A distant, eerie howl sounded from the woods, followed by another, then a chorus of them—deep, resonant calls that were neither wolf nor human, but something unsettlingly between. The sound raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  The Sirin smirked, her golden eyes flashing. "The forest grows restless. Soon my absence will be noticed by creatures far worse than me."

  I frowned, scanning the tree line. "What's making that sound?"

  "Jotuns," she replied. "Beast-men of inverted fold-flesh. They come in many varieties, each more unpleasant than the last. Perhaps you'll meet them soon. They would no doubt love to drag you to Chernobog, to bind you to their Master forevermore. They're strongest at twilight and in the fog when neither sun nor moon rules the sky."

  I grabbed the end of the rope. "If you're trying to scare me—"

  "I'm merely observing," she interrupted, her voice taking on an almost casual tone despite our circumstances. "When the Jotuns arrive, they will take us both. They aren't as... susceptible to dragonfire as I am and they have many eyes, magic, animal and human. Unlike me, they will be able to see you. They harvest magic-touched witches, heroes and magical beasts alike. The stronger the magic, the more they desire it."

  Another reverberating howl pierced the twilight, closer now. Stormy hissed from my shoulder, her tiny body tensing.

  "Time to go inside," I muttered, tugging on the rope to draw the cage toward the pub.

  The Sirin laughed softly. "Running already? And you were doing so well with your… interrogation."

  I ignored her taunt, focusing on maneuvering the heavy cage across the snow. The runners helped, but it was still awkward work, especially as darkness encroached. The pub loomed ahead, its sturdy walls promising sanctuary from whatever lurked in the forest.

  I dragged the cage through the pub's doorway, scraping it against the frame and then slammed the door shut.

  I secured the door and barred it with a heavy beam, then positioned the cage in the corner furthest from my soil mound. "Don't get any ideas."

  “Ideas like?”

  “Trying to magic yourself out of this cage.”

  “Metal is hard to break with magic.”

  “You got out of the bear-trap just fine,” I pointed out, opening the cold storage well cover.

  “I was ten times as powerful then,” she sighed. “You killed me twice and fractured my heart-core all over by keeping me close to dragonglass. Even if I somehow manage to overcome you, my wings are far too brittle now to escape this forest. Without my domain to hide out during the day, I will be eaten or turned into a Jotun.”

  “You don't like sunlight?”

  “The sun doesn't like me,” she huffed. “Makes my limbs brittle.”

  I considered her words as I began to lower the cage into the cold well. The Sirin hissed as the cage went sideways and she slid down and slammed into one of its sides.

  “Is becoming a Jotun worse than being a Sirin?”

  “Jotuns mindlessly serve their Master,” the Sirin replied. “They do not have a will of their own.”

  I secured the rope to a hook in the wall, leaving the cage suspended about halfway down the cold well—close enough to retrieve if needed, but deep enough to contain any magical influence she might attempt.

  “Do you sleep during the day then?”

  “Usually, yes. I… I'd like some food," she said suddenly.

  “Food?”

  "I’m hungry."

  "What do Sirins eat?"

  She hesitated for a moment. "Preferably… magical meat, but mundane meat will suffice too."

  I eyed her suspiciously. "You're not exactly in a position to make demands."

  "Not a demand," she replied, her golden eyes gleaming in the darkness of the well. "We can stop talking now as I'd like to put myself into a healing trance for a week or two. I cannot sate your... curiosity if I am too hungry to talk."

  She had a point. I retrieved some strips of dried meat from my stores and approached the well cautiously.

  I tossed the meat through the well opening, watching as it fell through the bars. The Sirin caught it, her movements quick despite her weakened state.

  As I leaned down to the well to observe her better, something strange happened. The Sirin suddenly froze, her body going rigid, eyes widening in what appeared to be panic.

  "What's wrong with you?" I asked.

  No response. She remained perfectly still, the meat clutched in her talons, her expression frozen in a mask of alarm.

  I straightened up. Almost immediately, she gasped, her body relaxing as she stumbled against the bars of the cage.

  "What... what did you do?" she panted, her voice trembling.

  "I didn't do anything," I replied, confused. “What exactly happened?”

  She shook her head, feathers ruffling. "Everything... disappeared. I couldn't see the Astral, couldn't hear, couldn't sense anything. It was like..." she shuddered, "...like being swallowed by the void."

  I stepped closer to the well again, watching carefully. The moment I leaned over the edge, she seized up, exactly as before. When I backed away, she recovered.

  "It’s… your domain!" she gasped when I retreated again. "It projects stillness in the Astral. When you come too close, it's like... like I cease sensing everything."

  I considered this new information. "Hmm… is that why you didn’t cross into my domain when it was outside?”

  "Yes," she said, her breathing steadying. “Your domain... it creates a dead zone, a pocket of nothingness where the Astral threads are still."

  I grabbed a chest filled with witch-soil and pushed it towards the well hole. The Sirin froze once more, her entire body rigid. I counted to ten before pulling the chest back.

