I found shelter before nightfall.

  It wasn't much just a rocky outcropping that formed a shallow cave. It was nothing like the tomb from last night, but it would keep me hidden.

  I pressed my back against the cold stone and settled in, legs crossed, worm-sword ready to form at a moment's notice.

  The Long Dark—the name we had given the night—began its descent.

  The chill had begun as the temperature dropped, cutting through Cedric's armor fragments like it wasn't there. Mist rolled in, thick and unnatural, crawling across the tundra like something alive. It moved against the wind, defying nature, seeking flesh.

  The sounds started next.

  Clicking. Rhythmic and mechanical, like bone striking bone.

  Then the sing-song wailing of the Mist Singers—another name we had created—high, then low, then high again, a melody designed to lure prey into the open.

  I stayed still, watching the cave entrance, my nerves stretched to their breaking point. The mist flowed past my hiding spot, as shapes moved within it I caught glimpses of their twisted silhouettes.

  The hours dragged on.

  My muscles cramped from holding still and hardly breathing, but I didn't dare move. My anxiety made the worms uneasy, and ready to burst forth at the first sign of danger.

  "Mabel," I whispered, barely audible. "I need to rest… could you wake me if anything changes."

  "Oh, so I'm your personal alarm system now?" Mabel's voice was prim in my head. "Do I look like a security guard to you?"

  "You don't look like anything. You're a worm."

  "I am a magnificent worm, thank you very much. And yes, I'll watch over you, my pathetically fragile host. I'll alert you if something decides you look tasty."

  I closed my eyes, letting my consciousness drift toward something like rest.

  I don't think I could have actually slept with those sounds outside… but it was a kind of half-aware doze that let my body recover without dropping my guard completely.

  The worms could repair flesh, but they couldn't erase fatigue. My mind needed the break as much as my muscles did.

  I don't know how long I drifted in that half-sleep before something jolted me back to full awareness.

  My heart hammered as I snapped upright, hand already forming the worm-sword before my eyes fully opened.

  The blade erupted from my palm, its bone-white segments locking together in a jagged edge.

  But there was nothing at the cave entrance. No Mist Singer. No monster. The mist just flowed past, thick as ever, but nothing was attacking us.

  "What is it?" I hissed, scanning for threats. "What woke me?"

  ""Look there," Mabel replied.

  She extended outwards from my neck, forming an arrow that directed my gaze past the immediate area around our shelter. I squinted into the darkness, trying to see what she meant.

  There, in the distance. Maybe five or six kilometers away.

  I could see a small orange light flickering in the darkness.

  Its glow wavered and danced, reflecting off the mist. A fire. Someone had made a fire.

  "Is that..." I trailed off, not daring to hope.

  "A fire," Mabel confirmed. "Someone who doesn't fear the Long Dark enough to hide their presence."

  I stared at the distant light, my mind racing.

  It seemed impossible, but they'd gone through the tear too.

  Or it could be locals. A settlement of some kind. Horn's Rest wasn't the only place people lived in the Hearthlands.

  Or it could be something else entirely.

  Cedric's memories stirred uneasily. Tales of creatures that used light to draw people into the Long Dark.

  The Frostspine Mountains bred horrors that hunted with deception, mimicking campfires or lanterns to lure travelers off safe paths.

  I watched the light flicker for what felt like hours, trying to decide what it might be. Trying to guess if it meant my salvation or my death.

  Then it disappeared.

  Swallowed by distance or deliberately extinguished. I couldn't tell which.

  I lay back down, but sleep was impossible now.

  My mind churned with possibilities. Zo could be out there. Sadie. Any of them. People who'd fought beside me, who'd risked everything to escape a dragon—Klaus—that should have killed us all.

  Or my death could be waiting, wearing a friendly face, holding a welcoming lantern.

  I remained awake until the sun rose and the mist retreated, thinking about that distant light and what it might mean.

  Dawn broke across the tundra, grey and grudging.

  The mist retreated with the darkness, crawling back toward the mountains.

  I emerged from my outcropping shelter, muscles stiff from the night's tension. My breath fogged in the cold air as I surveyed the landscape.

  The tundra spread before me—white and grey and endless—Cedric's memories mapping my way… staying close to the foothills where the wind was less brutal.

