Pain crashed through Toli's skull like surf against jagged rocks.
He opened his eyes, gagging on the sour taste of bile in his throat. The world spun in a dizzying blur of dark trees and falling snow. He tried to raise his hands to clutch his head, but his arms wouldn't move. He pulled forward, but a thick, coarse rope dug violently into his chest.
He was tied upright to the trunk of a massive pine tree.
Memory returned in violent, fractured shards—the dark jungle, the rabbit snare, the sudden trap, being yanked upside down, and Gero's final, terrified scream.
Toli's eyes darted wildly through the dark.
He saw Gero first. The massive infantryman lay sprawled in the snow a dozen paces away. He was perfectly still. The snow around his neck was stained black in the moonlight. Never moving again.
Then, Toli saw the fire.
It was a small, smokeless camp fire crackling in a tight ring of wet stones, pushing back the oppressive darkness just enough to illuminate a figure sitting on a fallen log.
It was a boy. He sat with unnatural stillness, one hand resting casually on his knee, the other holding a hunting knife over the flames. Skewered on the blade was the hind quarter of the rabbit they had found in the snare. The meat sizzled, fat dripping into the fire with a soft hiss.
Toli couldn't see the boy's face clearly. The shadows of the dancing flames concealed his features. But Toli saw the hands—steady, relaxed, and slick with fresh blood.
The boy slowly turned the knife over the fire. The rich smell of roasting meat wafted through the freezing air, making Toli's empty stomach cramp painfully.
"So," a voice drifted from the shadows, unnervingly calm. "You're finally awake."
Toli swallowed hard, his voice coming out as a cracked, pathetic wheeze. "Gero..."
"Your friend is dead."
The boy stood up. He pulled the knife from the fire and walked slowly toward the tree. As he stepped into the light, the flames finally caught his face.
He was young. Thin. His face was marred by three fresh, pale scars raking from his forehead to his chin. But it was his eyes that made Toli stop breathing. One was a normal, dark brown. The other was a swirling, necrotic green.
Green as poison. Green as a rotting grave.
Toli's blood turned to ice water.
"I know you," Toli whispered, his entire body beginning to tremble against the ropes. "You're the boy. The one we threw in the cavern. But... the arrows. I saw the arrows! They went straight through your chest. You were dead. You were dead!"
Ryan said absolutely nothing. He just stood there, staring at Toli with that horrific, mismatched gaze, his head tilted slightly to the side like a curious hound.
Panic overtook reason. Toli violently lunged forward—
His boot caught, and he crashed face-first into the freezing snow, his shoulder nearly popping out of its socket. He looked back at his ankle. A second rope was tied tight around his leg, anchored to an iron stake driven deep into the frozen earth.
He was completely trapped.
Ryan walked over to him, his boots crunching softly in the snow. He crouched down. In his hand, he still held the knife with the roasted rabbit leg. In his other hand, he held the raw, bloody carcass of the rest of the animal.
Toli watched in pure horror as Ryan raised the raw meat to his mouth and tore a massive chunk of uncooked flesh from the bone. Blood ran down his chin, dripping onto his collar.
"You're... you're eating it raw," Toli stammered, his stomach heaving. "You cooked the leg, but you're eating the rest of it raw."
Ryan chewed slowly. The sound of his teeth grinding against raw gristle echoed in the quiet woods. He swallowed, then looked down at the bloody carcass in his hand.
"Cooked or raw," Ryan whispered, his voice vibrating with a faint, guttural growl. "It all tastes like meat to me now."
He took another massive bite.
Toli couldn't look away. The boy—this walking corpse—was tearing into raw flesh with the desperate, unbothered hunger of a starving animal. He couldn't even taste the difference between fire and blood.
Ryan finished the raw meat, tossing the bones into the dark. He wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand, then held up the knife with the cooked rabbit leg.
"Your friend died quickly because he possessed honor," Ryan said smoothly. "If you want to keep breathing, you will answer my questions."
"No!" Toli sobbed, thrashing against the ropes. "If I talk, you'll just kill me anyway! And if you let me go, the Prince will flay me alive for treason!"
Ryan's expression didn't shift. Not a muscle.
He casually slid the roasted meat off the blade, dropping it into the snow. Then, he turned and thrust the bare steel of the hunting knife directly into the hottest coals of the fire. He waited. Ten seconds. Twenty.
When he pulled the blade out, the steel was glowing a furious, angry orange.
Before Toli could even process what was happening, Ryan stepped forward and pressed the flat of the glowing blade directly against the back of Toli's bound hand.
Toli SCREAMED.
