The best trap is not made of rope or steel.
It is not a pitfall or a deadfall.
The best trap is made of truth.
A truth the prey wants to believe.
Adrian left Gregor's mountain den a different creature.
The rage was still there, a cold, hard singularity in the center of his being. But it was no longer a wildfire. It was a focused, controlled burn.
Gregor had not taught him new ways to kill.
He had taught him a new way to see.
He now understood. To defeat Lysandra, he could not simply fight her. He had to unravel her. He had to turn her greatest strengths her discipline, her logic, her professionalism into weapons against her.
For two weeks, Adrian became a ghost in truth.
He moved north, into the highest, most unforgiving peaks of the Dragon's Tooth range. A place of eternal ice and wind, where only the hardiest creatures survived.
He was preparing his new stage.
And he was laying the bait.
This time, there were no clumsy, bloody tracks. There were no obvious signs of a wounded boy.
The clues he left were for her and her alone. Subtle. Intimate.
He found a small, abandoned hunter's cabin.
Inside, he did not leave a weapon or a map. He left a single, pressed Kingsfoil flower on the dusty table. The same flower his mother had shown him, all those years ago. The one Lysandra had identified a trace of.
It was a message. You were right about me. You know who I am. It was a truth she wanted to believe. It confirmed her deductions. It fed her professional pride.
Days later, in a different valley, he attacked a small Order patrol.
He did not slaughter them. He moved like a phantom, striking from the shadows, not to kill, but to disarm and confuse. He stole their supply packs, taking only their rations and a single, detailed map of the ice caves on the highest peak, Mount Veridia.
He let them live.
He knew their report would go directly to her. It would paint a picture of a target who was growing desperate, a target who was now stealing food and looking for a place to hide. Another truth she wanted to believe.
He was building a narrative.
The narrative of a boy, however skilled, who was reaching the end of his rope. A boy who was heading for the most remote, defensible location he could find: the ice caves of Mount Veridia. A place to make a final stand.
It was a story of desperation.
And every word of it was a lie.
He made his way to the ice caves.
They were a breathtaking, terrifying place. A vast network of tunnels carved into the heart of a glacier by millennia of wind and meltwater. The walls were shimmering, translucent blue ice, the air so cold it felt like breathing powdered glass.
Light filtered down from unseen fissures above, creating an eerie, cathedral-like glow.
It was a labyrinth of ghosts and echoes.
It was the perfect place to bury a hunter.
He did not set a single, obvious trap.
Gregor's voice echoed in his mind. "Make the world wrong."
He spent three days turning the cave system into a psychological weapon.
He used his dagger to carve a single, familiar symbol on an ice wall in a deep, little-used tunnel: the sigil of his family, the snarling wolf's head. A ghost from the past.
He took the rations he had stolen and left a small, half-eaten meal in a side chamber, as if he had been interrupted and had fled in a hurry.
He used his knowledge of the ice to weaken a large icicle hanging over a main passage, tying it with a nearly invisible strand of gut. It was not a death trap. It was a noise trap. A jump scare. Something to fray the nerves.
He was not building a cage.
He was building a haunted house.
The final piece of his plan was the trap itself.
The main entrance to the cave system was a massive, arching maw of blue ice. But Adrian, using the stolen map and his own explorations, had found another way out: a narrow, vertical chimney of ice that led to the surface on the far side of the peak. A route only a skilled climber could take.
His trap was not meant to kill her. It was meant to imprison her.
He spent a full day at the entrance, using his dagger to chip and score the ice on the roof of the archway. He did not want to weaken it enough to collapse on its own.
He just wanted to make it ready. Ready to fall with one, final, well-placed strike.
With his stage set, he found his perch. A high ledge, deep within the main cavern, shrouded in a darkness the faint light could not penetrate.
And he waited.
He did not have to wait long.
Four days after he had settled into his nest, she arrived.
He felt her presence before he saw her. A subtle shift in the air. A feeling of being watched.
Lysandra appeared at the mouth of the cave, a silver specter against the blinding white of the snow outside.
She was alone. She had followed his breadcrumbs. She had taken the bait.
She stood at the entrance for a long time, her head tilted, listening. She was a wolf sniffing the air, sensing that something was not right.
But the narrative he had built was too compelling. The desperate boy, the final stand. Her duty and her pride would not let her turn back.
She drew her twin swords, their silvery gleam a stark contrast to the deep blue of the ice.
And she stepped inside.
She moved with a breathtaking caution.
She saw the half-eaten meal and noted it. She saw the family sigil carved on the wall and her eyes narrowed in understanding. She was connecting the dots.
The wrong dots.
She passed under the weakened icicle. Adrian, from his perch, pulled a thin, almost invisible tripwire he had laid on the floor.
The icicle did not fall. The gut string simply made it swing and scrape against the ice wall.
SCRAPE.
The noise was loud and jarring in the utter silence. Lysandra spun, her swords up, her body tensed for a fight.
But nothing came.
It was just a sound. A random, natural sound.
Or was it?
A seed of doubt. The first crack in her perfect discipline.
She continued deeper, her movements even more cautious now. Her senses were on high alert.
She was expecting an attack from the shadows. A blade in the back.
She was expecting a fight.
Adrian gave her silence.
He let the cave itself be the enemy. The dripping water that sounded like footsteps. The shifting ice that groaned like a dying beast. The strange echoes that twisted and distorted every sound.
He was letting her own mind become his weapon.
She finally reached the center of the main cavern, the place where he knew she would come.
She stood in the eerie blue twilight, turning in a slow circle, her swords held ready.
She knew he was there. She could feel him.
"Come out, boy," she called, her voice steady, but lacking the calm certainty it had held in the monastery. "This ends now."
"It does," Adrian's voice whispered from the darkness above her, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
This was the moment.
Not for an attack.
For the final act.
With a powerful push, Adrian sent a large, precariously balanced rock tumbling from his ledge.
It was not aimed at her.
It hurtled through the air and struck the roof of the entrance archway, exactly where he had scored the ice.
The impact was the final, critical blow.
With a deafening, grinding roar, the entire entrance to the ice cave collapsed.
Tons of ice and snow crashed down, a solid, impenetrable wall.
The light from the outside world was extinguished in an instant.
The cavern was plunged into a deep, abyssal blue twilight.
They were sealed in.
Lysandra spun around, her eyes wide with disbelief as she stared at the wall of ice that had just become her prison door.
She was trapped.
The hunter had just walked into the cage.
Adrian dropped silently from his ledge, landing on the cavern floor behind her.
She whirled around, her swords coming up, her face a mask of cold, professional fury.
He stood there, daggers in hand, a dark silhouette in the ghostly blue light.
He did not attack.
He simply smiled. A cold, chilling smile.
The smile of the zookeeper who had just locked the tiger in its cage.
The hunt was over.
The lesson was about to begin.