The ravines below twisted in shadow, their depths swallowing sound and warmth alike. Above, the ridge offered no shelter, only exposure to the growing wrath of the storm. The wind bit without mercy, carrying the taste of rain and the promise of thunder. Lightning flickered behind the clouds, turning their edges a dull violet, whilst the company pressed onwards, heads bowed against the gale.

The hours had aged the camp, carving silence between the figures gathered close to the fire’s frail light. The embers pulsed in fitful rhythm, casting wavering silhouettes against the alcove’s stone, their forms both shelter and prison as the ravines beyond surrendered to blackness. The sky, heavy and implacable, withheld its stars, save for a lone silver moon strung low and watchful, its face blurred by drifting veils of mist.

Dream pressed on him like a tide. Nix knew he was sleeping, felt the weight of his body upon the cliff top, the cool stone beneath his shoulders where his wing wounds still ached. Yet he felt himself drifting, unmoored. He sensed his friends close by in their quiet watch, untroubled, unaware of Simi's presence, sharp and relentless, somewhere beyond the ravines.

his slender hands traced patterns in the air, each movement trailing a fine filament of light that unfurled and twisted, weaving itself into delicate, fluttering shapes. Tiny motes gathered, coalescing into iridescent butterflies that danced and shimmered above the planks, wings glinting like fragments of dawn.

The Mistwing forged onwards, its flanks cleaving the quietly burgeoning breadth of the Emaris river. Each sunrise found the river broader than the last, the water’s mirror stretching in silky panes beneath a sky mottled with the slow drift of cloud.

Nix felt different, not like he had felt before when meditating on the deck of the Mistwing, when he had tried to become one with the pain, as his mother had taught him long ago, breathing into it until pain and self became indistinguishable. Instead, as he had begun to feel the presence of the creature in the river hunting him, he had expected his recently awakened natural predator, Tiorian Lightweaver, instincts to surface, to rise snarling and defensive, all fangs and readiness.

The first night on the river had shaken them all. The creature’s attack, the protective runes Nix had woven beneath the hull in those tense moments, the revelations about Ulfgar’s death and Lisera’s true nature, all of it had left the crew watchful and the brothers subdued.

The moon stood sovereign in a vault of crystal winter sky, its argent light tumbling down over the river mist, painting the world in spectral blues and silvered whites. Drakkensund held its breath beneath this cold blessing, still as a painting, the quiet broken only by the distant whisper of wind chimes and the occasional long, melancholy groan of river ice shifting beneath its frosted carapace.