  "Hmm," I contemplated as she gasped back to awareness.

  The effect seemed to extend about one and a half meters from my domain.

  "You're doing this deliberately," she accused, her voice shaking slightly. "You have no idea what it's like—to be completely cut off, to feel and see nothing, to be nowhere."

  "Consider it payback for trying to lure me to my death with your song," I replied coldly. "Twice."

  “Ascension!” She hissed. “I wanted to give you wings, damn it! Becoming a Sirin isn’t…”

  “Can a man become a Sirin?” I asked.

  The question seemed to have stumped her for a moment.

  “I don’t think so.” She said after a minute. “Men breathe magic in, not out. A Sirin breathes magic out into the world, can cast spells.”

  “So then… possible death,” I concluded.

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  “Argh!” She picked up the meat with trembling talons and tore into it, her movements jerky and agitated.

  I remembered how the Sirin had searched for me during our previous encounters, how she had seemed to look right through me. "That's why you couldn't find me that first night in my glade."

  "Yes," she admitted grudgingly. "I could sense the domain's edge, but not see you within it."

  This was valuable information. My domain didn't just protect me from physical threats—it absolutely rendered me effectively invisible to beings that relied on magical perception. A significant advantage in a world filled with predatory magical creatures.

  "What about the kitten?" I asked, gesturing to Stormy who was watching us from atop my soil mound. I was looping the discussion a bit to see if I could catch the Sirin in a lie.

  The Sirin's gaze shifted to Stormy. "The cat? I can see it very clearly. Its soul is normal—bright, curious, alive."

  “Is she magical?”

  “I don't think so,” she replied. “A perfectly mundane pet… A runaway from Svalbard. It smelled like this place when I caught it in the forest.”

  "She went right into my domain after I freed her from your tree.”

  "Mundane creatures don't see via the Astral," she explained once again. "Your domain doesn't affect them the same way. Any mundane human or beast can invade a young witch’s domain without issues.”

  I processed this information, adding it to my growing understanding of this world's magical mechanics.

  “You mentioned a swamp-witch Master that the Jotuns serve. Who is that?"

  “I will not speak of the Master of Chernobog,” the Sirin said with a shudder. “The Gygr will know if her name is uttered and will send the Jotuns here to collect me.”

  “You called me a ‘Parasite’ in your song. What was that about?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Everyone perceives different lyrics when they hear me sing. If you think of yourself as such, then you are such. I simply project a general idea with my voice into the Astral and resonance magic handles the rest.”

  “How do witches level up?”

  “What’s level up?”

  “Do you see a magical chart with numbers tabulating your powers?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I frowned. Was numeric skill tabulation a thing I’ve created for myself in my head while simply trying to understand the nature of magic?

  “How do witches get stronger?”

  “Same as Sirins,” the Sirin replied. “The roots of their domain very gradually suck magic out of the dead things nearby and then push said magic into and through their souls.”

  “And you know this because…?”

  “Because I was a witch long, long ago,” she sighed. “Until a beautiful Sirin freed me from my prison. Her name was Lisabella and she was my… everything.”

  Sirins have names? I thought. “What’s your name?” My mouth asked.

  Why did I do that? I was getting far too casual with her.

  “Vesna,” she answered.

  ‘Spring in old Nordstaii’ some distant memory belonging to the original Ioan clicked.

  “A rather cheerful name for a creature of the night,” I said.

  “I was a ginger-haired, freckled, blue-eyed girl once,” she huffed. “I lived here in the great port of Svalbard, before the glaciers came.”

  “You didn’t get recruited through dragonfire into witchcraft?”

  “No. The world was very different then,” she sighed. “I was born with talent and made a wish upon River Glinka to expand my powers. Glinka bound me to one of her islands. It was a terrible mistake of a clueless girl, dooming her to a long life of loneliness… A prison of my own making."

  "How long ago was this?" I asked.

  "I didn’t bother counting the winters," she replied. "This place was green and beautiful then, not this frozen wasteland. Before the ice swallowed everything. I remember it all much clearer now that you’ve peeled centuries of life off me with steel and fire.”

  Her glowing eyes filled with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she uttered. “Had I known that you were a clever man-witch… a…”

  “A warlock.” I offered.

  “A warlock,” she repeated, chewing on the word. “I would not have attempted to free you. You’re a terrible anomaly, the result of the rules of magic fraying at the edges, the sign of the approaching end of everything.”

  “Uh-huh,” I arched an eyebrow. “And the whole… ‘I curse you, dark ones eat him, let no crevice be his shrine’ song?”

  “I was angry and scared. I didn’t know what you were!” she said. “It was just a song. It probably wouldn’t have reached anyone anyway. There are no Sirins left in the North. Also, it wasn’t exactly me. Time changes… people. Eternal life isn’t always a blessing… It is a curse. It changes you, day by day, century by century. I’ve been alone for so long, since Lisabella was taken by the fold-flesh beasts, watching over her thousand-year-old Oak tree… trying to get back the companionship that I lost… but it’s all gone now… all gone forevermore.”