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  I climbed to higher ground, onto a rocky rise that gave me a better view of the surrounding terrain.

  From this height, I could see farther across the frozen expanse. I searched for the source of last night's firelight.

  And I found it, where the ground rose into a forested ridge.

  The edge of the Greywood—dense pine forest—stretching toward the distant mountains. The light must have come from somewhere on that ridge, high enough to be visible above the mist.

  I considered my options.

  Cedric's memories provided a safe route to follow with shelter each night, reaching Horn's Rest in a few days. I could hunt if needed… I’d survive. It was my safest option.

  But that way of doing things lacked one essential element, the potential for finding my friends. It was well suited for keeping me alive, but offered no hope.

  If I was destined to spend days walking alone through frozen tundra, never knowing if my friends were dying somewhere in this world...

  "You're thinking about the fire," Mabel interrupted my thoughts.

  "Yeah."

  "The fire could be anything. Anyone… it is most likely something that wants to eat you."

  "You don’t have to remind me..."

  "Cedric survived by avoiding unnecessary risks."

  "And look where he is now…"

  I thought about Zo. About Sadie. About Rafe and Sophie. They were somewhere in Rajkovia, probably as lost and confused as I was before I consumed Cedric's memories.

  Staying safe meant abandoning them to figure it all out alone.

  "You know what this means," Mabel said, her voice unusually serious. "If we go searching for that fire, we're walking into drake territory."

  "It cuts the distance significantly," I replied. "And it leads toward where the fire was."

  "It's probably a trap."

  "Maybe. But what if it's not? What if it's Zo? Or Sadie? Or anyone else from the fortress?"

  Mabel was silent for a moment.

  Then, with a theatrical sigh that somehow conveyed perfectly despite not having lungs. "Fine. We'll go get ourselves killed chasing a mystery firelight. It's not like I have any choice in the matter. I'm just the brilliant, beautiful worm forced to go wherever my reckless host decides."

  I smiled. "Your concern is noted."

  "It's not concern. It's resigned acceptance of your inevitable poor decision-making."

  I turned toward the Greywood's edge.

  Trying and failing was better than not trying at all.

  The storm began without any warning.

  I'd been moving across the tundra for hours, leaving the safe route behind us. The terrain had changed as I approached the Greywood—more rocks, more vegetation, scattered pines becoming denser—the ground rose toward the forested ridge where I'd seen the light.

  Midday. The sky darkened as clouds rolled in from the Frostspine Mountains, black and heavy and moving too fast to be natural.

  A wall of cold air had slammed into me hard enough to stagger me backward, the snow followed, pelting my stolen armor with stinging pellets that felt like sand blasting against any exposed skin.

  This wasn't the Long Dark. This was a seemingly natural storm, but brutal enough to kill.

  I pushed forward, leaning into the wind. The worms were working overtime, to keep me warm. But the wind cut through everything, stealing the heat faster than the worms could generate it. Ice formed on the edges of Cedric's armor. My exposed skin went numb.

  Visibility dropped to nothing.

  The world became a white blur, disorienting and deadly. I couldn't tell north from south, couldn't see where I was going.

  The storm had swallowed everything.

  I stumbled forward, hoping I was still moving toward the Greywood.

  I found a large snowdrift piled against what might have been a boulder. I crashed into it, my frozen hands digging into the snow.

  "This is our best option," Mabel said, her usual dramatic tone replaced by urgency. "Dig in."

  I began to carve out a hollow in the snowbank, my hands clumsy with cold. The worms helped—thousands of them working together, flowing from my fingers and shifting the snow. I created a small cave, barely large enough for me to curl inside.

  I crawled in, pulling snow closed behind me to block the wind.

  The space was tight and dark, but it was out of the direct blast of the storm. My worms continued to generate heat, fighting back against the cold that had seeped into my bones.

  "This is fine," Mabel said, her voice dripping with sarcasm now that immediate danger had passed. "Just wonderful. A snow cave. Very cozy. I always wanted to experience hypothermia from inside one of these."

  "It's better than freezing to death out there," I replied, my teeth chattering.

  "Not by much."

  The storm raged for hours.

