Hain took no more than a few steps when yet another caw broke the silence. He peeked over his shoulder only for a second.

The world turned upside down.

Blood rushed to his head at an alarming rate and meddled with his train of thought.

A rope wrapped around his ankle as he looked up. Caught in a bear trap and unable to free himself from it, he hung upside down in the middle of the forest.

Shouting at the top of his lungs for the headmaster’s daughter proved to be in vain. She couldn’t hear him. She was long gone.

Nothing but the sinister trees and thickets heard his cries through the night, mimicking and taunting him without respite.

Desperate to free himself and make it back to Lárhus before sunrise, Hain strained every muscle to break free from the tow rope that kept tightening around his ankle and cutting off the blood supply.

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But nothing worked.

He swore under his breath. Who in the world could put a trap this close to the school grounds?

Then a thought hit him. The man with the boots! Was this how he lured and eventually trapped the missing apprentices?

Shaking off the dire thoughts, he tried to clear his mind and think straight. His life couldn’t end without even having started, could it?

There was so much he wanted to do, so many things he wanted to accomplish! Dying, especially in this manner, was out of the question!

Only a loser like Barken deserved such an untimely passing, not someone like him!

He still didn’t know anything about himself; about who he was and why his own mother cursed him before she bit the dust.

As these thoughts replayed on a vicious loop in his mind, another chilling idea took hold of him.

Hold on a second! It couldn’t be… right? But what if he was right? Now he understood why the man looked so familiar.

It was that guy! The one who saved him from dying at the hands of Barken and his stupid friends!

But what was he doing here? At Salwodor, at that! Was this why he let them off the hook back in the restroom? Because they already knew one another? Then again, why?

The only plausible explanation he could come up with was the following: the stranger knew more about him than he let on…