The shadow does not have a memory of its own. It remembers only where the light used to be.

— Excerpt from Anguish of the Heart, First Book of the Revelations from the Lost Soul

The suffocating thickness of damp rot and the hostile darkness looming in the ancient tree canopies consumed Qianna with such oppressive malice, it stung. The winter she used to cloak her mind held back a blizzard of roaring panic with each step closer to Azdam. It was a cage. Her cage. A cage she built for herself. If genuine terror cracked the ice, the flush of vibrant evergreen would betray her fear rather than hide it. She pushed herself deeper into her inner snowstorm.

I am the rust. 

The dark excuse settled into her bones. She was a tool for survival. Nothing more. Tools do not feel; they work until they break.

Suddenly, the pines broke. Where the woods gave way, the greedy mouths of Lorath mud finally ceased tugging at Qianna’s boots and spat them onto a sheer stone ridge. The fog rolled over the root-choked cliff, dimming the treeline beyond to a massive, pale drifting silhouette. Below, the staging camp at Azdam’s hidden mouth bled across the lagoon’s shoreline like a festering scar. The patrol they encountered earlier had gone down there to bring word. At least a dozen anemic orange fires struggled against the cool, saturating fog. There was no warmth there, merely flickering shadows painting the wet rock and clustered Stornir in shades of rust and ash.

Ahead of her, the two Elowyn Sisters staggered forward, rough gut-rope biting their wrists raw, stained dark by red tears of the weeping meat beneath. They wore mottled leathers on the outside, but they possessed no winter of their own. Their pale eyes burned in masks of violent indigo. What else could she be to them? To the Elowyn, Qianna was merely the decaying leavings of a sickened forest. Every time one of the Sisters stumbled or glanced back, the hatred Qianna absorbed from them reminded her of the black vein Loryssa had shown her. They might have a thick black vein of their own–if they knew how to find it. And they might need to, even if young shandaryn hoped not. They must feel the escalating bloodlust of the marching Nottsver in nauseating waves of bitter iron, just as Qianna could.

Ahead, two of the surviving Nottsver zealots led their small band in a single-file line, with the third survivor, Habogi, taking the rear. A heavy yank dragged the two Elowyn to the stone's edge. The first Sister turned, locking eyes with Qianna. The captive’s dark mask deepened in the weak firelight—fueled by pure hatred. Her jaw worked uselessly against the filthy rags stuffed in her mouth, the leather strap creaking as she tried to spit. The sound of the straining leather came for Qianna through her own mental bulwark, dragging her back into a dark memory.

In the lightless depths of the woods the night before, the Sisters had found their voices. But not their words. They began making piercing bird calls to the unseen. Violent threats had become reality, but had not dismayed them. Their defiant sounds sliced the heavy mist, inviting the axes. The fever of bloodlust eventually took hold within the reavers. Qianna had felt it before. The Stornir were seconds from butchering the mocking meat.

Qianna had moved first, sensing their intent an instant before. Bearing an axe with a blade made jagged by countless notches, one of the lead Nottsver turned on the Elowyn. Without warning, Qianna drove her shoulder into the first Sister’s chest, slamming her into the sticky mud. The back end of the axe meant for the Sister passed just over Qianna’s head.

“Stop!” Qianna yelled impotently, and to her astonishment, they did. She tore a filthy linen strip from her cloak, forcing her fingers into the Elowyn’s mouth and violently shoving the cloth past her teeth until the calls choked into wet gasps. The reavers stepped in to pin the second Sister's frantic thrashing. The Stornir watched the young shandaryn with a predatory, religious awe—zealots witnessing a holy acolyte deliver a dark sacrament. The Sisters saw a traitorous, broken thing performing the monsters' work.

The moist breeze curling up the cliffside shattered the agonizing memory. Staring back into the captive’s hateful flush, an ache settled in the hollow beneath Qianna's ribs. She offered no defense. The captives were entirely incapable of understanding that the suffocating gag was a gift of her kindness and the sole physical barrier preventing iron axes from splitting their throats. Qianna knew she was a cage, just keeping the meat breathing. To them, she was a bitter frost helping to unmake the world. The rust.

