The stars fell wrong.The stars fell wrong.
Streaks of light cut across the Frost-season sky, too bright, too fast, cutting against the wind. Torven had been watching the ridge for three hours, cold enough that his breath froze on his scarf, quiet enough to hear snow settling in the pines.
Then the sky tore open.
Light poured through—white-gold, searing, bright as creation—and sound followed. Something beyond wind or thunder—a cry that split bone.
Torven ran.
The watch house stirred behind him. Voices, firelight, the clatter of weapons snatched. His fingers closed around his knife. Iron, not Bone.
Varn emerged from the watch house with his crossbow, torchlight hardening his face.
"What—"
"North. Something fell."
Varn stared at the sky, the light fading, dimming to ember-glow beyond the treeline. And yet sound continued, scraping and dragging as something massive moved through snow.
"Rouse the hunters." Varn's voice pierced the cold. "Wyrms fell. Full party. Bone bolts. Move."
Renn stumbled forward, crossbow clutched wrong in both hands, a training crossbow, too heavy for him, stock worn smooth from years of drills. His fingers shook as he tried to load a bolt, fumbling with the mechanism.
Varn's hand cracked out, struck Renn's ear.
"Not this time." Varn's voice dropped, firm. "Rear guard. Stay at the back."
Renn's chin dipped. "I can—"
"Next season. When you're ready."
Renn's mouth closed. Torven watched him a moment. Blade season a month past, two winters as Iron-knife, first real hunt, but the freckles hadn't faded, the cheeks still soft. Torven remembered the feeling. He gripped Renn's shoulder and steered him away.
Varn's eyes followed the gesture, and his mouth thinned. Torven met his stare and didn't yield. Varn broke first.
"Eight hunters," Varn called. "Bone bolts. Move."
Eight hunters, all the settlement could spare against wounded dragons. Torven ran with them, crossbow heavy across his back, breath rasping. Whatever had fallen made no effort to hide.
The blood trail started half a mile out, dark streaks in white snow steaming and converging. Torven knelt and touched the nearest stain, still warm, his fingers lifting away red-black.
"Dragon blood. Fresh." Varn's voice tightened. Twelve winters since the last kill, and here it was steaming in the snow, pooling in quantities that made his stomach turn.
They followed the trails north, past pine boughs snapped like kindling, past gouges torn in frozen earth. Dark streaks splashed across bark, pooled in footprints, the iron reek thickening with every step.
The trees opened ahead into a clearing where the blood trails converged, and when Varn raised his fist everyone stopped.
Open ground stretched ahead, no cover, the trails converging at center. Varn's voice dropped to a murmur. "Spread wide. Three paces. Don't bunch. It charges, you scatter. Make it choose."
They fanned into position, Torven taking the left flank with his crossbow ready while Varn positioned himself rear-center, half-hidden behind a pine.
Breathing reached him first, deep, labored, rattling with fluid. The sound of something dying. No, two of them. The hair on Torven's neck rose as the breathing came from two directions, overlapping, filling the darkness ahead.
His hands shook as he loaded the crossbow. The Bone bolt was ancient, pale, precious, probably older than he was. Lighter than iron, smooth where iron was rough; dragon bone didn't corrode. It slid into the groove with a whisper instead of a click.
If he missed—
As they crept forward, the clearing sharpened in the frost-light to reveal open space, snow unmarked except for the blood trails ending in shadow. Massive shapes where the moon didn't reach, no details, just size, bigger than bears, bigger than anything he'd hunted.
One of the shapes shifted. Moonlight caught on something. A surface too smooth to be fur, too reflective to be hide.
Scales.
Varn's hand dropped. "There." Two dragons lay bleeding in the snow, massive shapes half-hidden in shadow, close enough to taste their scent, blood mixed with something sharp and clean, like heated metal.
Fire erupted from the clearing.
"Scatter!"
White-gold flame—sudden, blinding—tore through darkness. Torven threw himself sideways. Heat seared past his face, close enough to singe hair. Someone screamed. The smell hit, charred leather and scorched earth.
Torven pressed into snow, heart slamming against ribs. Around him, the hunters had scattered wide, their breathing the only proof they were still alive. Varn's command echoed uselessly in the dark.
The fire cut off and darkness rushed back, his vision swimming with afterimages dancing across black.
