I yanked my arm free, stumbling back from Sembrug, the sudden loss of that supernatural chill leaving me shivering uncontrollably. My wrist pulsed where his grip had bitten into the joint. I clutched the shamanic scroll to my chest, its dry paper rustling against my palm. The ancient ink of the Zhal-Mastiff seemed to writhe, its raw red silhouette bared in a toothy promise. Sembrug remained still, a gaunt shadow among the towering shelves, his head cocked as if listening to the groans of the cliff timbers.
“The ice will claim what it is owed,” he repeated, his voice now a dry whisper, devoid of its previous chilling power. “Go, child. He calls for you.”
Khandu. The name brought cold dread into my gullet, sharp and immediate. I spun, the scroll tucked under my arm, and fled the archives. The passage back to the main halls narrowed into an aisle of frozen cedar and deepening shadows. Each exhalation formed a gray plume, each step clattering against the rime-coated floorboards.
As I neared the great hall, a high-pitched wail pierced the hallway. It was the frantic, raw screech of a servant girl. Interspersed with it came guttural shouts, distorted and ragged, that belonged only to Khandu. The draft carried a metallic tang, sharp as iron filings on snow.
I hesitated, my hand gripping the cold wood of a doorframe, my knuckles stark white. The sound of a struggle, a sickening thud, then the servant’s scream rose to an unbearable pitch before being abruptly cut short, replaced by a whimpering sob. Khandu’s voice emerged then, clearer, though still laced with a horrifying mania. “Warmth! I need warmth! *Your* warmth! By the Spires, you’ll give it to me!”
My feet moved without conscious command, drawn forward along the wall. I rounded the corner past the grand hearth where Oghul usually sat swaddled in stolen pelts. Khandu, his cheeks gray with agony and unhinged frenzy, dragged a trembling scullery maid by her braided hair. His exposed forearm was mottled black with creeping rot. The girl's tunic was torn, her shrieks reduced to a wet gurgle as he hauled her toward the larder doors that led down into the meat cellars beneath the kitchen floor. The air around them shimmered with a haze of frost.
Khandu did not see me. His strength was poured into dragging the girl down the icy stone steps descending into the cellar vault. Her fingernails tore across the floorboards, leaving streaks of red grease. A rusty iron bolt, thick as my thumb, hung on the outside frame beside the cellar entrance—a latch built to seal out vermin. Its heavy presence caught my gaze.
Vapor puffed from my mouth in the frigid draft. The scullery girl's gaze met mine as Khandu hauled her across the stone threshold. Her chapped lips formed a soundless plea, tears frozen along her eyelashes.
My instincts urged me to intervene, to throw myself between Khandu and the maid. Yet through my skull ran memory: the skinned mastiff howling on the cliffs, the ancient blood-pact, the precise retribution woven decades ago. This agony was currency. This paid for Oghul’s theft and Khandu’s butcheries. The calculating spirit within me stirred, hardening my veins, smothering my pity.
I took a step toward the doorway. My numb hands closed around the iron bolt. It was stiff, locked in a scab of rime. Khandu had hauled the maid into the gloom below, their silhouettes swallowed by the stone staircase. Her choked sobs dwindled against the cellar floor. Khandu’s voice floated back up, a wet rattle: “You’ll be warm now, brother… so warm…”
Guided by an older will, my palms drove the bar forward. It ground against rusted iron, shrieking through the passage before slamming into the keeper. The strike echoed down the hall with brutal finality.
I rested my forehead against the planks of the door. The chill seeped through my brow like an old familiarity. Muffled wails still filtered up through the floor. The daughter in me wanted to tear the latch free and release the girl, but the ancient shade within watched in quiet contentment. A crooked, vindictive smirk pulled the corners of my mouth taut. It was not Nimka’s expression. I clamped a palm over my lips, wrenching my face flat, resisting the malice that threatened to hollow out what little mercy I still owned.
Then, the screaming abruptly stopped. The silence that followed was more terrifying than any shriek. It lasted only a breath, a moment of profound, unnatural quiet. Then, a new sound began, a terrible, scraping *shhhhk-shhhhk-shhhhk* from the inside of the iron door, like heavy, unseen claws dragging across the unyielding metal. It was quickly followed by a new voice, raw with terror, high-pitched and broken, entirely unlike Khandu’s previous manic growls. “No! Not me! Please! I… I just need the skin! Don’t… no, stop! I beg you!”