By dusk the mountains had turned harsh and gray, their ridges knifing the horizon as if cut by a god's blade. The trail bent downward into a hollow, where wind pooled like water in a bowl. Broken stone pillars jutted from the ground, half-buried in snow, leaning at odd angles. They looked like blackened teeth gnawed by centuries of frost.
Nestled at the hollow's edge crouched the remains of a shrine. Its roof sagged beneath the weight of ice. One wall had collapsed long ago, exposing the interior to the elements, yet enough of its frame still stood to suggest shelter.
Yeshe stopped at the threshold, her cane planted firmly in the snow. "Here," she said, voice calm.
Mira wrinkled her nose. "This place looks like it'll fall apart if I sneeze."
"Yes," Yeshe said. "And yet it has outlasted empires. It will outlast one more night."
Inside, the air was brittle with cold, but Mira coaxed a flame from dry twigs she found beneath the eaves. Soon, firelight licked the walls, painting them in flickering oranges and reds. Murals sprawled across the stone—gods with many arms, demons with tusks, warriors locked in eternal struggle. Much of the paint had cracked, their faces erased by weather and time, yet there was a stubbornness in the lines that remained, as though memory itself refused to die.
Arya sank beside the fire, wrapping his arms around his knees. His body trembled with exhaustion. His palm glowed faintly beneath the bandage, pulses of pale light that matched the beat of his heart. The whispers had been relentless since midday. Now they crowded his mind like voices outside a thin wall.
They are close. Teeth. Red eyes.
He pressed his hand harder against his chest. "Why won't it be quiet?"
Yeshe settled cross-legged near a mural of a goddess crowned in flame. "Because silence belongs to the dead. You live. The storm knows it."
Mira tore a strip of cloth to wrap around her scraped knuckles. "He looks half-dead to me."
Arya scowled at her but found no energy to argue. His gaze drifted upward. Above Yeshe loomed the goddess with many arms, each hand holding a weapon. Cracks split her face, and half the paint was gone, yet in the firelight her eyes seemed to glitter faintly, as though watching.
That night, Arya dreamed.
In the dream the goddess stepped free of the wall. Her limbs bent with the grace of flame, her many weapons clinking softly as she moved. A trident burned in one hand, dripping sparks. Her gaze fixed on Arya—unyielding, fierce, but not cruel.
"Child of storm," she said, her voice deep as thunder. "You cannot walk both paths. Choose."
Arya's throat tightened. "Both paths?"
"One is denial. One is burden. To walk neither is to be torn apart when shadow comes."
The fire from her trident spilled across the shrine, searing his eyes. He raised his hand to shield himself, but the light surged brighter until it consumed her form entirely.
He woke with a gasp, heart pounding. The taste of ash lingered in his mouth.
Mira was beside him instantly, hand on his shoulder. "Another nightmare?"
Arya shook his head. His bandaged palm glowed faintly, the mark throbbing hot against his skin. "Not a nightmare," he whispered. "A warning."
Yeshe hadn't moved from her place near the wall. She tilted her blindfolded face toward him. "And what did the warning say?"
Arya hesitated. Choose, the goddess's voice had whispered, and the weight of it still pressed on him. But he could not bring himself to share it. "That they're coming," he said finally.
Mira cursed under her breath. "Of course they are." She tightened her grip on her staff and glanced toward the ruined wall. The wind outside had grown sharp, carrying more than snow.
Before dawn, the first sound came—claws scraping stone, deliberate and steady. The noise echoed through the hollow, rattling loose pebbles from the shrine's walls.
Then the eyes appeared. Dozens of them, glowing faintly in the dark beyond the collapsed wall.
The hounds had found them again.
Mira leapt to her feet, staff spinning into her hands. "How do they keep tracking us?"
"The oath burns brighter than any lantern," Yeshe said, rising slowly, her cane clicking against the stone. "And predators never miss light."
Arya's mark flared, spilling brightness between the cracks of his bandage until the entire shrine pulsed with it. The whispers no longer pressed at the edge of his hearing—they screamed, sharp and insistent.
Run. Fight. Choose.
He staggered upright, chest burning. The mural of the goddess burned in his memory. This time there would be no hiding, no silence.