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The shaman went in first. The two travellers followed. Then Estingar.

Tirran stayed. So did Imbiad.

So did Yu.

The omira stood just beneath the sheltering curve of stone that framed the grand double doors. The wizard had not moved from the far edge of the platform. His cloak flared in the wind.

Yu had not moved either. Not because he wanted to stay, but because the part of him that controlled his legs could no longer tell which direction was safer. Or less deadly. At the same time, he could not stomach to stay a second longer. It was not just his stomach. Every part of him ached to be elsewhere.

He did not shiver. He did not cry. The terror was deeper than that. Not the surface kind. Not the visible tremor of someone startled or chilled, but real damage from within. Something inside his understanding of the world had been bent the wrong way and had not sprung back. The shaman had corrupted it. Or the thing that wore her skin. That harbinger of Mountain King hunger.

Yu could not do anything about the bent and broken mess in his mind, not here, not now, but he could do something about his body. He had to move. Get out of the storm. Get to where it was warm. There was fire inside. There were things that made sense. Things that looked like safety. Normal things. Towels. Mugs. Food. Walls. Doors with locks. A place to sit, to breathe, to pretend for ten seconds that the world had not turned sideways.

So he moved. Yu pushed himself off the wall and took a first step.

"I'll just…," he wrestled his beak to open. "I'll go too. Inside, I mean."

"Wait until Estingar is back," Tirran said.

"What? Why?" Yu raised his arm to shield his face from the storm and looked up at him.

Tirran's wild eyes remained unfixed, but his posture was quiet, nearly deferential. "We guard the west entrance in pairs," he said. "Whenever circumstances allow."

There was no force in his tone and no edge to the words, as if he truly meant to say that Yu's presence made a difference.

"He returns the staff," Tirran added. "He will not be long."

There was no trace of the Is it? voice.

Yu managed a Yes. He forced it out. Then he had to look away. It had been horrible to see what Tirran really was. But that was not the worst of it. The worst part was not seeing it anymore, but knowing it was there.

Yu stared at the door. Willing Estingar to return faster.

-

But from what he heard, Estingar had not even made it into the common room. He got stuck in the walkway with the new arrivals, where he explained to the impatient borman that the acclimatising was not optional. The borman argued heavily, but Estingar did not match the heat. He just spoke, his voice unhurried. It was the first time that Yu heard him like that. Sincere.

"They're injured, yes. Yes, I know … I see that. And I understand you ran for your life, for their lives, to get them here as fast as possible. But if you rush them into warmth, they'll likely die. Yes. Die. They'll die of shock … Of course it's different for you … Stop. Listen. No. Stop now and listen. It's not about fur or clothing. They don't have your size. They don't have your bulk. They don't have muscle and fat like you, to protect them from the inside. Their bodies aren't strong like yours. They can't take the sudden shift in heat. And they're injured. They're weakened. That makes it worse. That is more reason to wait, you get that? Krynn, you know that … Or you don't. Either way, I say when we enter. Trust me on this."

Estingar then left for the common room, but only to gather towels. When he returned, he started advising the travellers to discard the layers of coats and tent cloth, but not to strip the unconscious ones of their clothes.

-

So. That would take a while.

"Then … I'll wait," Yu said. Again. Louder this time. Like that would make it easier.

Tirran said nothing. It did not seem like he would.

Yu wavered near the door, caught in the dull glow bleeding out through its seams.

Then he turned his face back to the storm, letting its sting scrape against the side of his beak. And then he stepped into the dark.

There Imbiad stood. At the edge of the platform, motionless in the flickering light of the orbs. Watching the white, where snow and sky and distance and night blurred into nothing.

Yu stopped beside him. For a while, he watched too.

-

"Krynn, no, don't rub. Not the arms. Not the legs. We warm the heart and lungs first, in time … When I tell you. If you heat the limbs too fast, the cold blood in them floods back to the core. That's how you kill someone trying to save them … You hold their hands, if you want to help. That's all. Just hold. Keep the fingers from stiffening. No rubbing."

-

"Do you still see them?" Yu asked eventually. "I mean, sense them? The witch?"

"Yes," Imbiad said.

"Me too," said Yu. "I hear her, I mean."

He did not.

That was a lie. Or half of one.

He pretended, at least. He pretended to listen. Pretended to track the lingering pulse of her presence. In truth, he had shut it out — everything. The voices and the whispers. Yu did not allow the heartbeats in, nor any more of Estingar's careful instructions. He let the storm fill his head instead. He drew in the wind to run wild, to disturb and distort an drive away everything else. Because he needed space. He needed room to hear the echoes of his own thoughts.

They said that he needed to find someone safe.

