fading while her chest rose and fell irregularly; Gast facing away, watching the oncoming hoard of furious soldiers, each mourning the dead via unthinking vengeance. My legs carried all those images closer, faster than I could prepare for. Yet the Godkin was still faster.

When I was steps away the pad of its paws ceased, and I knew it had leapt for me. In one fluid movement, I turned, caught both of its front legs in my hands, and spun the creature around. Its weight was almost too much to keep suspended by the force my spinning generated, but when the cart passed me moments later I finally had cause to let go. The Oxkin hissed, bemused and offended, before I flung it into the dozens of soldiers approaching. Then I grabbed Aron’s flagging body and hauled him with me, after the sight of the cart vanishing into the town’s walls.

We slipped between the closing gate, and I stepped behind it, assisting Tully, Davian, and Ronnie in shutting it. Each bent over, wheezing, as soon as the task was completed. Next to us, a black heartwood log had fallen from its place in the wall, creating a thin gap. I grabbed its trunk and dragged it in-front of the gate, dumping it where it would hopefully impede progress.

When that was done, I turned and looked over the place we’d found ourselves in.

I’d seen a few like it, over my time in the Heartlands. There were a few dozen buildings within the village, each formed out of heartwood logs, black bark peeling to reveal pink flesh beneath. Whatever cracks had creeped between the logs were patched with mud and clay – likely gathered from the River Ien. Some houses had chimneys, while others simply had openings in their rooves to cough smoke. Shuttered windows hid the innards of each hovel, but they’d all be similar: small tables, chairs, cooking implements and knapped tools arranged around a central firepit. Cots and bedrolls would be moved near it over the night, during Frost.

Most families would possess similar skills: foraging, weaving, cooking, butchery. In a village of this size, they might have a cobbler, or even a leatherworker – though I didn’t smell the signature stench of the trade. Farming was a luxury in the Heartlands – the Aching would offer a new bounty when it arrived, and securing the land needed for fields required more resources than most possessed – yet a few houses had small, fenced yards to keep poultry or goats.

There were a few variations, compared to other such villages: the hill it was built atop was remarkably steep, and required stilts to keep houses level; houses were occasionally tied with coloured ribbons; its borders were larger than most. Yet one thing remained the same: all of it was built atop stone thinly-layered with dirt, so when the Aching occurred new growth wouldn’t burrow through their homes.

Except that gambit had failed. Unlike any other settlement I’d seen, speartrees studded the area in staggering amounts. Breaking through the sides and tops of houses, ruining their integrity and causing partial collapse; Piercing the road up the hill, leaving small mounds of stone and dirt at their bases. They shone in the light of the moons, sharp and bone-white amidst the crimson moss, weeds, and vines digging their thorns into every surface.

Despite the distant yells and stomping of boots, the jangling wind-charms tied to the houses and the sobbing of those within the cart, the derelict village felt shrouded with silence. Small animals, insects, and plants were the only creatures that lived within its broken walls; excepting four fonts of radiant life, stalking towards our location.

“We need to keep going,” I muttered. I spoke louder. “We need to keep moving.”

“Agreed,” said Tully. Her breathing was beginning to even. “We need shelter and a defensible position, and we won’t find it down here.”

At her words, someone in the cart shifted rapidly. Someone else shushed them.

“Horse needs a break.” There was a hitch in Wil’s voice. His swallow was audible. “It’ll go lame.”

Old Snapper gingerly left the cart, eyes red yet dry-faced. The greybeard staggered to Kit, who silently offered him the draught-horse’s reins. Trembling hands removed it from the bar. When that was finished, he stood next to it silently.

I took its place behind the bar and-

-started pulling the cart up the hill, slowly weaving it between the thin speartrees obstructing the way. Alongside everyone else, I followed.

Davian limped nearby, and I pulled one of his arms around my shoulder to support him.

“You good?” I asked.

He nodded slowly before responding. “Yes, I believe so. Pushing was… demanding. Nothing rest won’t fix.”

“No arrows?”

“None.” His eyes flicked to me within his warped face. “How is your face?”

I tongued one of the holes in the side of my cheek, then winced. “Prettier’n before, I think.”

“Do you think she fouled her knives?”

The practice of leaving blades to sit in dung overnight was popular among the spiteful. I’d never done it – that’d be like admitting I couldn’t kill someone in a straight fight. But I’d seen people die from it – cuts red and yellow and steaming hot, draining the life from the body with every passing second.