They approached the narrow path leading to the beach.

A branch snapped—a cracking bone in the stifling dampness. Habogi froze, his massive frame seizing. His tattoos, inked through a process similar to what had slain the Nottsver Vanguard during the kidnapping, made a web of runes visible only because they reflected none of the dim light. As he stared behind them into the impenetrable fog, a low, wet snarl bled through the timber, rumbling through the roots and up the soles of Qianna's boots. 

These butchers of the northern ice, clad in flayed skins and hauling heavy iron axes, were instantly reduced to trembling meat. The fearless devotees of Storn the Devourer who had spent the journey whispering of a massive, starving ghost now simply stared into the dark, watching their twisting nightmare finally materialize. 

The Stornir raised their axes with ragged gasps. The Lorath woods were finally closing their maw.

The silence held its breath. The reavers stood paralyzed, waiting for the massive ghost to break the fog.

Instead, the sound of heavy boots grinding against the wet stone shattered the standoff. The thick reek of dirty fur and old blood rolled over the ridge on the damp breeze, freezing the group in a sudden and violent tension.

A towering mass of matted white fur and dense muscle breached the narrow trail from the camp below. Iskar never simply stood; he consumed the space. His footing on the wet stone crushed fragile moss into dark smears. Several more in Iskar’s entourage took a position at his flank. With them came the overpowering stench of old blood, wet dog, and spoiling meat in a thick wave, entirely displacing the sharp scent of the woods. The sight of him scratched at her mental bulwark. Iskar could be a blunt and dangerously unpredictable force. He did not frighten in a conventional sense. But Iskar presaged the return to the one holding her leash–and his.  The air turned immediately dry, and a hot spike of panic pierced under her ribs. 

He gripped the heavy iron hafts of his twin axes, his knuckles stretched pale and bloodless. His chest heaved as a muscle twitched rapidly beneath his scarred jaw. Paranoia bled from him—a frantic, pressurized violence waiting for a single spark to ignite.

The Stornir reavers instantly fell back. These terrifying zealots, who had marched through the trackless forest in the dark, now lowered their heads at the sight of their Storm King.

He ignored the bound captives and looked directly at Qianna.

“What happened to the rest of you?” Iskar rumbled in the voice of a looming thunderstorm.

"The Vanguard is ice, Storm King," Habogi rasped, his voice trembling with a feral, deeply misplaced reverence. Keeping his eyes lowered, he dropped heavily to one knee on the exposed rock. "The little bird brought the dark. She crushed the black petals directly into the torn meat of the dead Warden. She thickened the blood into a holy sacrament. The Vanguard drank from the iron, and the Crone took his heat. He ascended to the long winter. She is a holy vessel, King. She walked the screaming dark and brought us the meat." 

Iskar did not look at Habogi. He kept his flat, furious eyes locked on Qianna. He scoffed. The sound was a wet, ugly tear in the freezing air.

"A holy vessel," Iskar repeated. The words dripped with a heavy, pitch-black mockery. He stepped closer, the iron of his axes catching the weak light. "The bone-man's little bird is playing in the deep woods. We will see what the master says when his pet brings back frozen husks instead of beating hearts.

“Take these sacks of blood and bone to the Darkcaller,” Iskar commanded in the guttural, grinding cadence of the Stornir dialect of the Nord tongue. He pointed at the pair of Elowyn women with two fingers. The words offered no quarter; they were a violent bark meant to move meat.

The descent into the muddy crater of Azdam began. Iskar did not take the lead. He marched directly behind Qianna, a threat possessing a physical weight. The cold, flat iron of his axe head occasionally struck her shoulder as she navigated the treacherous, slick stone—painfully reinforcing her exact place in the world. She was not a holy acolyte returning from the dark; she was a rogue tool operating outside its intent being dragged back to its master for inspection. 