There was only one other person who had been there for the whole encounter, from the moment the witch stepped into the light to the moment the shaman passed through the door. Imbiad. Even if Yu was utterly alone with what he had heard and seen and felt, Imbiad had at least been present.

Yu did not know what he was hoping for. Maybe a sign. A glance. A breath held too long. Anything to prove this was not just happening in his head, anything to show that Imbiad had also felt how much of all of this was … wrong.

But Imbiad said nothing. Gave nothing.

And the longer the silence stretched between them, the more room it left for worse things, for other voices.

Could he trust Imbiad?

Could he trust anyone from Harrow's party?

Yu wanted to. But that was the danger. Wanting was not the same as knowing. Trusting without reason or proof was just … fear. Fear with a mask on. Desperation disguised as hope.

What did he really know about them? About Imbiad, Harrow, about any of them?

They had brought him here. For coin. That was it. They had been paid to drag him up the mountain. And back then, that had been enough. Enough to believe they were just some random escorting party. But truth was, that did not prove anything.

Harrow had said it herself. She was a Witch-Blessed. And that meant marked. She was marked by a witch, and yet no one had done a thing about it. If being marked by a witch was so dangerous, then why had they let her into the guild last night? She had shown some papers. That was all it took. No questions. No suspicion. Nothing.

Was that because no witch had travelled with them?

That was idiotic.

Curses did not need proximity. You did not need to bring the witch with you. You only needed to be touched.

----So why had not anyone cared?

Now that Yu thought about it, he realised the shaman had not been there last night. Not on the platform. Not in the common room. She had tested no one. She had tasted no one.

Why?

She had insisted on reading two half-dead strangers just now.

Even if that whole witchmark reading was fake, just a lie to take more essence — then, especially then; why had she not jumped at the opportunity last night? Why had she not been all over Harrow and her party? Ten new travellers. Ten. That thing inside her could have gorged itself.

It made no sense.

Unless …

Unless she had a reason not to feed on them.

There was only one.

Because she knew them. Because they knew her.

She did not take from them because they were on the same side.

--------They worked together.

It was true. The guards had not questioned the travellers. The travellers had not been wary of the guards. No one had doubted anyone. None of them had acted like anything was even remotely off. Not when they arrived, not since.

That was wrong.

And that made it true.

Experienced escorts should be trained for this. For ambushes, for raiders, for imposters. It was their job to protect important people from harm. They should have been suspicious. They should have seen something. Said something. Anything.

And yet, they had not.

And neither had the guards.

And that was the most damning thing of all.

Because it meant they were all fake.

They were all in on it.

All of them.

There were grand criminal networks out there. Not just traitor mercenaries, thieves' rings, black-market wizards, or slave traders of humans and beastkin. No, there were entire collaborations of crime, as old and entrenched as the adventurers' and merchants' guilds. They operated on a scale beyond anything the bormen pulled in the settlements. Tria had told him. She had spoken of them — syndicates that ran beneath the Midlands cities like blood beneath the skin. -

----------What if all of them are part of a syndicate? -------------------It's all of them. ---------------------All of them are in on it. -------All of them are part of it.

-

Yu swallowed. His throat was raw from the cold.

----What if this is only the beginning?

What if they were still coming — more of them, sliding in, day by day. A slow, cold takeover. Not one that shattered walls or set fire to towers, but one that was unheard. One that just, ever so quietly, replaced the people. Kept the banners flying. Kept the fires lit. Kept the food warm. Who would notice a few missing guards if travellers were still greeted and fed and housed and let through? Who would question anything, if the guild still looked and worked like the guild?

And this place — it was not just shelter. It was control. A strategic chokehold on the Snowtrail. The only refuge between the western Moors and the eastern Barnstreams.

--What if that was the point?

-------What if that was the plan?

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

What if they were gathering? Criminals from all over, pulled here to prepare. A raid. A swarm. A full purge. Every settlement overrun in a day. And Yu — he was in the middle of it. He was trapped, surrounded, inside with all the monsters —

Yu had not enough air. The more he gasped for it, the worse it got. Ice-needle air stabbed down his throat and ripped through his lungs. His chest seized.

Stop it! Shit, just stop for a moment!

He clamped his beak shut. Clenched his jaw until it hurt. Held the breath. Locked it in. Forced it still.

Then he exhaled, as long as he could manage. He let it all out, past the reflex, past the instinct to breathe again, and further still. He emptied himself until his ribs folded in on themselves and the ache in his lungs became sharp and urgent. Then he held that. The void. One. Two. Three. He held it against the pull in his chest and throat and jaw to breathe in again. Four. Five. Six. His ears filled with pressure. Seven. Eight. His vision frayed at the edges. Nine. His knees bent. Ten. About to collapse. Eleven. Eleven seconds. He held it for all of eleven seconds, and only when his chest began to claw at him like a drowning animal did he suck the air back in and let it flood his insides like fire.

