He knew where he would go now. The road to Lord Leon’s Fortress ran through the woods. Stone, men, iron—he only hoped that wasn’t just another prayer cast into silence.

  He left—step by step. The farther he went from the clearing, the more the night changed. A wind rose; a fox barked in the distance; an owl called somewhere. The world remembered how to live, though it would never be the same.

  He lifted the axe and shifted his grip. He headed in the direction moss and memory told him to go if he wanted to see a wall. As he walked, the rhythm of his steps steadied his breathing. Another sound returned to him—not from the forest but from memory: his father’s calm voice—“Do as good sense bids.” He obeyed—and went.

  From afar Algar saw a wash of light. The Fortress was stone; it was the cottages around it that burned: swathes of roofing, pole-fences, sheets of drying cloth, wagons under sheds. Fire ate timber faster than it should, as if the wind served it. He stood at the edge of a copse with his mouth full of smoke. Wood was burning, and skin, and fat. And that same syrupy stench that had crept into their cottage just before the splinters flew. He knew it too well already.

  At first there was only a roar, like water smashing against rock. Then separate sounds pulled free: metal on metal, dull blows into wood, a bellow. Rarely did it sound human. Sometimes a human scream punched into the rhythm—short, sudden, cut off like a badly drawn string.

  They were making a stand. They had to. Stone, walls, iron. Lord Leon kept a garrison—knights, guards, stout warriors the village of Borenu had lacked. That was how the world worked: the stone stands, and the village burns.

  He moved along the trees, keeping to shadow. Bark rasped his shoulder; leaves whispered at his ear. The axe shifted in his hands. Sweat turned the haft slick as glass.

  Beneath the wall, across the moat, yawned a new rift—like the one at the chapel, only larger. The black was not darkness; it was a presence. And around it pulsed the same rhythm of signs. Red light walked through them like heat through ash.

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  The beasts were climbing from the depth. First came slick shadows that raised their heads and became wolves—the same kind that had torn his village, only more of them. They came tight, shoulder to shoulder, their pelts mottled with burned hide. Their eyes burned with the same black fire. Behind them heavier shapes heaved up: bodies like boulders, two bald heads on a single neck, bellies pendulous and leathery, clubs thick as trunks. Each step from those giants punched the earth, and their clubs beat the gate until the hinges grated and the portal groaned. They had to stand twenty feet tall. Above them, like black ships, winged monsters without feathers wheeled, their skin ragged as old sacks. They dropped alone or in pairs onto the walls, plucked crossbowmen from the crenels, and flung them into the waiting wolves—teeth catching men already in the air.

  This was not a siege. It was a flood.

  On the walls he saw men—the same guards he had passed when he and his father hauled grain to the granaries; the same knights the village children imitated in play, swinging sticks like swords. He knew many by sight. They thrust with spears, hacked with swords, loosed flaming arrows. Yet each thing they did was a drop of water in a pot of tar.

  Then he saw Leon. There was no mistaking him: a helm in green and black, moonlight skating over polished plates of armor, a blazon showing two black horses at full gallop on a green field. He stood straight above the others, pointing with his hand, his voice slicing the din like a blade. Algar had seen him only a few times in his life—always from afar—but now he felt close. Perhaps because Leon’s courage looked like something that could endure.

  A moment later a winged monster swept in from the western tower, where the smoke was thickest. It beat its wings so hard that dust and sparks scattered across the wall. Talons caught Leon’s helm and wrenched it back. A second creature, the first one’s shadow, darted under the crenel’s roof and jabbed him with its claws. A flash of metal turned to black. The lord flinched but held his ground. He took the blow on his shield—and the shield split. He pointed one last time. The first monster hauled him skyward, lifted him over the parapet as if to show him to the world, and hurled him. Leon fell straight beneath a giant’s club. The impact was so great that everything went silent for a heartbeat. The armor burst like a walnut shell. Blood spread wide, washing over the stone.

  The wall saw it. The people saw it. Something that held them together broke.

  The winged creatures circled and began to spill tongues of fire onto the shingles. Patches of thatch went up at once. At the foot of the walls everything vanished into smoke. The thud of clubs on the gate carried through. The runes around the rift beat harder. Algar stared too long. The sight pulled at him.