Amara had a general idea of where she was headed based on what she noted about the place in the beginning of the dream-vision.

  The early morning air was crisp with the lingering chill of night, and Amara’s breath curled around her wrapped face as she moved swiftly along the narrow forest paths. Her leather boots pressed into the damp earth, muffled by thick carpets of pine needles and frost-kissed lichen. Every step felt heavier than the last, burdened by the weight of what she had seen.

  She had no doubt now—the dream-vision was not just a warning. It was a command.

  The Hjolnir Fjoll loomed to her right, their jagged, ice-capped peaks glinting in the first light of dawn.

  Many leagues to the west, the vast and endless expanse of the Grendehaf stretched beyond sight, an abyss of dark, restless waters. Somewhere in the distance, half-muted by the thick woodland, the icy Silfrflod river moved in near silence, its babbling voice steady and unwavering. This was the place.

  Yet, as Amara pressed forward, the echoes of the dream-vision blurred with reality, overlaying themselves onto the waking world in vivid bursts of sensation.

  She turned her gaze ahead, searching, waiting.

  The forest was as it had been, the dream-vision fading like mist in the morning sun. But the weight of it lingered, thick in the air, pressing against her skull.

  She forced herself to move, to look for the small things she had seen. As she walked, the images clung to her mind like smoke—the ash tree, the raven, the faceless dead, the marching drums. They whispered in her ears, bleeding into reality.

  Then she found it.

  The trail.

  It was exactly as she had seen it in her dream, a deep wound in the untouched wilderness. But now, with waking eyes, she could see more.

  Many of the trees had their lower branches snapped or bent. Wandering soldiers or bandits would take care to not leave any markings and reveal themselves—these were the markings of something crazed, something tormented. The disturbed soil revealed heavy, clawed footprints—the gait of something inhuman. The ferns and moss were still moist, freshly overturned. Whoever—whatever—had passed through here had done so recently.

  Nar’gulam.

  Her stomach twisted. That wasn’t possible. The nar’gulam hadn’t been seen outside Utgaard for decades. The thoughts and words came racing to her mind, moving so fast that she hardly had time to process them before the next realization forced new dread into her heart.

  In her dream she had heard a harsh, guttural language she didn’t recognize. But nar’gulam didn’t speak any form of language she could detect, despite their vaguely, albeit twisted, human form. That language must have been spoken by men—dakh’nothalim, fallen kin who had sworn themselves to the evil. Amara shuddered to think of men and women, her brothers and sisters, giving themselves to the forbidden oaths. She had hoped that such an evil would have stayed squarely in the past, but she shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Tharan’nothalin had always enticed and lured power-seeking men and women to his cause. Many were unwitting fools, used up and cast aside when their utility ended, but there were others who knowingly gave themselves to the emptiness and eternal darkness of the void. It was a truth that had always been utterly incomprehensible to Amara, but it was a truth all the same.

  The clarity regarding her dream-vision now crystallized before her: nar’gulam and Oathsworn moving at speed through the Hrafnsvithr—toward Askholm. Toward Valdrik.

  A chill crawled up her spine.

  The Na’faarim must know.

  Amara turned, her breath coming fast, her thoughts racing ahead of her feet. She had to get back. Had to warn someone. Had to warn Valdrik. The vision had not come without reason. She hoped she was not too late to make use of the Kin’s warning.

  ***

  The wind lashed against Amara’s face, whipping strands of dark hair into her mouth as she forced her legs to keep moving. Each step sent fire lancing through her calves, her lungs burning as if she had inhaled embers. A jagged branch raked against her arm, drawing a thin line of blood, but she ignored the sting. There was no time. No time for pain, no time for hesitation—only the unrelenting press of urgency, pounding in her chest like a war drum.

  Each stride sent waves of fire through her legs, but she could not—would not—stop. Time was against her. If she faltered now, the village would be lost. Valdrik would be lost.

  The underbrush clawed at her wool-clad legs, thorns snagging, biting, and tearing, but she ignored the sting. The wind carried the scent of pine and damp earth, but beneath it, she swore she could already taste the smoke of what her nightmares helped her envision.

  She pushed herself harder, leaping over fallen logs and tearing through tangled brambles. Her mind whirled with calculations. How many hours of light remained? Two, perhaps three at most. The Hjol celebrations would be beginning soon—men gathered in the longhouse, bellies warm with mead, weapons stacked against the walls in careless revelry. That would be the moment. That was when they would come. The Na’faarim had to know what was about to happen in Askholm. Her husband must be notified. Amara ran for the Shir’firah station she had visited many times before. First the message. Then back to Askholm.