  I huddled in my snow cave, conserving energy, letting the worms maintain just enough heat to survive. More than once the wind threatened to collapse my shelter. But it held tight, waiting out nature's fury.

  As the storm finally passed, I crawled out of the snow cave, blinking in the sudden brightness. The sun had returned, reflecting off fresh snow that transformed the landscape.

  The Greywood was closer now… I could see the treeline maybe a kilometer ahead, a dark line of pines against the white. The day was more than half gone. I needed to reach the ridge before nightfall.

  I started walking again, pushing through snow that came up to my knees in places. The storm had cost me hours. But I was still alive, and still moving toward that distant light.

  The Greywood rose before me as the afternoon light began to fade, towering pines with dark bark and blue-green needles, their branches heavy with snow. The trees grew close together, blocking much of the sky, creating a world of shadows and filtered light.

  I hesitated at the forest's edge.

  Cedric's memories screamed warnings. This was not a place for humans.

  "We could still turn back," Mabel said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. "Find the safe route to Horn's Rest."

  I shook my head. "The fire came from somewhere on that ridge. We're close."

  "It's your funeral. And mine…"

  I stepped past the treeline, and immediately a strange feeling enveloped my mind.

  It was as though the world beyond the forest didn't exist anymore, and all that remained were the twisting, dark paths between the pines. The forest felt almost endless, swallowing my sense of direction.

  "I don't like this," Mabel muttered. "Send out scouts."

  I nodded, extending my palm.

  A thin stream of worms flowed from my skin, dropping to the forest floor and spreading out in different directions.

  They were my eyes and ears, crawling through the undergrowth, climbing trees, reporting back what they found.

  It looked like a clear path ahead, there was no movement, no threats. The worms climbed high, scouting different routes, allowing me to choose the optimal path through the dense forest.

  I moved carefully, following their reports. Sometimes I had to backtrack as we found dead ends. But the worms helped me find the way.

  An hour passed. Then two.

  The forest remained silent except for the occasional creak of branches under snow. The worms reported nothing dangerous—no drakes, no predators—nothing but trees and snow and shadows.

  "This is going too well," Mabel said.

  "Maybe we're just lucky."

  "Luck doesn't exist in places like this. There's a reason, and I don't think we'll like it when we find out what it is."

  I sent the worms farther ahead, searching for the ridge, for any sign of the fire's source. They reported a clearing about fifty meters ahead.

  The worm-scouts hadn't found any threats.

  My new power was working perfectly, with the scouts and Cedric's memories, I felt prepared for anything.

  The worms reported the path continued to be clear. I pushed forward, eager to reach the ridge before nightfall.

  I had lowered my guard. Just a little… just enough…

  The snow directly in front of me was starting to shift.

  Not much by much, it was just a slight depression. My instincts screamed a warning a fraction of a second too late.

  Twenty meters of scaled muscle had erupted from the earth in an explosion of dirt and snow. Its legless body and serpentine jaws were lined with teeth the size of daggers.

  The wyrm lunged at me with a frightening speed. I threw myself sideways but I was a fraction of a second too slow… the wyrm's head clipped my shoulder, spinning me through the air.

  I hit the ground hard, snow doing little to cushion the impact.

  The worm-sword had formed in my hand before I stopped rolling. I scrambled to my feet, blood running down my arm where the wyrm had scraped through Cedric's armor.

  The beast coiled, its massive body scattering the snow and dirt. Its head swung toward me, jaws opening to reveal row after row of teeth.

  It began hissing—like steam escaping a ruptured pipe—its scales were grey-brown, the color of dead wood and stone. It had near perfect camouflage.

  It had been waiting beneath the surface, sensing vibrations, letting me walk right into its kill zone.

  Cedric's memories flooded my mind with information.

  Wyrms were the primary cause of Dragoon deaths in the Greywood. They burrow through earth, strike from below, dragging their victims underground to devour them.

  I was fighting something that had killed professional dragon hunters.

  The wyrm was already on the move, its massive body forming a coil around the small clearing. Cutting off my escape.

  The wyrm's head rose above me, swaying slightly from side to side.

  I tightened my grip on the worm-sword and braced myself.

  There would be no escape.

  Only survival.

  The wyrm attacked.