When Myraden and the Hand reached the banks of the Skuvey Strait, she sensed a presence approaching. It was distant, perhaps a few miles away still, but it was undeniable. Her spiritual senses were best tuned for observing and handling danger. If they sensed something from such a distance, it was because it potentially posed a threat.

It wasn’t a Flare; it was too stable in her senses. A flare at a few miles might leave an impression, but not a stable, continuous push. A Blaze might, but even then, it was a long shot.

“Hand,” she whispered. “Get on Kythen. We have an Unbound Lord chasing us.”

They had been walking along the gravel shore of Greatsaad’s northern coast, but now, she sped up. To the left, rocky hills rose up, with peat and lime green plants growing on ridges. To the right, open ocean glimmering in the evening light. A few miles away, the dark ridges of Iskan's shoreline hid the horizon. The afternoon sun had burned away the fog, and now she could see it much clearer. Even without enhanced eyesight, a normal man could've seen it.

The Hand swung up onto Kythen’s back. "A Wildflame?"

"I sense it." She glanced to the left, in the direction the spiritual presence was emanating from. “Unless you want to stay and fight?”

"No point. If we move quickly, we can still cross the Ískan bridge and hide in Ravi before the Wildflame catches us.”

“You trust my judgement?”

“If you’re wrong, we lose nothing but breath. If you’re right and we do nothing, we risk a confrontation we aren’t ready for.”

She nodded, then activated her Tundra Veins. Kythen did as well, and the both of them took off down the shoreline, sprinting away from the looming presence.

With each step she took, the presence strengthened in the back of her mind. Perhaps the Unbound Lord sensed her using techniques and realized she was trying to escape. No doubt, whoever it was could outpace her.

How do you know it’s an Unbound Lord? Kythen asked.

“Are there any other Wildflames?” It was a rhetorical question for Kythen.

Still, the Hand said, “Aside from Nomad, I didn’t know of any. That doesn’t mean there are none, though.”

“Chances are, he is one of Lady Neria’s,” said Myraden in Low-Speech. “If he has recovered from Nomad’s attack.”

But they just had to reach the bridge.

The shoreline mountains peeled away as the shore curved, and as Ískan’s landmass angled closer to the Mainland, narrowing the Skuvey Strait. Ahead, the Greatsaadan road curved toward a precipice of rock hanging over the ocean, which an ancient bridge connected to.

The Ískan bridge was a massive structure of weathered sandstone. Wind and water had eroded its once-ornate facades into a mile-long expanse of plain arches bulwarks, and patina made its bricks look like they had more definition than they actually had.

She sprinted down the path, her boots skittering on the icy mud and cobblestones. When she reached the edge of the bridge, she nearly lost her footing as she turned onto it and sprinted across. The pressure of the Wildflame built behind them, turning into a pulse in her channels. He wasn’t veiling himself at all.

“Hand? Can you survive his full presence and spiritual weight?”

The Red Hand scoffed. “Of course. A mortal spirit can take it with careful training, even though most don’t know how. Exposure therapy, and—”

“I do not need to know how!”

She darted across the Ískan bridge, feet slipping on the icy surface. She began falling forward, and forced herself to speed up to accommodate for it. Kythen’s hooves gripped the slippery surface expertly, cleft toes digging into the ice like picks.

The sky turned rusty pink, framing the coast of Ískan ahead of her. It began as a set of glacier-scoured tidepools, with summer moss and grass growing in between, but quickly sloped upward into smooth, sloping hills of stone. For some, it might have seemed an alien landscape, with the glassy, weathered rocks and patches of snow, but the distant mountains and autumn tundra was her home.

As she neared the other side of the bridge, she passed the charred remains of a cart. The wind had swept it up against the bulwark at the side of the bridge, and the bones of the ox that’d pulled the cart heaped in a pile before it.

It’d only been ten years ago, but most of the carnage on the Ískan bridge was gone. But the charred husk of Ravi, the Bridge City, remained. It was a trading town, and though the shore here wasn’t conducive to a port, plenty of goods had once flowed across the bridge from the Mainland and back.

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Buildings began halfway across the bridge, climbing up the sides and forming tall walls around it. Shattered windows stared at her like gouged out eyes, and crispy clotheslines draped from one side of the bridge to the other. The upper levels were entirely black, and most structures had crumbled, leaving only a graveyard of supporting timbers, cobblestone first floors, and fallen peat roofs.

The city didn’t just span the bridge, though. In its prime, before the Burning, it’d probably hosted a hundred thousand northern sprites, and they’d lived in a complex of structures along the coast. Streets ran up and down the rocky shore, and houses’ skeletons clung to the edge of a cobblestone retaining wall.

“Hide in the ruins of the city!” the Hand called. “Some place that he won’t see us from above! Then veil your spirit.”

“I cannot veil myself and run at the same time!”

