Garran had barely finished flattening the map across the table when Averik looked down at it, then back at him. "I came here to talk about something else, but you immediately showed me a map."
Garran rested both palms on the paper. For a moment, he studied the lines running out from Vardel. "Yeah. I was just thinking... we’ve been searching for so long, going so far, and we still haven’t found any clean land that isn’t frozen. You happened to come by, and at first I only wanted to ask what you thought. Maybe that can wait. So, what did you want to talk about?"
"Any information about Corvin?" The question wiped the last trace of casual interest from Garran’s face.
He paused before answering. "Nothing so far. Nothing related to you, and I haven’t heard about him talking about you. But there is something else."
"What is it?" Averik Asked.
"Corvin just advanced to Sequence 5. And yes, of course, he has a Tier 4 Core now. He’s much stronger. On average, it does take longer to reach Sequence 5 than it does to go from Sequence 7 to Sequence 6. Maybe that’s also because when you reach Sequence 5, your Core goes up a Tier."
Averik’s gaze dropped to the map without really seeing it. ’He reached Sequence 5, with a Tier 4 Core. That means his raw power alone is at least on Garran’s level. If he becomes a threat to me later, I need to advance faster. Good thing one effect of my Bloodline can accelerate my progress.’
Garran had driven that Tier 4 difference into his abdomen yesterday morning. Averik remembered the impact well enough. "That’s useful information. I’ll thank you for that. Keep an eye on him."
Garran held his stare for a beat. "At this rate, I’m going to end up becoming your servant."
"I don’t mind if that’s what you want. Besides, you already said you’d help if I needed something. Garran, as a man, can’t you keep your word? If that’s really how it is, I’ll start doubting your leadership."
Garran went quiet. He rubbed one hand over his face. "Averik, you really are straightforward... Some parts of you are the complete opposite of your father."
Averik’s attention sharpened. Garran’s eyes lingered on him, but he didn’t say anything more about Roderic. "Don’t worry. I’ll keep watching him. I might also pass along anything that looks relevant."
"Well... that’s good." Averik said flatly.
Garran exhaled through his nose and tapped the map. "Back to this, what do you think about the ma-"
"Tomorrow. I don’t feel like staying here long. Evelyn and Snow are probably home already. If you still want my opinion, I’ll come see you around noon tomorrow."
Garran’s mouth opened, then closed. "Looks like I’m getting used to you, Averik. Fine. Do whatever you want."
Averik turned before the commander could find another reason to keep him there. He lifted one hand in a loose wave on the way out.
Behind him, Garran sighed. When Averik glanced back from the doorway, the man was already shaking his head.
***
The next morning smelled of hot fat, toasted grain, and whatever herbs Evelyn had crushed into the pan. She stood at the stove with her back to him, sleeves pushed up enough to keep them away from the heat. Snow was in the front room, quiet for once.
Averik came up behind Evelyn without announcing himself and wrapped his arms around her waist. Her shoulders relaxed against his chest before he even lowered his head. He pressed a kiss to her neck, then let his tongue brush the same spot.
Evelyn’s breath caught. Her hips moved back into him on instinct, soft ass pressing firmly against his body. "Averik~"
His hand slid down and squeezed one full cheek. He held it for a second, then slapped her ass once. A small shiver ran through Evelyn, and she leaned back into him. "My wife looks sweeter when she’s cooking."
She turned her head enough that he could see the curve of her smile. "My husband~ Love you..."
Averik bent and kissed her hair. "All right, finish cooking first. Then we’ll eat together."
"Yes, my husband~." He let her go. The pan hissed again as Evelyn returned her attention to breakfast.
***
Monday morning found Alex packing for the trip back to Vardel at Unit 1’s first forward camp. He shoved the last folded blanket into the crawler’s rear storage and leaned his forearm against the open frame.
"Guarding a forward camp alone is rough. Finally, it’s time to switch shifts. Yeah... at least last week there was a member who... That wolf was huge." He stopped there. Whatever had followed the unfinished thought stayed in his head.
