The wind off the pines had teeth tonight.
Antana kept her cloak pinned tight at the collar as she moved through the dark, boots finding the packed snow without crunching. The forest here was old—straight trunks, heavy boughs, the kind that held winter like a grudge. Somewhere beyond the trees, a road cut across the hills toward Ela Meda. Merchants used it. Pilgrims used it. People who didn't want trouble used it too.
And people who did.
Ahead, the faintest smear of orange flickered between the trunks. Not a campfire—too steady, too low to the ground. Lanterns, hooded. Wagons.
Antana lifted two fingers. The line behind her slowed at once.
They'd been walking for hours in that careful half-quiet that only trained bodies could manage—breath controlled, shoulders loose, minds sharp. The men and women with her weren't soldiers. Not officially. The Adventurers Guild didn't wear a nation's colors and didn't answer to politicians.
But they knew how to kill when they had to.
At the edge of the treeline, Isolde crouched beside a fallen log, the dark violet cloak around his shoulders almost indistinguishable from shadow. The silver starburst sigil on his chest caught a sliver of moonlight when he shifted. He didn't look at Antana when she approached. His gaze stayed on the road, on the shape of the caravan as it rolled.
"How many?" Antana murmured.
Isolde watched for another breath, then answered without turning. "Ten wagons. Two scout parties—one in front and one behind. Twenty guards visible. Probably more inside."
His voice was quiet, controlled—command without theatrics. Antana had worked with him enough to recognize the rhythm of his thinking. He wasn't nervous. He was running a checklist.
Antana lowered herself beside him, eyes narrowing as she tracked movement between lantern glows. The caravan crept along at an awkward pace, like something wounded trying not to show it. The wagons were covered in canvas, but the canvas hung too tight, lashed down in a way that didn't allow for cargo access. No merchant did that unless the weather was vicious—or they didn't want the cargo to escape.
"Front wagon's heavier," she said. "See the tilt on the axle."
Isolde's mouth tightened. "That's where they'll keep them."
Antana felt a familiar pressure settle into her chest—not anger, not fear. Something colder. Something precise.
This was why she didn't like these jobs. Bandits were simple. Monsters were honest. Slavers were a sickness that learned to smile. They paid bribes. They used paperwork. They hid behind trade permits and "labor contracts" and whatever polite lie the moment required.
The nation of Icilee had outlawed it. Officially. That didn't stop other nations from profiting on it.
Behind them, a few shapes shifted: guild blades and hired hands, clustered in silence, waiting for the signal. Antana knew most of their names. Not all. The guild took whoever could pay dues and prove they weren't useless. Talent rose. Cowards fell. Sometimes, the world sorted itself out.
Tonight, it would have to.
Isolde leaned closer. "We take the lead wagon intact if we can. The captives matter more than the slavers."
Antana nodded once. "I can lock down the road."
"On my mark," he said. "Not before."
That was his strength. He didn't let emotion rush the plan. Antana looked at him, and for a moment she saw the noble beneath the armor—someone raised on clean halls and rules and banners. He believed in law the way others believed in gods. Not because it made him soft.
Because he couldn't live in a world where it didn't matter.
A faint hiss drifted through the trees—Helvund, somewhere behind them, signaling that the second team was in place. Isolde answered with a small motion, barely a flick of his fingers.
Antana shifted her weight, letting her senses extend.
Ice was not a thing she "summoned" like a trick. It was a state of existence—cold, rigid, powerful. Water that chose stillness. The air was full of it tonight—cold enough that her breath left her lips like smoke, cold enough that the moisture on her lashes wanted to crystallize. The world here leaned in her favor.
If she asked it to stop, it would.
The wagons rolled closer. Antana watched the guards—how they held their weapons, how their eyes moved. Not lazy men. Not drunk. That made her stomach tighten. Slavers with discipline were harder to break cleanly.
A child's whimper slipped through the canvas for half a second before someone inside silenced it.
Isolde's jaw clenched.
Antana felt something sharp behind her ribs. She let it settle, compressed it, turned it into focus. Wrath was easy. Control took work.
