Tomas Thornwood found the blood twenty steps from his own door. He knelt in the grass, two fingers pressed to the wet stain. For months he had tracked this thing across his woods, following blood and nothing else. Every deer, every hare, every bird that vanished left the same mark and no body. He had sworn to break whatever curse fed on his forest. Now the curse had walked to his cabin. His wolf stood beside him, hackles up, a low growl in its throat. The old grey beast had survived a hundred fights. Its scars proved it. Yet tonight it would not step past the stain. It backed toward the lakeside cabin, ears flat. "Easy," Tomas said. His voice stayed calm. His hand did not. A small shape moved in the maple grove. Orange fur caught the last light. Tomas rose fast, knife out. Then he saw the ears, the wide yellow eyes, the shaking hands. A fox spirit, no taller than a child. It had been hiding behind the trees, watching him. "You're bleeding on your own ground," the fox said. His voice barely carried. "It follows the fresh blood. It will come here tonight." Tomas lowered the knife. "You've seen it." The fox nodded. He stepped from the grove, though his legs trembled. "It took my brother. I watched. I couldn't stop it." He looked at the stain, then at Tomas. "You keep hunting it. Everyone else ran. You didn't." That was the first clue Tomas had gotten in months. Not blood. A witness. "What is it?" Tomas asked. "A hound." The fox wrapped his arms around himself. "Black. It shines like smoke. Its eyes glow blue. When it takes something, it drinks the blood and the body just... goes." The wolf snarled. Tomas felt the air turn cold behind him. He spun. The hound stood at the treeline. It was larger than any dog, its body dark and flowing at the edges. Two pale blue eyes burned in its head. It looked at the blood on the grass, then at Tomas. "Get inside," Tomas told the fox. The fox did not move. He grabbed Tomas's sleeve. "It can't cross running water. The lake. That's why you're still alive here." Tomas glanced at the water behind the cabin. He believed him. He had no reason to, but he did. "Come on." Tomas pulled the fox toward the cabin door. The wolf ran ahead. The hound moved after them, silent, fast, smoke trailing from its legs. They reached the door and Tomas shoved the fox through. He and the wolf followed. He barred it and pressed his back to the wood, breathing hard. Outside, the hound stopped at the lake's edge. It could not pass the water. For now. Tomas looked down at the fox spirit, alone and shivering on his floor. He had wanted a clue. He had gotten a boy, and an enemy that now knew his door.

Dawn came slow over the lake. The hound was gone from the water's edge, but its blood still marked the grass. Inside the cabin, Luca had not slept. The fox spirit sat in the corner, knees drawn up, tail wrapped tight around his small feet. When Tomas moved near him, Luca flinched. He would not speak. He would not eat. Tomas needed to know what else the fox had seen the night his brother died. But fear had sealed the boy shut. Tomas knelt at a careful distance. He kept his voice low. "You saw more than you told me. I need it. But I won't force you." Luca's yellow eyes filled. He shook his head and turned to the wall. Tomas felt the wolf watching him from the hearth. Pushing harder would break the boy. So he stood, took his coat, and made a different choice. He carried Luca along the shore to a cave set in the hillside. Drying herbs hung across its mouth. Bottles of oil crowded rough shelves. A cauldron steamed over stones ringed with fire. This was where the healer lived, the woman his own kind had banished, the one who helped every outcast the forest cast out. A black raven perched by the fire and fixed Tomas with a wary eye. Auria came out wiping her hands, red hair loose, silver eyes steady. She looked at the shaking fox in Tomas's arms and asked no questions. "Bring him to the fire," she said. She took a bundle of herbs tied with cord and crushed the leaves into warm water. She pressed the cup into Luca's small hands. "Drink. Nobody here will touch you." Luca drank. The trembling eased. Auria sat beside him, close but not crowding, and let the silence hold. The raven hopped down and settled near the fox without fear. Slowly, Luca leaned into the warmth. Tomas stayed back and let the healer do what he could not. He had spent months chasing blood and finding no answers. Kindness, not force, opened the door. When the fire burned low, Luca finally spoke. His voice was thin. "The night it took my brother, the hound came from the old stones past the grove. There's a ring of them. The blood there is black and never dries." He looked at Tomas. "That's where it sleeps. That's where the curse starts." Tomas went still. For the first time he had a place, not just a trail. He looked at Auria. "You know these stones." It was not a question. Her face tightened. "I know them," she said. "And I know what waits there is worse than the hound." The trust was won. The witness had spoken. Now Tomas knew where to go, and knew the true danger had only shown its edge.