“Don’t think so,” I said, then paused. “I’ll get Gast to flash it anyway.”

“A good idea,” he agreed.

We hurried beside the cart, ignoring Ol’ Snapper trailing behind us and the nomad kid weeping and begging at the back of the cart. I kept my eyes away from those within, except the Strains, Jana, and the kids. Ronnie was already walking alongside, cradling their good arm.

“How’re they doin’?” I asked Jana. Crumpet had wrapped her body around the old woman’s skirt, while Tippi had a death-grip on her arm.

“They have seen it all before.” Her jaw was clenched beneath its burn-scars. “That’s making it worse, I think.”

I opened my mouth to say something to the children, then closed it. All I could offer was a nod.

“How ‘bout you, big feller?” I nodded towards the giant Strain.

The only response I got was a shrug, along with a glance towards their limp arm. Without the use of both hands, Ronnie couldn’t communicate well.

“Gast?” Davian whispered.

The fat Strain eyed Whip.

“Whip?”

Her face rested on the lip of the cart, far paler than usual. She breathed like some small bird.

“Hey.” I clicked my fingers in front of her face. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

The girl raised her hands, showing palms and fingers stripped of most of her skin. She must’ve held her crossbow too tightly, and without the ability to feel pain hadn’t realised she was harming herself.

“Ox’s balls, Whip,” I swore. “By all that’s good ‘n green, you really messed yerself up.”

Her teeth chattered. “Y-you look worse.”

“Yeah, well. I’d look even worse without yer help.” After a moment, she puzzled out my statement enough to smile at it. I returned the expression, then addressed the man I was supporting. “You got any salves?”

Davian nodded. “I do have some, yes.”

Leaning him against the side of the cart, I fell a few steps behind so I could root around his satchel.

A thud cut through my efforts like salt through a snail. Ronnie had kicked the side of the cart. I looked at her. The Strain’s teeth were clenched; some inscrutable emotion writ in the lines of their face. Their eyes were wide, and from their higher vantage gazed over the lip of the cart.

They pointed at Whip.

“What’re you- “

Vainly, their underdeveloped arm grasped towards the young woman. It latched onto her, and attempted to pull her body upright.

“Whip,” Davian said slowly, “what is Ronnie trying to tell us?”

The small Strain squinted at the giant, then followed their pointing finger down her body. “Oh.”

Gast fell backwards, tripping over Jana’s legs. The old woman said nothing.

Davian began limping towards the back of the cart, but before he could I pushed myself onto the lip and gazed inside.

Emerging from Whip’s back as if it were some twisted sapling, was the head of an arrow.

Hands shaking-

-I continued to pull the cart between speartrees.

Thoughts swarmed in my ears, buzzing incessantly for my attention. Instead, I tuned them out and focused on the placement of my feet; the strain in my limbs; the path in front. With a steady speed, I hauled the group up the hill, barely managing to outpace the monsters stalking towards us.

Perhaps that’s why I was the first to see the speartree growing from the peak, and the body impaled atop it.

The corpse’s skin had grown thin and sallow, yet even with most of its features fallen to decay and the slow pecking of carrion birds I could tell it would’ve stood nearly nine-feet tall. An Oxblood; likely the source of the divinity that flowed through the monsters stalking us. The full-plate armour it wore was intricate, and well-rusted by exposure to the elements, but sized for such a massive Blooded it still would’ve been worth a fortune.

But no sane merchant would buy it. After all, the armour was covering in flaking gold paint. The exclusive colour of the Albrights.

I watched it. The body was hung through the speartree like some warped parody of a flag – its legs and arms swayed in the breeze. The poor bastard must’ve been sleeping during an Aching, and the ivory spike had grown through their stomach, hoisting their flailing body away from the earth. My jaw tightened, and I looked away.

Then my eyes darted back. Back when I’d worked for Esfaria, we’d hung traitors at the entrance to our encampments. The only way they’d get taken down was if the neck or rope snapped. I remembered one teenager – a slight boy that’d gotten a Blooded girl pregnant – had stayed up for years. Every time I’d returned, carrying a new victory, I’d found a little bit more of him fallen away. It hadn’t taken more than four years for him to become nothing more than bones.