It was a ragged, ear-piercing shriek of pure agony. The sickening smell of burning hair and roasting pork filled the cold air. Toli thrashed wildly, bucking and kicking, his boots digging trenches in the snow, but the ropes held him fast. And Ryan's hand—stronger than any boy's had a right to be—did not budge an inch.
When Ryan finally pulled the blade away, a perfectly black, blistered brand in the shape of a knife marred Toli's flesh.
"If I smell a lie," Ryan said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, "I will cut off your fingers. One by one. I will cauterize the stumps so you do not bleed out, and I will keep cutting until you speak the truth."
Toli sobbed uncontrollably, hot tears freezing as they tracked down his dirt-stained cheeks.
"So, I will ask you once." Ryan leaned in close, the green eye flaring in the dark. "How many soldiers remain? How many commanders? How do you signal your troops? And what are the guard rotations at the gates?"
Toli's mind spun. Lie? Tell the truth? He was trapped between two monsters. The Prince would kill him if he found out. But this thing standing before him... this thing would take him apart piece by piece.
Ryan slowly raised the glowing knife toward Toli's index finger.
"WAIT! Wait, I swear!" Toli shrieked, his voice cracking. "I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!"
Ryan stopped. The knife hovered an inch from Toli's skin.
Toli took a ragged, shuddering breath. "Twenty commanders," he gasped. "Each one commands a hundred men. We marched here with two thousand, but... but the ambush, the cold... we have maybe seventeen hundred left."
Ryan nodded slowly, committing the numbers to memory. "And your communications?"
"Horns! Giant war horns in the center of the camp. The first blast means attack. The second means defend the perimeter. The third..." Toli swallowed hard, terrified. "Three blasts means retreat. Fall back to the ships."
Ryan studied the thief's terrified face. "If a commander dies, and the third horn sounds... will your men actually run?"
Toli hesitated. He looked at the glowing knife. "I... I don't know for sure. The horn alone might not break them. But if there's chaos? If there's fire, or if the officers start dropping? Yes. We would run. Most of these men are just mercenaries here for the silver. The only ones truly loyal to the Prince are his twenty elite guards."
Ryan absorbed the information. Seventeen hundred men. Twenty elites. Three horn blasts.
He slowly lowered the knife. He reached his free hand into the snow behind the log.
When his hand emerged, his fingers were wrapped tightly behind the head of a violently thrashing viper. It was thick, its scales pitch black against the snow, its fangs dripping with clear venom.
Toli's eyes widened in fresh horror. "What are you doing—"
"The poison I used to put your friend to sleep came from a spider," Ryan said conversationally. "It drops a man in seconds. But this snake is different. It is a slow killer."
Ryan stepped closer, holding the thrashing viper mere inches from Toli's face.
"Its venom takes exactly five hours to reach the heart. It will slowly freeze your blood, shutting down your organs one by one. And no healer in your camp has the cure." Ryan stared directly into Toli's soul. "Only I do."
"Why are you telling me this?!" Toli panicked, pulling back against the tree.
Ryan threw the snake.
It struck Toli's chest, its fangs sinking instantly through his tunic and deep into his shoulder muscle. Toli screamed, shaking violently until the viper detached and slithered rapidly away into the dark snow.
Ryan watched the man suffer, his face a mask of stone.
"Because now," Ryan whispered, "you work for me."
Toli clutched his shoulder. He could already feel it. A cold, heavy numbness radiating outward from the bite, sinking deep into his veins. A ticking clock inside his own body.
"You're insane," Toli wheezed, his face draining of color. "How do you expect to win? There are seventeen hundred armed men in that valley! The Prince has spirit magic! You are just one boy!"
Ryan's green eye burned like a beacon in the night.
"You have one job, thief." The boy's voice was colder than the winter wind. "You are going to walk back into that camp. And when you see a fire—the largest fire you have ever seen in your miserable life—you will sound the horn of retreat. You will make them run."
Ryan leaned in until his breath ghosted over Toli's ear.
"If the fire does not come, you say nothing. You do nothing. But when the sky burns red... you blow that horn. Do that, and when the ashes settle, I will give you the antidote."
Toli stared at the boy. He saw no mercy. No bluff. No hope. Just the absolute certainty of death.
He slowly nodded his head. "I... I will do it."
Ryan drew his hunting knife and slashed the ropes binding Toli to the tree. The thief collapsed into the snow, gasping for air, clutching his poisoned shoulder.
Ryan looked down at him. He felt nothing for this man. No pity for his pain. No anger for his crimes. He was just a tool. A stepping stone to the Prince.
"Then we have a deal.