Auria's warning stayed with Tomas through the night. Something worse than the hound guarded the stones. He could not walk in blind. So at dawn he returned to her cave, ducked under the drying herbs, and found her grinding leaves by the fire. "You told me a danger waits at the ring," he said. "I need its name. Or I die not knowing what killed me." Auria set down her stone. The raven shifted on its perch. "There's one man who could tell you," she said. "A mage. My people thought him dead years ago. He isn't. He lives beside the stones themselves." Her silver eyes narrowed. "He works blood magic, Tomas. Whatever guards that ring, he made it, or he woke it. Ask him and you invite him into this." Tomas weighed it. Days of blood and no answers. "I'll take the risk," he said. Auria pressed a bundle of herbs into his hand. "For wounds. If you live to use them." He left Luca sleeping by her fire and walked past the grove alone. The stone ring rose from the mist. Black blood pooled at its center and never dried. A weather-beaten hut leaned among the standing stones, its thatch rotted through. Tomas knocked. The door hung open on its own. Inside, a small figure sat in the dark. Ragged robes. White skin scarred and cracked. When the man lifted his head, his eyes burned red. This was the fallen mage. He looked frail enough to snap. Tomas did not trust it. "A protector," the mage said. His voice was thin and dry. "You've come to the stones. You want to know what sleeps here." "The hound came from this ring," Tomas said. "The healer said something worse guards it. Name it." The mage smiled with cracked lips. "The hound is my hound. A small hunger I fed with blood." He rose slowly. "But the ring holds more than a dog. It holds what I bound to it. A shade of my own making. It does not eat flesh. It drinks the living dry and leaves the body standing." He tilted his head. "You'll meet it soon enough. You've already told it you're here." Tomas gripped his knife. "Then I'll end you first." He stepped forward. The mage raised one thin hand. Tomas's own blood surged hot beneath his skin, dropping him to his knees. Pain tore through his chest. The mage was weak, but not powerless. "Not today," the mage whispered. "Bring me the fox spirit. His blood is rare. Do that, and I'll call off what hunts you." Tomas crawled from the hut and stumbled into the grove. His chest still burned. He had a name now, and a face for the curse. But he had walked out with a demand that turned his stomach. The mage wanted Luca. And the shade in the ring now knew Tomas by his blood.

