Chapter 32
Oh My Stars!
The worm-sword formed in my grip without conscious thought. I was just instinct now, like breathing. I stepped out of the cave, looking for any sign of the watcher.
"Still clear, no one's out here."
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the ridge; it was empty. There were no figures standing in the open, no corpses of Mist Singers to explain how someone survived the Long Dark without shelter. Just snow and stone and the endless forest stretching below like a dark green stain.
"Let's check around the cave," I said.
I circled the entrance, scanning the area. The snow lay undisturbed except for my own tracks from yesterday. Nothing to—
I stopped.
"Holy shit!"
There were fresh boot prints in the frost directly outside the cave. Someone actually stood here during the Long Dark, close enough to reach inside and touch me while I slept.
"Okay, and I thought you were creepy," Mabel said, a segment of her pale form emerging from my collar to inspect the tracks. "Someone actually stood here. Watching you. While nightmare monsters danced and sang all around them."
The tracks headed along the ridge before dropping into the Greywood.
"Should we follow them?" Mabel asked.
I nodded. "But first, I need to check something."
I settled against a boulder near the cave entrance, taking inventory of my body. The wyrm fight had cost me not just blood and pain, but essence. The worms needed to feed, and fighting burned through their reserves. But something felt different this morning.
I closed my eyes and focused inward, sensing the worms.
There were more of them now, far more than before the fight. The wyrm's essence hadn't just repaired my wounds; it had increased their number in ways I hadn't expected. And the connection between us had tightened.
"We're getting stronger, the wyrm was a good meal."
But that wasn't all. I focused deeper.
The wyrm had left something else behind; it wasn’t memories like Cedric's clear images, but I felt impressions, instincts encoded in the essence I'd consumed.
Images surfaced through my mind without being called.
I could see how the wyrm sensed the vibrations through the earth… how to feel footsteps from below, track prey by the tremors they made.
A fragmentary map of the Greywood's underground tunnel networks the wyrm used to travel beneath the forest, emerging to ambush its victims from below. I hadn't learned this. I'd absorbed it. The wyrm's knowledge now belonged to me.
"Hmm," Mabel hummed, a sound like bone dice clicking together. "Each meal makes you less human and more monstrosity."
◆◆◆
The wyrm's corpse had been reduced overnight.
The worms I'd left inside continued feeding through the Long Dark, stripping flesh from bone, consuming organs and muscle. What remained was a skeleton draped in loose scales, twenty meters of death already crusting with frost.
I approached the remains and began harvesting what I could.
I began pulling off wyrm scales, as they were valuable, according to Cedric's memories. Harder than steel, resistant to both blade and claw. Dragoons paid well for it.
I wonder if anyone here knows about Mikkel, maybe. Or how to get back to Earth.
I climbed back to the ridge and found where the tracks descended into the Greywood. Boot prints disappearing into the dark line of pines. I checked my supplies—food and water from the cave, wyrm materials in the pack, the core tucked safely away—and began the pursuit.
The pines grew thick here, branches interlocking overhead to block the grey sky.
My visibility had dropped to twenty meters at best. Shadows pooled between trunks, and every fallen log could hide a predator waiting to attack me.
I lost the trail twice. Each time I had to stop, send worms out, and wait for them to find the next clear print.
"We're burning daylight. If we're still in this forest when the mist rises, we'll be dead for sure."
The cave on the ridge was hours behind us now. We couldn't go back.
"We'll find something," I said.
I followed a trail for twenty minutes and came out at the same place I had started. I took a different route and found myself at the same set of boulders I'd passed an hour ago.
"This is not natural," Mabel said, her body extending from my collar to look around. "The Greywood has been altered somehow. The paths loop and twist, leading travelers in circles until they exhaust themselves or the Long Dark takes them."
"But the tracks don't loop," I pointed out. The boot prints I followed cut through the maze without hesitation, taking turns that seemed random but led steadily forward.
I forced myself to trust the tracks.
When my instincts said turn left, I followed the boot prints right. When the path ahead looked clear, I took the narrow gap between rocks that the tracks indicated.
