The wyrm struck like a battering ram.

  I dodged to the left, feeling the wind of its passage tear at my clothes. The worm-sword in my hand flashed out, biting into the creature's scales as it shot past.

  "That's it?" Mabel's voice rang in my head. "That's your big opening move? A little scratch?"

  The blade had barely broken the wyrm’s skin, sliding off armor that might as well have been steel plating.

  It didn't even seem to notice.

  "You try fighting a twenty-meter death noodle," I muttered, spinning to face the creature as it whipped around with impossible speed.

  Its tail caught me across the chest before I could react.

  The impact had lifted me clean off of my feet, sending me crashing through a one of the near by pine trees. I felt my ribs buckle and crack from the impact.

  Pain riddled my body as I hit the ground hard.

  "That went well," Mabel commented.

  I spat blood onto the snow and pushed myself up. "Shut up and help me kill this thing."

  The wyrm was preparing another burst attack again, its massive body forming loops of muscle that rippled beneath its scales.

  "Fish, it's going to strike again, look out!" Mabel warned.

  I slid to the left, narrowly dodging the incoming attack, then drove the sword toward the wyrm's eye.

  The creature was faster than me, it jerked its head aside, and my blade scraped uselessly across its armored scales. Its jaws snapped shut inches from my face.

  I could smell its rotten breah.

  "THIS THING IS FASTER THAN IT HAS ANY RIGHT TO BE!" Mabel shouted as I stumbled back.

  The wyrm struck again, its head shooting forward like a bullet. I brought the sword up to block this time, and the impact drove me to my knees. My arms shook from the force.

  The blade's segments flexed and reformed, absorbing punishment that would have shattered steel, but I felt the strain through my connection to the worms.

  "We're not winning this," I grunted, pushing back against the massive weight.

  "No shit," Mabel replied. "But dying isn't an option. I refuse to be digested in that thing's stomach."

  Pushing off the muzzle of the snake disengaging from it, I tucked into a roll as the wyrm's head slammed into the ground where I'd been. I flicked my blade at its side as I came up, cutting it deeper this time.

  Dark blood sprayed across the snow.

  The wyrm screamed and whipped around with savage fury.

  I was losing. I could feel it.

  The wyrm was too big, too armored, too relentless. Every wound I inflicted was superficial. Every wound I took cost essence to repair.

  I was bleeding resources while the wyrm had barely been inconvenienced.

  I was backed against a tree, it bought me a few seconds to think. As the wyrm circled, blood dripped from its wounds, it was showing no sign of slowing.

  "It's too heavily armored. You need to get inside it somehow." Mabel commented.

  I looked at the gash I'd carved in the wyrm's side. It was still bleeding.

  "No," Mabel said, reading my thoughts. "No, no, no. That is NOT a good plan. That's just suicide."

  "Got a better idea?" I asked, watching the wyrm as it moved hypnotically.

  "Several! All of which don't involve being EATEN ON PURPOSE!"

  The wyrm lunged again, jaws wide, teeth gleaming.

  I stepped into the attack.

  Its wide mouth snapping shut around my left arm.

  I felt its teeth punch through armor and flesh, grinding against my bones.

  The pain was blinding. I screamed but didn't pull away.

  "FISH!" Mabel shrieked. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"

  I drove the worm-sword into the wyrm's existing wound. The blade sank deep past its armored scales, past tight muscles, and deep into the creature's body.

  Then I willed the sword to break-down into thousands of worms.

  My worms began to spread within the beast's insides like an infection. I felt thousands of them spreading through its blood and burrowing into its organs.

  I felt them feeding, I felt the wyrm's essence flowing back through the connection.

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  The wyrm released my arm and thrashed wildly.

  Its body whipped back and fourth, slamming into trees, its tail tearing rifts ino the frozen earth. It didn't understand what was happening. It only knew it was dying and couldn't stop it.

  I stumbled back, cradling my mangled arm, watching the wyrm get torn apart.

  My little demons worked fast, spreading through the creature's massive body like fire through dry wood.

  The wyrm's movements were growing weaker.

  "That was absolutely disgusting," Mabel said, but there was a note of admiration in her voice.

  The wyrm collapsed.

  Twenty meters of dead wyrm meat, steaming in the cold air, already being eaten from within. My worms continued feeding even after the creature stopped moving.

  Essence flooded into me. Not as much as Cedric had provided, but substantial. I felt decades of accumulated power, all of it flowing into my body.

  I stood over my kill, breathing hard, covered in blood, my own and the wyrm's.

  "You know what you are now, don't you?" Mabel asked quietly.

  I didn't answer. I didn't need to.

  I was the monster that monsters feared.

  I was sitting against a tree, letting the worms work.

  My left arm was a ruin, the wyrm's teeth had shredded muscle down to bone in several places. The worms were repairing it, but the process was slow.

  They'd used a lot of essence in the fight, and the consumption only partially replenished their reserves.

  "That was too close," Mabel said, her voice subdued. "Another few seconds and you'd have lost the arm completely. Or your head."

  I didn't argue with her… I didn’t have the energy.

  The clearing around me looked like a battlefield.

  There were shattered pine trees, and overturned earth everywhere… It was mixed with snow and blood.

  The wyrm's corpse lay in a massive coil, still being eaten by the worms I'd left inside it. By morning, there would be nothing left but bones.

  I tested my arm.

  My fingers moved, but they were weak. It would take some time for the worms to rebuild the fine motor control that wasn't there yet. I'd need a few hours—maybe a full day—before the arm worked properly again.

