A Trap Between the Mountains

The fire crackled. The cave loomed behind them.

The revelation hung in the air like smoke, refusing to clear. Wren sat with her bowl growing cold in her hands, the words still echoing in her mind. The Fatebinder with no limitation. She didn't feel limitless. She felt small, and tired, and very, very far from home.

Rourke had not spoken since Silas's words landed. He sat across the fire, his red eyes fixed on the flames, his hands clasped loosely in front of him.

The usual composure was still there, but it had thinned. Beneath it, Wren could see something working — not fear, exactly, but something older. The look of a man who had just realized the weight of the thing he was carrying.

"Rourke," Wren said quietly. "Wren doesn't... she doesn't understand what this means."

Rourke looked up. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he spoke, his voice lower than usual.

"It means you're not just a weapon. You're the weapon. The one from the old stories." He paused. "And Ysolde knows it."

Rowan, who had been silent through all of this, finally spoke. His voice was rough, like he'd been holding the words in and they'd scraped their way out.

"So that's why she took Pryce. Not as a hostage. As bait." His hands were tight around his knees. "She knew Wren would come. She's been planning this from the start."

Wren looked at him. The firelight caught the scar along his jaw. "Then we're walking into exactly what she wants."

"Probably," Silas said cheerfully from where he lounged against a rock, his closed eyes turned toward the sky. "But knowing the trap doesn't mean you can avoid it. Not when the bait is someone you love."

The word love hit Wren harder than she expected. She looked down at her bowl. The stew had gone cold. The fire crackled on.

Nobody spoke again for a long time. The stars wheeled overhead. The cave kept its silence.

It was the next morning.

The camp came down quickly. Bags were packed, the fire was doused, and the clearing was left as they had found it. The air was cold and sharp, carrying the smell of pine and distant snow.

Rourke was quiet. Not just the usual clipped efficiency — something deeper. His movements were precise but mechanical, and his eyes kept drifting toward the mountains as if he expected something to emerge from them. Nobody pushed him. They all understood.

Rowan held the map, guiding the group forward. Wren walked just behind him, her eyes scanning the treeline. Silas brought up the rear, hands in his pockets, his closed eyes pointed serenely ahead.

They reached a narrow path. It cut through a row of trees between two mountains, stretching on ahead into the distance. The peaks rose steep and grey on either side, their tops lost in the morning mist. The path was old, worn smooth by weather and time, but something about it felt wrong.

They walked for a while, the mountains closing in, the trees thinning to nothing but bare rock and scrub. Rowan led the way, the map crinkling in his hands. Then Wren spoke up.

"Give wren the map. We've been walking for too long."

"Hey, I'm trying my best." Rowan handed it over without argument.

Wren unfolded the map while walking, her boots scraping against the stone. Her eyes traced the lines and markings. The forests. The roads. The town of Dunwallen. And there — the border with the Verdian Empire. Her brow furrowed.

"Rowan, this map shows no mountains near Dunwallen. Not two this close together."

Rowan stopped. "What?"

Wren held the map out for him to see. "Look. According to this, there's a forest, then the mountains. No narrow path between two peaks this close to Dunwallen."

They kept walking, but Wren's mind was running, trying to map out where they actually were. The geography made no sense. The peaks were real — she could touch them, feel the cold radiating off the stone — but they shouldn't be here. It was as if the land had rearranged itself when they weren't looking.

Then Rowan spoke up. "Didn't we already pass that?"

He pointed. Wren followed his finger.

A stone statue stood at the side of the path. It was old, weathered by centuries, and it had no head. The neck ended in a jagged break. It was identical to one they had passed an minutes ago. Wren was sure of it.

They all stopped.

Then an echoing voice came from both mountains at once, vast and without source, rolling down the pass like thunder.

"Your journey is complete. Step forward and you return to where you stand; step backward and you remain where you are. The pass will not open until you hold a shadow in your bare hands."

The words rang in their ears, a pressure that built inside their skulls until they thought their heads might split. Wren dropped to her knees. Rowan and Rourke fell too, hands pressed to their ears. Even Silas stumbled, catching himself against the rock.

Silence fell again. The voice was gone.

Rourke was the first to stand. "Let's leave." He started walking toward the back the way they'd come. A thick mist had gathered there, swallowing the path. The others didn't follow.

He entered the mist. One second. Two.

And then he was back, walking toward them from the mist, a look of confusion on his face.

"Why did you come back?" Wren asked.

"No, I just kept walking forward. I don't know how I came back."

