The sack twitched again, its coarse fibers straining against whatever—or whoever—was inside.

  Walk away, the pragmatic side of his mind urged. This isn’t your fight. You’ve already wasted enough time on thieves and thugs. The smithy expects you back, and Varrick won’t take kindly to excuses.

  But then came the other voice, quieter but sharper—What if it’s a child? What if it’s someone like Kael?

  Alph’s jaw tightened. He exhaled through his nose, the breath fogging in the damp air. The carriage was long gone, its polished wheels leaving no trace but the faintest echo in the distance. No witnesses. No consequences for ignoring this.

  Or no consequences for helping, he countered.

  He crouched beside the sack, fingers brushing the rough canvas. A muffled, desperate sound came from within—something between a whimper and a choked gasp. His fingers curled into a fist.

  "Fine," he muttered. He opened the sack’s bindings.

  The contents spilled out—pale limbs, tangled dark hair, and the unmistakable scent of blood. A woman. Unconscious, but alive. Her wrists were bound, her dress torn, and her face was ruined with knife marks, making it impossible to identify her.

  Alph’s stomach twisted.

  Damn it.

  Alph’s fingers pressed against the woman’s back, her skin clammy beneath his touch. The scent of iron and damp wool filled his nostrils as he invoked Nature’s Mend. A faint green glow pulsed from his palm, seeping into her broken flesh like mist curling over still water. The magic knit her wounds shut—shallow cuts sealing first, then deeper gashes knitting together with visible slowness. Her breath hitched, a wet rattle in her throat, but her chest barely rose.

  Come on.

  He leaned closer, pressing his ear to her lips. Her exhalations were shallow, irregular. The pulse beneath his fingers fluttered like a trapped moth, weak and erratic. The magic wasn’t enough.

  A broken vessel cannot hold what it cannot contain—but he shoved the thought aside. He funneled more willpower into the skill, his own stamina draining as the mossy light flared brighter. Her ribs, cracked beneath his hand, shifted slightly under the magic’s touch, but her lungs still wouldn’t draw properly.

  A cold knot of frustration coiled in his gut.

  Her fingers twitched against the cobblestones, and grime darkened her broken nails. The knife marks across her face looked deliberate and jagged, as if someone carved them with the intent to prevent recognition. His jaw clenched. The magic could stitch flesh, but it couldn’t force her body to remember how to breathe.

  Damn it.

  He rolled her onto her back, tilting her chin up to clear her airway. Blood bubbled at her lips. His hands hovered over her sternum, considering compression, but the angle was wrong, the street too uneven. The green glow sputtered, fading as his stamina reserves dipped dangerously low. His own breath came faster now, sharp with the acrid tang of failure.

  She wasn’t healing. She was dying.

  Her chest heaved once more, a ragged, final draw that rattled like pebbles in a broken bellows. Alph's hands pressed harder, the green glow skill flickering desperately against her skin, mending what it could—flesh knitting, color returning to her cheeks. But the light in her eyes, when they fluttered open, was gone. Hollow, like abandoned forges, staring through him into some void he couldn't reach.

  "End... it," she whispered, voice a threadbare rasp, barely parting lips that had just begun to lose their pallor. "Please... end me."

  Alph froze, his fingers going slack against her ribs. The words didn't register at first, a misheard echo in the grimy alley's hush. Save me. It had to be save me. But her gaze locked on his, empty as a shattered hope, pleading not for life but oblivion.

  A chill clawed up his spine, colder than anything he felt so far. What hell had carved that plea into her soul? What torments could strip away the will to fight, leaving only this quiet surrender at death's threshold? His mind reeled, a storm of incomprehension—she's asking me to kill her?—mingled with a hollow ache that twisted like a botched weld in his gut. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, the weight of her broken trust pinning him in place.

  Her hand, fragile and trembling, clutched at his sleeve. Then, with a sigh like wind through cracked stone, her body went limp in his arms. The green light sputtered out, fading into the damp air that carried the reek of alley rot—stale urine, spilled ale, and the metallic tang of her blood soaking into the cobblestones. Her warmth ebbed, skin cooling beneath his touch, the subtle pulse at her throat vanishing like a snuffed ember.

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  As the magic's afterglow dimmed, recognition hit him like a hammer blow. That delicate jaw, the dark hair... The newlywed from the caravan, the one who'd clung to her husband's arm, laughing at his boasts of mansions and wealth. Her face, now almost whole under the healing's touch, stared blankly at the smog-choked sky.

  Only then did he see what desperation had blinded him to: her body, mottled with bruises blooming like forge bruises under the skin, fading to sickly yellows. Scars crisscrossed her arms and neck—thin, deliberate lines that the skill had reduced to scabbed remnants, as if endless violations had been etched into her very frame. Rips in her dress revealed more: welts from bindings, finger marks on her thighs.