The corpse had decayed so much that pieces of bone peeked through what little flesh remained, but exposed as it was it couldn’t be more than two or three years old. But the Aching hadn’t occurred for over a decade.

Either a speartree had spontaneously grown at a rapid pace, or something had dropped the Blooded onto it.

There was only one entity that impaled men on speartrees. It left no witnesses, but the way it killed remained the only reason we knew it existed at all.

I finished hauling the cart to the top, stopping next to a reasonably large house formed of stone slabs – the only one of its kind in the village. Then, shivering, I moved around its side, shuffling past Kit and the Strains to find Maddie with them, hovering nearby.

“Get out,” I told her.

Her armour, still glowing a subtle purple, shifted as she turned. “What?”

“This is as far as you go, Maddie.” I paused. “Or whatever your name is. Get out.”

Tully grabbed my shoulder. “Vin, there’s- “

I threw her hand off. “Shut up. No one agreed to die for you.”

Maddie addressed me, her emerald eyes flicking away from my own. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean for this to happen- “

“Then get out,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

She had no response. Slowly, the young woman began clambering out of the cart.

Tully pressed her down. “House Heltia is larger than us.”

I turned to her, a warning in my voice. “Tully- “

She paused momentarily, but continued anyway. “It’s the forefront of human ingenuity, Vin. A century ago, no one would’ve ever thought of suspending a city above monsters; using tubes and Godsblood to dispose of waste; creating mechanisms that can annihilate monsters without needing to get close.”

The scarred woman pointed a hand towards the horizon. “In another century, Heltia will have conquered another thousand problems pressing down on human existence. And no other House has the gall to do what Heltia does.

“Without this girl here,” she said, pointing at Maddie, “there is no Heltia.”

I shook my head.

“This is more important than you or me, or anyone else, Vin.” Her eyes fixed my own. “Can’t you see?”

“Nothing should be more important than that,” I snarled. At that, I reached into the cart and began hauling her out.

“Vin,” Tully pleaded, “they will chase you anyway.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I spat, pulling the Head out and throwing her to the dirt.

The scarred Spiderblood placed herself between Maddie and myself. “Your friends are staying. They might not make it without you.”

I stopped.

Within the scope of my perception, Whip’s lifeforce began to ebb away. I looked at my team, gathered around the girl. Davian dripped some small concoction into her mouth with trembling hands. Gast pushed bandages down on the girl’s gut. Ronnie’s wept, mouth open in a silent howl. Kit yelled something, pupils tiny islands in the whites of her eyes. Whip said something to them, smiling weakly even as small tears dripped down her face.

I stopped myself from thinking about what any of it meant. All that mattered was whether I could subdue them all and escape. But as soon as my thoughts began, they stuttered; frozen in a moment in time.

“I can’t…” The words caught in my throat, my flesh desperately trying to pull them back in. I forced them out. “I can’t take responsibility for this.”

Tully stared at me.

I wanted to make some excuse. Tell her that nothing good would come of making me walk this path again. But I didn’t.

“A wish.”

My eyes flicked towards Maddie.

“Most of Heltia is gone, but Gale Vane still lives.” She swallowed. “He’s the greatest Owlblood on the continent, now. If…” The young woman looked away, copper hair escaping from her helmet. But moments later, her gaze met mine for the first time since this had all started. “If you bring me to him, he’ll give you anything you can imagine.”

“That goes for everyone here,” Maddie finished. “Any wish. It’s… I’m sorry.”

I stared at her. “Anything?”

“Anything within his or my power.”

I didn’t dare to breathe. “A transferral stone? One designed… just for me?”

Means of transferring power between living Blooded had existed for centuries. It was what allowed old Blooded to teach the new their powers – allowed humanity to stop running from gods. Yet though I’d searched as best I could for years and years and years, I’d found none for Ravenbloods. We had a built-in inheritance mechanism – there was no need for teachers. No need for anything but killing.

If Maddie owed me, then she wouldn’t let them execute me. Or maybe she would. As long as the Owlblood – Gale Vane – could figure out a way to destroy my Ravenblood, it didn't truly matter. It felt like a gamble, but like every single bet I'd made over the past years, I couldn't turn it down.

My team desperately tried to keep Whip alive behind us.

Maddie said “Yes.” She had no idea she was offering me the one thing I couldn’t say no to.

A way out.