Reaching the valley floor, the starving flames of the camp offered no heat to the procession as they moved through circling Nottsver. The sandy mud held the refuse of an army eating itself—cracked bones, rotting offal, and the sour stench of unwashed bodies pressing together. The Nottbrir parted, their wide eyes tracking the bound Elowyn and the girl shepherding them from behind.

The interlocking limbs of the Lorath canopy vanished, replaced by something heavier. The subterranean entrance to Azdam yawned in the sheer rock face ahead—a jagged throat carved through the roots that once hid the lost ruins.

Past the threshold, the temperature plummeted. The cloying mist of the forest died instantly, replaced by a dry chill. The air held the taste of old dirt, crushed stone, and absolute silence. 

Vorik was home.

The cacophonous echoes of two dozen boots flooded the passageways, swallowing the procession whole. Their path led deeper into the broken halls, where the flickering torchlight faded in the growing glacial light cast from a band of carved stone at the base of the walls, creating the visual sensation of passing through an ice cave.The sheer, carved face of the old tunnels closed around them, a crushing jaw moving them farther from the soggy Lorath woods above. The descent illuminated the stark stark the contrast between the two environments. From the chaotic, shifting threat of the woods above to glacial march into a frozen tomb. The winter inside her mind grew dangerously thin.

Iskar maintained his position directly behind her. His footfalls came in rhythmic scapes that sounded too much like a whetstone across a blade. His voiceless, ragged breathing like a starving predator quietly watching for a moment of weakness. He knew exactly what she had done in the mud. He knew she had the capacity to stop a heart. Every heavy exhalation against her neck was a promise of violence pushing her forward. 

Ahead, the two Elowyn captives staggered impotently.

The captives radiated a terror that struck Qianna in waves. The ache of their fear pressed on her sternum. The rushing fever in her veins sputtered to life as suddenly as dry wood catches a spark. The heat surged upward, painting her face with the evergreen betrayal of her own fright. She hung her head to hide her vulnerability from Iskar. She ground her teeth hard until a sharp pain shot through her jaw. Endure, Loryssa had told her. She seized the fading winter inside and smothered the heat threatening to rise into a roar. The cold scraped her mind hollow. Her chest tightened, forcing her breathing into shallow gasps, caging the frantic rhythm of her heart.

I am the rust, she repeated. Except, rust does not feel. Rust is not afraid. This is the cry of a child. You must Endure, young one. Endure, until you understand–you Accept–that pain can never exist separate from life.

The gruelling march slowed, unexpectedly throwing Qianna forward. She slammed directly into the spine of the Sister in front of her. Their column had become a single line in the narrowed corridor, briefly trapping Qianna and the Sister in a stagnant pocket together. The proximity stole her breath.

The Elowyn wrenched her neck in a violent thrashing against the crude gag. Saliva and blood soaked the filthy linen strip black. Her effort caused the wet cloth to slip sideways against the leather strap. Her face took on the sickly aqua pallor of a drowning victim returned to life. 

She gave Qianna a hateful stare that nearly breached her icy cloak.

"Floridyn li palyn cariel?" the Sister hissed in words wet and mangled by the slipping cloth.

Qianna recognized the rhythm of Eleysian Elowyn, but the vowels sounded flat and the consonants swallowed in the back of the throat. Cariel. Something about a bird. And something young. A young bird? Or... a little bird? Has the little bird come?

The captive was trying to understand what monster had gagged her in the dark. 

Qianna offered nothing. She locked her jaw and hid behind a frozen winter mask.

The captive Elowyn leaned closer, her breath hot against Qianna's cheek. She unleashed a rapid string of wet, muffled syllables. This time, the flow of words came as a labyrinth of garbled vowels, but she recognized the roots. Blood. The sacred paths. And a phrase that stood out in any Elowyn dialect: The Silver Wolf.

