Chapter 44

In a frozen wasteland beneath a scarred sky, Veya assesses a festering shoulder wound she previously cauterized with Kaan’s weald. Weak with fever yet driven by purpose, she resolves to cut the wound open and remove whatever remains inside, believing it may be the key to surviving long enough to act.

As predators howl across the plains and the distant Mists of Miel Et Muíem shift out of reach, Veya considers using the Mists’ waifs to pass a message to Borg when Kaan next opens his vial. She also steels herself to deliver a personal truth: to tell her brother that he has a daughter.

Veya drives a hot dagger through the wound, suppressing screams to avoid drawing hunters. She digs with numbed fingers and pulls a black stone splinter free, immediately easing her agony, then re-cauterizes the gash with the weald despite the searing pain and the stink of burned flesh.

Spotting a cavern mouth at the mountains’ base, she limps toward it as multiple howls draw nearer. She stumbles, reopens the wound, and forces herself onward as three crowls surge across the snow, skeletal and ravenous, racing to overtake her.

Veya dives into the cave just as the beasts charge. She spits a command—“Gerg-agh tah vú!”—and the entrance slams shut like a jaw, sealing her inside with dust, soot, and suffocating dark. Blood loss and cold overtake her; the weald’s flame skitters away as she slips into unconsciousness, her mission unfinished but survival momentarily secured.