Everybody understood, but Rowan was the first to put it into words.

"We're trapped."

He looked forward, toward the distant corner where the path bent. "Everyone wait here. I'm going to check ahead."

He ran forward. There was no mist in front. The path curved around a bend, and Rowan vanished behind it.

They waited.

Minutes passed.

Then he returned — not from the front, but from behind them, walking out of the mist with the same lost expression Rourke had worn.

Wren's heart sank. She understood now. "We can't leave. And we can't go forward."

The mountains loomed on either side. The mist sat motionless behind them. The path stretched endlessly ahead. They were caught in the middle, inside some trap that had been waiting for someone to walk into it.

Panic rose on all their faces. Rowan's hand had gone to his sword. Rourke was already scanning the walls of the pass, his red eyes searching for some hidden mark, some mechanism, some way out.

And Silas stood there with his hands in his pockets, his eyes closed, his face perfectly calm.

Like he had been here before.

Wren focused on the words. They echoed in her mind, turning over and over. The pass will not open until you hold a shadow in your bare hands.

"What does it mean? A shadow? How do you hold a shadow?"

She dwelled on it for a long time. The sun was climbing higher behind the mountains, its light spilling over the peaks and into the pass. The mist behind them had thinned slightly, but it was still there, waiting.

The sunlight hit her eyes. She raised a hand to shield her face, blinking against the glare.

"The sun. Light. Shadow." She looked toward the sun, then at the mountains, then at the ground. Her eyes caught the edge of the pass where the light fell, cutting a sharp line across the stone.

"Wait." She stood up, sudden conviction in her voice. "Maybe it's about creating a shadow. Holding a shadow in your hands means catching the dark between your fingers."

She cupped her hands together, the way she'd seen a soldier do to trap fire, and held them out toward the light. She angled them slowly, deliberately, trying to form a shadow inside her own palms. A dark patch, a small piece of the absence of light, held between her fingers like something solid.

She closed her hands around it.

Nothing happened.

She opened her hands. The shadow wasn't there. It wasn't a thing you could hold. The moment her fingers closed, it vanished, replaced by the pink bloom of light through her skin. She tried again, frustrated, but the result was the same.

"It's not working." She let her hands drop.

The sun climbed higher. The light shifted. Her own shadow stretched out behind her, long and thin across the stone. She stared at it.

"Our own shadow." She stood up straight again, sudden conviction in her voice. "It has something to do with our own shadow!"

"But how do you hold your own shadow in your hands?" Rourke asked.

Rowan bent down, pressing his bare palms against the dark outline of his own shadow on the ground. "How about this?"

Silas let out a small chuckle.

Wren and Rourke both followed Rowan's lead, bending down and touching their shadows with their bare hands. They stood there, three people pressed against the cold stone, looking faintly ridiculous.

Then they walked ahead.

The path curved. The statue did not reappear. And then, all at once, they were out — the narrow pass opening into a wide forest, the trees thick and green and ordinary. The mountains were gone.

Wren turned to Silas. "How did you get out? You didn't touch your shadow."

Silas's smile widened. "Did you notice the wording, little clerk? Step forward and you return to where you stand; step backward and you remain where you are. So all you had to do was step sideways." He tilted his head. "That saves you from embarrassment."

Wren and Rourke both went red. Their faces burned in the morning light. Wren looked at the ground, then at her hands, then anywhere but at Silas. She had touched her own shadow. Like a fool. Rowan, still bent over from touching his shadow, straightened up with as much dignity as he could manage.

"Hey," Rowan said, looking back over his shoulder. "Weren't there two mountains here a minute ago?"

They all turned.

The mountains were gone. Behind them, there was only forest. Dense, unbroken, stretching back the way they had come as if the pass had never existed at all.

Wren stared at it, trying to understand. The trap had been real. The mountains had been real. And now they weren't. It was as if the land had folded itself back into shape the moment the riddle was solved.

Then, suddenly, there was a sound.

Glass shattering.

The sharp, crystalline crack split the air, and Wren felt her blood go cold. Rourke and Rowan's expressions changed instantly, the same way they had on the road to Halcombe. That sound. They all knew that sound.

But for Wren, something else rose up alongside the fear. An image. A glass box. A grey-haired man trapped inside, pounding on the walls with soundless fists.

Pryce.

She felt closer to him suddenly, as if the sound of the glass had pulled him nearer. She could almost see him. Almost reach him.

Then there was a barrage of glass shards heading toward them — or so they thought.

At the last moment, all of the shards turned toward Silas.