The killing blow didn't come from the front.
That was the thing Grog would remember, in the fragments of thought that still flickered through his dying brain. He'd spent forty-one years expecting death to come screaming at him with claws bared, or maybe whispering on the edge of a poisoned blade. He'd pictured it a thousand times—going down swinging, axes red, a war cry on his lips.
Instead, it came from behind. Quick. Quiet. Cowardly.
The sword punched through his lower back and out his belly, a foot of gleaming steel blossoming where his navel used to be. Grog looked down at it stupidly. The metal was wet with his blood, steam rising where it met the cold cavern air.
"Huh," he managed.
Then the sword twisted.
Grog's knees hit the stone floor. His axes clattered beside him, useless. The pain came after—a tidal wave of it, hot and sick, crawling up his spine and down his legs. His vision swam.
He turned his head. It took everything he had.
Aldric stood behind him.
The hero's face was the same one Grog had followed for twenty years. Same wheat-colored hair, now streaked with gray. Same strong jaw, same straight nose. Same eyes that had once crinkled with laughter when Grog told a joke wrong.
But those eyes now burned crimson. And behind them, something else smiled.
"Hero," Grog coughed. Blood bubbled past his lips. "You—"
Aldric—no, the thing wearing Aldric—tilted its head. Almost curious. Almost gentle.
"Shh," it said. In Aldric's voice. The same voice that had called Grog "brother" a thousand times. "It's almost over. You were the strongest, you know. That's why I saved you for last. I wanted you to watch."
Grog's body wouldn't move. His legs were dead. His arms were dead. But his eyes still worked, and the thing that wore his friend's face knew it.
It grabbed his hair and forced his head up.
The cavern was a charnel house.
Mirena the mage lay crumpled against the far wall, her robes soaked dark red, her staff broken beside her. She'd been the first to fall—a spell interrupted mid-cast, her own magic consuming her from within. Her face was still frozen in surprise.
Theron the knight was closer. He'd made it twenty feet toward Aldric before going down. His sword was still in his hand. His eyes were still open. They stared at nothing.
And Lira.
Grog made a sound—not a word, just sound. Raw. Animal.
Lira lay face-down in a pool of her own blood, her hunting bow snapped in half beneath her. An arrow—her own arrow—protruded from her back. She'd died reaching for her quiver. Reaching for one more shot.
She'd died first.
Grog had been too far away. Too slow. Always too goddamn slow.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" The thing that wore Aldric crouched beside him, conversational. "The devotion. The loyalty. They loved you. All of them loved you. And they died believing in you." It smiled with Aldric's mouth. "But you couldn't save them. You couldn't even save yourself."
Grog's vision was darkening at the edges. His blood spread beneath him, warm and endless.
"Why?" The word came out wet. Stupid. He knew why. He'd always known.
The thing tilted its head again. "Because the vessel was always meant to break. Because your hero made a deal he didn't understand, with a power he couldn't control." It leaned closer, and Grog could smell it now—something rotten behind Aldric's familiar scent. Something old. "Because I was patient. And you were all so very, very predictable."
Grog's hand twitched. Toward his axe. Toward nothing.
The thing laughed softly. "Oh, I'm going to miss you, barbarian. You were the only one who almost made it interesting." It rose, wiping Grog's blood from its blade. "Sleep well. When you wake—if there is anything after this—tell them the Void sends its regards."
Grog fell forward.
His cheek hit the cold stone. The last thing he saw was Lira's hand, reaching toward him. Not quite close enough.
I'm sorry, he tried to say. I'm sorry I couldn't—
Then nothing.
---
Darkness.
Silence.
Cold.
This was death, then. Grog had wondered about it, sometimes. Between battles. Late nights around campfires. He'd imagined a great hall with endless meat and mead, or maybe nothing at all. The priests had strong opinions. Grog had never been good at listening.
This felt like nothing. Like floating in deep water with no surface above and no bottom below.
He wondered if Lira was here somewhere. If Mirena and Theron were waiting. If they'd forgive him for living longer than them, only to die anyway.
He wondered if Aldric was in there somewhere too—the real Aldric—screaming inside his own skull while the thing wearing his face did unspeakable things.
I hope not, Grog thought. I hope you're already dead. I hope you didn't feel any of it.
Then something changed.
The darkness pulsed.
It was subtle at first—a shift in pressure, like swimming too deep. Then stronger. A pull. A push. Grog felt himself moving, tumbling end over end through nothing, and somewhere in the distance he heard—
—stay down, you ox—
A voice. Young. Female. Annoyed.
—if you sit up too fast, your brain will slosh out your ears—
Lira.
That was Lira's voice.
Grog tried to reach for it, tried to swim toward the sound, but his body wouldn't obey. He didn't have a body. He was just thought, just memory, just want—
And then he slammed back into flesh like a diver breaching the surface.
---
Breath.
Pain.
Light.
Grog's eyes flew open.