He grabbed the final field bag instead, tossed it beside the blanket, and pulled the rear latch shut. "Huff... Everything’s finally loaded. Time to head back to Vardel."
The crawler rumbled awake beneath him. Its broad tracks chewed through packed snow as he drove across the small yard and through the camp gate. Outside, he braked and climbed down, pulled the gate shut, and set the lock. Metal met metal with a heavy clunk.
Alex checked it once, then turned toward the crawler. Something moved beyond it.
Several hundred meters ahead, on the left side of Unit 1’s main route, a wolf-shaped Frost Beast was clawing at the snow. Alex went still as the creature lifted its head. Frost crusted the fur along its neck and shoulders. Cold blue showed through split patches of hide. Its stare found him at once.
"Shit! Why does one have to show up right when I’m about to leave?"
The wolf launched forward. Alex moved too.
He left the crawler where it was and sprinted straight at the beast. The frozen ground ripped open beside his stride.
Stone and mineral mass streamed up, the material changed as it wrapped his forearm, compressing it into a dense gauntlet studded with short spikes. Essence flooded through his arm and the shaped shell together.
The Frost Beast was fast. Alex covered the distance faster.
Its body rose at the end of the charge, jaws opening toward his head. Alex dipped beneath the bite line and drove his fist toward the lower jaw.
***
By the time Averik and Evelyn left their house, morning had already begun giving way to noon. Snow stayed home.
The two of them had only gone a short distance when Averik saw Corvin approaching from the opposite direction. Corvin slowed first. "Averik. Evelyn."
"Corvin," Evelyn replied, polite but cold.
Corvin looked from her to Averik. "Averik, I was just about to visit your house, but it looks like you’re heading out."
"Yeah. What business did you have at my house?" Averik asked.
"Since I used to be close to your parents, maybe I’ve come to think of you as a son too. I just wanted to ask how you’re doing. How’s your progress in the Unit? You two are doing all right, aren’t you?"
Averik watched him for another second. Knowing Corvin now had a Tier 4 Core made Averik pay closer attention. It still didn’t tell him what Corvin wanted. "Yeah, pretty well... Corvin, if you want to talk, let’s do it another time. I’m on my way to Unit 1."
Corvin didn’t press. "All right. I don’t want to disturb you." He stepped aside. "Take care, both of you."
"You too," Evelyn said, her voice as cool as before.
Averik continued walking. Evelyn matched his pace beside him, and neither of them looked back.
***
The door to Garran’s office was closed when they reached it. Averik opened it without knocking, and the conversation inside stopped.
Caedren stood near the table with one hand on the map. Bram leaned against the wall beside him, broad arms folded. Tovan had taken the chair closest to the door. Several senior Unit 1 members were spread around the room, and among them was a blonde woman Averik hadn’t seen before. She caught his glance and raised one brow, completely unbothered by it.
Garran looked toward the door. "There he is, the one who-"
"Garran, no need for the small talk." Averik said flatly.
The commander closed his eyes briefly. Bram’s mouth twitched, while the blonde woman’s quiet huff almost became a laugh. Garran ignored all of them and pointed at the map. "Come here."
Averik and Evelyn moved to the table. This time Garran didn’t start with the distance they had already traveled. He put one finger on the line leaving District 1’s main gate, followed it through the first forward camp, then farther along the marks Unit 1 had added through years of exploration.
"We know this line," Garran said. "Not every patch of ground, but enough to work from. Same for most of what branches off to the right." His finger moved left, where the marks thinned quickly and the paper beyond them was almost empty.
Caedren leaned over the table. "We’ve crossed pieces of it before. Never enough to make a useful route."
"Because the main line kept giving us something to work with," Garran said. "We kept finding reasons to push farther instead of cutting off into blank ground."
The blonde woman shifted away from the wall. "So now the empty part’s annoying you."
Garran glanced at her. "Mona, everything annoys me eventually."
"Okay." Mona said.
Averik looked at the blank stretch. Unknown ground didn’t bother him by itself. Ground nobody had properly checked could hold beasts to tame, useful material, or something dangerous enough to matter. Any of those was worth knowing. "What are you planning?" he asked.
