The fire crackled low that night, but neither Hine nor the silent soul found warmth in it. The cave where they sheltered from the creeping frost felt suffocating, the weight of the mountains pressing down like the judgment of unseen gods. Hine sat near the entrance, her knees pulled to her chest, staring out at the distant stars. They flickered faintly beyond the curtain of mist, too far to offer light or guidance. Behind her, the soul stood still, as he always did, silent as the void that clung to him.
She had grown used to the sound of his steps trailing hers, light but always present, like a shadow tethered to her. She had grown used to his presence saving her, to the way he seemed to move ahead of time, warning her before danger even surfaced. But tonight, something about the darkness around him felt heavier. More human. She wanted to ask, but fear bit her tongue.
When sleep finally tugged at her, she whispered without turning, "Tell me. Tell me what you are."
The silence that followed stretched long enough that she thought he would ignore her again. Then, his voice came, deep and raw, like stone grinding against stone.
"You will not like the answer."
Hine turned to face him, eyes sharp despite the tremor in her chest. "Then tell me anyway."
For a moment, he said nothing. Then he moved, a slow deliberate step closer to the dying fire. The dim glow carved hollows into his face, though the hood still hid his eyes. His shadow stretched, long and thin, across the damp cave walls.
"I was not always like this," he began, his voice barely a whisper, yet the weight of it pressed against her ribs. "Once, I was a man. A warrior, sworn to protect the living. But the Night Kingdom... it takes more than it gives."
Hine swallowed hard. She said nothing, only listened, the air around her thickening with something ancient and bitter.
His memories spilled like blood from a wound he had never let heal.
There had been a battlefield. He could still smell it... iron, mud, and fear. The clash of steel against steel rang in his skull as clearly as if it were yesterday. The screams of the dying were louder still, a cacophony that had followed him into death and beyond.
He had been young. Too young, though no one in his world had cared for age when there were borders to defend and enemies to kill. His hands had learned the weight of a blade before they had learned the warmth of love. He had been good at killing, and that had been enough to make him indispensable.
Until the night the sky split.
The Night Kingdom came not as conquerors but as saviors, or so they claimed. They spoke in honeyed voices, promising strength beyond mortality, freedom from pain, the power to protect. And he had believed them, because what else could a boy with blood on his hands and no home to return to believe?
He remembered the ritual. The fire so black it swallowed the moonlight. The circle of salt and bones. The way their voices rose in unison, calling to something that should never have been called. He remembered the pain too, the way it tore through him, ripping flesh from spirit, chaining his soul in shadows so deep no light could reach.
When he opened his eyes, the battlefield was quiet. His enemies lay dead, their bodies broken, their blood painting the earth. His comrades too. Everyone. Gone.
The Night Kingdom had kept their promise. He was strong. Untouchable. A perfect weapon.
But he was no longer human.
The soul's voice did not tremble as he spoke, but Hine could feel the cracks in it, sharp and jagged. His words painted horrors she had never dared imagine, a life consumed by violence, a death stolen and rewritten by something far worse.
"They called me the Black Fang," he said, stepping closer to the edge of the firelight, revealing the faint scars along his neck, twisted like marks of ownership. "I killed for them. For centuries. Until I forgot why I had ever fought at all."
Hine's fingers dug into her knees. She wanted to speak, to tell him she understood pain, that loss was a language she too had learned. But what words could bridge the chasm between them? She was still human. She still had warmth in her chest. He... did not.
"Why tell me this now?" Her voice was soft but steady. She was not afraid of him... not anymore... but the weight of his story sat heavy in her bones.
The soul tilted his head, and though the hood still veiled his face, Hine felt the sharpness of his gaze cut through her. "Because you asked," he said simply. "And because you deserve to know the kind of monster guiding you through these mountains."
"You are not a monster," she whispered, surprising even herself. "If you were, you would have let me die when the avalanche came."
Something in his stance shifted. Not quite disbelief, not quite anger, but something restless, like the stir of wind before a storm.
"You do not understand," he said, his tone low and edged. "The Night Kingdom does not let go. I may walk beside you now, but my chains are still there, waiting. The moment they call, I will answer. Even if it means destroying everything in my path."
Hine met his gaze without flinching. "Then I will find a way to break those chains."
For the first time, silence fell that did not feel suffocating but fragile, like the thin sheet of ice over a deep lake. He stared at her, as though trying to decipher the weight behind her words, the stubborn fire in her eyes.
"You cannot," he said finally, though softer now, as though trying to convince himself more than her. "No one can."
Hine turned back to the mouth of the cave, where the stars still shone dimly through the mist. "Maybe not now," she said, her voice a quiet promise. "But I will try. For you."
The rest of the night passed without another word. The soul kept his watch by the fire, unmoving, a sentinel cloaked in the darkness that had claimed him long ago. But for the first time in centuries, the shadows whispered something he could not quite understand, something unfamiliar and dangerous.
Hope.
And though he tried to bury it beneath the weight of his past, he could not. Not when her voice still lingered in his mind, steady and unwavering, promising something no one had ever promised him before.
That he was worth saving.