The next day
The third morning came with frost and silence.
Lanssa woke to find Ausgelich already gone. His pack remained, along with the cold ashes of last night's fire, but he had vanished like mist. She sat up slowly, joints stiff from sleeping on stone, and wrapped her arms around herself.
The forest stretched in all directions—endless, indifferent. No path. No markers. Just trees and shadows and the kind of quiet that made her skin crawl.
She waited.
An hour passed. Then two.
By the third, anger crept in to fill the hollow spaces grief had carved.
He'd left her.
Of course he had. Mysterious savior with his cryptic warnings and bone-white cloak—probably decided she was too much trouble after all. Too broken. Too loud in her sorrow.
Fine.
She'd survived seventeen years without him. She could manage a few more.
Lanssa gathered what little she had—the blanket he'd given her, a water skin, half a loaf of stale bread—and chose a direction. East, toward the pale sun struggling through the canopy. Away from Ausdale. Away from everything that had been home.
She walked for maybe an hour before the screaming started.
Not hers.
Something else.
Something that sounded almost human.
Lanssa froze, breath catching. The sound came again—raw, desperate, echoing through the trees from somewhere ahead. Then voices. Shouting. The clash of metal.
She should have run the other way.
Instead, she crept forward.
Through a tangle of dead ferns and fallen logs, she found them. A small homestead tucked into a clearing—stone walls, thatched roof, smoke rising from a chimney that suggested warmth and safety. But the yard was chaos.
Three people stood back-to-back in a rough circle: an older man with a shepherd's staff, a woman clutching a kitchen knife, and a boy who couldn't have been more than twelve, tears streaming down his face as he held a rock like a weapon.
Around them prowled two shadow creatures.
Smaller than the one that had destroyed the tavern, but no less wrong. They moved like liquid darkness, all claws and teeth and hunger, circling their prey with predatory patience.
The man swung his staff. It passed through the nearest creature like smoke.
The woman screamed as claws raked across her arm.
The boy threw his rock It hit nothing.
They were going to die.
Lanssa's hands shook. She pressed herself against a tree trunk, every muscle coiled to flee. She wasn't a fighter. She had no weapons, no magic, no way to help them.
But she could still hear Jessa's last breath.
Still see Darion charging hopeless into the dark.
Don't you dare let that be for nothing.
She stepped into the clearing.
"Hey!"
The creatures turned. Four eyes like burning coals fixed on her, and she felt the weight of their attention like ice in her veins. But she didn't run.
"You want blood?" she shouted, voice cracking. "Here I am!"
The shadow beasts abandoned their first prey and flowed toward her like smoke given hunger.
She backed up, step by step, drawing them away from the family. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Her mouth was dry as bone.
This was stupid.
This was suicide.
But at least it was her choice.
The first creature leaped.
Light exploded between them.Not the pale, cold fire Ausgelich wielded—something else. Something that burned red and gold and fierce, like a forge or a hearth or the heart of a star. The shadow beast shrieked and recoiled, its form wavering like disturbed water.
"Stay back."
Ausgelich stepped out of the trees, but he wasn't alone. Another figure moved beside him—a woman with copper hair braided with small bones and feathers, her clothes the color of autumn leaves. Fire danced around her fingers without burning them.
"Aries," she said to the creatures, and her voice carried the crackle of flame. "You know what that means."
The shadow beasts hissed and circled, but they didn't attack.
The woman raised her hand. The fire spread, forming a wall of orange light between the creatures and their prey.
"Run," she told the family.
They didn't need to be told twice.
As they fled toward the homestead, the woman turned to Ausgelich. "Two of them. Someone's getting bold."
"Or desperate," he replied. Then, louder: "Can you hold them?"
"For a moment."
Ausgelich moved—not toward the creatures, but toward Lanssa. His pale eyes found hers across the clearing.
"When I say run," he said, "don't look back."
She nodded, though she wasn't sure why.
He raised both hands. The same cold runes that had saved her in the tavern cellar began to form in the air—but brighter now, more complex. The light was harsh enough to make her eyes water.
The shadow creatures shrieked.
"Now!"
Lanssa ran.
Behind her, the world exploded into light and shadow and the sound of something ancient screaming its death.
By the time the echoes faded, she had reached the homestead.
The woman's name was Kira. She poured tea from a clay pot and set it before Lanssa with hands that still smelled of smoke and magic.
"Drink," she said. "You look like you've seen ghosts."
"Worse," Lanssa muttered, but she took the cup.
They sat around a rough wooden table in the homestead's kitchen. The family—Jorik, his wife Maren, and their son Tam—huddled together on the other side of the room, speaking in low, urgent whispers. Every few minutes, one of them would glance toward Lanssa and Ausgelich like they expected them to vanish or burst into flames.
Kira settled beside Ausgelich, close enough that Lanssa caught the scent of pine and woodsmoke that clung to her clothes.
"Two shadow beasts," Kira said. "That's not random."
"No," Ausgelich agreed. "Someone's hunting."
"For her?" Kira's eyes flicked to Lanssa.
"Yes."