“Then you better hope we had enough of a lead that he isn’t able to pin us down before we find a spot.”

At that, Myraden pushed herself even faster. Buildings whirled past. The bridge ended, depositing her onto a gravel street. Her boots gained proper traction once more, and she turned onto a thoroughfare, dodging the wreckage of market stalls. Sprite skeletons still lay in the streets where they were slain, their bones picked clean long ago.

But the main thoroughfare would be too obvious. As soon as they were a few streets inland, away from the coast, she and Kythen turned into an alley. A lattice still hung overhead, once hosting hardy winter vines, now bare. Not good enough.

She kicked in a charred door on one side of the alley, then dove into the house beyond. A stairway descended down into a cellar. The interior reeked of ash, but the timbers supporting the ceiling were only slightly blackened. The three skeletons in the corner hadn’t died from the flames, but by sword wounds—even without guessing, their bones were shattered and broken, and some of their ribs had been slashed in regular patterns.

Myraden gagged at the stench—decay and decomposition that hadn’t tasted fresh air for a decade—and nearly threw up, but she held it in.

Kythen barely fit through the opening, and the Hand jumped off his back to enter.

They both deactivated their techniques, and Myraden held her breath, stopping her Essence from moving. Even the Hand took short, small breaths, suppressing his small, mortal spirit.

“How long do we wait?” Myraden whispered.

“Until you cannot sense him anymore,” replied the Hand. “While you use a veil, your senses will be diminished, so we’ll have to be cautious. If you keep veiled once we leave, he won’t sense us anymore.”

“What if he tries to wait us out?”

“He won’t.”

“How can you be certain?”

The Hand chuckled. “We are dealing with Lord Two. Lady Neria wouldn’t have sent Lord Three after us; she’d keep the Lord she trusts closer to herself. And Lord Two is jumpy. The moment he senses something to the north—be it a wraith or a horde of bloodhorns, he’ll go running off after it, thinking it’s us.”

“Then we will have time to escape.” Myraden wanted to exhale forcefully, but she restrained herself, maintaining the veil. She slumped down against one of the cellar walls—in a gap between two shelves of charred barrels. “You are almost always reasoning your way out of situations. How come you were not able to reason your way out of imperial servitude?”

He raised his eyebrows. In the dim light pouring through the cellar door, she barely noticed. “You assume I was always like this? No, Myraden, you must realize: my uprising was the unreasonable action. Me entering imperial servitude seemed…more reasonable.”

“Seemed?”

“Yes, seemed. I can’t say for certain. Young Lord Kovar would have disagreed deeply with the decision.” He shook his head. “Everything a cold calculation, striving to maximize every aspect of my life and service. I hoped it would bring me peace.”

“That does not seem like something you would say.”

“Nomad and I spoke when you raided the Aremir estate. He…reminded me of something I had lost.”

“Your soul?”

“To put it bluntly, yes, though it didn’t feel like it. Then, when the Emperor threw me out, everything became empty and meaningless. I don’t know if I will ever have peace, nor if I’d deserve it if I found it. Finding peace, Myraden, is different from actually accepting it.”

“When we defeat the Dominion—”

“Will you have peace when the Dominion crumbles? When the Unbound Lords die, and Neria lacks any strength to hold together her empire, will you have peace because you saw it all crumble?”

Myraden pursed her lips and shook her head. “I do not know, Hand. I cannot tell you.”

“Only one part of that sentence is right. You do know, you just don’t want to say.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Myraden kept close watch on her senses, monitoring to feel Lord Two’s presence. It stayed completely steady for a few minutes as he passed up and down the street. Essence levels fluctuated as he used a technique to lift himself off the ground and hover, and dropped again as he disappeared deeper into the city.

As his presence receded, a new point of warning sprouted in Myraden’s contained senses. It was an acute point of danger right to her side, and everything within screamed at her to move. She almost gasped and broke her veil, but restrained herself, and instead, dove forward across the floor of the cellar.

A whip of enamel and rot smashed into the alcove she’d been standing in, ripping up the bricks and creating a plume of stone. A tornado of bone shards, clothing scraps, and rotten antler pieces swirled out from a crack in the wall, then surged toward her.

First, Kythen head-butted it, scattering a chunk of its form.

A bone-wraith. It was only a low Flare equivalent, and that was probably why she hadn’t sensed it, but it still would’ve done damage. Without taking a deep breath, she picked up a length of timber and swatted the side of the beast’s form, taking out another chunk of it.

Finally, the Hand drew his sword and, manifesting Reign, sliced the wraith in half. It didn’t reform. He’d slashed right through its spiritual form, through the fabric of its existence, and in the eyes of the Eane, it no longer existed as alive.

Myraden fell to a crouch, then glanced at him.

“We must be careful,” he said. “This is a cursed place, and we’ll find many terrifying beasts that have emerged since the Burning. Keep your wits about you.”