The lead wagon reached the point Isolde had chosen—where the road narrowed between two outcrops, where the trees pressed close enough to funnel movement, where an escape would require speed.
Isolde's hand rose.
Antana drew a breath.
His hand dropped.
And the night froze. Antana stepped onto the road. She lifted her palm.
The world obeyed.
Ice surged across the packed snow like a sheet unrolling—thin at first, then thicker, hardening in a heartbeat. It slicked the road beneath the horses' hooves, froze around the wagon wheels, locked the caravan in place as if a giant hand had pressed down.
The recoil hit her instantly. It wasn't a sound, but a sudden, draining silence in her blood. Her fingertips went numb inside her gloves, a deep, aching chill that had nothing to do with the weather. It was the price of forcing the world to be still. She gritted her teeth against the shiver, forcing her arm to stay steady.
A flare arced from the left—oil-soaked cloth, hurled with practiced accuracy. It shattered against the second wagon and bloomed into orange. The horses screamed and reared, traces snapping taut. Men shouted.
A guard lunged toward Antana, blade raised. Elementalists were dangerous and needed to be handled fast to turn the tide of a battle.
Antana flicked her wrist.
A spike of ice thrust up from the ground at his feet, not to impale, but to throw him off balance. He hit the frozen road hard, wind knocked from him. Antana didn't look at him again.
The ambush line closed in.
Guild steel flashed. Crossbow bolts hissed. Isolde moved like a shadow with a spear—fast, efficient, always where his people needed him. He shouted orders without wasting breath.
"Left flank! Keep them from the trees!"
"Second wagon—don't breach it!"
Antana moved along the road, sealing escape routes, shaping barriers with minimal motion. An outrider tried to force his horse through the right side gap; she snapped her fingers and an ice wall rose waist-high in his path. The horse skidded, screamed, went down. The man rolled clear and came up swinging.
Antana met him with a step and a palm to his chest.
Cold slammed into him like a hammer.
Frost raced across his armor, locking joints, stealing breath. His eyes widened—not with pain, but with the sudden realization that he couldn't move.
Antana leaned close enough that her voice didn't carry. "Drop it."
He didn't.
She exhaled, and the ache in her bones sharpened, a needle threading through her marrow. She paid the cost willingly. Ice crept over his gauntlet and the hilt of his blade until his fingers couldn't close.
The sword clattered onto the road. She stepped away and let him fall.
No dramatic finish. No cruelty. Just removal.
She flexed her hand, trying to drive the stiffness from her knuckles. The magic was heavy tonight. Each use felt like drawing water from a well that was slowly running dry, leaving her limbs hollow and brittle.
Behind her, one of the wagons rocked violently. A muffled pounding echoed from inside, frantic and irregular.
A slaver in a fur-lined cap barked at his men. "Keep them down! Keep them—"
A bolt took him in the throat. He dropped without another sound.
The fight twisted into pockets. Slavers tried to form ranks. Guild blades broke them. A few captives had been dragged out and thrown to the snow, hands bound. Isolde's men moved to secure them, cutting rope, covering them with cloaks. Antana caught glimpses of faces—hollow-eyed, bruised, too thin.
Paradise, she thought without humor.
A guard charged toward the treeline, trying to slip past the chaos. Antana reacted before thinking: she sent a wave of ice into the snow at his feet, turning it into a slick slope. He stumbled, recovered, and sprinted anyway.
Someone stepped into his path.
A dark shape near the second wagon—cloaked, hood up, face hidden by shadow.
Antana didn't recognize him as one of theirs.
He moved once. Not with flourish. Not with speed meant to impress. Just... correctly.
The guard's blade came up. The cloaked figure's sword met it. Steel rang. And then the guard was on the ground.
Antana's eyes narrowed. The kill was clean. The kind of strike that ended something completely—no thrashing, no begging, no last-second change of mind. The guard's body hit the snow and didn't try to rise again.
The cloaked figure didn't look down. He turned as if the man had never existed.
Antana felt a small chill crawl up her neck that had nothing to do with winter or magic.