  Her lips moved in a breathless whisper, sending a desperate plea to the Kin. “Guide my feet, steady my breath, let me be swift. Let me save them if I can.”

  Ahead, through a stand of gnarled birches, she spotted the hidden hollow where the shir’firah nested. The small alcove was darker than she remembered, its cool shadows swallowing the last vestiges of daylight. Amara hesitated at the entrance, her breath loud in the hush that had settled over the woods. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. She slid inside, pulse hammering against her ribs, and nearly jumped when the sparrow stirred, tilting its head to regard her with one gleaming black eye. It was waiting. Always waiting. She reached into the bust of her dress, withdrawing the slender strip of parchment she had prepared. Her fingers trembled as she scrawled the words in a tight, slanted script:

  The Black Serpent has found Vazir. Askholm will burn.

  She bound the message to the sparrow’s delicate leg, murmuring a final prayer before lifting it into the air. She didn’t have time for the customary codes and methods of obscuring the real meaning of her message. This was a true emergency and she simply had to trust the shir’firah to avoid detection and deliver its message safely. The bird hesitated only a moment, then, as if sensing the urgency, it took flight—wings cutting through the dying light like an arrow loosed toward destiny.

  Amara did not stay to watch it disappear. Grabbing a spear that had spent long years gathering dust leaned against the wall of the stone enclosure, she turned, not yet recovered, and sprinted back toward Askholm. If she was swift—if the Qav’larim willed it—she might yet have time.

  Amara’s strides began to settle into a rhythm, as fast as a pace as she felt she could maintain over the distance back to Askholm. In her youth, she had spent hours upon hours running, training her body to be ready for a journey such as this. Although her time in Askholm had not allowed her to train in the same way, her muscles and lungs still remembered the long years spent running through freezing desert nights, up sand dunes, and back down the other side.

  She had to trust that her body would not betray her in her hour of great need. Her long strides were a steady beat that gently coaxed her thoughts toward the impending doom of Askholm. If a dagger of nar’gulam and Oathsworn had made it past the Yronmur, through Thoringaard, and over the Hjolnir Fjoll, without detection, that could only mean one thing—khal’shadim.

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  On their own, nar’gulam were crazed, relentless killers, looking for their next sport—or meal. The dakh’nothalim would be called upon to do the things that Tharan’nothalin’s hordes of Helbrood couldn’t do. They could blend. They could strike up a conversation and extract information from drunks and fools. Where the nar’gulam simply followed their instincts for murder, terror, and havoc, the Oathsworn could be the dagger’s eye and ears without alerting anyone to their presence.

  Of course, without the cruel hand of a khal’shadim keeping them trained on a greater purpose, the nar’gulam would have been drawn to any number of settlements and easy prey, the dakh’nothalim included. The nar’gulam didn’t discriminate in their tastes for flesh. Only the khal’shadim maintained any sense of order.

  A dagger of nar’gulam and Oathsworn was dangerous, enough to make seasoned Na’faarim warriors concerned. But a dagger with a brain was something far worse.

  Amara clenched her jaw, pressing forward, though she could remember with striking clarity the feel of the unnatural cold seeping into her bones. Not the sharp bite of winter, but something more insidious—a chill that burrowed into the chest, coiling around the heart like unseen talons. It was a cold that did not merely freeze flesh but sank deeper, into the very marrow of a warrior’s spirit, gnawing at their resolve before the enemy had even revealed itself.

  This was the power of a khal’shadim.

  Just thinking about one of the black demons played with her mind—her very grasp on reality. The forest around her seemed quieter now, unnaturally still. A deathly hush blanketed the trees, smothering the usual rustling of wind through the branches. Even the nocturnal creatures had fallen silent. As if they, too, could sense the presence of something in her mind that should not exist.

  And with the cold came the stench. It was the scent of death long past as if the nightmarish wights did not merely kill but carried the grave with them. The air thickened and soured with the acrid bite of rotting flesh. But beneath it, mingled into the decay, was something worse—a distant, almost sweet odor. Cloying. Festering.

  The Na’faarim had long fought khal'shadim in the shadowed places where most dared not tread. She had seen what they did to men—how they unraveled their courage, broke them before steel was ever drawn.

  She could picture one now: grotesquely tall, nearly eight feet in height, their form was that of something once human but stretched and mutilated beyond reason—twisted by unseen hands into something vile. Their limbs were thin but corded with sinew, their arms too long, and their fingers tipped with blackened fingernails that twitched with precise, almost delicate intent.

