1
RIVER
The Emerald Mist Mountains live up to their name—green, thick with moss and fog so dense it clings to your skin like spider silk. My boots sink half an inch into wet loam with every step, and every breath tastes like mildew and rot and distant lightning. The mountains don’t want us here. I can feel it in my teeth.
We’re ten strong, a lean line of Rangers fanned out along the deer trail, though only five of us are really worth a damn. The others are green—new meat, twitchy fingers, wide eyes that flash too often to the trees. Me? I watch the ground. Watch the sky. Count the seconds between the snap of twigs. I don’t need to look for danger. I can feel it.
“Bet it’s just an old goat,” someone ahead says. Garth, I think. Too loud. Too loose. His voice bounces off wet rock. “This monster people keep yappin’ about? Probably a moss-covered donkey with a limp.”
“Or your mom,” Bex mutters, and someone snorts. Even I crack a smile, just a twitch.
“They say it eats people whole,” Lenny adds, lagging behind me with his rifle slung lazy over one shoulder. “Leaves just the boots. And if the boots’re nice, it keeps those too.”
“Try me,” I snap, not looking back. “See how well your balls bounce off the side of this mountain.”
Silence. Then more laughter. Nervous this time.
I keep walking.
We’re heading north of Kyrdonis, through this cursed ridge, scouting a supply path that won’t get blown to hell or blocked by elf patrols. The Emerald Mist eats armies. The terrain shifts. Maps lie. I’ve heard stories of whole platoons swallowed by landslides, or by something worse—things that move beneath the earth.
I don’t deal in stories. I deal in dirt, in angles, in shadows that move wrong. My name’s River Majors, and I don’t believe in monsters.
But I do believe in the way this place watches me.
A branch snaps underfoot. The fog rolls a little thinner, and I catch a glimpse of something massive—just an impression in the muck. A footprint, maybe. Bigger than a cartwheel. Three toes, clawed. Sunk deep.
I crouch, brush it with my glove. Still fresh. Still damp.
“Hold,” I whisper. My voice doesn’t carry far in the fog, but it doesn’t need to. Bex hears. She repeats the command. The line freezes. Weapons raise. The fog curls tighter.
Someone breathes too loud. Lenny again.
“River?” Bex steps up beside me. She’s lean, sharp-eyed, always ready. The only one here besides me who’s seen what happens when things go wrong. “That what I think it is?”
“Too big for a bear. Too clean for an ogre.” I run my fingers along the edge of the print. “Whatever it is, it passed through here within the hour.”
“Shit.”
“No talking,” I hiss. We move on, slower now, tighter. No more jokes.
The forest presses in, all dripping ferns and bent pines, branches clawing at our clothes like fingers. Every sound feels too close. Every shadow twitches.
It takes me back. Not the good kind of back.
I was fifteen when Rizzo found me. Auction block. Chained. My wrists still ache in the cold. He shot the bastard who bought me through the chest, gave me a gun, and said, “Shoot or die, kid.” I shot. I didn’t stop shooting for six hours. When it was over, I was covered in blood that wasn’t mine, and Rizzo said, “You’re one of us now.”
I wasn’t. Not really. But I stuck around. Learned to disappear, to shoot straight, to make bullets sing. I learned to be useful. No one wants to fuck what they’re afraid of.
Still, some of them try.
“Hey, River,” Lenny mutters, sidling up close. “Once we make camp, maybe you and me?—”
I stop. Turn. He nearly trips over his own feet.
“If you ever finish that sentence,” I say, voice flat, “I’ll make sure your next words come out the back of your skull.”
He goes pale. Bex doesn’t bother to hide her grin.