"That was what I wanted your opinion on." Garran tapped the blank again. "I’m not throwing a large group into it just because the map looks ugly."
A knock cut in before Averik answered. Garran looked up. "Come in."
The door opened, and Alex stepped through carrying a wooden sign. Nearly two meters of broken post remained beneath the board, forcing him to angle it past the frame.
The instant it crossed the threshold, a vibration ran through Averik. Not across his skin. Through him.
It was faint, but it touched deep enough that his attention snapped away from Garran. ’What... what kind of feeling is this?’
Alex adjusted the sign in his hands. Snow and dirt still clung to the lower wood. Averik waited a beat for something more from the strange sensation. Nothing came.
Alex faced Garran first. "Camp was fine when I left. Gate’s locked. Crawler made it back without trouble." He shifted the post and showed the board. "I also found this. It looks like survivors. It’s written in the same language we use. Take a look."
Several heads turned toward the board at once. The cuts across the upper half remained readable: ~survivors. Meet us this way~
An arrow had been carved below it. Beneath the arrow sat a second pattern, or what remained of one. Straight and curved cuts crossed one another in a deliberate arrangement, but deep claw gouges had torn through part of it. Several lines simply ended where wood had been ripped away.
Alex lowered the end of the broken post carefully against the floor. "Look at this symbol. It looks strange. Does anyone understand it?"
Averik stared at the damaged carving. The vibration had started when Alex came in, and the sign had come in with him. ’Could this symbol be what caused that feeling? But what is this symbol?’
He kept the question to himself. Caedren bent closer without touching the board, while Bram’s expression hardened as he read the word at the top.
"Survivors," one of the senior men muttered.
"If whoever wrote it is still alive," Bram said.
"That’s the problem," Garran replied. "The board doesn’t tell us when they wrote it."
Mona had moved closer too. She looked from the arrow to the damaged pattern. "The message is simple. That thing under it isn’t."
Nobody answered her. Garran studied the carving for several seconds, then straightened. "Maybe we need Sophia. Caedren, go get Sophia."
Caedren left without argument. No one filled the wait with guesses. Garran lowered the sign beside the map so everyone could see both at once. Tovan shifted closer to see it. Evelyn remained beside Averik, her attention moving between the carving and his face once before returning to the board. Averik gave her nothing to read.
Caedren returned a short while later with a woman beside him. Sophia had brown hair, glasses, and a cute face. She hesitated for a moment at the crowded room, adjusted her glasses, then went straight to the sign. Once she reached it, the hesitation disappeared.
Her eyes moved over the intact cuts first, then the claw marks, slowing where the pattern ended too abruptly. After a while, she looked at Garran.
"I can’t fully understand this yet. It looks like my ability isn’t enough, or at least I need more evidence or another clue."
Mona tipped her head. "So we’re missing the part that might’ve mattered."
Sophia glanced at the damaged wood. "The claws definitely didn’t help."
Averik looked at the carving again. More evidence might give Sophia something she didn’t have here. If it did, perhaps it would also tell him why he’d reacted to the thing at all.
Garran turned to Alex. "Where did you find this?"
"At first, I’d just closed the camp gate. When I turned around, I saw a Frost Beast a few hundred meters ahead of the camp. It looked at me too. It rushed at me right away. I didn’t think long. I attacked, coated my hand, aimed my fist at its jaw, and then..."
***
BOOM
Stone crashed into the wolf’s lower jaw head-on.
The hit snapped its head upward and threw its whole body backward. Snow burst beneath it as it landed almost where it had been digging moments earlier, rolled once, and carved a dark trench through the white ground.
Alex stopped only long enough to reset his footing.
The Frost Beast rolled to a stop, then dug its forelegs back under itself. Its jaw hung wrong for a moment. A split along the side of its face showed cold blue beneath the frost-coated hide. Then the ruined line tightened, and the beast’s head jerked back toward him.
