Night seeped into the cracks of the cabin.
It didn't fall all at once. It leaked in slow, patient tendrils, pooling in corners, smothering what little color the place had left. The fire burned low again, more ember than flame, casting long shadows that crept and stretched like they had somewhere to be.
Nikolai sat on the cot, a rough hunk of bread untouched in his lap. His body ached less, but the tension hadn't left. If anything, it had grown worse.
Every minute dragged. Wanda moved through the cabin with quiet efficiency, preparing things he didn't understand. Bundles of herbs laid out on the table. Strange symbols drawn into bowls of black sand. Glass jars placed in careful lines.
She never spoke.
The silence wasn't comforting. It pressed down, heavier with every heartbeat.
Nikolai watched the window as the sky bruised purple, then black. His hands itched. Not from pain. From the weight of what was coming.
He tried to imagine walking away. Out the door. Back into the wilds. Wandering until something stronger or crueler ended him.
He couldn't. That part of him had already died on the ice.
Now there was only forward.
He shifted, testing his legs. Still weak, but he could stand if he had to. The bread stayed on the cot. Hunger gnawed at his insides, but eating felt pointless. The bigger hunger—the one that drove him across the river—swallowed everything else.
The smell inside the cabin changed as the sun bled away. Less herbs now. More smoke. A faint, sharp tang that prickled the back of his throat.
He wondered if it was the smell of the ritual starting to bleed through the walls.
He didn't realize he had fallen into a half-doze until a sound jolted him upright.
Not a word. Not a knock.
Just the scrape of Wanda's chair across the floor.
He looked up.
She stood by the door.
"Come," she said simply.
No ceremony. No explanation.
He forced himself to stand, muscles trembling slightly from disuse and tension. He followed her, the blanket sliding from his shoulders to pool forgotten on the floor.
The air near the door felt colder somehow. As if stepping across the threshold meant more than leaving one room for another.
Wanda led him through a narrow hallway he hadn't noticed before, the walls closer here, the ceiling lower. Strange markings had been carved deep into the beams overhead—not just drawn, but gouged out, like wounds that had healed wrong.
The hallway ended in another door. Heavy. Old.
Wanda pressed her palm against it. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—a low groan. The door shuddered and swung inward, revealing a room lit by a dozen oil lamps set into alcoves.
Nikolai stepped in and felt the weight of the place hit him like a physical force.
The ritual chamber.
The walls were stone, veined with cracks that pulsed faintly in the lamplight. Symbols—older than anything he could name—spiraled outward from a central point on the floor, where a low, wide altar of black rock waited.
The smell here was thicker. Herbs, blood, something sweet and cloying under it all. The air buzzed against his skin, fine as a needle's kiss.
Wanda crossed the room without looking back. She moved with purpose, like someone walking familiar, sacred ground.
On the altar, a bowl waited.
It looked almost ordinary—rough clay, glazed dark. But the liquid inside shimmered strangely, catching the lamplight in ways it shouldn't. Not water. Not oil. Something else.
Something hungry.
Wanda turned to face him.
Her expression was unreadable. No smile. No warning. Just the faint reflection of flame in her blue eyes.
"This is the threshold," she said.
Her voice didn't echo. It just sank into the stones like a secret.
"Once crossed, there is no return."
Nikolai stepped closer. The air around the altar felt thicker, heavier, as if the space itself resisted him.
"You will not die tonight," Wanda said. "But neither will you remain as you are."
He stopped at the edge of the markings on the floor. They seemed to hum faintly under his boots.
Wanda gestured to the bowl.
"Drink," she said.
Simple. Final.
Nikolai stared at the surface of the liquid. It moved on its own, tiny ripples dancing across it without source. The scent coming from it was—wrong. Sweet at first, then sharply metallic. Like blood. Like flowers rotting in sunlight.
He thought of the Frozen River.
Of the woman and her pot of finger bones.
Of the silence inside himself, hollowed out over years of fear and loss.
His hands didn't shake as he stepped forward.
He didn't ask what would happen.
He didn't ask if it would hurt.
He reached for the bowl.
The ceramic was cold under his fingers. Colder than the river had been.
He lifted it to his lips.
The first taste was bitter. Like swallowing smoke and iron and something sweeter—something alive.
The second swallow scalded his throat.
Heat blossomed in his chest. Then cold. Then—
Pain.
As the first shock of the ritual hit Nikolai, Wanda's attention drifted, her gaze lifting slightly, acknowledging the silent, unseen witness whose presence was a constant weight across realities—distant, yet perpetually close to her. There was no tension in her posture, only the familiarity of ancient oversight. Her lips formed the words, a quiet murmur directed not at the room, but outwards, upwards, towards the indifferent observer.
"Are you entertained?" she asked softly, the question hanging unanswered in the buzzing air of the chamber.
Nikolai dropped to his knees, the bowl slipping from numb fingers and shattering on the stone floor.
The world tilted, spun, darkened.
The ritual had begun.