Who—
A shout drew her attention back: two slavers had rushed Isolde, trying to overwhelm him with numbers. Isolde parried one, took a shallow cut across his forearm from the other. Antana moved without thinking, ice lancing from her hand to the nearer man's knees. He dropped with a scream.
The effort made Antana stumble, just half a step. The cold was settling deep now, slowing her heart rate, making her breath shallow. She forced air into her lungs, shaking her head to clear the frost from her vision.
Isolde finished the second with a ruthless thrust. He didn't spare him. Not tonight.
The fight began to collapse. Slavers fled into the trees and were chased down. Those who stayed were disarmed, bound, dragged to their knees. The caravan burned in patches—controlled, contained.
Antana stood near the lead wagon, breathing steady, hands lowered at her sides, scanning for any last threat. Her body felt light, stripped of heat, as if she were made of the same ice she commanded. It would take hours for the warmth to return to her skin.
Isolde approached, blood dark on his sleeve. "Casualties?"
"Two wounded on our side," someone answered from behind Antana. "None dead."
Isolde nodded, jaw tense with relief he wouldn't show.
"Captives?" Antana asked, her voice rasping slightly.
"Thirty-one," another voice said. "Maybe more inside the wagons."
Thirty-one. Antana exhaled through her nose. That number would have been just a rumor on paper yesterday. Now it was flesh and breath and fear.
She turned, eyes sweeping over the wreckage.
And found him again.
He sat where the second wagon had split, its frame collapsed, embers crawling along the broken ribs like slow insects. Smoke curled around him, turning his silhouette into something half-formed. He looked untouched—no stagger, no labored breath, no urgency. A giant greatsword rested on his shoulder.
Just present.
Antana started toward him without meaning to. Isolde noticed immediately. His attention snapped to the same point. "Hold."
The command went down the line. Soldiers and guild hands slowed, weapons half-lowered, eyes following Isolde's gaze.
The cloaked man didn't react to being seen. He remained in the wreckage like a marker someone had forgotten to remove.
Isolde stepped forward, voice carrying cleanly through the crackle of embers. "You. Step forward. Identify yourself."
The figure turned. Not sharply. Not startled. He moved like someone responding to weather.
Antana's first impression was not threat—but finality. The way he held himself suggested nothing left unfinished behind him.
"I'm nobody," the man said.
His voice was calm. Unremarkable. Too even.
"I'm just a farmer."
The words landed wrong.
Isolde frowned. "A farmer traveling with slavers?"
"I didn't know what they were," he replied. No defensiveness. No excuse. Just a statement of fact. "I was heading east. So were they."
Antana felt a prickle along her spine. People always wanted something after a fight. Safety. Payment. Mercy. Direction.
This man wanted nothing.
Isolde gestured, two fingers flicking outward. Soldiers began to fan, boots crunching softly in the ash as they moved to encircle him.
"Lower your cloak," Isolde said. "Slowly."
The fire surged.
Not outward—upward, as if drawn by breath. Flames licked higher along the shattered wagons, snapping suddenly loud, sudden, hungry. Heat rolled across the clearing, sharp enough to sting Antana's eyes.
She stepped forward instinctively, ice rising in her chest—
And then he was gone.
No sound. No flash. No rush of displaced air. One moment he stood there, framed by fire. The next, there was only flame and collapsing wood.
The soldiers froze, weapons half-raised, confusion rippling through them. Antana stared into the blaze, heart pounding—not in fear, but in something colder.
Absence.
Not the sense of someone fleeing. The sense of someone no longer interested in the events unfolding around him.
The fire began to die again, just as neatly as before.
Isolde swore under his breath. "Find him."
But Antana didn't move. She knew—without knowing how—that there would be no tracks. No trail. No direction that made sense.
The man hadn't escaped. He had left.
And as the heat faded, a hollow feeling settled in her chest—subtle, unwelcome, and entirely new. As if something had passed through the world without permission.
She walked to the spot where he had stood. The ash was undisturbed. The snow beneath the charred wood wasn't melted; it was grey and dry, as if the moisture had been sucked out of it instantly.
"Antana," Isolde's voice broke the trance. It was heavy now, stripped of combat adrenaline. "Leave the ghost. We have living problems."
