The forest grew quiet as we rode.

  Not in the way it usually did at night — that hush of sleeping things and soft winds through branches — but something heavier. Like a held breath. Like the land itself was waiting for something to go wrong.

  It was the birds I noticed first. Or rather, the lack of them.

  No crows cackling in the trees. No owls stirring.

  No rustle of small creatures in the underbrush.

  Just the wind.

  And even that sounded...wrong.

  The kind of silence that wraps around you like cloth soaked in blood.

  I raised a fist, signaling halt.

  Jonas reined in just behind me, brows drawn.

  "You feel that?"

  He nodded. "Something's watching."

  I scanned the tree line. The trees were tall here — old-growth pine and snowdrift fir, their branches thick with frost. Shadows pooled between them like ink.

  We’d been tracking the broken wagon trail deeper into the forest for two hours. The ruts veered sharply east at some point — a deliberate diversion. It wasn’t just an accident. Someone — or something — had taken it off-course.

  "Dismount," I said.

  We moved quiet. No clatter, no chatter. Horses tied to low branches. Swords drawn. Jonas took the right flank. Brannock moved left. I pushed forward alone through the tree line, each step slow, deliberate.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Then twenty.

  Still nothing.

  But the feeling didn’t fade. It deepened.

  The way it does before a storm breaks — not loud, not sudden, but inevitable.

  And then I saw it.

  A clearing opened ahead, maybe twenty feet across, surrounded by crooked black trees that looked burnt at the tips. Snow clung to their bark like mold.

  In the center stood a deer.

  At least, I thought it was a deer.

  It had antlers, yes. Long, spiraling like the horns of some ancient statue.

  Its body was wrong, though — too thin, too long. Its legs bent backward in unnatural angles. Its hide shimmered faintly, like it was slick with oil.

  Its eyes—

  They weren’t eyes.

  They were holes.

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  Not black. Not empty.

  Just...wrong.

  Like staring into a well that had no bottom.

  It turned its head toward me — slowly, deliberately — and I felt it.

  Something in my chest twisted.

  A pressure. Like drowning in silence.

  I took a step forward.

  The creature tensed.

  And then it screamed.

  It didn’t sound like a deer.

  It didn’t sound like anything that belonged on this side of the veil.

  The sound hit me like a wall — low and high and shattering all at once. My vision swam. My knees almost buckled.

  But I didn’t break.

  The Forge burned steady in my chest, pushing back the wave of wrongness.

  I drew steel.

  Durendal rang as it cleared the sheath, the blade pulsing faintly in my grip.

  The creature lunged.

  Fast.

  Too fast.

  It covered the distance between us in a blink, its legs folding and unfolding like a spider's. Claws — claws now, not hooves — slashed through the air.

  I ducked under the first strike, rolled left, came up with a tight arc of my blade.

  Steel met flesh — and caught.

  The thing screeched — not in pain, but fury — and leapt back, black ichor hissing where the blade had cut.

  Durendal shimmered faintly, aura burning white-blue in the gloom.

  So. It could bleed.

  That meant it could die.

  I pressed the advantage.

  Two steps forward. A feint high. Cut low.

  The creature twisted unnaturally, spine bending, limbs contorting.

  It struck again — faster, more savage. I blocked once, twice. The third blow slammed into my shoulder. Pain flared. Something cracked.

  Still, I stood.

  No wild counters. No fancy footwork.

  I let the Forge guide my breath.

  Inhale.

  Set your stance.

  Exhale.

  Strike.

  The creature lunged again — too close this time.

  I stepped inside the blow, dropped low, and drove my blade upward through its belly.

  Durendal sang as it passed through the thing’s guts and out its back.

  The creature convulsed, limbs flailing. Its scream shattered birds from the far trees — a sudden chorus of wings as silence finally broke.

  I twisted the blade and pulled free.

  It collapsed.

  I stood over it, panting, blood dripping onto the snow. My shoulder burned. My vision swam.

  But I was alive.

  And it was not.

  Jonas arrived seconds later, sword ready, eyes wild.

  "What in all seven hells—"

  "It’s dead," I said hoarsely.

  "That...wasn’t natural."

  "No."

  I knelt, inspecting the corpse.

  Even in death, the thing seemed unfinished. Its skin bubbled. Its limbs twitched. The ichor steaming against the snow.

  Jonas crouched beside me.

  "That one of the monsters from the stories?"

  "No."

  "Then what?"

  I stared at it.

  At the unnatural stretch of its body. The way it shimmered like oil under moonlight.

  At the faint, slow curl of smoke rising from where Durendal had touched its flesh.

  "A scout."

  Jonas looked at me sharply.

  "A scout for what?"

  I rose, cleaning my blade with a cloth and resheathing it.

  "For what's coming," I said.

  "That was no accident. This thing was hunting. Learning."

  He swallowed. "From the Abyss?"

  "From something deeper."

  I didn’t say the word that hung at the edge of my thoughts.

  Azazel.

  The Sovereign of corruption

  One of the Princes. One of the names from the later volumes of the novel — the ones that haunted Aiden's every step.

  If they were moving already, sending monsters this far north...

  It meant something was pushing them. Waking them.

  Breaking the timeline.

  And that meant the war wasn’t years away.

  It was now.

  We burned the corpse.

  Not with fire — not just. Fire alone couldn’t purge the stain of the Abyss. Not when it had roots.

  Instead, I used Durendal.

  The sword gleamed as I drove it through the body one last time, tracing a symbol in the dirt — a ward I barely remembered reading about in a footnote from a world away.

  Something old.

  Something real.

  The flames that rose weren’t orange, but white and pale blue. They burned clean.

  The body was gone in seconds.

  Only ashes remained.

  We made camp an hour away. Too exposed to risk travel in the dark.

  Jonas kept watch. Brannock brewed something bitter in a dented pot over the fire. The men were quiet.

  I sat beneath a pine, one hand on Durendal’s hilt, the other cradling my shoulder. It would bruise deep, maybe crack if I wasn’t careful.

  Didn’t matter.

  I looked up at the sky.

  The stars were back now. Cold and distant. Flickering faintly.

  But they were there.

  And so was I.

  Still breathing.

  Still standing.

  And if monsters from hell thought they could crawl into my world early?

  Then I’d just have to kill them early, too.