Was this just a desperate, bleeding prophecy? The Elowyn woman wielded the myth of the ghost wolf to hold back the dark, promising a horrific slaughter to spill the black blood and cleanse the old stoneways. The venomous rancor aimed toward Qianna confirmed her inclusion in the Sister’s words.

The pitch-black irony of the situation fed the heavy cynicism settling in Qianna's throat. She stared into the terrified, weeping eyes of the bound woman. She knew what waited for them at the end of these blind, geometric halls. There would be no grand cleansing. A thousand iterations of the Silver Wolf existed across the territories, and they all amounted to the same pathetic delusion. There was only Vorik, his hollow needles, and the terrifying certainty of his sadism. Given the chance, Qianna would eagerly watch the ghost wolf tear his throat out, too.

"The silver wolf will set us free," Qianna whispered in the Elowyn tongue.

The reaction was instantaneous. The Sister jerked her head forward. A warm, heavy glob of bloody saliva struck Qianna directly on the cheekbone.

The spit dripped slowly down her cheek, warm in the frigid air. She smelled blood and dirt–two things Qianna knew too well. She did not try to wipe it from her stone face. Nor did she flinch. She let the bloody saliva stiffen into another layer of rust on her skin.

Behind them, Iskar grunted and shoved Qianna with the haft of his heavy iron axe at the base of her spine, ending her momentary standoff with the Sister. She lurched forward, deeper into the suffocating dark. Finally, the narrowing corridor cracked open, spilling the procession into a huge, sunken cavern. The sudden silence became a crushing void that stripped the moisture directly from their lungs, swallowing the din of the Stornir whole.

At the center of the room filled with the gloom of glacial light stood Vorik. He leaned heavily against a pale, bone-white staff, a towering skeletal figure wrapped in skin and covered by heavy white furs. The air around him never simply felt cold; it actively devoured the warmth of the room. Her skin grew tight where the wet gift left by the Elowyn captive stiffened into sharp flakes, like rust.

The sheer, unyielding presence of the Shadowmancer shattered the stifling discipline holding the Stornir together.

Iskar shoved Qianna forward unceremoniously, sending her stumbling toward the Darkcaller. The Storm King stepped forward with her, keeping the iron of his axe pressed aggressively against her spine.

"Your little bitch left my Vanguard frozen in the cursed mud!" Iskar roared. The guttural Nord words echoed through the room, thick with boiling paranoia. "The woods scream. A white wolf is said to hunt our perimeter. Bleed these wolf pups now, bone-man. I want to paint the snow crimson in our hunt for Nottirbar!"

The roaring heat of the Storm King’s rage passed impotently by the old man, as if absorbed by the puckered, empty crater of his missing eye. The Nightcaller’s single, pale blue eye—a weeping hole in the world—shifted slowly from the towering brute to Qianna. The scent of old dust filled her senses, as if she suddenly stood in an ancient crypt.

"The girl is a tool, Iskar," Vorik said, cutting effortlessly through Iskar’s lingering echo in a voice that remained flat and deadly calm. "A necessary instrument. She survived the woods because she understands the bounds of her enclosure. You will not touch her."

Iskar’s jaw quaked. The massive cords of muscle in his neck tightened. The tension of his simmering rage struck Qianna with the heat of a geyser. The twitching of his heavy knuckles betrayed his violent urge to swing his axe in response. But the oppressive, endless winter of the pale man held the dark brute. Iskar was a volcanic fissure; Vorik was the glacial plain waiting to bury him.

Vorik turned his attention away from Qianna and the seething warlord to look down at the shivering, weeping Elowyn Sisters forced to their knees in the dirt. The mask around their terrified eyes filled him with a frozen hunger Qianna felt in her gut. He tapped the tarnished silver ferrule of his staff against the stone. A dead, rhythmic thump.

"Bring the canvas to the light," he whispered in a dry voice that cracked like the sound of old parchment tearing. Vorik gestured to a space he had claimed in the cavern. He unspooled a long roll of blackened leather, revealing an array of slender, wicked instruments carved from pale bone and dark iron. The Nottsver obliged the Darkcaller, forcing the injured one onto a stone slab near a motley array of improvised alchemical equipment.