He took just that one breath. No more.

Then he forced it all out again. Even harder this time. Out, all out, all the way out, until there is nothing left — HOLD.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four —

Yu gasped. The air tore in. It burned.

Five. And a half.

He was not good at this. But it helped. Suffocating helped. Cutting the breath meant cutting the panic. Starving himself of air drowned the inner screaming, even if only for seconds. Just long enough to think. Or not to.

Yu decided to do three more void breaths.

--.

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He held his breath, until even the innermost noises went still.

-------.

----------.

Not gone, but quiet.

----.

Almost.

From there, he tried not to think.

Just to feel.

To listen to his gut, while his mind still struggled to get back to the surface. -

Trust Harrow. Hate Fallem, said the gut.

The opposite, said his mind, which was back all too quickly. -

Reason dictated the same as before. If there was something wrong, if the guild was compromised and the guards were imposters, then someone from Harrow's party should have noticed. They were experienced. Nine travellers, all seasoned. They knew the guild, had they not said just that, when assuring Tria Yu would be in good hands? Had they not claimed to have stayed here before?

But then where did that gut feeling come from?

Wait. Hang on.

He got it wrong.

They had come from the south-east! Through Noratellems, up the coastal trail. Yu remembered now — Fallem had said they had crossed from the eastern Midlands, then travelled north. Which meant they had not taken the Snowtrail. Not recently. Maybe not in months.

Yu raised a wing to shield his face against the storm and looked up at Imbiad.

Fallem had explained all that during one of their first nights on the trail, while helping Yu fix his tent. As hard as Yu tried, he could not recall what Imbiad had been doing at the time — just that he had not been nearby. Not within earshot.

"Uhm, Imbiad … Has this happened before?" he asked. "I mean, is it normal? For witches to come here? Did you meet a witch last time you were here?"

"No," said Imbiad.

"But you come here often, right? As escorts, I mean? Do you meet many witches on the trail?"

"I cannot answer that. I have not travelled this stretch of the Snowtrail in over two years," Imbiad replied, still facing the night snows.

"But how did you get to Undertellems, then?"

"Before we met you, some of us came from Noratellems."

"Oh, right. Of course. Thanks."

It tracked. That matched what Fallem had told him, a month back. They had come from the far south of Undertellems, crossing the rivers that formed the natural boundary between the Midlands and the Northlands. It was the only open route east of the Albweiss. The only other somewhat established passage into the Northlands led through the far western Moors. Everything in between was masses of mountain.

So no, Imbiad, Harrow, and the rest could not have been at the guild recently. Maybe their last visit had simply been so long ago that they had not noticed any changes. Different staff, new procedures; Imbiad had no reason to question anything, not after two years.

Yu also remembered something else: how Imbiad had explained his abilities to Tirran. When he had insisted to remain on the platform with the guards, he had introduced himself like a stranger.

Which meant … they really were strangers?

They really did not know each other?

So they could not be raiders, then?

No, surely not. They could hardly be part of a grand scheme syndicate raid if they did not even know one another.

Right?

Yu exhaled.

Held the void breath.

Held it. -

---.

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-------------- .

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----. -

Released.

Again.

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And again.

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-

Yes. Maybe … Maybe he had just … exaggerated?

Maybe all that syndicate talk was just an insane interpretation of things?

Was this just paranoia?

Was he just … tired and stupid and afraid.

-.

But then — just how much more insane was the alternative? That these nine people actually planned to go down into the mountain. To find Fallem's brother. Who had been taken by the Shaira.

Nine people.

Into Shaira territory.

Into their mountain.

Nine people wanted to infiltrate the most powerful witch coven of the Nortlands. They planned to face witches who openly raided entire settlements, and never lost a single one of their own —not even when wizards fought back, with every advantage, every ward and weapon they could prepare right then and there in the heart of the settlements they were defending.

Where in the world did they find that kind of delusion? To think they could walk straight into the Shaira's mountain territory and survive?

"So all of you came together to find Fallem's brother?" Yu asked.

"Yes," said Imbiad.

"And he was taken from the settlements, right?"

"Yes. During the raid two months ago."

"Do you know if he's still alive?"

"We cannot be sure. I do not know of any wizard who had been captured and escaped. We do not know what the Shaira do to them. Though, they must have other intentions than direct execution, otherwise there would be no reason for the abductions. We can only hope that Evander is still a captive."

It sounded so … sincere.

But this could not be what they had come for. It was absurd. It was utterly unreasonable, unthinkable, yes, straight up delusional. You had to be stupid in love with that brother to throw away your life like that.

The thought made Yu pause.

Were there people like that?

People that … loved others so much?

"And so … you want to rescue him? From within the mountain?"

"Yes."

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