Lanssa set down her cup harder than necessary. "I'm right here."
"I know," Kira said, but not unkindly. "And I'm glad. Most people don't survive their first encounter with the shadow-touched."
"Is that what those things are called?"
"Among other names." Kira leaned back in her chair. "They're not natural. Someone makes them. Feeds them. Points them in the right direction."
"Who?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
Ausgelich stirred. "Kira's from the Aries Lineage. Her people keep the old knowledge."
"Some of it." Kira's fingers traced the rim of her cup. "Enough to know that shadow beasts don't just appear. They're summoned. Bound. And whoever's doing it has access to power that shouldn't exist anymore."
"What kind of power?"
Kira and Ausgelich exchanged a look.
"The kind that died with Cosmora," Kira said finally.
The name hit Lanssa like a physical blow. She'd heard it before—whispered in prayers, carved into shrine stones, sung in the old ballads Mirell used to play. But this felt different. Heavier.
"You know the stories," Kira said, watching her face. "The Great War of Zinch. The Twelve Houses scattered and broken. Cosmora's sacrifice to save what remained."
"Those are myths."
"Are they?" Kira smiled, but it was sad. "Tell me, girl—what do you think just saved your life out there?"
Lanssa looked at Ausgelich. His pale eyes were distant, focused on something she couldn't see.
"Magic," she said.
"Zodiac magic," Kira corrected. "The power of the constellations. The gift Cosmora left behind when she bound her essence to the stars."
"I don't understand."
"Most people don't. The Church teaches that Cosmora was a saint who blessed the worthy with divine favor. Pretty story. Safe story." Kira's voice took on an edge. "The truth is messier."
She stood, moving to the small altar in the corner of the room. Twelve candles burned there, arranged in a circle, each one carved with different symbols.
"Cosmora wasn't human," Kira said. "She was... something else. Something older. When the Great War threatened to crack the world apart, she made a choice. She tore her essence into twelve pieces and scattered them across the heavens."
"The constellations," Lanssa whispered.
"The constellations," Kira confirmed. "And from them, power flows to those with the right bloodlines. The Twelve Houses. Each one tied to a different sign, a different strength."
She gestured to Ausgelich. "Libra. Balance and judgment. The scales that weigh truth against falsehood."
Then to herself. "Aries. Fire and memory. We keep the flames that remind the world who it used to be."
Lanssa felt something cold settle in her chest. "What about me?"
Silence.
Kira looked to Ausgelich. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly.
"That," Kira said carefully, "is not my story to tell."
They stayed the night.
Jorik and Maren insisted, though Lanssa could see the fear in their eyes. They offered food and warm beds and grateful words, but they watched Ausgelich like he might explode at any moment.
Lanssa couldn't blame them.
She felt the same way.
As the others settled in for sleep, she found herself outside, sitting on the stone steps of the homestead. The stars were clearer here, away from the smoke and lights of Ausdale. The constellations hung overhead like ancient promises.
Footsteps on gravel. Kira approached, a clay pipe in her hands.
"Can't sleep either?"
"Too much to think about."
Kira settled beside her. The pipe smelled of sweet herbs and something else—something that reminded Lanssa of campfires and stories told in the dark.
"He's not what you expected, is he?"
Lanssa glanced toward the homestead. Through the window, she could see Ausgelich sitting at the kitchen table, perfectly still, staring at nothing.
"I don't know what I expected."
"Someone warmer, probably. Someone who'd explain things."
"Someone who'd tell me the truth."
Kira was quiet for a moment. Then: "The truth is dangerous. Especially for you."
"Why?"
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Because some truths change you just by being known. And once you're changed, you can't go back."
Lanssa turned to look at her. In the starlight, Kira's face was kind but ancient, like she carried the weight of too many stories.
"What if I want to be changed?"
"Do you?"
The question hung between them.
Lanssa thought of the tavern. Of her friends' faces in the firelight, laughing and alive. Of the way Darion had looked at her when he said, Don't say things you want the world to keep.
"I don't know," she said finally. "But I want to understand. I want to know why they died."
Kira nodded slowly. "Then you'll learn. Eventually. Whether you want to or not."
She stood, knocking ash from her pipe.
"But for what it's worth," she said, "I think you're stronger than he gives you credit for."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're still here. Still asking questions. Still trying to protect people you barely know." Kira smiled. "That's not weakness. That's the kind of strength that changes the world."
She headed back inside, leaving Lanssa alone with the stars.
Later, much later, Lanssa finally went to bed. But as she drifted toward sleep, she heard something that made her eyes snap open.
Voices. Low and urgent.
She crept to the window and peered out.
Ausgelich and Kira stood in the yard, their heads close together. Too far to hear words, but their postures spoke of argument. Kira gestured sharply toward the homestead. Ausgelich shook his head.
Then Kira said something that made him go very still.
He looked up at the house—directly at Lanssa's window.
She ducked back, heart pounding.
When she looked again, they were gone.
But in the distance, at the edge of the forest, she saw them. Dark shapes moving between the trees. Not two shapes.
Dozens.
The shadow beasts had found them.
And this time, there were too many to fight.