Tomas came back to the healer's cave with the mage's demand burning in his chest. Luca slept by the fire where he had left him. The fox spirit's ears twitched at bad dreams. Auria stood at her cauldron, red hair loose, silver eyes on Tomas. She had banished herself to these woods for practicing what her people called witchcraft. Now she was the only one who might save the boy she had helped him hide. "He wants Luca's blood," Tomas said. "To call off the shade. I won't give it. But I can't move against the ring either. I bled there. The shade knows me. If I strike it, it drains me dry." Auria pulled a heavy book from a shelf. Its cover was cracked leather, worked with faded gold. "This holds the old stories," she said. "Spirits, curses, the men who bound them. My family kept it." She turned brittle pages until her finger stopped. "A shade bound by blood feeds through the blood that woke it. Yours. That's the leash. That's also the flaw." Tomas leaned close. "Say it plain." "You can't cut the shade from a distance. But blood cast on running water breaks the tie." Her finger traced a line of ink. "The lake by your cabin. If your blood reaches it before the shade drinks you, the leash snaps. The shade loses its hold and returns to the stones." Tomas thought of the lake's threshold, the water the black hound could not cross. "Then I lead it to the water. And bleed there instead of at the ring." "You'd be baiting your own death," Auria said. "Too slow and it takes you." She pressed the herb bundle into his hand again. "For after. If there's an after." He did not wake Luca. He walked to the ring alone and cut his palm. The old wound reopened. Cold rushed the grove. The air thinned, and something without a face rose from the black blood at the center of the stones. It reached for the warmth in him. Tomas ran. The grove blurred past. His legs went heavy. His heartbeat slowed under the shade's pull. He fell twice and rose twice. The lake shone ahead. His pet wolf stood at the shore, scarred and low, hackles raised at the thing behind him. The wolf held its ground and snarled, buying him three strides. Tomas reached the water and thrust his bleeding hand under the surface. Blood curled into the current and swept away. The shade shrieked and tore backward, as if yanked by a chain. The cold left his chest. His heartbeat climbed. The shade thinned to nothing and fled toward the stones. Tomas knelt in the shallows, gasping, alive. The leash was cut. The shade could no longer hunt him. But the mage still lived by the ring. And now Tomas had broken the tool the mage used to bargain. The next move would be the mage's, and he would come for Luca himself.

Tomas came back to the cave with lake water still dripping from his sleeve. His cut palm throbbed. Luca slept by the fire, ears flat against a bad dream. Auria met Tomas at the door, silver eyes narrow. The shade was broken, but the black blood at the ring had not changed. Tomas knew the truth now. As long as that blood never dried, the hound would keep crawling out of the stones. Killing the shade fixed nothing at the source. "I broke the leash," Tomas said. "But the ring still bleeds. The hound still comes." He pressed his good hand to the stone wall. "I need to clean the blood. Burn it, wash it, anything. Or none of this ends." Auria pulled the cracked leather book from its shelf and set it on the table. She turned pages until she found a marked line, tracing the old ink with one finger. "Black blood from the stones can't be washed by hand," she said. "It answers only to old cures. Cold iron. Salt. And running water, poured on the source itself." She looked up. "Not your blood this time. Clean water, carried to the ring and spilled over the stain." "Then I carry the lake to the stones," Tomas said. He filled two skins at the shore before dawn. Auria packed her bundle of dried herbs and a fistful of salt from her stores. Luca woke and would not stay. "My brother died there," the fox spirit said, voice small but firm. Tomas let him come. They reached the ring past the grove. The black blood pooled at the center, wet and shining as ever. No hound yet. Tomas scattered the salt across the stain. It hissed and smoked. Then he poured the lake water over the source, both skins at once. The blood boiled black, then thinned. For the first time it began to dry, cracking to grey dust. Luca crept close and touched the dead stone. "It's cold," he whispered. "It stopped." Auria knelt, pressing her palm flat. "The source is clean," she said. "The hound loses its door here." Tomas breathed out. One site closed. The curse's origin, cleansed at last. Then a figure stepped from behind the tallest stone. Pale skin, red eyes, a dark robe stained at the cuffs. The blood mage. He looked at the grey dust where his shade once fed, and his face twisted. "You cleaned my ring," the mage said softly. He raised a bandaged hand toward the fox spirit. "But the boy's blood can wake far worse than a shade. And I no longer need to bargain for it." Luca shrank against Tomas's leg. Tomas stepped in front of him, hand on his knife. The ring was clean. The mage stood between them and the only path home, and now he wanted Luca himself.

