CHAPTER 6: THE WEIGHT OF A NAME
The guild board finally posted a contract nobody wanted to touch with a ten-foot spear.
Contract 17-E-89
Task: Investigate abandoned watch-fort at Cragmere Pass. Last patrol missed two check-ins. Recover logbook and any survivors. Eliminate cause if feasible.
Estimated threat: E+ to low D
Reward: 120 silver base + hazard pay
Duration: 6–8 days round trip
Party limit: 5 maximum
[Note: Avalanche risk. Bring rope. Bring sense.]
It sat unpinned for four straight days. Every time someone reached for the tag, they read the "low D" line and put it back. E-rank parties didn't fight low-D threats. That was the unspoken rule. The guild wrote it in blood a long time ago.
Kael took the tag on the fifth morning.
Torven found him in the yard lacing new climbing boots (hard leather, double-stitched, bought with stirge money).
"You're joking," Torven said.
"Nope."
"That fort's been dark three weeks. Whatever ate the last patrol isn't sitting around waiting for E-ranks with sharp sticks."
Kael kept lacing. "Then it'll be surprised when one shows up with sharper ones."
Torven rubbed his beard until it looked like he was trying to start a fire. "I'm E+. Lysa and Dren are still E. You drag us into a D-threat and the guild will strip us for kindling."
"They won't," Kael said. "Because we're coming back."
He said it flat, like weather.
Torven stared at him deeply for a long time, then sighed. "I need better mates."
They filled the fifth slot with a quiet healer named Selene. Solid E rank, guild-assigned, pale hair and eyes that never quite met yours. She carried a cedar staff and smelled faintly of mint and antiseptic. Nobody asked why the guild suddenly had a healer free for a suicide run. Nobody wanted the answer.
They left at first light.
Cragmere Pass cut through the Ironspine like a broken tooth. The old fort crouched on a shelf halfway up, three days' hard climb from the tree line. Snow started on the second night and never really stopped.
The trail was narrow, iced, and angry. Twice they roped together when the wind tried to peel them off the mountain. Kael learned the exact way snow shifted under a boot sole, the tiny crack that meant give-way, the half-second before a slab let go. By the third slide he was catching people before they knew they were falling.
On the fourth evening they reached the fort.
The gate hung open on one hinge. Snow had drifted across the courtyard in perfect silence. No footprints. No smoke. No bodies.
Inside, the silence had teeth.
They found the patrol in the mess hall.
Eleven men and women arranged in a circle, facing inward, throats opened ear to ear. The blood had frozen black. Their eyes were gone, cleanly scooped, no tearing. In the center of the circle sat the logbook, open to a fresh page.
Someone had written, in careful common letters:
[It listens when you speak its name.]
Torven read it aloud before anyone could stop him.
The temperature dropped so fast their breath turned to needles.
"Eeeh!!"
Selene made a small sound and gripped her staff until the wood creaked.
Lysa nocked an arrow that wouldn't help.
Dren disappeared into the shadows the way knife-fighters do when they smell something worse than death.
Kael closed the logbook gently and set it in his pack.
"Spread out," he said. "Pair up. We find what did this, we kill it, we leave."
His voice sounded steady. Internally though, something cold walked down his spine and kept walking.
They searched.
Barracks: empty bunks, sheets folded, boots lined up like parade.
Armory: weapons racked, oiled, untouched.
Cellar: barrels of salt pork, still sealed.
Whatever killed the patrol hadn't come for food or gear. It had come for them.
They regrouped in the courtyard as true night fell. The sky was iron. The wind had died completely.
Torven's voice cracked a little. "Maybe we take the logbook and run."
Kael was about to answer when the silence broke.
It started as a whisper inside the skull (no direction, no source). Just a name, repeated, patient, tasting itself on their thoughts.
Torven dropped his shield. The clang echoed like a gunshot.
Lysa's bow slipped from suddenly numb fingers.
Selene's staff clattered to the stones. She stared at her empty hands like they belonged to someone else.
Dren stepped out of the darkness with his knives reversed, points toward his own throat.
