When Cain woke, I told him about the visitor in the night.

  His expression hardened immediately.

  “Then we need to deal with it before we return to the village,” Cain said. “I won’t risk something like that stalking Holver.”

  I nodded. I’d been thinking the same thing.

  “So,” I asked, “what’s your plan?”

  Cain began preparing breakfast as he spoke, movements steady and deliberate, as though discussing tactics was as routine as sharpening a blade.

  “We pretend to sleep,” he said. “One person stays on watch, hunched by the fire, looking like they nodded off. The stalker should see that as an opening. When it moves in to strike, we surround it and take it down.”

  Illara’s eyes widened.

  “That’s incredibly dangerous,” she said. “What if it attacks before we can react?”

  Cain glanced at her, calm but attentive.

  “I’m open to other ideas,” he said evenly. “If you have one.”

  Norman cleared his throat.

  “I agree with Cain. From what little we know, it won’t approach if it thinks we’re alert. It hunts patience and weakness.”

  Cain nodded once, then smiled faintly.

  “I’ll be the bait. I trust the rest of you to keep me alive.”

  I raised a hand.

  “What if we add pit traps around the campsite?” I said. “If it tries to flee, it might panic and fall into one. Or, if we’re lucky, trigger one on the way in.”

  Cain considered that, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  “On the way in, probably not,” he said. “It’ll be cautious. But in a panic?” He nodded. “Yes. That could work.” He looked at each of us in turn. “We’ll just need to be careful not to fall into our own traps.”

  Illara still looked unconvinced, worry written plainly across her face. But she didn’t argue further.

  In the absence of a better plan, this was what we had.

  We broke camp and began moving toward the village again, deliberately keeping our pace steady. The idea was simple: if the stalker was following us, forcing it to move would tire it, even if only a little. Any edge, however small, was worth taking.

  The forest stretched on endlessly, each stretch of trees indistinguishable from the last. Snow threatened from a low, grey sky, the cold sinking deep into bone rather than biting sharply. It was the kind of cold that lingered, patient and exhausting.

  By midafternoon we stopped and made camp once more.

  This time, we worked immediately.

  Cain chose the placement carefully, spacing the pits in a loose arc around the campsite, leaving what looked like clear paths between them. Digging in frozen ground was miserable work. Our fingers ached, and the soil resisted every strike of the shovel, but by the time darkness fell we had managed three pits.

  Each was roughly a metre deep, lined at the bottom with sharpened stakes. Not deep enough to trap something forever, but enough to wound, to slow, to turn panic into opportunity.

  As the light faded, we ate what little we had left. Rations were running thin. Tough, tasteless jerky mixed with wild mushrooms we’d gathered earlier. It filled the stomach without comforting it.

  No one complained.

  Because we didn’t know when the creature would strike, we decided to compress the danger into a smaller window. We followed our normal watch rotation for the early part of the night, conserving our focus for the hours when exhaustion would make mistakes most likely.

  As the time approached, the tension became almost physical.

  During my watch with Illara, we barely spoke. She sat stiffly, eyes too wide, scanning the darkness again and again as if expecting it to move on its own. When it was finally time for us to sleep, neither of us truly did. We lay still, eyes closed, bodies tense, hoping for dreams and finding none.

  Eventually, as planned, Norman tapped my shoulder lightly and muttered something about his turn ending as he crawled into his blankets and stilled himself.

  I watched through the corner of my eye as Cain took position near the fire. He slumped forward deliberately, shoulders sagging, head bowed as if sleep had claimed him mid-watch. The firelight flickered across his armour, casting uneven shadows.

  Careful not to move too much, I shifted my focus outward.

  We were positioned behind Cain. If the stalker came, it would come from the darkness beyond the firelight. That was my responsibility.

  Illara’s task was Cain.

  Mine was the dark.

  And as I strained my eyes into the forest, listening to the wind and the creak of trees, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something out there was already watching us.

  Waiting.

  Time stretched until it lost meaning.

  At first I thought I was imagining it, the way exhaustion makes shapes out of shadow. Then I saw it clearly.

  The creature stood in the distance, half-hidden behind a tree. Its long, spear-like arms were planted into the earth, supporting its weight like living stakes. It did not move. It simply watched.

  I forced myself to remain still.

  My eyes were mostly closed now, lashes lowered just enough that I could still see through the slits. I willed my breathing to slow, my body to slacken, to become convincing in its stillness.

  The stalker waited.

  Seconds dragged past. Then minutes. It did not rush. It did not fidget. It observed with the patience of something that had never needed to hurry.

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  At last, it moved.

  Slowly, it detached one arm from the ground, then the other, and began to advance. It slipped between trees with deliberate care, pausing after every few steps. Each time it stopped, it watched again, measuring us, listening for a mistake.

  When it reached the edge of the firelight, its posture changed.

  The spears of its arms extended forward as it walked upright on two legs, no longer creeping but no longer careless either. The fire revealed more of it than I wanted to see. Its skin was a dull, lifeless grey, stretched tight across its frame without folds or softness. Its eyes were black and empty, hollows rather than sockets. Its mouth hung open, lined with rows of sharp, shark-like teeth.

  It was smiling.

  The creature stepped closer, circling us with careful precision. It moved around the three of us who lay “sleeping,” never once brushing against gear or cloth. It chose its path with unnerving intelligence.

  Then it passed beyond my line of sight.

  I could not turn my head. I could not risk it.

  But I knew exactly what it was doing.

  It was going for Cain.

  What unsettled me most was the silence. There were no footfalls. No scrape of soil. No whisper of disturbed snow. It was as if it was not walking at all, as if the ground simply allowed it passage.

  Beside me, Illara tensed.

