The Ashen Pass greeted them like the breath of a sleeping god vast, ancient, and cold. Its jagged cliffs rose on either side of a narrow, winding path carved by wind and time, dark rock scorched and pitted with the scars of old magic. No birds sang here. The wind whispered in mournful tones, dragging thin veils of ash across the ground, like gray snow.
Cael pulled his cloak tighter. "I thought the ash was just a name," he muttered, brushing the fine dust from his shoulders.
"It used to be," Fen said, walking a few steps ahead. His boots crunched softly on the path, leaving shallow prints that were soon swallowed by the drifting gray. "Then the Breach happened. A mage line ruptured during one of the old wars they say fire poured from the mountain for a week. Now it rains ash every few days. Sometimes more."
Cael glanced up. The sky overhead was choked with low-hanging clouds, faintly red at their edges like bruised skin. They looked ready to weep fire. "Anything alive in this place?"
Fen didn't answer at first.
Then: "Nothing we want to meet."
The pass narrowed after a mile, flanked by cliffs that leaned inward, oppressive. Black rock loomed above them in jagged outcroppings, some large enough to hide a caravan behind. Occasionally, skeletal remains poked from the ash horned skulls, broken tusks, the shattered ribs of things long-dead but not forgotten.
They pressed on in silence.
By midday, the wind picked up, and the ash came harder, stinging their eyes and swirling around their boots like smoke. Cael's wardstone glowed faintly not in warning, just awareness. Something was watching. The land itself, maybe.
They made camp in the shallow hollow of a collapsed cliff face. Fen started a small fire with dryshard stone and tinderroot, while Cael checked their supplies. Nothing had gone missing. But he couldn't shake the tension in his spine.
"We shouldn't stay long," Cael said.
"Agreed." Fen tossed another shard into the flame. "I say we're through the worst by tomorrow evening. The pass opens up near the ridge. Once we're on the flat, we can make better time."
Cael nodded.
Then froze.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. The stone around him suddenly felt too still. Too quiet.
A deep sound rolled through the ground not thunder, but something heavier.
Closer.
Thoom.
Thoom.
From the east, where the cliffs dipped into a broken ravine, came a silhouette massive, swaying, wrong. The fire dimmed. The air grew colder.
"Cael…" Fen breathed, rising to his feet, hand going for the hilt of his hooked dagger.
Cael didn't answer. He was already moving.
The creature lumbered into view.
It stood nearly twenty feet tall, its body a twisted mass of molten stone and sinew. Blackened bone jutted from its shoulders, and a mane of glowing embers clung to its back like a dying crown. Its face was a cracked mockery of a beast — six red eyes burning in uneven rows, and a jaw that opened too wide, revealing a furnace of flickering flame within.
"Ragewrought," Fen whispered.
The monster bellowed a sound like stone grinding against bone and charged.
Cael moved fast, drawing both blades in a blur of steel. The cores surged within him, light and shadow flaring in tandem. Fen darted right, circling the beast's flank, moving like a wraith on cracked stone.
The Ragewrought struck the ground where Cael had stood a heartbeat before, shattering the rock in an explosion of debris. Cael rolled, slashed across the beast's leg sparks flew, but the skin held. Too thick.
Fen hurled a knife, glowing with a faint blue rune. It struck the creature's shoulder and detonated in a pulse of frost.
It roared in fury and swept its arm like a battering ram.
Fen ducked.
Cael jumped.
Steel met lava-slick flesh he drove one blade into the joint beneath its elbow, the other into its side. The light burned, the shadow cut deeper. The monster howled and staggered.
But it didn't fall.
It twisted, slamming its massive back into the cliff behind. Cael was crushed between stone and muscle his breath left him in a gasp, and he tumbled to the ground hard.
"CAEL!" Fen shouted.
Cael coughed, blood in his mouth, pain blooming in his ribs. He forced himself up.
The Ragewrought turned, steam rising from the wound in its side. Flames licked from its mouth.
Then it spit.
A jet of molten fire burst toward Fen — the boy barely leapt aside, his coat catching alight at the edge.
Cael saw red.
His cores pulsed in unison.
Light flared down his arms heatless, radiant and the shadows surged with it, coating his blades like oil. He charged the monster's blind side, feet barely touching the ground.
One slash light.
One thrust shadow.
The twin energies sang in harmony, and this time, the wounds bit deep. The Ragewrought screamed, buckled, and turned to crush him again.
Too slow.
Fen was already back on his feet, two more daggers flashing in hand. "NOW!" he shouted.
Cael leapt.
Fen dove.
The twin strike landed one blade through the monster's eye, one dagger into the back of its skull. Magic surged. Energy cracked.
The Ragewrought staggered once…
…and fell.
The silence afterward was deafening.
Cael panted, falling to his knees, his arms trembling. His hands were blistered from the heat, his legs weak. Fen dropped beside him, breathing hard, face streaked with ash and sweat.
"You okay?" Cael asked.
"I think I peed a little."
Cael laughed, winced, and sat down fully. "That was the worst idea we've ever had."
"I thought it went well."
"You nearly caught fire."
"I said 'nearly.'"
They sat there, surrounded by the ash and the corpse of a monster that shouldn't have been there not this deep, not this high.
It meant something.
"Do you think more are coming?" Fen asked, voice quiet now.
"Probably," Cael said. "But we'll deal with them."
They moved the body before resting, hiding it under a blanket of stone and ash. That night, they slept in shifts, and no more monsters came.
The pass, for now, was still.
But in the deep cracks of the mountains, something else had begun to stir.
Something older.
And hungry.