  "That much blood will attract predators." Mabel said.

  I looked at the sky. The sun was touching the horizon. Orange light bled across the snow, casting long shadows through the broken trees. The Long Dark was coming. The mist would roll in soon, and with it the Mist Singers and whatever else hunts in the night.

  "The clearing won't protect us," I agreed, pushing myself to my feet.

  My body protested, exhaustion and residual pain from wounds that weren't fully healed. "Where do we go?"

  "What about the ridge… if the fire came from there, if someone made camp on high ground, we might find shelter." Mabel said.

  "Or we might find something worse."

  "Worse than staying here and getting eaten by whatever smells the wyrm's blood? I doubt it."

  I started walking toward the ridge, following the slope upward through the darkening forest. Each step was harder than the last.

  The slope grew steeper, and the tree thinner… the last light was beginning to fade from the sky when I reached the final approach to the ridgetop.

  "Hurry," Mabel urged. "The mist is already forming in the valley."

  I pushed on, climbing the final slope as the sun disappeared behind the Frostspine Mountains. The forest gave way to rocky ground and wind-twisted scrub. The temperature dropped sharply as the light faded.

  I reached the ridgetop and stopped. The view stole what breath I had left.

  The Greywood spread below me in every direction, it was an endless sea of dark pines stretching toward the distant mountains. Mist was already forming in the valleys, as its white fingers began creeping between the trees.

  "Pretty," Mabel said. "Now stop gawking and find shelter before the mist gets us."

  I turned my attention to the ridge itself. And found what I was looking for.

  A cleared area. Trees cut back, stumps still fresh. A fire pit in the center, stones arranged in a circle, ash and charred wood inside.

  "Someone's been here," I said, kneeling by the fire pit.

  I started to search the area as the light began to fade. There was a torn piece of fabric that had snagged on a branch, I found a broken arrow shaft. There were marks in the dirt where something heavy had been dragged.

  The fire pit still held some of its warmth when I touched the stones. Whoever was here left recently. Within the last day, perhaps less.

  The mist was rising faster now, I could see its white walls climbing the slopes toward the ridge.

  The singing had started in the valley below, the Mist Singers beginning their hunt.

  I had minutes at most before the Long Dark swallowed everything.

  I moved along the edge of the ridge, searching for any natural shelter as the mist climbed toward me. The sing-song wailing started to grow louder.

  "There!" Mabel said suddenly. "To your right."

  I spotted a dark opening in the rocks.

  I squeezed myself into the opening… Inside, the space opened up slightly, it wasn’t a true cave but a hollow in the rocks—maybe three meters deep and two meters wide—it was dark and protected from the outside.

  "Fish," Mabel whispered. "We're not alone."

  The cave wasn't empty.

  A bedroll lay against one wall, roughly made from animal furs. A pack sat beside it, partially open, supplies spilling out—waterskin. Dried meat wrapped in cloth. A knife with a chipped blade—someone was living here.

  The bedroll was still warm, or at least not frozen. The food was fresh. Whoever stayed here left very recently. Maybe when I was fighting the wyrm. Maybe they had heard the commotion and fled.

  Or maybe they went to investigate the sound of battle and hadn't returned.

  "This is weird," Mabel said. "Who lives in a cave on a ridge in the middle of monster-infested wilderness?"

  "Someone who doesn't want to be found," I replied, checking the supplies. Enough food for several days, clean water and basic tools. Whoever left this behind wasn't planning to abandon it. They expected to come back.

  The mist had fully risen outside.

  Through the cave entrance, I could see nothing but white fog and the shapes that moved within it. The Mist Singers passed in waves, their wailing echoing off the rocks.

  I was trapped until dawn. Alone in a stranger's shelter, surrounded by the Long Dark, wondering who made the fire I saw and whether they were still alive.

  I couldn't sleep, I was too wired, too curious about the cave's owner.

  I examined the supplies more carefully in the dim light.

  The knife was well-used but maintained, someone who knew how to care for tools. The dried meat was local game, prepared in a way Cedric's memories recognized as standard Rajkovian technique.

  The bedroll smelled of woodsmoke and pine, this was someone who had been living in the forest for a while.

  It wasn’t one of my friends.

  They wouldn't know how to prepare food this way. This was someone who knew Rajkovia. A local, maybe a hunter… or even a Dragoon.

  Hours passed. I drifted in and out of sleep, too exhausted to stay fully alert but too wired to truly rest.

  The sounds of the Long Dark blended into a constant background noise.

  "Fish!" Mabel's voice snapped me to full alertness. "Something's outside."

  My hand formed the worm-sword before my eyes fully opened. I stared at the cave mouth, the eye charm revealing shapes in the mist.

  Eyes stared back at me.

  Human eyes. Wide and watchful, visible through a gap in the mist. Someone was standing just outside the cave entrance. Someone who had survived the Long Dark without shelter. Someone who had been watching me this entire time.

  I didn't move. Didn't speak. I stared at the eyes in the mist and they stared back at me.

  Then the mist shifted, and the eyes were gone. Swallowed by white fog as if they were never there.

  "Did you see that?" I whispered.

  "Yes," Mabel replied, her usual dramatic tone subdued. "Someone who can walk in the mist without being eaten. That's... not possible."

  I waited, my heart pounding, but the watcher didn't return.

  I watched the cave entrance until dawn, wondering who was out there and why they didn't reveal themselves.