“That must be it,” Rikard murmured, eyes locked on the darkness ahead.

  “The Mother?” Lukas asked, his voice hushed but tense.

  That e were here. Why we had fought, bled, and watched our brothers die.

  The Mother.

  We believed—hoped—that this creature, whatever it was, was the source. The one breeding the Sch?delwyrms. Some twisted, grotesque equivalent of a queen bee, endlessly birthing more of these monsters, spreading them like a pgue across Valkthara.

  And if we killed it?

  The King himself had made a promise. Any soldier who slew the Mother could ask for whatever they desired.

  Imagihat.

  Some men dreamed of gold. Others of titles, nd, a noble’s life.

  Me?

  Power.

  Not just strength. Not just skill with a bde. True power. Enough to carve out something of my own. Maybe even leave Valkenheim behind one day, cross the sea, and build a kingdom of my own.

  Wouldn’t that be something?

  But that dream would never happen if we died here.

  The clig sound grew louder. Closer. A stant, rhythmic tap against the stone floor, like sharpened bones dragging across the rock.

  Then—something else.

  A flicker. A faint, pulsing glow deep in the cavern.

  A bonfire.

  My breath hitched. My grip tightened around my sword.

  We were not alone.

  Rikard raised his hand, signaling for Lukas. “Put it out.”

  The fmes around Lukas’ fingers vanished, plunging us into near darkness.

  Silent now, we crept toward the light.

  The fire crackled, casting an eerie glow across the cavern walls. But it wasn’t the fmes that made my stomach twist.

  It was what they were burning.

  The bonfire wasn’t wood. It was bone. Skulls stacked atop one another, fused together with melted, bed flesh. Ribcages split open, spiwisted and iwined like a grotesque sculpture. Human remains. Soldiers, most likely.

  And just behind that wretched pyre—

  It.

  A creature unlike anything I had ever seen. Twisted. Wrong. An abomination given form.

  It stood hunched over, its elongated body rippling with lean, sinewy muscle. Pale, leathery skin stretched too tight over its frame, slick with some kind of viscous secretion. Its arms were long, disproportionately so, ending in hooked cws that glistened in the firelight.

  But it was the head that made my breath cat my throat.

  Elongated. Predatory. The shape almost mimicked the Sch?delwyrms—but where they were feral beasts, this was something else entirely. Its maw was too wide, stretg past where a jaw should have ended, filled with jagged, ueeth that looked like they had been stolen from multiple creatures.

  And its eyes—

  Gods, its eyes.

  Too many of them, scattered unevenly across its face, bulging, their milky-white pupils twitg in different dires as if they each had a mind of their own.

  Its chest rose and fell with slow, deliberate breaths.

  It kneere here.

  And it was waiting.

  The moment we saw it—it was already moving.

  A blur of pale muscle ah.

  Before I could eve, before anyone could raise a bde, Lukas was gone.

  One sed, he was standing beside me—the , his body split in half. A sii sound, like teari, filled the cave as his torso slid apart. His fire flickered out as his remains crumpled to the blood-soaked ground.

  Another soldier barely had time to scream before the creature’s hooked cws ripped through his throat, severing his head from his shoulders. The st thing I saw of him was his eyes—still wide, still alive—before his body colpsed beside Lukas.

  A third soldier died without a sound. One moment standing, the —nothing. Just a smear of red across the stone.

  “Erik!”

  Rikard’s voiapped me out of my frozen state, and I barely had time to raise my sword as the thing turoward us.

  Too fast.

  I couldn’t react. I k. I had no ce of blog something that moved like that.

  But I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

  Rikard lunged forward, his sword fshing in the firelight. For the first time, the creature hesitated. It had been toying with us—until now.

  Rikard had seen something. An opening. And before the creature could move, he took it.

  His bde sshed through its side, bck blood spraying across the cave floor.

  It hissed, a horrible, clig hat rattled through the chamber. Its milky-white eyes twitched, its cws flexing.

  It was wounded.

  This was it.

  I surged forward, sword aimed for its chest. If we could just—

  g.

  Pain shot through my arms as the creature’s hooked cws caught my bde mid-strike.

  It blocked me.

  I barely had time to process what happened before it moved again.

  Fast. Too fast.

  A fsh of white—a cw raking ay shoulder. Pain. White-hot and blinding.

  I staggered back, barely holding onto my sword.

  Rikard wasn’t so lucky.

  The creature’s strike nearly took his head off. He jerked back at the st sed, the edge of the cw missing his throat by an inch.

  I barely had time to breathe before two more soldiers rushed forward.

  Their swords were raised. A battle cry on their lips.

  I knew before they even reached it—they were already dead.

  And just like that—

  They were gone.

  It happened so fast, I didn’t eveer it.

  One moment they were charging—

  The , their bodies were ripped apart, torn as if they had never existed.

  And now, it was just Rikard and me.