"Hold the ink, little bird," Vorik commanded, not looking at Qianna.

She took a small, shallow clay bowl from the space of his makeshift laboratory. The fluid inside was a swirling liquid void that refused to reflect any ambient light. The smell was horrific—the sharp odor of wrought iron mixed with the sour stench of a freezing carcass. The ancient crypt smell, once again.

Vorik used ash to draw marks across the Elowyn’s skin while she thrashed and pushed a muffled scream over the leather strap tied across her mouth. The other Sister retreated inward in search of her own winter, replacing her visceral terror with a vacant, hollow gaze.

Vorik turned to Qianna with a calculated grace. He withdrew a thick, hollow iron needle attached to a small, compressed bladder from his leather roll and held it out to her. Rather than simply extract the blood himself, he intended for her to perform the act. The giant Nottsver, the weeping Elowyn, even Qianna herself, moved like marionettes to a precise choreography-–staged by the conductor himself. He makes us all dance to his tune.

"She must be made ready for the Crone’s Blood," Vorik said in a voice reserved for speaking to a pupil. Qianna froze, entirely unable to make herself reach for the iron. She stared at the hollow needle. What were her options? She had three Nottsver zealots in the room who might kill for her, but they would never survive Iskar, let alone the soulless void of the Darkcaller. 

"The shadow requires absolute obedience," Vorik pressed quietly. The words slowly drowned the tiny resistance building inside her. He was forcing her to build the cage. "The hook must be placed. Do it, little bird. Do it now."

He always yanked the leash. She set her jaw and took the needle. Qianna knelt beside the fellow shandaryn without pomp. She did not chant. She did not wave her hands in grand, sweeping arcs. The freezing numbness in her mind muted the terror screaming within.

She pressed the thick iron needle into the flesh, carving the first jagged rune and squeezing the black fluid directly into the open wound. 

The ink hit the living tissue and began to smoke. A terrifying, hissing sound filled the air, like water thrown onto a red-hot iron skillet. The edges of the wound blackened immediately, the healthy meat flash-freezing into dead, rotting necrotic tissue.

Instantly, the Sister contorted on the stone slab, her mouth open in a silent, agonizing scream. The icy rot would spread through her body, burning all natural heat from her blood. 

Qianna tightened her throat against a sour, freezing nausea. She kept her eyes locked on the clay bowl, shutting out the cold, betrayed look of the second Sister, still bound and pressed to her knees in front of the Nottsver. 

Winter buried her panic beneath thick frost, reducing the horrific butchery to nothing more than a deliberate process, making precision lines in flesh, following the ash marks of her instructor. The screaming was just shifting air. The smoking meat was just the foul alchemy of Vorik’s insidious rot. It was the only way to endure the horror of her own complicity.

As the first rune flash-froze, Vorik nodded in objective assessment. Qianna set the iron needle aside and took a single, hooked iron instrument from his leather roll to begin the real carnage.

Standing at the side of the elevated slab, she began slicing intricate, geometric lines into the flesh, pulling the skin apart with the hook to press the slow-roiling shadow deep into the muscle. The prone Sister thrashed, a muffled, wet gasp tearing from her throat in response to the deep iron cuts. The Stornir warriors leaned their heavy weight onto her limbs, destroying her once flawless, martial grace with their sheer, unrefined bulk.

Qianna carved for an hour. The Elowyn’s upper back had become a tapestry of smoking, blackened ruins. As she cut ravines into the flesh, the whole of the markings grew clear, mirroring those on the Nottsver who had committed themselves to Iskar.

When she finally finished the last markings, the shandaryn woman on the stone slab had stopped thrashing. Her breathing had become rapid and shallow. She trembled violently. Her skin was deathly pale, drained of all heat. 

