The forest was too quiet.
No birdsong. No rustle of small creatures in the underbrush. No crack of twigs except their own. Just the wind—dry and whispering, dragging dead leaves across the frozen soil like fingers over a grave.
Lanssa didn't cry.
She hadn't cried when Bram screamed, or when Jessa's blood painted the tavern floor like spilled wine. She didn't cry when Mirell fell with his eyes still wide and startled. She hadn't even wept when Darion threw her toward the cellar stairs and stayed behind to buy her those precious seconds with his life.
She just kept walking.
Branches caught at her cloak with grasping fingers. Her boots—too thin for this harsh terrain—broke through the crust of old snow with each stumbling step as she followed Ausgelich deeper into the wild. She didn't ask where they were going. She didn't care anymore.
Let him lead her wherever he wished.
Let him walk them both straight into the jaws of the next nightmare.
Ausgelich didn't speak. The only sounds he made were the soft crunch of his steps on frozen earth and the faint chime of bone talismans woven into his sash. He never looked back to check if she still followed. Perhaps he didn't want to see what his choices had wrought.
Good.
She didn't want to look at him either.
It wasn't until dusk painted the sky in shades of ash and blood that he finally stopped. They had reached a steep ridge above a half-frozen stream, where sparse trees clung to rocky soil like desperate hands. A tangle of old pine roots and withered shrubs created a natural shelter. Nothing truly lived here—the land felt hollow, forgotten by whatever gods still cared about such places.
Ausgelich dropped his pack beneath a low stone overhang and began clearing space for a fire with methodical precision.
Lanssa sat several paces away, curled into herself like something broken. Her hands were clenched white-knuckled in the folds of her bloodstained skirt. Her eyes stared at nothing, unblinking for long minutes at a time.
"You should eat," Ausgelich said without turning from his work.
Silence.
"I have dried meat. Travel bread."
Still nothing.
He sighed—a sound like winter wind through empty branches—and struck flint to steel. Sparks flared bright in the gathering darkness, then caught on dry kindling with the ease of long practice. He moved like a soldier—precise, economical, calculating every motion. Even his magic, when it surfaced, was subtle. A slight gesture, and the flames steadied against the wind. The smoke curled upward instead of stinging their eyes. The bitter cold retreated just enough to feel bearable.
But Lanssa only stared into the dancing flames as if they might hold answers to questions she couldn't voice.
"They were my family," she said finally, so quietly the words were nearly lost beneath the fire's whisper.
Ausgelich didn't reply.
She turned to him slowly, her pale face etched with grief, dark circles under eyes that had seen too much. Yet when she spoke, her voice held a fury like glass about to shatter.
"Did you know it would happen?"
He met her gaze without flinching.
"I knew something was coming," he said carefully. "Not what. Not when."
"But you know more things, don't you?" Her voice rose, taking on a razor's edge. "You appeared exactly when that creature attacked. You wielded magic—I've never seen magic like that before. And now I'm stumbling through these cursed woods with some bone-wearing stranger who won't even tell me his true name."
He didn't react to the barb.
"I saved your life."
"No, you—" She faltered, her voice cracking like ice under pressure. "You saved me. Just me. Why not the others? You could have done something. You could have stopped it before—"
He didn't answer.
"Say something, damn you!"
"I couldn't save them all."
She surged to her feet, hands trembling. "That's not an answer."
"It's the truth."
His tone turned sharp as winter iron. For a moment, the fire dimmed as if responding to his mood. A sudden breeze rushed through the clearing, biting and unnatural, and Lanssa felt the weight of it—like standing between two vast, invisible forces straining against each other.
Ausgelich rose to face her. The firelight carved his silhouette from shadow—tall and imposing, draped in pale furs and dark metal, the sharp line of his jaw half-hidden by the bone collar at his throat. But his eyes—they held depths that spoke of centuries, not years. Ancient weariness layered with something that might once have been compassion.
"They died because something wanted them dead," he said quietly. "Not because I failed to act."
"But you didn't even try to help them."
The accusation hung between them like a blade. She didn't entirely mean it—not really. But she needed someone to blame, and the others were ash and memory.
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"You don't understand what you're saying."
"Then help me understand."
"I cannot."
"Why not?"
"Because if you knew the whole truth, you would hate me far more than you already do."
The words struck her like a physical blow.
Lanssa stared at him, breath catching in her throat. He looked away first, his gaze turning to the star-scattered darkness beyond their small circle of light.
For a long while, neither spoke. The fire crackled and popped. Somewhere in the surrounding trees, a branch gave up its grip on life and crashed to the forest floor. The wilderness went on pretending it didn't care about human pain.
Later, when the fire had burned low, Ausgelich offered her a blanket. She didn't take it. He set it beside her anyway, close enough that she could feel its warmth without having to acknowledge the gesture.
She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, back turned to the dying flames. Her mind remained trapped behind the tavern walls, lost in the smell of burning ale and torn flesh, the sound of splintering wood and dying screams.
She could still see Bram reaching for her with desperate, bloodied fingers.