The grey dust at the ring meant nothing now. Tomas kept his knife raised, but the mage did not attack. He only smiled at Luca, and the boy's tail curled tight. "Cleaning one stone changes little," the mage said. "My power does not live in the blood. It lives where I hid it. Until you find that, the curse will simply grow a new root." Tomas felt the words land like a stone in water. He had won nothing. The hound's door here was shut, but the mage could open another. Auria stepped up beside him, silver eyes fixed on the pale figure. "Then he'll tell us where," she said, "or he won't leave here breathing." The mage laughed and raised his bandaged hand. Old scars glowed red. Tomas's arm went heavy, forced down by unseen weight, the same blood grip that had beaten him before. He fought it and lost. His knife dipped toward the dust. A shape burst from the trees. Tomas's wolf, lean and scarred, hit the mage from the side. The grip snapped. Tomas gasped and stumbled free. The wolf tore at the mage's sleeve, and blood ran down the pale wrist onto the ground. Auria moved fast. She pulled a pale birch bow from her back, the one she kept wrapped in cloth, its bone arrows dark with old poison. Above her a raven dropped from the branches, screaming, wings beating at the mage's face. He staggered, blind for one breath. "Tomas," Auria called. "His blood. On the ground." Tomas understood. Fresh blood at the ring called the shade's kin. But it could also mark the mage himself. He grabbed the last salt from his pack and flung it across the mage's bleeding wrist. The mage screamed. The salt burned where his own blood touched it. "His power hides in a thing," Auria said, drawing the bowstring. "Bound with his blood. Break the blood bond and he must show it." She loosed. The bone arrow struck the mage's shoulder. He fell against the tall stone, clutching the wound, poison spreading dark under his skin. He did not die. But something changed. From under his robe a small iron box slipped loose and clattered on the stone. It was hot. It hissed like the salted stain had hissed. Luca crept forward and pointed. "That," the fox spirit whispered. "It smells like my brother." The mage grabbed the box and fled into the trees, one arm dead at his side, the raven chasing him. He was hurt now, weak, and running. But he had the box. Tomas knelt and caught his breath. Auria lowered the bow. "That box holds his power," she said. "Now we know what to hunt." Tomas looked at the path the mage had taken. The curse had a heart at last, and it had legs. He wrapped his cut hand and stood. "Then we follow the box," he said. "Before he hides it again."

The mage's trail ran cold by morning. Tomas found the iron box abandoned near a fallen log. He almost grabbed it. Auria caught his wrist. "It's bound to his blood," she said. "Break it wrong and everything inside spills onto whoever stands closest." Luca stood too close, ears flat, tail low. Tomas stepped in front of the boy. The box hissed on the ground, hot enough to blacken the leaves beneath it. They took the box to the old druid. Arthur Oakwhisper had taught Auria as a girl, before her people cast her out. He lived past the grove in a hut wrapped in ivy. His beard was white, his hands slow, his eyes kind. He did not flinch when Luca crept behind Tomas's leg. "A fox spirit," he said softly. "Welcome, small one." Then he saw the box, and his face went grave. "Blood-bound. Yes. I feared this." Arthur pulled a heavy book from a shelf. Its cover was cracked leather, its pages full of old spirits, good and cruel. He turned to a marked page. "You cannot smash it," he read. "The power flows to the nearest living thing. But a blood bond can be drowned. Running water breaks what blood ties." Tomas remembered the lake, his own blood spilling into the current, the shade's leash snapping. His chest tightened with sudden hope. "The lake," Tomas said. "We drown it there." Arthur nodded. "Carry it fast. Do not let it touch bare skin." Auria wrapped the box in cloth. They needed speed. Tomas whistled once, low and long. Hooves answered through the trees. The lead horse came, brown and white, calm even near the hissing box. Tomas pressed his palm to its neck. "Carry us," he said. The horse knelt. They rode hard for the lake. The box burned through the cloth against Auria's arms. She gritted her teeth and held on. Behind them, a scream rose from the woods, thin and furious. The mage had felt them moving his heart. Luca clung to Tomas's back, small hands shaking. "He's coming," the boy whispered. Tomas urged the horse faster. They reached the water's edge. The mage broke from the trees, one arm dead, poison dark under his skin. "Give it back!" he shrieked. Tomas took the box from Auria. It seared his hands. He ran to the shallows and drove it under the running current. The mage screamed and fell to his knees, clawing at his own chest. The box hissed once, then went cold and silent in Tomas's grip. The mage sagged. His scars stopped glowing. His power was gone, drowned. But he did not die. He looked up at Tomas with hollow eyes and laughed weakly. "You freed it," he rasped. "Every soul I fed the box. They're loose now." From the water, pale shapes began to rise, drifting toward the trees. Tomas held the dead box and watched them go, cold spreading through him.