"The tether is carved," Vorik rasped, stepping forward. His dark robes drank the weak light as he looked down at her. "Now, the ink must find the root. The anchor must be set deep within the stem."

A delicately carved bone needle lay in his hand. He held it out to Qianna.

"Do it, little bird. Set the anchor."

The name stung. The horrific realization of his intention crashed through her winter, shattering the mental armor she had painstakingly built. He was not demanding the Sister’s execution. Nor the brutally efficient slitting of her throat. He was demanding she inject the freezing rot directly into the spinal column.

I am the rust, Qianna repeated internally, the dark excuse settling like a heavy stone in her gut. 

She picked up the bone needle. It felt thick in her numb fingertips. The Elowyn woman trembled uncontrollably on the slab, her head hanging loosely over the stone edge exposing the smoking ravines of ruined flesh carved into runes up the back of her neck.

Qianna looked at the hollow bone between her thumb and index finger. The Elowyn weakly rolled her hanging head to the side, turning to face Qianna. She looked into the pained indigo mask darkening the eyes of the Sister. The hatred was gone, replaced by a profound, weeping terror of the inevitable.

She placed her right hand against the woman’s cold, shivering forehead, guiding the head downward to expose the base of the skull. Qianna met no resistance.

Carefully, she pressed the point of the needle directly into the bloodless skin at the base of the Sister’s neck.

Qianna did not close her eyes. She forced herself to witness the cost of her own survival.

She drove the delicate bone needle directly into the space between the vertebrae. As the forbidden ink met the pale, dead skin, it bubbled and hissed, furiously boiling away any remaining warmth. Qianna pressed her thumb against the bladder, forcing the freezing black rot directly into the spinal fluid.

The Sister stiffened with a horrific physical snap. 

She did not scream. Her spine became unyieldingly rigid. The shivering stopped instantly. Her jaw clamped shut with a sound like cracking stone. No heat remained in her body. What had been a protector of Ciermanuinn’s Vales was entirely snuffed out by a terrifying, absolute stillness. 

The reavers slowly released her arms, and the woman remained lying perfectly still, frozen like a statue of frozen meat. 

Slowly, the Sister opened her eyes and tilted her head up to look forward.

The riverine color of her irises had vanished; the whites of her eyes were replaced by an opaque, impenetrable blackness. Two deep, endless voids staring blankly toward her fellow Sister.

Then, she opened her mouth to scream.

What tore forth could barely be considered sound. It was a high, keening screech—a frequency that made the teeth ache and the eardrums throb while remaining physically inaudible. 

Qianna pulled the needle free, her hands slick with tacky, black blood. She staggered backward, her stomach violently rebelling, and dropped the bloody bone needle into the dirt. She vomited sour bile into the mud, dry-heaving as the horrifying reality of what she had just done settled into her bones. 

This was infinitely worse than the butchery of Jodera, resulting in the hunter’s death. The Sister remained entirely conscious inside her flayed corpus. The silent wail drove the Stornir to their knees, their heavy hands desperately clutching their ears, the sound of her soul rebelling against the unmoving prison of its own flesh. She retained awareness while remaining entirely trapped inside a freezing shell she could no longer control. 

The silent, deafening wail ceased as violently as it began.

The Darkcaller raised a single, grey finger.

"Perfect," Vorik breathed, a rare, chilling satisfaction creeping into his dry voice.

"The beacon is lit," Vorik declared to the terrified Stornir warriors. "The White Wolf will follow the screaming meat. And like a pigeon fluttering home, will lead us to their hidden sanctuary."

Qianna dragged herself to her feet. She wiped the remnants of her expulsion from her chin and looked away from the Elowyn Sister she had trapped in a cage of void. She caught the bare, muscular back of a nearby Nottsver guard. The air seized in her throat. Just as she feared, the runes Vorik had carved into his broad shoulders were identical. They were the exact same runes currently bleeding black smoke from the Elowyn’s spine.

Vorik had not just forced Qianna to build a cage for the Elowyn. He had rigged the entire Nottsver vanguard.