The grey dawn did little to soften the ruins of the Dam. From her vantage point on a splintered balcony, Almitad surveyed the wound that had been her home.

  The city had been a testament to Beaver Kin ambition—a metropolis built atop a giant Dam. A structure so vast it felt less like a construction and more like a mountain range woven from the trunks of ancient trees.

  A brutal path of destruction had been carved through the whimsical, brightly-painted timber towers and hovels, now hollowed and leaning at impossible angles. Shattered foundations, ripped off walls, intricate rope bridges, once connecting colorful houses hundreds of feet in the air, hung in tangled, useless threads. Nearby, a great water wheel, the size of a giant's shield, lay in a splintered heap.

  Below, a solemn procession moved through the debris. Almitad descended to join them. She was grasping a heavy twelve-foot pole of polished, solid white wood. Atop it, a colorful lantern adorned with complex runes swayed with her steps, casting tendrils of black-green.

  Within the lamp, a single, perfectly preserved flower floated in the darkness. It was a Mana Bloom, maintained by a complex weave of Enchantments, Necromancy, and Runes. It had dried, dark green petals, paper-thin and brittle. They were laced with a web of fine gold veins that seemed to pulse with a faint, internal light.

  Almitad resumed her chant, and the mourners followed, their furry beaver faces etched with loss. As the procession advanced through the ruined metropolis, Almitad's litany rose, in competition with the noise of the waterfall. The crowd responded sporadically to Almitad's chant with a prayer to a lost loved one.

  They reached the crushed remains of a bright blue cottage, its cheerful color a mockery of its own destruction. Almitad’s chant softened, her focus narrowing. The black-green light of the bloom intensified, revealing what the grey dawn could not: a small, translucent shape flickering by a splintered toy box.

  It was the spirit of a child, its form indistinct, its confusion a palpable cold in the air. It clutched a small, carved wooden toy, its tether of trauma holding it bound to the place of its death.

  Almitad raised the pole, her bloom’s light washing over the spirit. “The river flows on, little one." She reached out with her will, finding the shimmering knot of the child’s terror. It was bound to the ruins of their home with a sickly, distorted tether. She carefully and patiently began to tangle her connection with the child, a connection every citizen shared with the Shepherd of Loss. The cursed tether that bound the child’s soul to undeath snapped like a twig.

  The spirit looked up, its flickering form coalescing for a moment, its spectral eyes finding hers. A silent, grateful sigh seemed to pass through the ruins before the child's form dissolved into a thousand motes of gentle, rising light.

  The procession resumed, the sound of the great falls growing to a roar that swallowed her chant whole. They reached the end of the road, where the city abruptly stopped. A grey-furred Beaver Kin broke from the crowd and picked his way toward her.

  They stood together at the edge of the gash, peering through the ten-yard chasm that hemorrhaged a torrent of water. The sheer scale of the Dam was breathtaking; a wall of interwoven logs and packed earth that held back a vast, calm lake on one side, and plunged into an abyss on the other.

  It was impossible to see the bottom. The water from the chasm fell for a couple of miles, only to vanish into a roiling, permanent blanket of black mist that filled the valley below; a hungry void that swallowed the light and the river.

  The Grey-Fur turned to Almitad, inclining his head in a formal, sorrowful bow. He raised his voice to be heard over the rapids. "Shepherd of Loss."

  Almitad gave a slow, solemn nod, her own gaze fixed on the plunging water.

  "We have begun the count," the Grey-Fur continued, his palmed paws clenching into fists at his sides. "So many... gone." His gaze drifted from the chasm to the path of destruction that scarred his city. "It was a giant crocodile, its body larger than three cottages back to back, with a tail just as long. It was covered in gems and gold," his voice trembled with a rising rage.

  "It played with us. It burst through the woodworks and reveled in the carnage." He turned, his eyes from her. Fear and resentment hardened his expression. "Its voice... It spoke a name. It had a message."

  He mimicked the booming, unnatural sound that had echoed across his dying city: "Bring me Trenn!" the elder quoted. "Your blood is on his hands!"

  The accusation hung in the air, louder than the roar of the falls. Almitad’s eyes narrowed.

  "It said: 'Tell Trenn to follow Dawn's Tears. If he does not, I will return! I will destroy every city on the coast of the mainland until Trenn pays for disfiguring my True Host!'"

  Every breath was a lesson in pain. Propped up by expertly crafted wooden crutches, Trenn, his bandages much cleaner than they had been in Spider-House, watched the methodical chaos of the salvage operation. Beaver Kin teams were swarming the ruins, a mix of cleaning crews and builders. Intricate scaffolds were growing across the Dam.

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  His mind, however, was caught in the Message Spell he'd cast that morning. He’d been so troubled his mother immediately knew something was wrong. A few pointed questions later, the confession spilled out of him: the One-Eye, the Wayrest, the Dam… He could still hear his mother’s horrified whisper, “All those people? Because of one Wild Mage?” and his sister Elora's furious, immediate retort: “That wasn’t your fault! It’s on that Giant Asshole!”

  Zeen caught Trenn's eye. He'd been darting in and out of the ruins for hours, a crew of young Beaver Kin in tow.

  What's that damned smuggler doing now... he better not be robbing people.

  Almitad approached, a current of serene grace moving through the industrious haste. Her eyes, however, held the unyielding quality of river stone. She offered a steaming mug to Trenn. The earthy, medicinal scent of pine and honey rose from its chipped rim.