The freed souls drifted into the trees and were gone. Tomas dropped the dead box in the shallows. Lucas Ashmore knelt in the mud, his power drowned, his scars gone dark. Once this fallen mage had overpowered Tomas with a flick of his hand. Now he could barely lift his head. He breathed. He lived. And Tomas stood over him with no idea what to do next. Auria came to Tomas's side, water soaking her boots. Her silver eyes moved from the mage to Tomas's face. She had warned him of this man in her cave, weeks ago. She knew what he had done. "He can't cast anymore," she said quietly. "But he's still alive. The curse won't truly die while its maker breathes." Lucas laughed, wet and thin. "So finish it," he rasped. "Cut my throat. Become what I am." He tipped his chin up, baring it. "You've hunted me for months, forest man. One stroke. Do it." Tomas drew his knife. Luca made a small sound behind him. The fox boy had lost his brother to this man's hound. He had every reason to want the mage dead. But Luca's ears were flat, his eyes wide with fear at the blade, not the mage. Tomas looked at the boy, then at his own hand on the hilt. Killing a helpless man would stain him the way blood magic had stained Lucas. He would not do it. But he could not let the man walk free either. Tomas sheathed the knife. He bent and hauled Lucas up by the collar. "You don't get an easy end," he said. "You get to watch me undo you." He dragged the mage into the running current, waist-deep, and forced his hands under. "Running water breaks what blood ties. Auria—the salt." She understood at once. She poured salt over the mage's scarred palms while Tomas held them beneath the flow. Lucas thrashed, then screamed. The dark marks on his skin loosened, thread by thread, and washed downstream like ink. The last threads of his blood magic dissolved into the lake. When it was done, his skin was only skin. An old, broken man knelt in the water, weeping, empty of power for good. Tomas pulled him to the bank and let him fall. "Arthur will decide what happens to you," he said. "You're the druid's problem now." Luca crept out and pressed against Tomas's leg. Tomas rested a hand on the boy's head. He had ended the mage without killing him. But over the water, the treeline stood silent where the freed souls had vanished. Somewhere in his woods, those lost spirits were loose now, unbound and afraid. The ring was clean. The mage was broken. And still something waited out there for him to find.

The freed souls had scattered into the woods at dusk. By morning, Tomas found their marks. A doe lay stiff in the ferns, no wound on her, only frost on her open eyes. A rabbit the same. Whatever the souls touched, they drained. He knelt by the doe and pressed his palm to her cold flank. The old cures had stopped the mage. Salt, iron, running water. But those cleaned blood and broke bonds. He did not know if they would touch a loose soul. Guess wrong, and more things would die while he wasted the day. He brought the doe's cold to Auria's cave. She was the healer banished to these woods, the one who had first warned him of the stones. Silver eyes, purple hair tied back, hands always busy. When he stepped through her herb-fence gate, she was crushing leaves into a bundle by the cauldron fire. She took one look at his face and set the bundle down. "They're feeding," Tomas said. "Two dead already. I don't know what stops them." Auria wiped her hands and pulled an old book from her shelf. Its cover was cracked leather, the pages thick and hand-marked. "My family kept this. Stories of spirits, good and cruel." She turned pages fast. Luca crept in behind Tomas and pressed close to his leg. The fox boy's ears were flat. His brother had been taken by this same curse. Auria stopped on a page and read. "Hungry souls fear the hearth. Not salt. Not iron. Fire and warmth." She looked up. "A soul torn from its body is cold. It hunts heat to fill the cold. But true fire, ringed and living, it can't cross. The warmth unmakes it." Tomas's jaw tightened. "Guess wrong and something else dies." "Then don't guess." Auria took a coal from her fire in an iron pot. "We test it now. On one. If I'm wrong, we've lost a coal, not a day." They went to the ferns where the rabbit lay. The air there hung cold and still. Tomas felt it move, a pull at his chest, hungry. Auria set dry sticks in a ring and dropped the coal. She blew until the fire caught. Then she waited. The cold thing came. It bent the fern-tops with no wind. It slid toward the warm bodies of the three of them, toward Luca. Tomas stepped in front of the boy. The fire snapped high. The cold hit the ring of flame and recoiled, thin and shrieking, then thinned to nothing and was gone. The ferns went still. The pull left Tomas's chest. "Fire," Tomas said. "It works." Luca let out a breath. Auria closed the book. But Tomas counted in his head. He had one fire. The souls were scattered across the whole forest, and cold was coming with the night.

