Rowan releases. “Stars guide you, alpha.”
“They’re as lost as we are.”
He snorts. “Then may the mountains remember.”
He departs. I quench lantern, step outside. Aurora glints faint green across northern rim, omen no elder can read. I shift to wolf fully, fur dark as midnight salt, ember stripes glowing along spine. The pack watches from the glade, a ring of eyes catching faint light. I throw back my head and howl farewell. The answering chorus shivers the trees.
Then I run. Snow sprays behind, paws hitting ground with thunder rhythm. Breath slices cold air. The shard bumps my chest, a wicked heartbeat not mine. In that echo I hear Yarrow’s laugh, high and sweet, and his scream, low and wrong.
Never again.
The oracle waits somewhere beyond ridges, beyond stories. She will explain why shadow spirits carry maps and why cub hearts are coin. If she speaks in riddles, I’ll crack them. If she speaks in lies, the shard’s song will feed on my wrath.
I pick up speed. Wind roars. Moon slides higher, silver blade above the pines. The night is long, but I have longer.
3
CARMILLA
Snow hushes beneath my boots, yet the ridge itself speaks—every slab of stone a warped bell struck by history. I have walked one league since stepping out of the ley gate, and already the world misbehaves. A crow’s call stretches like molten glass, six heartbeats long, then snaps silent. Pine needles drift upward instead of down. Time here is drunk, staggering between moments, and I must dance with it or break.
The locals call this scar Bleed-Through Ridge. To my eyes, it resembles a blade laid sideways between realms, thin enough to split seconds. Three winters ago a rift bomb detonated in a sister valley—Remi and Zale’s handiwork by necessity, though the price was steep. The wound never closed. It seeped into the soil, rising in shimmer waves that fold minutes, hours, entire yesterdays.
My cloak flutters in reverse for a breath, fabric folding around calves instead of streaming behind. I stop, exhale slow, counting. One, two, three heartbeats—then motion realigns. Good. Nothing lethal yet.
Moonlight floods the slope, turning sap-slick boulders to mirrors. In those surfaces I glimpse my reflection: tall, lean, hairflowing silver past shoulders, hood thrown back so starlight can trace the angles of my face. High cheekbones, grave mouth. The crystal lattice creeps above tunic collar, spider-fine lines glinting like frost veins. Beneath them my pulse drums, stubbornly mortal.
I raise the star compass. The dragon-tooth needle spins, caught between misaligned currents, then stabilizes north-northwest. A pulse of warmth travels up my arm—the compass approves. I return it to the pouch, flex fingers. Skin along knuckles tightens; tiny facets glimmer beneath. Not yet, I tell the stone as one would soothe a restless child. Give me time to reach the shrine.
Wind barrels from the chasm below, carrying resin and something sweeter—wolf scent, faint but fresh. Territory line. Kylan’s people. I tighten pack straps, fighting an impulse to divert and warn them of what dreams hide here. I can’t afford detours. Every vision brings the Convergence closer, and every meter of ridge distorts chronology.
Ahead, a section of trail blurs, then jerks forward, as though the mountain hiccups. I picture constellations overhead, memorize their coordinates—Orion’s arrow tip, Dragon’s loop, the twin suns that never appear in this realm yet mark time in mine—and breathe them into a single cadence. Stars, guide the tempo.
My next step lands in a fast pocket; wind rips past with summer gale force though surrounding trees remain still. I lean into it, counting, heart steady. When the gust subsides, I emerge at the far end of the pocket unscathed. Behind me, footprints appear slowly, catching up from the minutes they lost.
“Two minutes gained,” I murmur. If only I could bank them.
A flicker of motion on the peripheral slope draws my gaze. Shadow forms swirl, coalescing into human outlines. For a blink, I see Everest Ashfall—hair black as volcanic glass, glyphblade sparking lightning—and Isabelle, her mouse-brown curls whipping as she weaves water whip sigils. They duel wraiths molded from memory; each specter wears Everest’s father’s face, a cruelty crafted by the ridge.
The scene vibrates translucent, overlaid upon the real pines. They’re not physically here; I spy them across a thin partition of when, a pocket where their fight from years ago replays. The ridge hungers for emotion and borrowers from archives.
“Hold fast,” I whisper, though they cannot hear.
Everest spins, slashing two wraiths in half. Isabelle’s water whip lashes a third, steam rising as ectoplasm dissolves. But the ridge rewinds the kill—wraiths reform behind them, over and over. A loop meant to break resolve.
I grip a crystal shard dangling at my neck. Its facets catch light, refract into a narrow beam cutting sideways through the temporal haze. The beam touches Everest’s phantom shoulder. For an instant, his gaze snaps toward me—eyes wide, startled, as if sensing a change in script. Isabelle follows that look, brow furrowing.
Momentum shifts. The wraiths stutter. The looped scene fractures, glassy shards of time falling apart. Wind pulls the fragments upward, scattering them like leaves. Everest’s phantom lifts two fingers in salute, then vanishes with Isabelle into dissolving memory.
I release breath I didn’t know I held. That future, at least, remains intact. The ridge’s appetite delays me but offers glimpses that remind me why I left my tower—nothing about this battle belongs to a single pair of hands.
The thought invites another presence: Kylan’s. Not in vision—his aura thrums faint through the ley lines, iron and lupine musk, threaded with recent sorrow. Anguish brushes across my senses like coarse wool, accompanied by a vow hammered hard enough to echo miles. A life taken—necessary, butsoul-splintering. I ache for him though we have not yet traded names.
“Soon,” I promise the wind. But the shrine first. Without the record hidden there, no vow can matter.
I lengthen stride. The ridge narrows into a suspension of broken stone slabs bridging opposite cliffs. Under each slab, ropes of shimmering air hold fragments in place like cobweb cables. I tread lightly, feeling each block shift a finger’s breadth. Behind, the path slides backward, erasing itself. This place is a serpent swallowing its own tail.
Halfway across, time hiccups again. Daylight lashes the canyon, full noon glare where dusk reigned seconds ago. My shadow shrinks under me, sharp and short. Heat claws down throat. I smell blooming alpine roses, impossible this late in season.
