Good.
Let them send more.
We’ll kill them all. And they’ll stay dead.
We makecamp as darkness falls.
The terrain has shifted again—less ice, more exposed earth. Gray ground that’s starting to remember color. The freeze is losing its grip on this territory.
So are the gods.
I position myself against a rocky outcropping, pulling my cloak tighter against the evening chill. The temperature has dropped again—the wild fluctuations of this unstable zone following no pattern I can predict.
Kaster builds a fire. Small. Controlled. Enough heat to take the edge off the cold without announcing our position to every monster within miles.
The flames dance. Shadows shift.
I watch him through the firelight. The way he moves. The economy of every action. The certainty that seems built into his bones.
“You’re staring.”
His voice carries amusement I didn’t expect.
“I’m observing. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
I don’t answer. Don’t trust myself to explain what I was actually seeing.
He lowers himself across the fire from me. Near enough that his heat adds to the flames. Near enough that I see the wounds on his torso beginning to close—dragon healing doing what medicine never could.
“The dreams,” he says after a long silence. “You said they’re showing you an ending you don’t understand.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to understand it?”
The question catches me off guard. I turn it over, examining its edges.
Do I want to know what the pressure is pushing me toward? Do I want to see clearly the point of convergence that the dreams keep obscuring?
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Part of me wants clarity. The rest...”
“The rest?”
“The rest suspects that understanding will require action. And action will change things that can’t be unchanged.”
He absorbs this without comment. The fire crackles between us.
“Whatever the dreams are showing you,” he says finally, “whatever ending they’re pointing toward—I will be here.”
The words are simple. Unadorned. No promises of protection or declarations of devotion.
And yet.
They mean more than flowery speeches ever could.
NINETEEN