One fire had saved the rabbit's clearing. Tomas stared at the flames and knew the truth. The souls were everywhere. He could not carry heat to every part of the woods before dark. He turned to Auria. "We need more fires than we have hands. Or the souls will scatter past us and feed all night." Auria wiped ash from her palms. "Then we don't chase them. We pull them." She flipped through her family's book again. "Cold hunts heat. So build the biggest heat in the forest, in one place. They'll come to it on their own." Tomas thought of his cabin by the lake. Its hearth. Its wood walls. "My home," he said. "I burn a great fire there. The souls come for the warmth. And the lake at my door stops anything that tries to slip past." Luca pressed close to Tomas's leg. The fox boy's ears flattened. His brother had vanished to this same curse, and Tomas felt the small body shake. "You'll stay behind the fire," Tomas told him. "Right beside me. Nothing crosses it." Luca gave a small nod. They worked fast. Tomas dragged dry logs into a pile before the cabin door. Auria scattered dry herbs to feed the flame high. He struck the fire and it climbed, throwing heat across the yard to the water's edge. The lake glowed orange behind them. Cold began to gather at the treeline. Tomas felt the pull start in his chest, then double, then more. The souls came. Fern-tops bent with no wind. The air went bitter and thin. One by one the cold things slid toward the great fire, hungry for the heat. They hit the ring of flame and could not cross. The fire roared and the souls thinned, shrieking, and burned to nothing. Tomas stood with the heat at his back and Luca at his side. He counted them go. A dozen. Then more. The whole night's hunt drawn to one hearth and unmade. By the time the sky paled, the pull had left his chest. The ferns stood still. No frost spread. No animal fell. Auria let the great fire sink to coals. Then a figure limped from the trees behind them. Old, white-bearded, robes marked with knotwork. Tomas knew him. The druid who had shown him how to break the mage's box. Arthur Oakwhisper leaned on his staff and looked at the dead coals. "You drew them well," Arthur said. His kind face did not smile. "But not all came. The strongest souls do not hunger for warmth like the weak ones. They hunger for the living. Those are still out there, and they are hunting your kind now, not the deer." He fixed his eyes on Luca. "They will come for the spirits of this wood first." Tomas looked at the fox boy pressed against his leg. The night's fires had saved the forest's animals. But the worst souls were still loose, and they wanted Luca.

