Sivara Frostwhisper wanted the great stag, the one whose antlers were said to carry a shard of the Helium Mother. But a village eats now, not in legends. So she tracked a lame Frosthorn buck instead, a fat kill to fill bellies while she waited for her real prize. The buck's left foreleg dragged. She had followed its tired trail for two days. Then the tracks crossed onto ground she did not know, and the sign vanished. She knelt in a patch of frostglow tundra. The grass blades shone faintly from within, blue and green and one strange purple. She pressed her palm to the frost. No fresh scent. No broken stem. The buck had walked here, then simply stopped existing in her senses. Her scalp filaments strained the air and found nothing. Sivara stood and studied the strange purple glow. The tundra should not glow that color. Something had changed this ground. She followed the purple threads with her eyes, deeper, until she saw two great mushrooms ahead. A web of luminous silk stretched between their stalks, wide as a hut, shimmering pale violet. A voice came flat behind her. "You are far from village trails." Sivara turned. Seren Velyx stood among the frostpines, spear in hand, the tip stained faint purple with Venara toxin. Seren was a hunter of dangerous beasts, not deer. One patch of skin on their forearm stayed dark where poison mist had once numbed it. Sivara knew Seren by reputation. Careful. Never wasteful with words. "I lost a buck," Sivara said. "Bad leg. He came this way." Seren looked at the web, then at her. "He did not come out." Sivara walked closer. Now she saw it. The buck hung tangled in the lower silk, still, its bad leg twisted in the strands. Above it crouched a spider the size of a Cronkey. Orange hairs bristled along its back. Purple armor covered its body, and green marks pulsed slow across its swollen belly. "That took my kill," Sivara said. "That took three settlements' game," Seren said. "I have hunted it for a cycle." The spider shifted. Its legs found the strands without sound. Sivara pulled her runed blowgun from her shaw and slid a dart from the frostelk bag. Her dose was cut for deer meat, too light for this armor. She knew it the moment she raised the tube. "Do not," Seren said. "Your poison is wrong." Sivara blew anyway. The dart struck the belly and stuck. The spider did not slow. It dropped from the web onto the tundra, fast, and both hunters scattered. Sivara rolled through frost and came up empty-handed. Her dart bag lay behind her, near the spider's legs. The buck was lost. The meat was lost. And now the beast that had emptied three villages of game stood between Sivara and the ground she needed to cross to find her stag. "We kill it together," Seren said. "Or it feeds again."

The spider circled between them. Sivara pressed her back to a frostpine and counted what she had. Her dart bag lay behind the beast's legs. Her deer-dose poison could not pierce that armor. Seren crouched a spear-length away, spear tip glowing faint purple, and it would not matter either. "Your toxin is too weak," Sivara said. "So is mine. We need something stronger." Seren's eyes flicked past her, low to the ground. "There." A tiny cluster of mushrooms grew at the base of the frostpine. Green caps, bright yellow dots, a sick sheen to them. Even at rest they warned the eyes away. Sivara knew the myths. The green-cap toxin killed the biggest predators. It could kill the hunter who touched it too. "That mist can drop you," Sivara said. "I know the mist." Seren held up one forearm. A patch of skin stayed dark where the glow had died. "Two days numb. Scrape careful, breathe none of it." A new voice came from the frostpines behind them. "Coat only the tips. Do not let it touch your hands." Silvaeth Dreamcaller stepped from the shadow, cloak shifting indigo to rose, the crown of filaments on her scalp reading the air. She was a Helivox, a keeper of the Helium Mother's voice, and she handled these toxins in her rites. Sivara had never expected one so far from the grove. Silvaeth held out a small carved scraper. "I followed the die-off. I did not follow it to watch two hunters feed a spider." The spider lunged. Both hunters scattered. Seren rolled to the mushroom cluster, dropped their old spear, and pressed the scraper to the green gills. A faint mist rose. Seren turned their face away and worked fast. Sivara circled wide, drawing the beast's eyes, waving her arms. Green marks pulsed across its swollen belly. "Coated," Seren called. They threw the spear across the gap. Sivara caught the haft mid-air, low gravity slowing its fall. The tip shone wet and dark. The spider turned toward Seren's noise. It bunched its legs to spring. Sivara had one throw. She stepped, planted her back foot, and drove the spear down between the purple plates, into the soft belly where the green light pulsed. The tip sank deep. The spider screamed through its body, a shudder without sound. It reared, legs clawing air, then dropped. Its legs curled inward. The green marks dimmed, then went dark. It did not move again. Sivara let go of the spear. Her hands shook. Silvaeth knelt by the dead beast and studied the belly, the armor, the wound. "This did not empty three villages," she said. "It ate what came near its web. Nothing more." "Then what did?" Sivara asked. Silvaeth looked west, past the strange purple tundra. "The die-off. It spreads that way. Your stag's ground is dying, hunter. Whatever feeds on it is still out there." She pressed the scraper into Sivara's palm. "You will need this again."

The bow was hers now, and the aim with it. But the stag ran where Sivara had never hunted. She stood at camp's edge and stared west, toward the frost belt's far reach. She had one cycle before the moons rose. She did not know the stag's range. Her time would bleed away in wrong ground while it grazed somewhere she never thought to look. She found Ike Frostthread checking a trap line at first light. He was the trapper who had seen the black stag two winters past, who had guided her to it once before. He knelt over a snare, freeing a tundrahare with quick fingers. He did not look up when she spoke. "I need the stag's range," Sivara said. "Not where you saw it. Where it goes now." Ike tied the hare to his belt. "Cold pushed it past the river." He stood. "It shelters in a cave by day's end. Feeds at the water in the light." "You've seen this?" "Twice this winter." He tipped his chin west. "I'll take you. One cycle's enough if we leave now." They crossed the frozen grasslands first, then a wide lake locked in glassy ice. Their soft boots made no sound on the frost. Ike read the belt the way his father had taught him, marking ridges and hollows Sivara could not name. Past the lake, a river wound in frozen curves. Cracked patches showed pale blue beneath the surface. Ike stopped at a bend and pointed across. "There." On the far shore a black shape moved. The stag lowered its head to a frostglow patch, cropping the glowing blades. Its antlers rose pale and forking, threaded with fine cool light. It stood forty steps out, downwind, unaware. Sivara sank low behind a snowbank. She drew an arrow from the rune-marked quiver and set it to the string. Ike went still beside her. She picked the shine on the stag's shoulder, the way Veyla had taught her. Only that. She drew the bow full. It pulled hard and held. The wind she had feared before was quiet here, blocked by the river's bend. She breathed out slow. The stag lifted its head. Its ear turned toward her. Sivara loosed. The arrow flew straight. It struck the shoulder deep and buried to the fletching. The stag lurched, staggered two steps onto the ice, and went down. Its light dimmed against the snow. The cropped grass glowed on beside it. Sivara stood. Her hands did not shake. She crossed the frozen river to the fallen stag and knelt. The antlers were cold under her palm, laced with faint light that pulsed and slowed. She had it. The legendary black stag, down by her own arrow, in ground she had never walked. Ike came to her side and looked at the shard-lit antlers. "Now the hard part," he said. "Getting it home."