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I hop up to him, fighting my boot and shaking my tunic down. “The man is Brennan. The woman is Margarida. The boy is Tobin. They, and others like them, live in the mountains. Not bandits, exactly. More like…people who prefer to live outside society.”

“Outlaws.” Agnar’s expression flattens.

“Not the bad kind!” Though even as I say it, I realize how naive I sound. “They’re nomads who hunt and forage. They’ve been bringing game and herbs to Veradin for years. In exchange, we provide medical care when they need it.”

He narrows his eyes. “You trust them?”

“I trust them not to kill us for sport.” I watch them wade out of the river, water streaming from their clothes and boots. “I’ve never caught them in a lie. They drive hard but fair bargains. And they, more than any others, know what the Wardens do for humanity.”

Brennan reaches us first. He’s a big man, tall and broad through the shoulders, his beard shot through with gray and ragged at the ends. His sharp eyes assess Agnar with the same wariness Agnar considers him with.

“Esme.” He nods once, polite but not friendly. “Trouble finds you even up here.”

My cheeks burn as I smooth my pants over my ankles. “It seems to follow me.” I nod toward my companion. “This is Agnar. He’s…helping me.”

The pause before ‘helping’ is obvious enough that Brennan’s mouth twitches. But like all of his kind, he doesn’t ask probing questions.

One of the many reasons I like working with him.

Margarida pulls up beside Brennan. She’s smaller and leaner, all coiled strength and no wasted motion. Her eyebrows rise as her gaze travels back and forth between Agnar and me. “Helping. Right. Brennan helps me too.”

Tobin hovers behind them, considering Agnar with eyes too serious for someone his age. His left arm hangs loose at his side. The limb seems fully functional now, but I remember how bad it was two years ago.

He was brought to us with a compound fracture that developed an infection in the marrow. The arm was swollen to the shoulder with black lines marking the path of the tainted blood. Veradin was ailing, and I was a last resort. He talked me through the healing process. If my magic had failed, they would have needed to amputate to spare his life.

Thankfully, I somehow managed to heal him and the infection as well. He got better, but Margarida later told me it took weeks for the boy to fully recover. That was the only time I’ve successfully healed a person, though I’ll admit I couldn’t have done it without my mentor guiding me through every step.

Tobin doesn’t say anything, but that’s normal for him. He’s not much of a talker.

Brennan points upstream to the dead creature pinned on Agnar’s stone spikes and currently bleeding into the current. “Basilisk-kin.” His words confirm my brewing thought. “Or something related. I’ve never seen one this large. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it wasn’t attacking you.”

I freeze. “What?” The only reason I didn’t try to stop Agnar from killing it was because I feared for my life. Wardens are allowed to defend themselves, even if I’m not particularly capable. Now, Brennan says I wasn’t actually in danger?

“Don’t get me wrong, it would have killed you. But not on purpose. It was fleeing.” He points to the spot where they’d appeared on the other side of the river. For the first time, I notice a fresh drag path snaking through the trees and grass. “You got in its way, and it wasn’t going to stop after it finished rehydrating itself in the water.”

Ice spreads through my chest. What could possibly frighten a large basilisk-kin that could kill with poison, teeth, and sheer size? Usually only others of their kind and dragons fear them. “What was it running from?”

Margarida shrugs, her face tight. “We don’t know. But all the animals in the area are fleeing.” She lifts her bow to point upstream, toward the deeper forest of the foothills. “Everything. Deer. Wolves. Even the birds, insects, and worms. They’re all moving away from something.”

“Normally, it would be an earthquake or a fire. An elemental attack or the like.” Brennan shakes his head. “But we’ve seen nothing. Only felt these strange cold pockets. Some of our group has disappeared too. Just left with no warning.”

This is exactly the kind of disturbance I should be investigating. My first instinct is to ask which direction, but I need more information before I charge off. “How long has this been happening?”

A silent conversation passes between Brennan and Margarida before she replies. “Three weeks. Maybe four. Sten went missing four days ago. I saw him by chance and called to him. But he stared at me as if he didn’t know me, then he took off without a word.”

“Have you found any tracks? Or seen the creature responsible for the cold spots?” Agnar asks.

“We don’t really see anything when it happens. We just notice odd movement in the air at night. In the morning, there are no tracks at all.” Margarida sags. “The only physical evidence are the fleeing animals and the silence. It’s not natural. Not the normal quiet of a forest at rest. It’s the silence of a place that’s forgotten what sound is.”

My stomach drops.

Their description matches too closely to what we witnessed ourselves to be a coincidence. “They’re called Hollow Ones. They consume memories and identities from people and potentially animals. At first, they forget everything they knew. Then they forget what they are and lose the ability to communicate. We’ve seen it happen.”

Agnar nods, backing me up. “They don’t touch the ground. They move above it somehow. Even the dirt is affected by their presence.”

Tobin speaks for the first time. His voice is deeper than I remember, almost a man’s. “Do the Hollow Ones hate fire? We’ve noticed they don’t come close if the fire is high. Any kind, even small campfires or torches.”

That’s new information to us. I didn’t see anything like that in the book, but then again, I couldn’t read much. “You’re certain?”