Still hear Jessa's final, whispered apology.
Still taste copper and terror in the air.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Why me?" she asked the darkness.
Ausgelich's voice came from somewhere behind her, low and reluctant. "Because you're important."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I can give you."
She turned toward him then, and for the first time since they'd met, her voice carried no anger—only fear, raw and honest.
"Are there more of those things out there?"
He hesitated, and she knew the answer before he spoke.
"Yes."
"Will they come for me?"
"Yes."
"Why?" The word came out barely above a whisper.
"Because someone wants what lies within you."
She went rigid. "What the hell does that mean?"
He offered no clarification, only silence heavy with unspoken truths.
She stood abruptly, her fingers curling into trembling fists. "I don't know who you are. I don't know why you saved me. I don't even know where you're leading me. But if you think I'm just going to follow you like some lost lamb into the wilderness while you feed me cryptic riddles—"
"You don't have a choice."
The words fell between them like stones into still water.
She froze, staring at him across the dying fire. He stood as well, meeting her gaze with that same grave stillness she was beginning to recognize. But something flickered behind his controlled expression—uncertainty, perhaps. Or regret.
"There is nowhere else for you to go," he said more gently. "Nowhere safe. The creature that attacked your tavern was only the beginning."
Night pressed down like a burial shroud, the sky above them blurred with pale stars and drifting clouds that promised more snow before dawn.
Lanssa sat hunched near the fire's glowing embers, arms wrapped tight around her knees, forehead pressed against them as if she could disappear entirely if she made herself small enough. Her breathing had turned shallow hours ago, each exhale visible in the frigid air. Her body remained motionless, but it wasn't stillness—it was the terrible quiet of something about to break.
Ausgelich stood beneath a gnarled pine some distance away, one hand resting lightly on his sword's pommel, eyes trained not on the dark forest around them, but on her huddled form. He had positioned himself to watch the approaches, but his attention kept drifting to the girl by the dying fire.
She hadn't spoken in hours. But grief had its own terrible weight—its own way of pulling everything inward until the center could no longer hold.
And finally, it didn't.
It started soft—a small, broken sound barely audible above the wind. Then another, sharper and more desperate. Her shoulders began to tremble, and then the sound escaped fully—a choked sob that seemed torn from somewhere deep inside her chest.
She pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to contain it.
But the dam had broken.
The first sob dragged another behind it, then another. Soon she was weeping fully—harsh, shaking cries that held nothing back. Not the elegant tears of ballads and stories. This was grief in its truest form: raw, breathless, utterly honest.
She curled tighter around herself, pressing her fists against her eyes, and wept as if the entire world had died.
Because for her, it had.
Ausgelich didn't move. Didn't speak. He simply watched from the shadows—face carefully composed, jaw tight with tension, moonlight catching the thin silver ring on his thumb. He could have turned away, could have stepped deeper into the darkness to grant her the illusion of privacy.
But he didn't.
Because somehow, bearing witness felt like the least he owed her.
And in her weeping—sorrow like a wound split open to the bone—something deep within him shifted. This girl, sobbing by the embers of their fire, had once dreamed of simple things. Of laughter shared with friends. Of warm bread and peaceful mornings. She had tried to protect the people she loved with nothing but courage and trembling hands.
And she was the one whose power would reshape everything.
The irony cut deeper than any blade.
He didn't sleep. He rarely did anymore.
Too many visions haunted his rest.
Too many possible futures burned into his memory like brands.
The barriers between realms were weakening—he could feel it in his bones, in the way shadows moved differently and starlight seemed dimmer. Perhaps it was her proximity. Perhaps something far worse was stirring. But he felt the cosmic threads pulling taut, straining toward some inevitable conclusion.
Lanssa.
The girl by the fire was barely seventeen. Grieving. Shattered. A tangle of pain and determination and warmth that had no idea what slumbered in her blood.
No conception that she carried the power to unravel the very foundations of existence.
He had seen it in his visions—over and over, until the images seared themselves into his soul.
Thrones built from the bones of worlds. Oceans turned to glass and shadow. Cities crumbling like sand castles before a cosmic tide.
And always—always—her silhouette stood at the heart of the devastation.
He pressed his palms together until his knuckles cracked.
He could end it now. Should end it.
The blade at his side would make it quick. Merciful.
But something in him rebelled against that certainty. Maybe it was the way she had looked at her dying friends—not with fear for herself, but with desperate love for them. Maybe it was how, even as her world burned, she had chosen to fight rather than surrender.
He didn't know what stayed his hand.
He only knew that tonight, he would not be the instrument of fate the prophecies demanded.
Not yet.
Not while she wept for friends who had died trying to protect her.
Ausgelich lifted his eyes to the star-scattered heavens above. The constellation of Libra hung there like a set of cosmic scales, barely visible through the shifting clouds—balance and judgment suspended on the edge of eternity.
And for the first time in decades, his carefully controlled voice cracked with something that might have been grief.
"Mother," he whispered to the indifferent stars, "I did the right thing, right?"