Eirik's mind raced as he descended.

  He had an answer, yes, but they appeared to be more than a conduit than the real thing. To corner them and interrogate directly, would have been a fool's errand.

  The entity would have sensed the trap, severed its connection, and abandoned its host, leaving Eirik with nothing but a mindless husk. No, the thing pulling the strings had to believe it was winning.

  "Commander!" A young Talon guard stumbled back from his post near the prison mouth. "The children—they're swaying, eyes rolled back, and their shadows—"

  "Don't touch them," Eirik cut him. "Don't even step on their shadows. Whatever's controlling them might transfer through contact."

  The guard paled further. "Should we gag them? The sound is—"

  "Let them sing," Eirik said as he descended into the prison.

  In the guard alcove, Dren cowered against the wall, his scarred eye sockets weeping pus, thin hands clutching a half-eaten crust of bread.

  "L-lord! The singing! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!" He pressed his palms against his ears. "It's in my head! Crawling like worms!"

  Eirik studied with him. Fear radiated from every line of his body. But fear of what, exactly?

  "You'll come with me," Eirik said. "I need your knowledge of Skarl rituals."

  "But Lord, I've told you everything—"

  "Not everything." Eirik's voice hardened. "You haven't told me how the ritual would affect someone who wasn't one of the Skarls."

  Dren's head tilted, those empty sockets somehow conveying confusion. "Not Skarls? But Lord, only those close to the shaman had knowledge of the ritual, and all of Grakk'Thor's circle are dead or imprisoned. Unless..."

  "Unless?"

  "Unless someone hid their knowledge. But who would—" Dren's breath hitched. "You suspect someone! Who, Lord?"

  "Guards," Eirik called. "Bring Lord Rurik Stormcrow. Now."

  Within minutes, Rurik emerged between two Talons, his once-fine clothes stained with filth, hair matted, but he straightened when he saw Eirik.

  "Brother," he drawled. "Come to gloat? Or finally decided to execute me properly instead of letting me rot?"

  "Neither." Eirik grabbed Rurik's arm. "You're coming topside. There's something the people need to see."

  "What are you—"

  "Dren, you too." Eirik gestured to the blind man. "I need you to identify certain sounds in the blood ritual."

  Dren stumbled forward, one hand on the wall. "Of course, Lord. Whatever you need."

  They emerged from jail into the courtyard. The crowd, which had been fracturing moments before, turned as one toward the emerging group.

  Eirik hauled Rurik to the center of the cleared space, directly in the sight line of hundreds of terrified faces. Dren shuffled along behind, guided by a Talon.

  "PEOPLE OF ABERCROMBIE!" Eirik's voice boomed. "The enemy stands among us!"

  Gasps rippled through the crowd. Rurik's eyes widened in shock.

  "What insanity is this?" Rurik snarled. "You think you can blame your failures on me? I've been locked in your cesspit for—"

  "Locked away, yes," Eirik circled his half-brother slowly. "But your reach extends beyond bars, doesn't it? Your schemes don't require freedom, just... accomplices."

  "Accomplices?" Rurik laughed bitterly. "Who? The rats? The mushrooms growing on my cell walls?"

  Eirik stopped directly in front of him.

  "The prisoners. The Skarls. You made a deal with them, didn't you? Promise them freedom in exchange for this blasphemy?"

  The crowd leaned forward, hungry for confession, for someone to blame.

  Rurik stared at him, aghast.

  "Brother, you truly are desperate, aren't you? Your ice crumbles and you need a scapegoat. Very well, let's play your game." He raised his voice to the crowd. "Yes! I, locked in a cell without contact with anyone but guards who hate me, somehow orchestrated a complex blood ritual using Skarl magic I don't understand, through prisoners I've never met, to achieve... what exactly? Making a statue cry? Brilliant plan!"

  The crowd murmured uncertainly. Rurik's denials rang with some logic.

  Eirik stalked towards him.

  "Desperate? Oh, no, brother. This is a revelation. Look around you! Look at what you helped unleash! The Frost Mother weeps, defiled! I thought your little game with the Order was your end, but you were still scheming from the dungeon!"

  Rurik’s brow furrowed.

  "Did Varina scramble your brain before she left? Or perhaps it was that little spell you tried? Knocked the last sense from your thick bastard skull? Scheming? From a damp hole? Chained like a beast? While you prance about with your little ice tricks and delusions of grandeur? You flatter yourself, Commander. And vastly overestimate my capacity for suicidal stupidity."

