The choice echoed in Brandt's fading consciousness, a cruel binary.
He couldn't lift. His arms were dead meat, the nerves fired until they were nothing but static. The iron block lay in the mud where it had fallen, an immovable anchor.
Brandt's vision tunnelled. The darkness of the training yard encroached at the edges, a soft, inviting vignette urging him to just let go. To stop fighting. To accept the boot.
'Not... yet.'
He clawed at the frozen earth with bloody fingers. He didn't try to lift the weight. He tried to survive.
But his body had reached its terminus. The machine simply shut down. His limbs went slack, trembling one last time before falling still on the ice.
He waited for the snap. The final crunch of cartilage that would end this second, miserable life.
It never came.
"Boring," Balg grunted.
The pressure vanished.
Air rushed into Brandt's lungs with a violence that felt like inhaling broken glass. He rolled onto his side, retching, his body convulsing as it remembered how to breathe.
Balg stepped back, the crunch of his heavy boots on the ice sounding loud in the sudden silence. He scratched his beard, looking down at the heaving, broken pile of boy at his feet with mild disappointment.
"You got grit, Little Lord," the giant rumbled, swaying slightly. "But grit don't lift heavy things. Muscle does. And you ain't got any."
Balg turned, hitching his patchwork armour up.
"Same time next week. Try to eat a cow before then."
He began to walk away, his massive silhouette retreating toward the warmth of the barracks, dragging his iron slab behind him.
Brandt lay in the mud, his chest heaving. Every inch of him screamed. His skin was a map of abrasions, his neck throbbed with a dull, terrifying ache where the boot had been, and he was fairly certain the iron block had cracked his thigh bone.
'Next week.'
The thought cut through the haze of pain, sharp and intolerant.
A week of waiting. A week of slow, agonising stagnation while the world moved on without him.
A week where his enemies—known and unknown—grew stronger while he healed. He didn't have the luxury of time. The hunt was in two months. Falk's deadline hung over him like a guillotine blade.
"Wait."
The word was a wet croak, barely audible over the wind.
Brandt forced his head up. He pushed against the frozen ground, his arms shaking violently, and dragged himself to his knees. He looked like a revenant crawling out of a shallow grave.
"Balg!" he called out, the desperation lending volume to his rasp.
The giant stopped. He turned slowly, his face a mask of drunken annoyance.
"What now? You want a bedtime story?"
"Two sessions," Brandt wheezed. He swallowed the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. "Two nights a week."
Balg snorted, turning back around. "Piss off. I got drinking to do."
"Double," Brandt shouted.
Balg froze.
The giant stood still for a long second. Slowly, very slowly, he turned back around. A grin, wide and greedy, split his beard, revealing his yellowed teeth in the gloom.
"Double the coin?" Balg asked, his voice suddenly sharp, the slur vanishing.
"Double," Brandt confirmed, swaying on his knees. "Starting... in three days."
Balg walked back. He moved with that deceptive, terrifying speed, closing the distance in three long strides. He loomed over Brandt, nodding his head with vigorous approval.
"You're a mad little bastard," Balg chuckled, the sound rattling in his chest.
He reached into the folds of his filthy furs and pulled out the dented, greasy flask. He uncorked it with his teeth, took a long, gurgling swig, and then thrust it toward Brandt's face.
"Here," he commanded. "Drink."
Brandt recoiled. The smell alone was enough to strip paint.
"I don't—"
"Drink!" Balg roared, losing his patience. "Warrior's rule. You bleed, you drink. Numbs the ache. Puts fire in the belly."
He didn't wait for consent. He grabbed Brandt's bruised jaw with a hand that felt like an iron vice, squeezed his cheeks until his mouth opened, and tipped the flask.
Liquid fire poured down Brandt's throat.
It wasn't alcohol; it was poison.
It seared his oesophagus, burned his stomach lining, and sent a shockwave of artificial heat exploding through his veins. Brandt gagged, coughing violently, tears streaming from his eyes as the vile spirit tried to claw its way back up.