  And their faces…Most never saw what lay beneath their black tattered robes. But those who had wished they never had. Their skin clung to their skulls like ancient parchment, desiccated and splitting, ink-black cracks webbing their hollow features. Their mouths, jagged and irregular, were lined with teeth—sharp and unnatural—but they did not hunger for flesh like the nuruk. They devoured something far worse.

  Hope. Resolve. The will to fight.

  And then there were the eyes. Twin voids, pits of utter darkness that seemed to drink in the light itself. Within them was not mindless hunger, but something colder than death—a presence, an intelligence that lingered on the farthest edges of sanity.

  Tharan’nothalin himself had surely given his seal to this purpose. The enemy must be certain beyond even the faintest shadow of doubt. What gods forsaken soul had betrayed them?

  They had been so careful, but the truth always yearned to be known, to exist beyond shadows, into the light. They should have known that Valdrik’s birth would make its way into the enemy’s mind at some point. It was the reason they had taken the precautions in the first place.

  The prophecy haunted her. She realized now that they had been trying to run from it, but running from fate is like trying to run from the wind—pointless.

  Amara’s steps continued to fall in the same cadence, carrying her back toward Askholm with all possible haste. Her breath was steady, and despite her weariness, she knew that the Qav’larim were granting her the strength to run. If she lived to see the coming dawn, she would have a steep price to pay, but if she could save anyone from the horror of death at the hands of nuruk, it would have been well worth the sacrifice.

  The rhythm once again invited her mind to drift toward Valdrik. His birth had surprised her. The nursing women in her village had expected the child to arrive in a few weeks, but even this was a sign that Valdrik was the Eshandir. She had studied the words of the prophecy almost daily since Valdrik—Vazir she had first called him—was born. It was an ancient verse, whispered in the shadowed halls of the Na’faarim, etched into crumbling scrolls, feared and debated by those who understood its weight. And though many questioned its meaning, none dared ignore it.

  The scholars of the Na’faarim had never agreed. Some believed the Eshandir was a savior, others a harbinger of destruction. And now… now she feared the worst.

  Was Valdrik already condemned?

  Her chest tightened at the thought. She had always feared for him, but never like this. The secrecy surrounding his birth, the sacrifices made to keep him hidden—it had all been done to protect him. But had she only delayed the inevitable?

  She could picture it in her mind, even now—the springtime night of his birth, a sky black as ink, the air thick with the scent of pine and fire. The pain, the silence, the terror. They had moved quickly, wordlessly, and when the child finally let out his first cry, it was met not with celebration, but a hushed and solemn fear.

  She had never told him.

  She should have.

  She should have told him who he was.

  Who his father was.

  And now, she feared she would never get the chance.

  The thought sent a fresh surge of urgency through her limbs. She pushed forward, her pace quickening as the forest began to thin.

  Then, the glow of Askholm’s bonfire came into view.

  The sight of Askholm nearly stole the breath from her lungs. It was whole. It was untouched. The bonfires burned bright, casting golden halos across the laughing faces of warriors and elders alike. The scent of roasting venison and honeyed mead curled in the air, thick and rich, mingling with the distant crackle of firewood.

  For one heartbeat, relief washed over her. She was not too late.

  But if she hesitated, if she wasted even a moment—they would all die.

  With a burst of speed, she sprinted into the village, her breath ragged. Her boots pounded against the frozen earth and compacted snow as she rushed into the heart of the feast.

  “You must hide or take up arms! Now! The village is in danger!”

  Her voice rang out over the revelry, sharp and panicked.

  The reaction was immediate—a hush fell over the crowd. All eyes turned to her, wide with surprise.

  Then came the skepticism.

  Some faces twisted in concern, but most showed only confusion. A few of the warriors exchanged amused glances, shaking their heads. The village elders sat unmoved, their brows furrowed.

  And then, laughter.

  A man near the fire, his cheeks red with drink, raised his cup. “Are you hunting spirits, Amara?” he called, his voice thick with mirth.

  The jest broke the tension. More laughter followed. A woman smirked, nudging her companion. Some of the warriors chuckled, shaking their heads.

  No, no, no. They weren’t listening.

  Amara’s throat tightened. She stepped forward, her voice breaking with desperation.

  “You don’t understand. If we don’t act now, it will be too late—”

  A horn sounded.

  One.

  The laughter faltered.

  Two.

  The color drained from Amara’s face.

  Three short blasts.

  For a heartbeat, all was still.

  Then, chaos.

  Torches flared around the village. Warriors leaped to their feet, hands flying to weapons. The sharp thrum of bowstrings, the hiss of arrows, and then—

  The first scream.

  A shadow moved beyond the firelight, and the night erupted into blood and flame.

  The nar’gulam were here.