Alex’s spiked gauntlet had cracked across two knuckles of stone. Essence still ran through the material and his arm.
The wolf came again, lower and faster this time. No leap at his head. It drove forward with its body close to the ground, front claws reaching before the jaws.
Alex stamped once. The frozen surface ahead of him bucked. earth and stone beneath the snow rose into a short, dense ridge directly under the wolf’s leading paws. It didn’t stop the beast, but it spoiled the angle.
One paw struck high. The other skidded. The wolf twisted violently to correct, claws raking across the stone wrapped around Alex’s forearm instead of his flesh. Alex was already inside the bite.
His gauntlet slammed into the side of the skull near the base. Bone gave under the blow. The Essence riding it jarred deeper, and the wolf’s whole body seized for a heartbeat.
Alex didn’t give its recovery that heartbeat back. He caught the collapsing angle, drove the beast down, and hammered the reinforced gauntlet into the back of the damaged head. The skull and upper spine hit the hardened ridge together.
The wolf spasmed. Frost crept over torn flesh. One hind leg kicked as the damaged body tried to rise again.
Alex struck again. The movement stopped.
He stayed over it for another breath, gauntlet raised, watching for the next twitch. None came. Only then did he look at the gouges the claws had carved through the outer stone around his forearm. The stone had taken the claws. His coat beneath it was intact.
The corpse was another problem. Alex kept his bare hands off it. He stepped aside and pulled the ground open into a deep pit. A slab of packed earth lifted under the dead wolf, tilted, and dumped it into the hole. He folded soil and stone back over the body until nothing remained exposed.
Alex broke the stone from around his forearm and looked toward the patch the beast had been clawing at. Dark wood showed beneath the churned snow. He cleared the top with a sweep of shaped earth, then crouched and grabbed the exposed post through his glove.
It didn’t move. He pulled harder, but frozen ground held the lower end like a clamp. Alex shifted his grip and hauled again.
CRACK!
The post snapped below the board. He rocked back a step with the sign in his hands. The carved words showed through the dirt and snow.
Alex stared at them, then at the strange damaged carving beneath the arrow. He carried the sign back to the crawler, lifted the long broken post into the rear bed, and wedged it securely beside his packed gear.
***
"That’s how I found it." The room stayed quiet for a few seconds after Alex finished.
Garran looked at the sign, then at the map. "When you pulled it free, which way was the arrow pointing?"
Alex leaned over the table and indicated the blank ground to the left of Unit 1’s main route. "Out here."
Garran followed Alex’s indication with one finger. "So the wolf was digging here, near the first camp."
"Several hundred meters from the gate," Alex replied. "Left of the main route."
Caedren studied the same blank area. "The direction fits ground we haven’t properly covered."
"Fits," Garran said. "Doesn’t prove what’s at the end of it."
Sophia pushed her glasses up again. "If there’s more context out there, I may be able to tell more."
Bram looked toward the sign. "And if there’s a pack of Frost Beasts sitting on top of it, we learn that too."
Mona folded her arms. "That sounds more honest than ’go find survivors.’"
"No one’s calling them survivors yet," Garran said. "We have a board that says the word."
Averik said nothing. He had another reason to watch the blank ground now, and no reason to tell Garran what he’d felt.
Garran looked around the table. "Tomorrow. Caedren, Bram, Mona, Tovan, you’re scouting it."
Mona blinked once, then nodded. Garran pointed to another senior FU member next. "You go with them as far as the first forward camp. You’re taking Alex’s watch."
Senior gave a short nod. "Fine."
"Once he’s in place," Garran continued, "the other four follow the direction on that sign. You look. You mark what you can actually confirm. If the ground turns bad, you come back."
Bram uncrossed his arms. "Simple enough."
Caedren looked at the map rather than Garran. "We’ll know more once we’re standing there."
Garran tapped the table. "This is a scout," he said. "Not an expedition." His finger stayed on the blank part of the map. "Tomorrow, five of you leave. One stays at the camp. The rest of you follow the arrow. That’s all. So, don’t go too far, and don’t take any dangerous risks".