The world had been stripped of all colour, leaving only the bruised purple of the twilight sky and the stark white of the unending frost. The cages, crude constructions of splintered wood and taut sinew, swayed with the rhythm of the Vultarians' march. They were an insult to carpentry, lashed together like a child's toy, but their strength was undeniable. Inside, Elias felt every jolt in his bones. Dangling from the frame, black and white crow feathers danced in the biting wind, silent omens in a land that had forgotten silence.
In the cage beside his, Thorne slumped against the bars. His face was a mess of swollen flesh and dried blood, but the wounds to his pride were deeper, septic. He had been a knight, a bulwark against chaos. Now he was back in cage.
"Like an animal," Thorne rasped, the words a gravelly blend of fury and despair. His gaze was fixed on the distant figures of their captors. The Vultarians paid them no mind, their focus on their grim ritual. They moved in a wide circle around a smouldering pyre, chanting in a guttural tongue that scraped the air raw. With each stanza, they dipped their hands into pouches of ash and frost, smearing the grey and white paste across their bare chests in swirling, hypnotic patterns. Their dance was a brutal poetry Elias couldn't decipher, but he felt its meaning in the marrow of his bones: a claiming, a consecration for a sacrifice to come.
Darkness deepened, and the cold became a predator. Thorne's shivers were violent now, his breath a ragged cloud. Elias knew that if the warrior's spirit broke, his body would soon follow. His own lute, his voice in the world, had been smashed against a rock—a deliberate act of cruelty meant to unmake him. But they hadn't taken his throat. Not yet.
He began to hum.
It was a soft sound, barely a whisper against the wind and the chanting, a thread of melody so fine it seemed impossible it could exist in this desolate place. It was an old lullaby from the southern vineyards, a tune of warm sun and gentle rains, a memory of a world that felt like a madman's dream. He hummed it for Thorne, a small anchor in a sea of misery. But he also hummed it for himself, a question posed to the encroaching dark. Are you listening?
For a long moment, there was only the cold. Then, something shifted. A single mote of pale, silver light winked into existence near the cage bars. It was no bigger than a snowflake, but it pulsed with a gentle warmth. Another joined it, then a third. Soon, a score of them swirled around the cage, drawn to the fragile music like fireflies to a lantern on a summer's eve. They were nameless things, the lowest of the low in the spirit hierarchy—the echoes of fallen leaves, the sighs of melting ice, the last breaths of field mice. But they were something.
The crow feathers tied to the cage began to shiver, rustling not from the wind, but from the faint, coalescing energy. They danced to a rhythm only they and Elias could feel.
Hidden behind a snow-dusted ridge of black rock, Olaf trembled. Not from the cold—spirits felt no such thing—but from a frantic, paternal worry. He was invisible to the Vultarians, a being of mist and memory, but his anxiety was a palpable force. He saw the faint motes, the shyest of his kin, and willed them forward. Go to him, he urged, his thoughts a gentle pressure on the spiritual currents. He is a friend. He offers a song.
Reassured by the unseen presence, the motes grew bolder. They pressed closer to Elias, their collective light casting a soft, ethereal glow on the rough-hewn wood. Elias felt it—not just saw it. A flicker of power, like the catching of tinder, returned to the hollow space inside him. It was a faint and unstable thing, a pale imitation of the torrent he could command with his lute, but it was enough. Hope, he thought, was a desperate and stubborn weed.
The Vultarian chanting stopped. The sudden silence was a physical blow.
From the shadows near the pyre, a figure detached itself. The Bone Shaman.
He approached the cages, his staff a dead rhythm on the frozen earth. The tribesmen parted before him, heads bowed. The Shaman ignored them. He ignored Thorne entirely. His masked head tilted at an unnatural angle, fixing on the faint, swirling lights around Elias's cage. The humming died in Elias's throat.
The Shaman struck the base of the cage with his staff. The sound was a flat, dead thump, and from the point of impact, a web of crystalline frost instantly crept up the wood, chasing the light. The tiny spirits scattered like startled minnows.
He growled, his voice a rasp of grinding stones from behind the bone. "Something hides. False fire… spirit not seen."
The Vultarians stirred, their eyes darting into the shadows, hands gripping spears and stone axes. They saw nothing but their captives and the snow. The Shaman, however, felt the lingering resonance of Olaf's influence. He raised his staff and pointed it toward Elias.
"A trickster spirit watches this one," he declared. "It clings to him. It poisons the air."
Fear is the parent of rage. The tribe's unease curdled into open hostility. A curse was spat from the crowd. Then a sharpened bone, meant for a stew pot, clattered against the bars of Elias's cage. Another followed. They called him a witch, a soul-thief, a bringer of ill omen. Some cried for his tongue to be cut, for his song to be silenced for good.
"Leave him be, you craven dogs!" Thorne roared, lurching to his feet and gripping the bars. His defiance was magnificent but brief. The butt of a spear slammed into his ribs, and he collapsed with a choked gasp, all the air driven from his lungs.
Through it all, as the insults and bones rained down, Elias closed his eyes and began to hum again. His voice trembled now, the notes wavering with the violent shuddering of his body, but the melody held. He would not let them break his rhythm. He would not let them shatter the one thing that was entirely his. It was a desperate, foolish act of rebellion, and he knew it, but it was the only one he had left.
The Shaman strode forward until he stood directly before the cage, the miasma of pine smoke and frozen earth clinging to him. He leaned in, the hollow eyes of his mask inches from Elias's face. The humming faltered. Through the carved bone, Elias could see the glint of the man's real eyes, old and cold as glacial ice.
The Shaman's whisper was more terrifying than any shout, a fractured, sibilant hiss. "Crow watches. Your tongue… your song… bring ruin."
He punctuated the warning with a final, violent strike of his staff against the cage door. The black and white feathers convulsed as if seized by a fit, then hung limp and still. Without another word, the Shaman turned and retreated, melting back into the shadows from which he came.
The Vultarians fell back, their fear now laced with a kind of superstitious awe. They gave the cages a wide berth, muttering amongst themselves. The immediate danger had passed, but the air was thick with a new and more profound dread.
Olaf. The spirit's presence was a small, flickering warmth against the crushing cold. Elias opened his eyes. A few of the bravest motes of light had returned, circling hesitantly a few feet from the cage, their glow a fragile promise. A glimmer of hope.
But the Shaman's warning echoed, a shard of ice in his soul. Crow watches. It wasn't the Vultarians he truly had to fear. It wasn't even their grim Shaman. His music, his very essence, had acted as a beacon in the oppressive dark. And something ancient, something sleeping in the heart of this frozen wasteland, was beginning to take notice. The Ice Crow itself. And Elias had a terrible feeling it was not coming to listen to a lullaby.