  I felt it rather than saw it. A subtle tightening of her body. A hitch in her breath. She had seen it now too.

  The air seemed to freeze around us.

  The fire crackled softly, oblivious.

  I realised I had stopped breathing.

  And all I could think was that if we moved too soon, someone would die.

  Then Illara screamed,

  “NOW!”

  We exploded into motion.

  Weapons flashed as we surged to our feet. Cain spun first, barely in time, his blade snapping up to deflect the creature’s initial strike. One of its spear-like arms glanced off his sword with a metallic shriek of force.

  The creature screamed in response, a high, unearthly sound that scraped at my nerves.

  We had it surrounded. Cain to its front, Illara to one side, myself to the other. Behind us, Norman began an incantation, his voice low and urgent.

  My grip was slick with sweat. I waited, heart hammering, searching for an opening.

  The stalker’s head snapped toward Norman.

  Too late to warn him.

  It kicked backward with terrifying strength, slamming both feet into Illara’s chest and launching itself off her like a springboard. She was thrown hard to the ground. Before I could react, two spear-arms were already driving toward me.

  Instinct took over.

  Drisnil surged forward.

  I parried both arms in a blur of steel and dropped beneath the creature’s body, rolling past it as it lunged straight for Norman.

  My stomach twisted.

  Of course Drisnil wouldn’t hesitate. Of course she wouldn’t value another life over momentum. I should have stopped it. I should have trusted my own judgment instead of letting her lead.

  Norman broke off his spell and dove aside.

  He wasn’t fast enough.

  One of the spears punched clean through his shoulder. He screamed as he hit the ground, blood splashing into the snow.

  That snapped me back into myself.

  I turned and ran.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Illara lying still where she’d fallen. Cain was already moving too, closing the distance from the opposite side.

  The stalker tore its arm free from Norman’s shoulder and fled, galloping on its spear-arms with unnatural speed.

  Straight into the trap.

  Both arms plunged into the concealed pit at once. The ground gave way beneath it, and the creature pitched forward with a shriek, its chest impaled on one of the sharpened stakes below.

  It thrashed and screamed, flailing wildly.

  “Finish it!” Cain shouted.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  Rapier forward, short sword ready, I lunged. The stalker lashed out desperately, one spear slashing toward my head. I parried with my short sword and drove my rapier in—

  —but it twisted at the last second.

  The blade punched through its arm instead of anything vital.

  It screamed again.

  Then pain exploded through my leg.

  One of its spears drove straight through my thigh. I howled as it wrenched the limb sideways, tearing the wound wider.

  I forced myself forward instead of back, riding the pain, slamming into its body. I stabbed wildly with my short sword, over and over, breath ragged, vision tunnelling.

  The stalker drove its arm deeper, pinning itself to me, its weight dragging us both down.

  Its screams were deafening.

  Then Cain was there.

  He came in from the front and brought his sword down in a single, decisive arc, severing the creature’s head cleanly.

  The body went limp at once.

  Green blood spilled out across the snow as the stalker collapsed.

  I sagged with it, my leg still impaled, pain pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

  We had killed it.

  But as I looked toward Illara’s unmoving form and heard Norman’s laboured breathing behind me, I couldn’t stop the thought from forming.

  What did this victory cost us?

  Cain ran to Norman first, dropping to his knees to stem the bleeding, leaving me alone with the corpse of the thing we had killed.

  I turned my attention to freeing myself.

  Carefully, I began to pull the creature’s arm from my leg. Every inch it moved sent pain lancing through me, sharp and bright enough to make my vision blur. I bit back a scream and kept pulling, breath coming in short, ragged bursts. When the limb finally slid free, I collapsed forward, barely aware of hitting the ground.

  Blood poured freely from the wound.

  I forced myself to move.

  Drawing on Drisnil’s knowledge, I knew what had to be done. Pack the wound. Stop the bleeding. Survive.

  I tore a strip from my cloak, not sparing a thought for how clean it was. There was no time for that. Magic might save me later, but right now this was all I had. I pushed the cloth into the wound, deep, deeper than felt possible. Pain exploded through my leg, raw and blinding. I clenched my jaw until it hurt, then grabbed a strip of leather and bit down hard as I finished packing it.

  When I wrapped more cloth around my thigh, it darkened almost instantly, blood soaking through and dripping to the ground.

  It would have to be enough.

  Illara.

  The thought cut through the pain like a blade.

  I tried to stand and failed, collapsing with a strangled gasp as my leg gave out beneath me. Gritting my teeth, I began to crawl instead, dragging my useless leg behind me. Every movement sent fresh agony through my body, but I didn’t stop.

  I wouldn’t stop.

  Cain was still working on Norman when I passed them, his hands moving fast and sure while Norman lay on the ground, breath coming in sharp, pained bursts.

  It felt like an eternity before I reached Illara.

  She lay on her back, armour crushed and twisted, eyes closed. Panic surged up my throat. I fumbled at the straps, forcing myself to be careful even as my hands shook. Once the armour was loose, I pressed my ear to her chest.

  A heartbeat.

  Slow. Steady.

  Relief crashed over me so hard I nearly sobbed.

  Her breath misted faintly in the cold air. I checked her head quickly, hands gentle, searching for wounds. There were none. Just unconsciousness. Just the aftermath of impact.

  I sagged forward and draped myself over her, burying my face in her hair. The familiar scent grounded me, dragged me back from the edge.

  “I’m so glad you’re safe,” I whispered, voice breaking despite myself. “I don’t think I could survive without you.”

  In that moment, the pain in my leg faded into irrelevance. It didn’t vanish, but it no longer mattered. Nothing did, except that Illara was alive.

  We had killed the creature.

  We had endured.

  And for now, that was enough.