Chapter 111

Carnage.

I devoured it.

My teeth sank into flesh - throats, arms, whatever I could reach - and I tore away chunks, chewing as I ran. Blood filled my mouth, hot and thick. Human, orc - it didn’t matter. Meat was meat, and I was starving.

I was always starving.

I was too heavy for a warg, so I ran beside them, pounding across the battlefield as the Others crashed into the orcs and shattered their lines. The deeper we pushed, the more purple and gold bodies we found waiting for us.

Enemies. Food. If they threatened the pack - our home - they were mine.

So I ate.

Bit. Tore. Chewed. Swallowed.

Steel rang against steel somewhere around me, but it didn’t matter. Screams rose and fell. Someone gurgled as I ripped out their throat, blood bubbling between my fingers before I stuffed it into my mouth.

More. I needed more.

Then the noise stopped.

A deep, awful vibration rolled through the world, drowning everything else. It rattled my teeth, churned in my gut, numbed my bare feet against the ground. I couldn’t hear anything beyond it - just that endless, thrumming cacophony.

The sky darkened.

Something black poured over the walls.

At first it looked like water - like a wave breaking over the battlefield - but it was too thick. Too alive.

It crashed into the soldiers and spread, clinging to them like snakes drenched in hot birch pitch. The black things writhed, slid into mouths, **** their way up noses, burrowed into open wounds or tore new ones to crawl inside.

The people froze. Then they shook. Their faces twisted, mouths open in screams I couldn’t hear. The whites of their eyes burst red as veins popped. Blood ran down their cheeks like tears.

Then they stopped. They looked around, confused, like someone snatched their favorite sausage while they weren’t looking.

Then they moved again.

Some turned on the soldiers who weren’t covered in black. Most didn’t.

Most turned toward the keep.

Toward Nim. Toward home. Toward my pack.

A growl ripped out of me, low and hungry. I charged.

Bodies slammed into me and bounced away. Blades struck and slid off or bit deep - I didn’t care. I pushed through all of it, shoving, trampling, tearing a path straight toward the tide moving for the walls.

They wouldn’t take it. They wouldn’t touch what was mine. I would eat every last one of them before I let that happen.

I was Moss - the Devourer of Carnage.

This - this was what I was made for.

I threw my head back and howled.

* * *

With four armies bearing down on us, we didn’t stand a chance.

Maybe we could’ve held against the orcs alone. Maybe we could’ve weathered a siege - kept the gates shut, waited them out, slipped away into the demesne when we had to. But that wasn’t the fight coming.

Real wizards were marching. Stone and timber wouldn’t mean a damn thing against that.

And even the orcs weren’t simple. Enough of them could climb, could loose arrows until the sky went black. Their shamans could call spirits, raise dead, rot us from the inside out. I’d heard the stories - fingers falling off, toes turning black, bodies unraveling while you were still breathing.

No, we weren’t surviving this alone. We needed help. We needed something that could stand in the way of all that. We needed an army.

I told Torvek I was leaving. Nothing more. There wasn’t time to explain, and I didn’t want him trying to follow.

Then I headed for the mountains. The only place left that might answer.

Dusk bled into night before I found the trail again - the narrow, half-hidden path that wound up into the frozen teeth of the peaks. By the time I reached the chamber, the world behind me was gone, swallowed by dark and wind.

The cave opened into that same vast, hollowed space of ice. Blue light pulsed faintly through the walls, casting everything in a cold glow. The wind died the moment I stepped inside, cut off by sheer walls of ice and stone.

And they were there.

Dozens of them. Trolls. Watching. Waiting.

Before, they’d been great, hulking beasts. Now the spell had been broken and I saw them clearly - people. Broken, hollowed out by time and grief. Skin stretched thin. Eyes dim. Bodies worn down by cold and memory. Not monsters. Not spirits. Just people who had been forgotten.

I moved through them slowly.

I passed Amilie and called her by name. She blinked, her eyes glimmering with recognition. I did the same with Makresh and Jip and Shaa’liira. Though they couldn’t speak, their eyes softened and they followed me as I made my way down the amphitheater made of ice.

Where he stood unmoving, watching me descend. The Troll King.

He was massive - nearly seven feet, broad in a way that felt immovable rather than strong. His flesh had hardened into something like stone, veined through with ice that pulsed faintly beneath the surface. His beard was a jagged fall of frozen crystal. His hair rose in spikes of frost, a crown shaped by cold and time.

Ancient. Unyielding.

“You returned,” he said.

“We need your help,” I answered, stopping a few paces from him. “There are armies coming. More than we can handle. We need allies.”

My voice echoed softly off the ice. “We didn’t forget you,” I continued. “We raised standing stones. Marked your names. You’re remembered. Not just by me - by all of us. Even Lilae. We’ve told your story. It lives.”

I met his eyes. “It can keep living. Maybe it will live on beyond me and beyond you. But we need your help for that to happen.”

He was silent for a long moment. The faint glow in his veins pulsed.

Then he nodded. “We grow restless,” he said. “This is the season we would leave. To seek remembrance. To find those who have been lost.”

His gaze shifted past me, to the others gathering behind. “We will follow. We will help. We will find a way to be remembered.”