  More tears ran down across her face. She wrapped herself with her hands and then her dark wings and fell silent, quietly sobbing.

  It was hard to determine if her tears were genuine or simply another attempt at manipulation. I'd seen her switch from murderous to pitiful awfully fast.

  Still, there was something about the raw pain in her voice that gave me pause. If what she said was true, she had been alone for centuries, possibly millennia, until she devolved from a human witch into a predatory creature.

  "So you were a witch, like me?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

  She peeked out from her wing-cocoon, tears glistening on her strange, bird-like face. "Not like you. Normal. Earth-bound to one place.”

  “I was… technically bound to a place until I obtained a shovel,” I said.

  “You… what?” Vesna sputtered.

  “I dug up my domain,” I said.

  The Sirin choked at that, somewhere between a bewildered gasp and a laugh.

  “A pity I could not do that for my domain was a rocky island,” she let out.

  I moved the sled with my earth pile closer to the hole, but not too close to put her into a sensory deprivation state and stretched across it. Stormy immediately moved onto my stomach, purring softly. "Tell me about this world. Where are we exactly?"

  “Why?” She asked. “Are you not a son of the Nordstaii? How can you not know where you are?”

  “I might have given my memories up to River Glinka for magic powers,” I said, petting Stormy.

  “Figures,” she let out. “This is what remains of Svalbard. Once a great, thriving metropolis, the jewel of the North. Now a frozen ruin at the edge of the dying world. Beyond the hills to the North is the Great Ice wall, advancing decade by decade. To the south, the Wild Forest, riddled with White Blight. To the north-west, Chernobog's domain grows, the swamp where fold-flesh thrives. To North-East, the Shalish Wood, domain of Yaga Grandhilda.”

  I absorbed this information, mentally mapping the geography. "You mentioned children of the Wormwood Star. Who are they?"

  Vesna hissed softly. "Intruders. Mage-flesh. Twisted souls hollowed from within that walk on two legs, wielding horrid Star-shard magic that burns the land. A blight of a different sort. They sometimes come from the South upriver in search of flesh.”

  “Flesh?”

  “To collect,” Vesna said. “They hunt the Nordstaii men from white horseless chariots that sing with thunder."

  "Humans with technology," I translated. The crow-marked tools I'd found suddenly made more sense.

  "Magitek tools. They worship the fallen star," she continued. "Say it whispers secrets of the universe to them. Their crows carve its symbol on everything they build."

  "A crow's head inside a circle with a star?" I asked, recalling the logo on the modern tools.

  "You've seen their mark?"

  I nodded. "Found some tools with it. Tell me about the Yaga who transformed me."

  "Grandhilda," she spat the name. "A trickster and schemer. Bound to her grove. She's ancient, even by my standards, and meddlesome. Always sending heroes on quests, creating witches to tend her borders."

  "Could she have caused the dragon attack?"

  “No,” Vesna hesitated. "But she knew it was coming, just as I did. Yaga always knows. She used it to her advantage, to create you. She is not to be trusted.”

  "Right. So, these Jotuns," I asked, "how dangerous are they?"

  “Incredibly so. Even at my strongest I had no way to stop a Jotun,” Vesna said. “Delay… confuse, fly away, but not put down permanently.”

  “How did they not find your giant corpse-filled oak?”

  “It was unplottable,” she sighed.

  “Then how did I find it by simply following your blood trail?”

  “You just said so–you followed my blood,” she said. “Spilling the blood of a witch or a Sirin disrupts the unplottability of their domain.”

  “Good to know,” I said, listening to the distant howls.

  “The fold-beasts will capture me with ease,” she let out.

  “Not if I hide you in my domain,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to have to deal with being blind and deaf for the night,” I said.

  “I… ugh, fine,” she let out. “It is incredibly unnerving, but compared to what awaits me after Jotunification… Give me a moment. I will put myself into a sleep-trance state so as not to go insane from the Astral-sense-deprivation.”

  “How long are you planning to stay in a trance?” I asked.

  “A week or two… perhaps,” she replied. “I am very badly hurt and need to recover from dragonfire decay.”

  “And if I want something from you earlier?”

  “Bring me a slain magical beast to eat.”

  She began humming very softly. I waited, listening to her music. It no longer pulled at my head, nor commanded me, seemingly targeted inward. Then she curled in on herself, forming a dark feathery ball and fell silent, eyes closed.

  I pushed Stormy off me and grabbed the trunk with the witch-blessed earth and pulled it towards the cold well. The Sirin’s wings twitched slightly as my domain radiance engulfed her.

  I pulled the iron well cover closed and put the trunk atop it. With it there, the Sirin would hopefully not be able to escape nor bother me.

  I listened to the forest, settling back on my sled. The Jotun howls grew distant. Stormy returned to my chest.

  “You’ll wake me up if she tries anything, yeah?” I yawned.

  “Brrrr,” the kitten affirmed and closed her eyes, radar-dish ears moving left and right.

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