Kael felt it too, an itch behind the eyes, a pull like warm water closing over his head. The name wanted to be spoken aloud. Needed it. Promised everything if he just gave it voice.
He bit his tongue until he tasted iron.
Pain worked. The itch retreated a finger's breadth.
He grabbed Torven by the beard and shook him hard. "Look at me. Count my scars. Out loud."
Torven blinked. "What—"
"Do it."
Torven's eyes focused. "You… you don't have any."
"Good. Keep counting nothing. Stay with me."
Kael turned to the others, repeating the order, pain, focus, anything real. Selene dug her nails into her palms until blood welled. Lysa pressed her forehead to the frozen stone. Dren carved a shallow line across his own forearm and hissed at the sting like it was a friend.
The name retreated farther, sulking.
Whatever it was, it needed willing voices.
They backed toward the gate, weapons up, moving as one.
That was when the thing showed itself.
It stepped out of the well in the center of the courtyard; tall, thin, made of joints and shadow and too many elbows. Where its face should have been was only smooth skin and a mouth that opened sideways. No eyes.
It opened the mouth and the name poured out again, louder, a physical weight.
Torven dropped to his knees.
"Aaaa–"
Selene screamed, one short, sharp note, and then went silent, blood running from her ears.
Kael felt his jaw try to unlock, tongue shaping the first syllable against his will.
He did the only thing he could think of.
He walked forward and punched the thing in the face.
Knuckles met smooth skin. Bone gave, its, not his. The impact felt like hitting cold water that hated him.
The name stuttered.
Kael hit it again. And again. Each punch bought them a heartbeat of clarity.
On the fourth strike the creature moved faster than thought, arms unfolding like paper. One hand closed around Kael's throat and lifted him off the ground.
The grip was winter and hunger.
Cold poured into him, deep, past flesh, looking for something to freeze solid.
Instead of resisting though, Kael let it.
He felt the exact temperature, the way the chill tried to stop his heart, the precise pattern it used to crawl along nerves.
Ten seconds. Fifteen.
Then he adapted.
The cold became background. His pulse steadied. The hand around his throat went from iron to warm rope.
The creature made a sound like tearing cloth.
Kael head-butted it. The smooth face split. Black fluid sprayed.
He dropped, rolled, came up with Torven's fallen shield.
The thing lunged.
They fought in the courtyard under starlight that felt too bright.
Every blow it landed taught him. Every second in its grip refined the adaptation. Cold resistance climbed so fast his breath stopped fogging. Joint locks that should have shattered his arms turned into lessons on leverage.
He broke its left arm at the elbow. It re-set with a wet pop and kept coming.
Torven found his feet, roared something obscene, and charged in with a broken table leg.
Lysa put three arrows into the thing's torso. They stuck like pins in cloth.
Dren appeared behind it and opened both Achilles tendons (or whatever passed for them). The creature dropped to its knees.
Selene, pale and shaking, raised her staff and spoke a single word that smelled like summer.
"Regaliarunther."
Light exploded outward.
The creature screamed with a voice that wasn't sound.
Kael stepped in and drove the shield's metal rim through the sideways mouth until something important gave.
The body unfolded, collapsed, melted into black snow that steamed and was gone.
Silence rushed back in.
They stood in the courtyard breathing hard, staring at the place where it had been.
Selene's nose was bleeding. She wiped it on her sleeve and didn't stop shaking.
Torven looked at Kael like he was seeing a ghost that owed him money.
Kael picked up the logbook, tucked it away.
"We leave now," he said. "Before whatever's left decides round two."
They roped together and started down the mountain in the dark.
Behind them, Cragmere Fort stayed quiet.
For now.
On the third day out, halfway to Branch 17, Selene finally spoke.
"I felt it die," she said. "But I don't think it's gone. Just… listening from farther away."
Kael didn't answer right away.
He was too busy realizing that the cold no longer touched him at all. Not the wind, not the snow underfoot, not the memory of that grip.
He looked up at the ridge they'd left behind and felt, for the first time, something watching back.
The name was still out there.