Relief hit harder than I expected. “Thank you,” I said quietly.

I didn’t stay long after that.

On the way down the mountain, I found Yveth. Or she found me.

I told her everything. The armies. The Myrddin. What was coming.

She said she’d meet me there.

We left the mountains and headed home.

A hundred trolls behind me. Not an army.

But maybe it would be enough.

* * *

I tried to be brave. I really did.

But the wind howled against the castle like it was trying to tear it apart, and the lightning kept flashing so bright it hurt my eyes, and the thunder - every time it hit, it felt like the walls jumped. I’d never seen a storm in the demesne before. I didn’t even know it could storm here.

And it was bad. Worse than anything I’d ever seen.

Torvek kept telling us it was fine, that we were safe, but I could hear it in his voice. He was scared too. That made it worse.

I wished Vaer was here. Or Thren. Or Ashie. Or Serah. They knew how to be brave. They made it look easy.

Another crack of thunder slammed into the castle and I screamed before I could stop myself.

Tib was already crying. Issa sat with him, singing softly, trying to calm him down. Brinja and Elarion were pressed shoulder to shoulder, both of them shaking but trying not to show it. Mak sat close to Torvek, jaw set like she wasn’t afraid at all - but I could see it in her eyes.

I hoped Grams was okay.

Thren had moved the village - slid everything away, houses and crops and all of it, up onto a distant hill. You could still see it from here if you looked, and it wasn’t really that far. The demesne made distances weird.

But it was far enough that I couldn’t just go sit with her.

Goosebumps prickled along my arms. Something felt wrong. Like someone was watching me. Like when Clo hid in the shadows and waited to jump out and scare me. She did that a lot. Said I was easy.

I swallowed and tried to be brave.

Then something moved under the door. Black. Wet.

“Torvek!” I shouted, pointing.

He turned instantly. “Everyone back!”

We scrambled into the corner as the black liquid oozed into the room.

At first it moved like spilled paint, slow and thick. Then it shifted. Thickened. Tendrils peeled away from it - thin, stretching, reaching. They latched onto a chair, the couch, the ceiling.

It pulled itself upward.

Not a puddle anymore. A shape. Something like a snake, fat and coiling, rising as if it could see us.

Elarion struck first. Lightning cracked from his hands, blinding and deafening for a heartbeat. Brinja followed, vines bursting from the floor - thick, thorned, wrapping and squeezing.

The thing melted through them.

It didn’t rush us. It crept. Slow. Deliberate. Like it was stalking.

More tendrils lashed out, grabbing furniture, anchoring itself as it dragged forward.

Torvek lifted the axe Mirri had given him - one of Ashie’s spares. Mak snatched up the fire poker from the hearth.

I pulled mana into my hands and pressed them to their backs, flooding them with strength, with life.

“Go get ’em,” I said.

They didn’t hesitate.

Torvek surged forward, axe swinging down - but the thing split apart just before the blade hit, the two halves peeling away from each other. Mak slammed the poker into it, but it barely seemed to notice.

Spells lit the room - ice, lightning, spears of wood punching up from the floor and walls.

I couldn’t tell if any of it mattered.

The thing lashed out.

Webs of black shot toward us. One whipped past my face and slammed into the wall behind me. Another snapped toward Mak, and I threw up a glowing shield just in time. It splashed against it, writhing.

Torvek ducked a strike, then buried his axe deep into the mass. This time it didn’t dodge fast enough.

Mak hammered it again and again. The others kept blasting it.

I stayed back, patching cuts, mending bruises, pouring strength into them whenever they faltered.

The room fell apart around us. Furniture shattered. The floor split and buckled under Brinja’s magic. Pictures crashed to the ground and broke.

Through all of it, Tib moved. I didn’t see him at first. He slipped toward the hearth, small and quiet. Too close. Way too close.

Torvek kept the thing busy, drawing its attention.

Until Tib scraped the little shovel against the hearth. The sound was tiny. It still heard.

A tendril snapped toward him.

Torvek moved faster. His axe flared green as it struck the web midair and split it clean in two. The severed pieces sagged and melted into tar.

Torvek grinned.

Tib didn’t hesitate.

He jammed the shovel into the coals, scooped them up, and flung them with everything he had. “DRAGON FIRE!”

The coals burst in midair, flaring brighter than they should have. When they hit, the thing screamed.

Not one voice. Hundreds.

Everyone went all in.

Mak’s poker flared green, lengthening, sharpening - turning into a sword in her hands. Elarion’s lightning shifted, yellow arcs turning pale green as they hammering into it again and again. Brinja’s vines thickened, no longer melting, crushing and holding. Issa’s ice pinned it in place, slowed it just enough that it couldn’t slip away.

We didn’t stop.

We hit it until it collapsed. The shape sagged, lost form, melted down into a thick, stinking pool of black tar. And stayed there. Still. Dead.

I stared at it, chest heaving.

“What… what was that?” I whispered. “A Myrddin?”

How did it get here? Were there more?

My stomach dropped. “Grams!” I shouted.

If one got in here-

We didn’t wait. We bolted for the door and burst out into the storm.

Rain slammed into us, cold and hard. Lightning split the sky. Thunder crashed so loud it felt like it shoved the air out of my lungs.

We ran for the village.