The worm scouts helped a lot. They ranged ahead, confirming which paths looped and which continued forward. I built a mental map of the maze, marking dead ends and noting patterns.
The afternoon light had begun to fade. The sun descended toward the Frostspine Mountains. The Long Dark was coming, and I was deep in a labyrinth with no shelter in sight.
"Wait," Mabel said suddenly. "The scouts found something."
"What?" I asked, changing direction to follow where she indicated.
"A clearing, maybe a hundred meters through the trees."
The path opened into a small clearing surrounded by towering pines. I could see marks carved into the trees. I moved closer, brushing away the frost to see them clearly.
English letters… Scratched crudely into the bark with a knife or sharp stone.
Two letters: Z.S.
My heart stopped. I knew those initials. I knew exactly who would carve them.
"Zo," I whispered. "Sadie."
"Your prison buddies?" Mabel asked, extending from my shoulder to examine the carving. "They were here?"
"They came through the tear ahead of us," I said. "When Klaus attacked. We all went through together, but at different times..."
"Well, they were here," Mabel confirmed. "And they left—or were taken—recently enough."
I examined the tracks leading away from the camp. They headed toward the edge of the Greywood. Toward the wild tundra.
I didn't hesitate. The mysterious watcher could wait. The mystery of who walks through the mist could wait. My friends were alive. I followed the new tracks at a run.
These prints were easier to read than the watcher's careful trail. Multiple people moving together, two sets of boots. They were not trying to hide. They were moving fast, heading toward the edge of the Greywood.
I followed the tracks without thinking, trusting the prints, letting the others' path guide me through the maze that nearly trapped me earlier. They found a way through.
Hours blurred together. The sun dropped toward the Mountains.
I ran faster.
The tracks were fresher now, snow disturbed more recently, prints sharper. I was catching up. They couldn't be far.
The trees began to thin ahead.
The edge of the Greywood, opening onto the tundra beyond. I could see the grey sky through the branches, the open tundra, and two people moving across the snow. They were heading toward a rocky shelter.
My eyes locked onto their figures.
Even at this distance, even with failing light, I knew them.
The first was tall and curvy. She had an axe strapped across her back; she must have found that or made it in this frozen world.
Zo.
The second was smaller, quicker, constantly looking over the terrain around them. Her hair was whipping in the cold wind.
Sadie.
I tried to call out, but my voice caught. I had been running for hours. My throat was raw from the cold air. The sound that emerged was barely a croak.
I tried again. Forced the word out with everything I had.
"ZO! SADIE!"
The people stopped.
Turned. For a long moment, no one moved. They stared at me across the snow, and I stared back, heart pounding, hardly able to believe what I was seeing.
Then Zo started running toward me.
Sadie followed after her, her cautious nature overwhelmed by the same desperate hope I felt. I stumbled forward to meet them, three survivors together on the frozen plain as the sun sank.
I reached them as the first wisps of mist began forming in the valleys.
Zo's arms wrapped around me in a crushing hug. Sadie grabbed my shoulder, her grip tight, as if afraid I would vanish if she let go.
"Fish, you crazy son of a bitch. You made it!"
"We thought you were dead," Sadie said, her normally guarded expression cracked wide open. "When the tear separated us—"
"Later!" Zo cut in, already moving. She pointed toward the shelter.
We ran together as the mist descended behind us, a white wall crawling across the tundra, swallowing everything in its path.
We reached the shelter with minutes to spare.
Zo pulled a hide covering across the opening, securing it with stones.
The shelter was small but dry, with bedrolls and supplies stacked neatly against one wall.
"Home sweet home," Zo said, dropping onto a bedroll. "For now, anyway."
Sadie knelt beside a small fire pit, striking a spark to kindle a tiny flame. "You look like hell, Fish," she said, her eyes taking in my changed appearance. "What happened to you?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but Mabel emerged from my collar first, stretching dramatically to her full length.
"Oh my STARS, it is GOOD to meet actual people who aren't trying to kill us," she announced. "Do you have ANY idea what I've been through? Trapped with this natural disaster, fighting monsters, freezing half to death—"
Zo's eyes widened. Sadie's hand went to her spear.