The breathing continued, but ragged now, weaker. A second burst flared, smaller and sporadic, dying out.
Movement in his peripheral vision. Renn.
Torven's breath stopped. The boy had edged forward. Disobeyed Varn's direct order, crept through darkness toward the clearing when he should've stayed back. Now crouched behind a fallen log, crossbow raised, rigid with prey-stillness.
Too close.
If Varn saw him—
The fire sputtered once, twice.
The shapes in the clearing heaved, still moving, still alive despite everything.
Renn stood transfixed. Torven's hand shot out.
When the third burst came, fire sprayed wide, weaker but wild, straight toward Renn.
Torven lunged before thought caught up.
He hit Renn from the side, drove them both down. Fire roared overhead, a hand's breadth, no more. His cloak caught. Flames on his arms. Through leather, through wool, straight to skin.
He rolled, smothered the flames in snow. The pain caught up, bright and sharp, the smell of his own flesh burning.
Renn scrambled back, gasping. "You—"
"Stay down!"
The fire stopped.
Just wind and the crackling of burning brush.
Varn stood behind a boulder twenty paces back, crossbow raised, scanning the clearing. He went still when Renn scrambled to his feet, unhurt but shaking.
"You—" Varn stared at Renn. "You followed. I ordered—"
"Captain." Grey-beard's voice cut through. "The clearing."
Light. It was faint but growing, gold-white, rising from the center like heat shimmer. Everyone turned.
Torven forced himself to his knees, cradling burned arms against his chest. The skin pulled tight, blisters rising, each movement white-hot. The clearing ahead lay silent.
Varn pushed off the boulder. "Check it. Carefully."
He limped forward, crossbow leveled. Ferne followed, bigger than he remembered, then two others. Varn remained in position, covering their approach.
The clearing opened before them. Dark pools steamed, plumes rising into freezing air. Heat hit Torven's face, blood-hot, wet. Metal coated his tongue. The moisture clung to his skin, his beard. Copper and iron, thick enough to coat his throat. Sweat prickled under his cloak despite the frost. The air sat humid and wrong, the wet dark evaporating around them in slow clouds.
Gouges scored the frozen earth where something massive had dragged itself, scorched patches marked where dragon fire had erupted. The blood trails led to the clearing's center, then just... stopped.
No dragons.
The air hung still and heavy; the breathing had stopped. His boots squelched through red-black slush, following the trails to where they ended.
"The tracks just end." Ferne scanned the treeline. "I can't find prints leading out, can't find wing marks, can't find bodies." She stared at the blood. "They were here—all this blood proves it—and now they're gone."
The others searched the treeline, found only empty snow. "Dragons don't just vanish," someone muttered. "Not with this much blood." The hunters shifted, eyes on the treeline, on their boots, anywhere but the center.
Then—light.
Faint at the clearing's center. Soft gold, pulsing like a heartbeat. Torven stepped toward it. Warmth radiated from the ground like a banked fire. Impossible when breath froze in the air. The glow brightened as he approached.
He stopped at the edge of a perfect circle where snow lay melted and steam rose from wet ground.
And at the center—
An infant.
The child lay naked in the snow, its skin pink where it should have been blue and dead, impossibly alive in the killing cold. Light pulsed from it in soft waves—chest, fingertips, the crown of its head—pushing back the frost as if warmth were something it could simply will into being. Dark pools surrounded the circle but none had crossed the boundary, held back by something Torven couldn't name.
He eased down onto his knees. The wet earth yielded beneath him where there should have been frozen ground, and when he reached out, his hand passed through the golden light into warmth that pressed against his palm, not passive heat, but something that reached back. Real, and almost soothing against the raw burns.
The baby's chest rose and fell in the rhythm of deep sleep, eyes closed, silent as snowfall.
The warmth wrapped around him, seeped into the screaming nerves of his burned arms, not healing them, but quieting them, the way a hand on a wound can gentle pain even when it cannot cure it. The baby's eyes opened. Amber-gold, bright as the fading light, they settled on his face and stayed. The baby's gaze didn't wander the way infant eyes should. It tracked. It fixed. Those were not infant eyes. Then the eyes closed again.
Behind him, boots crunching in snow. The hunters gathering at the circle's edge. No one spoke. They stared at the impossible thing, a baby glowing in melted snow where dragons had been.