Blue sky. Clouds. Trees. The smell of pine and damp earth. And looming over him, haloed by the sun—
Lira.
Young Lira. Fourteen, maybe fifteen, with straw-colored hair pulled back in a messy tail and a bruise purpling her cheekbone. Alive. Alive. Sitting on his chest like he was a horse she'd decided to break.
Grog stared at her.
She stared back.
"You're awake," she said flatly. "Good. I was getting tired of talking to myself."
Grog couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Could only look at her—at the face he'd watched grow from girl to woman over twenty years of friendship, at the face he'd last seen pressed against cold stone with an arrow in her back.
Tears.
Something hot and humiliating rolled down his temples and into his ears. Tears. He hadn't cried since he was six years old and his father told him berserkers didn't cry. He'd believed it. He'd lived it.
Now he was crying in front of a girl young enough to be his daughter, and he couldn't stop.
Lira's expression shifted from annoyance to alarm. She scrambled off his chest like he'd burst into flames.
"Hey—hey, stop that. Stop. Did I hit your head harder than I thought? Grog, stop. You're scaring me."
Grog.
She'd called him Grog.
He knew her. She knew him. This was real. This was now. Not the cavern. Not the blood. Not—
He sat up too fast. The world tilted. His stomach heaved. He turned to the side and vomited onto the forest floor—thin and bitter, nothing in his stomach but bile.
Lira's hand landed on his back. Small. Warm. Calloused from bowstrings.
Alive.
"Easy," she said, her voice softer now. "Easy. You took a mace to the helmet. The healers said you'd wake up or you wouldn't. I guess you decided to wake up."
Grog wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Looked at that hand.
Young. The knuckles weren't scarred yet. The calluses were fresh. This was a hand that hadn't swung an axe in a hundred battles. A hand that hadn't reached for Lira's body and found only cold.
"How long?" His voice cracked. Sounded young. Sounded wrong. "How long was I out?"
"Half a day." Lira was watching him carefully now, the way she'd watch a wounded animal—ready to bolt, ready to fight. "The skirmish was this morning. We dragged you back here after it ended. Captain Voren said to leave you, but Aldric—"
She stopped.
Aldric.
Grog's blood went cold.
"Aldric," he repeated. The name tasted like ash.
Lira nodded, oblivious to the war happening behind his eyes. "He carried you half a mile. Wouldn't let anyone else touch you. Said you'd do the same for him." She shrugged, affecting casualness. "He's annoying like that. Always trying to be the hero."
Grog looked down at his hands again.
Twenty-five years.
He'd been dead, and then he wasn't. He'd been old, and then he was young. He'd watched his friends die, and now—
Now Lira was sitting beside him, alive and annoying and fourteen.
Now Aldric was somewhere in this camp, seventeen years old, not yet a hero, not yet a monster. Just a farm boy with a big sword and a bigger heart.
Now Grog had a chance.
A chance to do what? Kill him? Save him? Warn him? He didn't know. His head was still ringing, his body was weak, and his mind was a hurricane of memory and grief and something that felt terrifyingly like hope.
"Grog." Lira's voice cut through. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Staring at nothing. Making faces." She poked his arm. "You hit your head really hard, didn't you?"
He looked at her. Really looked. At the dirt on her cheeks, the scab on her chin, the way her hand still rested on his back like she was ready to catch him if he fell.
She doesn't know, he realized. She has no idea what's coming. None of them do.
"Lira," he said slowly. "I need you to listen to me."
She raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. What could he possibly say? I'm from the future? We all die in twenty-five years? The boy you think is your friend is going to murder us all?
She'd think he was mad. She'd tell the captain. They'd lock him in a tent and send for a priest, and he'd lose any chance of—
"Grog." Lira's voice sharpened. "Whatever it is, just say it. You're terrible at lying. You always have been."
He blinked. "I am?"
"You are. Your ears turn red." She poked his ear. "See? They're red now. So spill."
Grog stared at her for a long moment. Then, despite everything—despite the death and the blood and the horror still fresh in his mind—he felt his mouth twitch.
Almost a smile.
"You haven't changed at all," he said softly.
Lira frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He shook his head. Pushed himself to his feet. His legs wobbled, but they held. His body felt strange—too light, too weak—but it was his. He'd make it stronger. He had time.
"Nothing," he said. "Just—thank you. For staying with me."
Lira's frown deepened. She wasn't buying it. She was too smart for that, even at fourteen. But she let it go. For now.
"Come on," she said, standing and brushing off her leathers. "Aldric's probably worried sick. You know how he gets." She started walking, then paused, looking back at him. "You coming, or what?"
Grog looked past her, toward the camp. Toward the smoke rising over the trees. Toward the boy who would one day save the world and then destroy it.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I'm coming."
He followed her into the trees, and behind them, the afternoon sun climbed higher, burning away the shadows.
But Grog knew better than most that shadows always returned.
They just needed somewhere dark to hide.