  The crowd shifted uneasily. Rurik’s indignation sounded real. His insults, biting and personal.

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  "Suicidal? Hardly!" Eirik spat. "Ambitious! Craving destruction! You wanted Abercrombie! You wanted my power! But you couldn't take it openly! So you turned to the darkest tools! Made a pact with those Skarl savages! Used their filthy blood-magic! Planned this… this blasphemy!"

  Rurik shook his head and laughed.

  "Oh, you truly have lost it, haven't you? Pact with Skarls? With that crone? Using blood-magic?" He shook his head. "Eirik, you ignorant clod, I wouldn’t touch that savage filth if it meant my freedom! Unlike you, I understand the real limit of what I can or cannot do! This is Skarls' job alone! Or perhaps…" he let his gaze sweep the crowd with malicious intent, "...perhaps it’s simply the Frost Mother showing her true displeasure with you?"

  The crowd gasped. Some pilgrims recoiled, others stared at Eirik with renewed doubt. Rurik’s counter-attack was vicious and plausible. He leveraged the very doubt Eirik had shown earlier about the statue itself.

  Eirik feigned being momentarily rocked by the accusation, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face that the crowd devoured.

  "Lies! Twisted words! But you won't confuse them anymore!" He turned to Olaf and Leif. "Bring him! Bring him to stand before her! Let him face the symbol of what he tried to destroy!"

  "Unhand me, you brute!" Rurik struggled futilely against the Talons who seized him. "This is madness! You’ll prove nothing! People! Open your eyes! He’s desperate! He doesn’t know what’s happening, so he blames me! It’s pathetic!"

  Eirik ignored him, marching forward. His gaze swept the crowd again.

  "You want the real enemy? You want the hand behind this desecration? Then witness!"

  As the Talons forced Rurik to kneel on the blood-soaked snow at the statue’s feet, Eirik paused. His eyes weren’t on his brother. They scanned the periphery, past the Talon cordon, past the cowering pilgrims, landing on a huddled figure trying desperately to melt into the stone of the keep’s entrance tunnel.

  "Dren!" Eirik’s voice cracked. "You! Come here! Now!"

  Dren's head snapped up.

  "M-me, Lord? Why? I... I don’t..." He stumbled forward, guided roughly by a nearby Talon guard who’d been watching the unfolding spectacle with everyone else. He seemed utterly insignificant against the backdrop of the pulsating statue and the kneeling, furious Rurik.

  "Stay close, Dren," Eirik growled. "You witnessed Grakk'Thor’s filth firsthand. You understand the depths of their evil. You’ll confirm what this snake denies!"

  Dren whimpered, stumbling as Eirik dragged him towards the center stage Rurik occupied.

  "Y-yes, Lord... Anything... I saw... I saw terrible things..."

  They reached the space just before the kneeling Rurik and the weeping statue. Eirik positioned Dren slightly behind and to the side of Rurik. The contrast was stark: the defiant, if battered, nobleman kneeling in chains, and the broken, blind traitor trembling like a leaf. The children’s song intensified, the words chillingly clear now:

  "Vessel breaks, the vessel bleeds,

  The hungry maw on terror feeds.

  The offering weak, the conduit thin,

  But traitor’s blood lets darkness in!"

  The last lines were new. A fresh chill swept the courtyard. Eirik felt it too – a tightening in the air, a sense of imminent arrival. Time was bleeding faster than the statue’s crimson tears.

  He had minutes, maybe seconds.

  He stepped forward, putting himself between Rurik and the statue, facing the crowd. He raised his hands for silence, his expression grave, almost sorrowful.

  "You see him?" Eirik gestured dramatically towards Rurik. "The face of betrayal? The architect of our suffering? He denies it! He calls me mad! He twists my words! But the Frost Mother... she sees the truth in every frozen heart."

  He paused, letting the silence stretch. The only sounds were the children’s unnerving chant, the soft drip of blood from the statue, and the ragged breathing of the crowd. Eirik slowly raised his right hand. His eyes, however, were not on Rurik.

  "GELU HONESTUS!"

  Light exploded. But this sphere wasn't centered vaguely over the prisoners or the crowd. Eirik shaped it with fierce, focused intent. The shimmering sphere of truth condensed not over Rurik, but directly above Dren, enveloping him completely in its ethereal, pulsing light.