Dawn light did not reach the cabin fast enough. Arthur's warning still hung in the air when the cold came again. Not toward the coals. Toward Luca. Tomas felt the fox boy stiffen at his side. A strong soul had already slipped past the dying fire. It moved for the boy, not the warmth. Tomas grabbed a burning brand and swept it between Luca and the cold. The soul recoiled from the flame, then circled wide. It did not flee like the weak ones. It watched. It wanted the boy behind the fire, and Tomas could not hold the brand and hunt the thing at once. "I can't do both," Tomas said. "Guard him or chase it. Not both." Arthur limped closer, leaning hard on his staff. The old druid's kind face was grim. "Then don't fight it here," he said. "Take the boy where these souls cannot follow. There is a place, an old ring of stone with a great firepit at its heart. My order keeps it burning. No cold thing crosses that ground." He nodded toward the mountain path. "Onrion. The holy town. Its walls are blessed. Its fire never dies." Tomas looked at Luca. The boy's ears were flat, his small hands shaking. His brother had vanished to a curse like this one. "Will you come?" Tomas asked him. Luca gripped Tomas's sleeve and nodded. Auria stepped from the cabin door with her book and her herb bundle. "Then we run," she said. "Before it brings others." She thrust a second torch into the coals and lit it. "Two fires between us and it. Move." They went. Tomas kept the burning brand at Luca's back. Auria held her torch high on the other side. The cold soul trailed them through the trees, always just past the reach of the flame. Arthur set the pace, faster than his years should allow. Twice the soul darted in. Twice Tomas swung fire and drove it back. The stone town rose ahead, wrapped in pale banners and weathered walls. Past a broad gathering ring of stone, a great firepit blazed at its center. Robed figures tended it day and night. Tomas pulled Luca across the ring's edge and turned. The cold soul stopped at the stone line. It could not cross. The blessed fire threw its heat outward, and the thing shrieked and thinned and slid back into the trees. Luca sat by the great firepit, and for the first time in days his shaking stopped. Auria knelt beside him. Tomas let the brand fall from his hand. "He's safe here," Arthur said. "But safe is not the same as free." He met Tomas's eyes. "The strongest souls still hunt your woods. This fire holds them off the boy. It does not unmake them. That work waits for you."

Luca slept by the great firepit, safe inside Onrion's ring. Tomas could not sleep. Arthur's words held him awake. The strongest souls still hunted his woods, and this fire only guarded the boy. So Tomas walked to the town's edge to learn what waited outside the walls. He needed to know how many souls circled Onrion before he took the fight to them. At the wall's base he found a dead thing. A hare, stiff and white with frost, though the night was warm. A cold soul had slipped near the town and touched it. Tomas crouched by the frozen body. He could not tell how many more souls stood in the dark trees beyond. The blessed fire lit only the ground at his feet. "That one won't rot," said a voice below him. "Cold keeps it fresh. Waiting." Tomas turned. A goblin stood in the shadow of the stones, no taller than Luca. Charms and cold iron tokens hung across his chest, small as pulled teeth. His eyes glowed yellow. Tomas had seen him twice before, always near the dead, never once helping. This was Dart Shadowgleam, who trailed the curse and gathered what death left behind. "How many?" Tomas asked. "How many souls out there?" "Wrong question." Dart knelt and touched the frozen hare with one finger. "You count them. They count him." He nodded toward the firepit, toward Luca. "Three strong ones. Watching the boy. Not the wall." Tomas gripped his knife. Three. He could not fight three souls with one torch, and he could not draw them to Onrion's fire. The souls feared flame but did not chase it. They chased living spirits. Dart pulled a charm from his chest. A small iron bell, dull and cold. "They came from the box you broke," he said. "Bound to it once. The bond leaves a mark." He held the bell to the frozen hare. It gave a thin, cold ring, and the frost on the hare flared brighter. "The mark answers. Iron from the same forge calls them." Tomas stared. "You can find them." "I find death. Same thing, near you." Dart did not smile. "The bell rings louder the nearer they stand. Follow it, you follow them." Tomas took the bell. It was heavier than it looked, and cold as river ice. "Why give me this?" "I collect what the dead leave." Dart looked at the frozen hare. "You make more dead than anyone. I want the whole set." He stepped back into the dark. Tomas rose with the bell in his fist. He knew the count now. Three strong souls, all fixed on Luca, none of them driven off by walls or fire. And now he held a thing that could point him straight to each one. He walked back toward the firepit, past the sleeping boy, and looked out at the black trees. The hunt was his to start.