She blinked, the world rushing back in—the smell of burnt canvas, the groan of timber, and the sound she had been tuning out: weeping.
Antana turned away from the empty space and looked at the convoy.
The victory, which had felt so sharp moments ago, was dissolving into a messy, grim reality. The guild hands were prying open the backs of the intact wagons. The sound of metal snapping was followed immediately by a stench that rolled out into the crisp night air—urine, rot, and stale sweat.
"Get them out," Isolde ordered, lowering his spear. "Anyone who can walk, get them to the fires. Use the slavers' cloaks if you have to."
Antana moved to the nearest wagon. A guildsman, Helvund, was helping a woman down from the bed. Her ankles were raw where iron cuffs had bitten into the skin, the flesh purple and swollen against the snow. She stumbled, her legs too weak to hold her weight.
Antana caught her.
The woman flinched violently, a guttural sound of terror escaping her throat. She was young, perhaps twenty, but her eyes were ancient, rimmed with grime and exhaustion. She looked at Antana's armor, then at the ice still rime-crusted on Antana's gauntlets.
"It's over," Antana said. Her voice was rougher than she intended, her throat dry from the cold. "You're not going east."
The woman stared at her, uncomprehending, shivering so hard her teeth clicked together.
Antana unclasped her own cloak. The cold air bit instantly through her tunic, finding the places where the magic had already drained her warmth, but she ignored it. She draped the heavy wool around the woman's shoulders.
"Sit by the fire," Antana instructed, pointing to a pile of burning wagon debris where the other survivors were gathering. "Don't look at the dead bodies. Just look at the fire."
She didn't wait for thanks. There wasn't time.
She moved down the line, her soldier's mind taking over. Thirty-one people. Three wagons still serviceable, though the horses were spooked and the harnesses slashed. The nearest outpost was Ela Meda, a day's march south through deep snow.
"Isolde," she called out. He was kneeling beside a man who had taken a bad blow to the head, checking his pupils.
"Report," he said without looking up.
"We can't put them all in the wagons. The axles won't take the weight on this terrain, and we're short on horses."
Isolde stood, wiping his hands on a rag. His face was pale, the adrenaline fading to leave only exhaustion. "The wounded and the children ride. The rest walk. We'll rotate them every hour."
"We don't have enough food for them," Antana noted. She gestured to the open crates scattered in the snow. "The slavers were traveling light. Hardtack and dried meat for maybe two days for their own crew. The captives are starving already."
"Then we march fast," Isolde said grimly. "If we stop, the cold takes them. If we slow down, they starve."
He looked over the huddled group. They were a mosaic of misery—bruised, weeping, some staring blankly into the dark. A few were already eating the snow, desperate for water.
"Get the slavers' boots," Isolde added, his voice dropping. "Some of the captives are barefoot. Strip the dead. I don't care about honor tonight."
Antana nodded. It was a brutal necessity. She turned to the nearest fallen guard—the one the mysterious farmer had killed with such terrifying efficiency.
She knelt to unlace the dead man's boots, but her hands paused.
The cut on the guard's chest was precise. It had cut the leather brigandine perfectly. She'd never seen a sword slice right through a person this cleanly. It wasn't the work of a farmer defending himself. It was the work of someone who knew exactly how human beings were put together, and exactly how to take them apart.
She looked back at the spot where the stranger had vanished.
The forest was silent now, save for the crackle of fire and the low murmurs of the liberated. The wind picked up, rattling the pine boughs, sending a spray of snow drifting over the clearing.
Thirty-one lives saved. A caravan destroyed. A victory.
But as Antana pulled the boots from the dead man's feet, feeling the lingering warmth of a life just ended, she couldn't shake the hollow ache in her bones. The magic had taken its tithe, leaving her cold, but the dread settled deeper.
The farmer had said he was nobody.
Antana looked at the dark treeline, the vast, swallowing night of the east. Nobody killed like that, she thought. And nobody left without a trace.
"Antana!" Isolde called. "Move out. We burn the rest."
She stood, grabbing the boots, and turned her back on the mystery. For now, the living needed her.