  A gasp ripped through the crowd. Olaf stiffened, eyes wide. Leif inhaled sharply, comprehension dawning as he saw Eirik’s true target.

  Dren froze. Utterly. Every tremor stopped. His jaw went slack. The light of the sphere illuminated the scabs on his ruined sockets, the stark terror suddenly etched onto his face.

  Eirik didn't give him time.

  "Dren! Under the Frost Mother’s unblinking gaze and this sphere of ultimate truth... SPEAK!"

  The sphere pulsed with relentless pressure. Frost crackled instantly across Dren’s lips. A sound of pure agony escaping his throat.

  "Who commands the children’s song?" Eirik demanded.

  Dren’s mouth opened. He tried to clamp it shut, muscles straining impossibly against the sphere’s compulsion.

  "WHO?!" Eirik roared.

  The pressure intensified. Dren screamed. Not defiance, but the sound of something internal shattering under unbearable force.

  "Who taught the Skarl brats that chant? Who whispered the words to Krenna while she bled? Who watched Varina leave and knew the time was ripe? WHO IS THE HAND INSIDE THE GLOVE?!"

  Dren slammed his forehead against the frozen ground, bloodying it against the ice. The frost spreading across his skin thickened and he whimpered, gibbered, and fought with the desperation of a trapped animal.

  "No... please... master... forgive... I didn’t... they promised..." The words spilled out, fractured, terror-stricken, utterly uncontrolled.

  "WHO'S YOUR MASTER, DREN?!" Eirik took a step closer. "WHOSE PROMISE? TELL ME THE NAME!"

  Dren’s back arched impossibly high, and then the name ripped itself from him:

  "MALAKOR!"

  The name hung for a heartbeat.

  Then Dren’s body exploded.

  Not into gore, but into a storm of glittering, obsidian shards. They hung suspended for a microsecond, swirling like smoke.

  The black smoke rose twenty feet, thirty, forty, spreading outward like the wings of some primordial bird of prey. Within that darkness, forms began to solidify.

  Not one shape, but many.

  Eyes opened along the smoke. Hundreds of them, each a different size, some human, some reptilian, some bearing pupils that spiraled into infinite depths. They blinked in no synchronized pattern.

  "FROST MOTHER PRESERVE US!"

  Pilgrims trampled each other in despair. The merchant who'd been so concerned about honey prices moments ago clawed past an elderly priest, sending the old man sprawling. The Talon cordon shattered instantly—even trained soldiers couldn't hold against this primal terror.

  Bodies pressed against the gates, which groaned under the crushing weight of hundreds trying to escape at once.

  From the writhing smoke, arms began to emerge. Not two, but dozens, each ending in hands that bore too many joints, fingers that bent in directions that violated anatomy. Some hands had mouths in their palms, already gnashing teeth of obsidian. Others sprouted smaller arms from their wrists.

  Where Dren had knelt, only scorched stone remained.

  "COMMANDER!" Olaf's roar barely penetrated the din. The massive warrior had gone sheet-white. Even facing down trolls and Skarl berserkers, Olaf had never looked afraid.

  Now he looked like a child confronting his worst nightmare made flesh.

  But training overrode terror. Olaf's hand found his war axe, though it shook as he raised it. "GET BACK! GET BEHIND US!"

  Leif moved with mechanical precision, his Frost Realm power flaring around him in desperate self-defense. His sword was already drawn, the blade trembling despite his white-knuckled grip.

  "Demon," Leif breathed. "It's a demon. An actual demon. Commander, we need to—"

  Eirik took a step forward.

  Both lieutenants stared at him in shock.

  "Commander, no!"

  Leif grabbed Eirik's arm, but Eirik shrugged him off.

  The entity's form was still coalescing. A torso emerged from the smoke—if torso was even the right word for the writhing mass of flesh and shadow and things that existed between states of matter. Ribs pushed through its skin only to dissolve and reform elsewhere. Hearts—multiple hearts—beat visibly through translucent patches of its chest, each pulsing to a different rhythm.

  Its head...

  There was no single head. Instead, faces pushed through the smoke at random points, surfacing like drowning victims breaking through black water only to sink again. Each face was different—human, animal, things that had never existed in the mortal realm. They spoke in unison when they appeared, creating a chorus of discord:

  "VESSEL..."