  His vision narrowed, a roar building in his ears. The guess formed sharp and vicious—she'd been abused so much that her will to live has been snuffed out just like her life, her husband's promises nothing but lies to drag her into chains.

  They will burn for this. His hands clenched into fists, nails biting into his palms as fury ignited in his chest, hot and unyielding.

  The body felt lighter than it should have. Alph adjusted his grip, the woman’s limp form cradled against his chest like a broken tool. The lower districts sprawled beneath the mountain’s shadow, their winding alleys choked with the stench of tanneries and the distant clang of late-night forges.

  He moved without sound, Deft Movement guiding his steps over loose cobblestones, Reduced Presence wrapping him in a cloak of shadows. No drunkards lurking in doorways glanced twice. No night watchman’s lantern swung in his direction.

  The burial site crouched at the city’s edge, where the mountain’s slope grew too steep for proper construction. A rickety fence of lashed-together planks marked the boundary, beyond which the earth turned uneven, pocked with fresh mounds and sunken stones. The undertaker’s shack squatted near the entrance, its single oil lamp casting long, wavering fingers across the dirt.

  The dwarf behind the counter had a beard like frayed rope, streaked with ash and something darker near the roots. He looked up as Alph approached, squinting through the haze of pipe smoke. “Closed,” he grunted, already reaching for the rusted bell beside his ledger.

  Alph’s free hand flicked. Copper coins skittered across the warped wood, spinning like desperate dice before coming to rest. The undertaker’s fingers twitched. His gaze darted between the coins and Alph’s face, then down to the bundle in Alph’s arms. A slow, calculating silence stretched.

  Then the coins vanished into a pocket. The dwarf stood, joints cracking like cooling metal, and grabbed a shovel leaning against the wall. He jerked his chin toward the far corner of the graveyard. “Follow me lad.”

  The grave took less time to dig than Alph expected. The undertaker worked with the efficiency of a man who’d done this a thousand times before, his shovel biting into the earth with practiced strokes. Alph laid her down when the hole was deep enough. The dirt hit her shroud with soft, final thuds, each one settling like a counterweight in his chest.

  The dwarf wiped his brow with a grimy sleeve and produced a chisel. “Name for the marker?”

  Alph’s throat tightened. He shook his head.

  The undertaker shrugged, already turning the chisel against the rough-hewn stone. A simple sigil took shape—Unknown, of the Mountain’s Mercy—before he wedged it into the fresh mound. He spat on his palms, rubbed them together, and clapped Alph on the shoulder. “Forge-Heart guide her.”

  The dwarf tramped away, his heavy boots fading into the gloom. Alph stood in the sudden silence, the only sound the rasp of wind against the fresh mound of dirt. He looked down at the nameless stone, the rough edges of the earth a bitter reminder of the help he had been too slow to give.

  The wind howled down from the peaks, carrying the scent of smoke and distant rain. He should’ve asked her name when he had the chance. Should’ve pressed harder, demanded answers, done something.

  The lesson had been drilled into him, bone-deep: observe first, act later. It was how he’d survived the courtroom battles of his past life, how he’d navigated the treacherous currents of this world, how he’d kept his true nature hidden beneath layers of caution. Every decision weighed, every risk calculated—because hesitation was armor, and patience was the blade that never dulled.

  But armor could become a cage.

  His mind flashed back to the meeting hall in Oakhaven, the way he’d lured Valerius into that carefully constructed snare, ensuring he would be isolated, neutralized—controlled. He’d accounted for every variable. The villagers’ safety. The positioning of the hearth. And then…

  The bloodwitch had erupted from Valerius’s shadow like a blade from the dark, her laughter a serpent’s hiss as Kael’s body hit the floor. All his precision, all his restraint, had crumbled in that instant. Now, despite knowing who was truly responsible, he couldn't touch him, couldn't do anything.

  And then Stoneford.

  He’d stood there, frozen, as the abomination tore through the garrison. Sal had moved first—with his gruff voice and his shield raised high, buying time Alph hadn’t been fast enough to claim.

  The sergeant’s body had hit the cobblestones before Alph’s fingers even closed around his bow. Only then had the fury come, the desperate, reckless surge that had sent him scrambling up that tower, that had made him demand the siege crossbow, that had turned Paladin's fire into a killing stroke. There too, he knew the person responsible, but he had to rely on him to escape the death.

  The pattern was there, etched into his failures like a brand: he couldn't do anything to the perpetrators.

  His fists clenched.

  Not this time.

  The cold fury in his gut wasn’t just anger. It was a forge fire, banked low but ready to roar. He didn’t have the luxury of patience anymore. The man who’d done this—whoever had carved that woman into something that begged for death—would pay. And if that meant burning his careful plans to ash? Then let them burn.

  Alph turned his back on the grave and strode into the dark. The streets of Val Karok had just become a hunting ground.

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  Destiny on the Frozen Peak: The Myriad Constellations

  Released on January 1st, 2026

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