  He took it, his hands trembling slightly. As he drank the warm healing potion, Almitad sat on a wrecked wall beside him, her expression unreadable.

  "A Grey Fur spoke with me," she said, her voice quiet but carrying a weight that cut through the roar of the falls. "The monster that did this... it left a message." She paused, her gaze unwavering. "It used your name."

  The warmth of the potion turned into a knot in Trenn's stomach. "What... My name?" He said, stunned. "How? Who? What did it say?"

  Almitad didn't hesitate. "It was a giant crocodile with scales that glittered with gold and gemstones. It said: Bring me Trenn. Your blood is on his hands," she quoted, her voice flat, emotionless. "It has threatened every city on the coast. It will not stop until it has you."

  The mug slipped from his numb fingers, clattering against the ground. The spilled potion soaked into the soil, a small, dark stain in a world of ruin.

  Is this my fault, too? He thought, staring, dumbfounded, and the sheer amount of destruction. Their world had ended. The damage to the Dam would take generations to repair, not to mention the damage it would cause its surrounding environment.

  The images were burned into his mind: the Fire Elemental, freed by their hands, turning the Wayrest to ash. And now, the Gem-Croc, bursting through the Dam. Rampaging across its surface. Wrecking the Beaver Kin lumber yards along the lake.

  Killing everyone in its wake. The weight was so heavy his soul bent under the impossible load. A civilization lay in splinters, its people decimated, their future threatened, and his name was on everyone's lips.

  "The One-Eye," he said, the name tasting like poison. "It's an amulet. A Wild Mage. A parasite. A con artist... and a mass murderer. It tricked me. It guided me to the ancient Gem-Croc... and possessed it."

  The serenity in Almitad’s posture fractured. Her furry fists clenched to her sides. The gentle aura of the exorcist evaporated, replaced by the chilling stillness of a grave.

  "So we are the victims in a Wild Mage song?" she said, her voice losing its melodic calm, becoming flat and dangerous. "Something for bards to rhyme? A warning for future generations?"

  Her gaze fell on the tears now openly streaming down Trenn’s face. There was no pity in her eyes. Not even empathy. Only a shared enemy.

  "The Nest Cliff, the Burrow, the Dam," she listed them like inmates on death row. "Your ‘One-Eye’ threatens all of us. It uses your name as an excuse for its rampage."

  Trenn lifted his tear-streaked face. As he met her gaze, his voice turned into a hoarse whisper of condensed resolve.

  "The One-Eye must die."

  Almitad looked at him for a moment. She only saw resolve. A man who was ready to put everything aside and die for a cause.

  "Agreed." A flicker of grim satisfaction ignited in Almitad's eyes. "When you are healed, when you are ready to leave for the first Dawn Tear, I am coming with you. This ‘One-Eye’ is waiting for us at the end of the Trail of Tears. It will pay for what it has done to my people,” she said, her button nose twitching with fury.

  “Let's give the bards a proper end for their song."

  The world was a blur behind her watery eye.

  Ezy blinked, the rough canvas of the infirmary tent swimming into a disorienting landscape. A dull throb pulsed from her empty eye socket. She tried to push herself up, but met only an alien emptiness where her right arm should have been.

  A phantom limb, ghost-muscles clenching on nothing, sent a wave of vertigo through her.

  Her breath caught in her throat. The canvas walls of the tent seemed to press inward, suffocating her. Her heart became a frantic hammer against her ribs. With a choked sob, she yanked the suffocating wool of the blanket over her head, a desperate attempt to block out a world that was suddenly, fundamentally wrong.

  A rhythmic, three-legged thumping grew louder, a familiar, irritating cadence. Zeen stood at the foot of her cot, leaning on the crude metal crutch salvaged from the Stomper.

  Grief for Gil had soured his features, carving new lines of resentment around his mouth. His bright white hair was a mess, and his mustache had turned into a wide, wild bristle. The vain smuggler was hidden behind the resolve of anger and hatred.

  It was Ezy's stillness, her week of catatonic surrender, that had finally ignited his resolve.

  The metal tip of his crutch jabbed her blanket-shrouded form. "So that's it?" His voice was a gruff, angry thing, each word a stone of self-loathing thrown at her. "That's what the inventor of the Stomper is reduced to? You let some mind-thief and a big lizard turn you into a victim?" He sighed. "They didn't take your arm. They didn't take your eye. You sacrificed them to save everyone else."

  A muffled, angry sound came from beneath the blanket.

  "Stop it. It's not your fault. You saved us. What the elemental did after, it's not on you." He paused. "It's on the One-Eye. It took Gil from me. I'm not letting it get you, too."

  He gestured with the crutch at the bustling ruins visible through the tent flap, at the endless, methodical work of rebuilding. "Look at this! This is a city of builders, and builders build. You're the best engineer I've ever met, and you're rotting under a blanket."

  He hobbled closer, his face warped by furious grief. "We're not deadweight, Ezy. We're the smart ones. The survivors. You think Mara and Trenn can survive on their own? Didn't you want to see the world? The infiniverse?" She wasn’t moving. “You wanted a Wild Mage song, Ezy. Well, you got one.”

  The blanket lowered a bit, revealing Ezy's one eye.

  "Now get up and build something before your brain rots."

  This was a heavy one. After the non-stop chaos, I wanted to give these characters a moment to breathe in the ruin and really feel the weight of what's happened.

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