The light ebbed, retreating from fingertips toward his chest with each breath. The warmth remained.
Varn stood at the boundary, face ash-pale. "Ash and bone." He kept his distance, crossbow half-raised. He hadn't come closer, none of them had, except Torven.
"A baby." Varn's voice cut through the silence. "Where the dragons were."
"Leave it."
Torven's voice came quiet. "Bring it back. Let the Council decide."
"We hunt dragons." Varn still hadn't turned. "Not strays."
"No dragons to hunt."
"Then we report. Council decides." His hand gestured toward the trees, toward home. "Not us."
"It'll die." Ferne glanced at the others. "Minutes in this cold."
"Good."
Varn gave them his back.
Ferne's face stilled. Warmth spread from the baby through the circle.
The baby shifted against him, small and warm. Torven looked at the other hunters—at Ferne, at Grey-beard, at the ones studying the snow. He drew breath, held it.
"You didn't say 'good' when the fire came." The words came out rougher than he'd intended. Pain made everything sharp.
Varn turned back. Slowly. "What?"
"Renn stood in the open. You called scatter from twenty paces back."
The hunters drew back. Some stepped away. Others didn't.
Varn's spine straightened. "Command position. Protocol."
"While a boy burned."
"The boy disobeyed—I ordered him back—"
"He's sixteen. You're the captain." The baby's warmth pressed against his chest. "I pulled him out. You watched."
Ferne's eyes widened. The other hunters shuffled, wouldn't meet his eyes. Varn's hand tightened on his crossbow. "For a baby? You'd trade dragons for a baby?"
"What dragons?"
Varn's eyes swept the other hunters. Stopped on Ferne. On Grey-beard. On the others shifting, looking away.
"Defying orders. In front of the party."
"It's a child."
Words died. Only the baby's breath, small and measured, as the light faded to nothing.
Varn's eyes never left Torven's face. When he spoke, each word came out like breaking ice. "Your choice. Your burden."
Varn's gaze caught on the bundle against Torven's chest. His weight shifted forward—half a step, caught—before his eyes found the treeline instead.
"Everyone hears what happened. All of it." He looked at the other hunters when he said it.
"We leave. Now."
Torven knelt. His cloak, singed and smoke-stained, would have to do. He wrapped the infant carefully, using his fingertips to avoid letting the raw burns touch fabric. Calloused hands clumsy against soft skin.
He gathered the bundle against his chest, tucking it close, using his arms as little as possible, just enough to keep the baby from slipping. The baby settled there. Light, fragile, heat bleeding through the cloth. The warmth eased through him, took the edge off the pain.
He straightened, unsteady but upright. The hunters watched him with curious faces and wary stances, their eyes flicking away when he looked back. Ferne stepped closer. Held out a water skin. "It's a long walk."
Torven transferred the baby's weight to one forearm and reached for it with his free hand. Their eyes met. She opened her mouth—closed it. Nodded once instead.
Grey-beard adjusted his pack, pulled out a worn blanket. He stepped forward, tucked it carefully around the baby without making Torven adjust his grip. Fingers lingered on the fabric for a heartbeat, almost saying something. Then he pulled back, wouldn't meet Torven's eyes, stepped away, putting distance between them.
Renn stood at the edge of the group, arms wrapped around himself. He took a step toward Torven, then stopped. Drew breath to speak, let it out unused. His eyes were wet, and he turned his face toward the trees.
"Move out." Varn was already walking. "Nothing more here."
No one moved immediately. The cold pressed in, and the hunters stood scattered across the clearing, feet planted but bodies angled wrong, half toward Varn and half toward Torven. Grey-beard stood longest of all, his eyes tracking from the baby to Torven's burned arms to Varn's retreating back before dropping to the snow between his boots.
Then he turned and fell in behind Varn, and the others followed one by one, slow and silent. Renn among them, eyes down. Ferne last.
Varn led them away. Still captain. The hunters fell in behind, farther back than before, quiet.
Torven stood at the clearing's edge, the bundle against his chest. Behind him lay the evidence, blood blackening in snow, scorch marks from dragon fire, the melted circle where he'd found this child. The bodies gone, just questions no one could answer.
His arms throbbed, would scar, but the baby was warm and alive.
Above, the stars had stopped falling, and Torven carried his proof home.