"And you trust him?"
"I trust that he keeps his word," he says it the way you'd say the sun rises. "Fae are bound by their oaths. He owes me a blood debt. He'll pay it."
The descent into the valley takes another hour of treacherous paths. When we finally reach level ground, Hrolf raises his hand to halt us.
"Don't be alarmed by what I'm about to tell you," he says. Something in his tone makes everyone freeze.
"What now, dwarf?" Aelfric demands.
"The reason the healer seeks seclusion during wartime isn't just for peace and quiet." Hrolf takes a breath. "It's also because he's one of Eirik Bloodhound's Masters of the Hunt. A Herald of the Wild Hunt itself."
Garrett draws a measured breath. "You brought us to one of Eirik's commanders? One of the fae who burned Aelfheim?"
The silence that follows does not break.
Aelfric turns on Hrolf. His sword is out before anyone can blink. "This is a trap. You've led us to our deaths—"
"He owes me," the dwarf interrupts calmly, not flinching from the blade pointed at his throat. "Fae honor demands he pays it."
"And if he decides his loyalty to Eirik matters more?" Aelfric presses the sword closer.
"He won't. I know him," Hrolf says simply. "He's not an oatbreaker."
Aelfric studies Hrolf for a long moment, blade still at his throat. The forest holds its breath.
Then, slowly, he lowers the sword. Steel whispers as he slides it back into its sheath.
“My caution stands,” Aelfric says at last, voice hard but measured. “Show us the way.”
Hrolf gives a short nod, as though this was always the expected outcome. He steps past us toward the lip of the hollow, boots crunching over brittle leaves.
We standon the edge of a bowl of land scooped out of the forest itself. The trees bend away from it like they're afraid to grow too close.
"We're close," Hrolf announces.
"How can you tell?" I ask, seeing nothing but empty land ahead.
Hrolf kneels beside the crumbling ledge of the ravine. He pulls aside a patch of creeping fern and presses his palm into the stone beneath. His lips move to read an incantation.
"What is hidden, now be seen. Break the veil that lies between." The stone beneath his palm grows warm.
For a breath, nothing happens. Then the rock beneath his hand ripples. What lay before us peels back without sound as the world shifts. The illusion drops like a curtain falling and the valley shows its true face.
Nestled in the bones of the ravine below us lies a small cottage.
A wyvern crouches next to it. The creature is enormous, easily ten times the size of Coral with emerald scales overlapped like polished shields. Its wings are folded against its sides, the membranes scarred and veined.
"Calm down," the fae murmurs, his voice low.
He stands beside the emerald-scaled beast, lean and battle-worn. Bandages wrap his torso beneath torn linen, darkened where blood has seeped through. His remaining armor clads his lower half—blackened greaves and plated fauld etched with faint golden lines. The rest of his armor lies discarded in the grass nearby, dented and scored from recent combat.
His hand rests on the wyvern's flank, examining the creature's healing wound. Iron filigree wraps the vambraces in intricate patterns—thorned vines wrought in metal. Even marred by battle, the emblem stitched across the breastplate fragment is clear. A black rose in full bloom, petals edged like blades.
The Black Rose Regalia.
The mark of the Wild Hunt.
Eirik Bloodhound's war-band.