Balg laughed, a booming sound that echoed off the keep's walls. He snatched the flask back, wiped the rim on his sleeve, and corked it.
"See you in three days, Little Lord. Try not to die before then."
With that, the giant lumbered away into the darkness, leaving Brandt alone in the cold, drunk on pain and cheap liquor.
Brandt collapsed back onto the mud, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
'Was that...' he thought, his mind fuzzy and warm, '...a smart decision?'
He lay there for a long time, staring up at the starless void. His body was broken. His dignity was gone. He had paid a fortune to be beaten half to death by a drunkard, and then thanked him for it.
But as he flexed his hand, feeling the raw, bruised knuckles... he felt something else. A hardness. A reality.
'Yes.'
He finally moved.
He began the long, slow limp back to the keep.
'Vorin,' he thought, wincing as his bruised thigh took his weight. 'He's going to be furious.'
The old Maester had warned him about rushing the cycle. Brandt had just booked a schedule that would test the limits of the old man's patience—and his magic.
'That's a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I just need a bed.'
He reached the outer corridor of the keep. The stone walls blocked the wind, offering a small mercy. He shuffled along the dark passage, dragging his feet, his goal simple: his room.
Scuff.
He stopped.
The sound was faint—barely a whisper of leather on stone.
Brandt pressed himself against the cold wall, merging with the shadows. His senses, heightened by the pain and the lingering adrenaline, were razor-sharp.
Someone was ahead of him.
Curiosity pricked through his exhaustion. Who else would be skulking around the freezing corridors at this godforsaken hour?
He moved.
He ignored the screaming protests of his thigh and moved like a ghost, silent and fluid.
He rounded the corner near the kitchen entrance.
There, huddled by the heavy iron grate that vented heat from the ovens, was a small figure.
It was a girl.
She was wrapped in a thin, patched shawl that did nothing to ward off the creeping chill of the stones. She was shivering violently, her small hands pressed against the warm iron of the grate, trying to steal a fraction of the residual heat.
Brandt recognised her instantly.
Elara.
The servant girl from the well. The one whose terrified face had been the first thing he saw in this new life.
He watched her from the shadows. She looked miserable. Her lips were blue, her skin pale and waxy in the dim torchlight. She looked like a stray cat trying to survive the winter, seeking out the waste heat of the castle that employed her.
'She's freezing.'
He decided not to lurk. He stepped out of the shadows.
"Elara."
His voice was low, a raspy croak damaged by the alcohol, but in the silence of the hallway, it sounded like a gunshot.
Elara flinched so violently she nearly fell into the grate. She spun around, her eyes wide with terror, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle a scream.
She saw him.
And the terror deepened into horror.
Brandt realised, with a detached clarity, what he must look like.
His tunic was torn and muddy. His face was a mask of fresh bruises, blood caked on his lip and chin. There was a dark, ugly ring of purple forming around his neck where the boot had been. To her eyes, he didn't look like an heir returning from training.
He looked like a corpse that had crawled out of a grave. Or a victim of a brutal assault.
"Y-Young Master!" she gasped, her voice trembling. "Oh, Old Gods, your face! You're... you're dying!"
She scrambled away from the wall, panic overriding her fear of him.
"I... I have to get help! I have to call the guards! Someone has—"
"Stop."
The word was not a shout. It was a flat, rusted blade of sound that cut through the panic in the corridor.
Elara froze.
She was mid-turn, one foot already raised to bolt down the hallway, her mouth open to unleash a scream that would have woken the entire west wing. The command hit her like a physical barrier, rooting her to the cold stone.
She stood there, trembling violently, her eyes wide and wet, staring at him.
Time seemed to slow, stretching into a thick, syrupy sludge.
In that suspended moment, while the servant girl struggled with her terror, a new thought uncoiled in the back of Brandt's mind. It was alien, serpentine, and terrifyingly logical.
'She is going to run.'
The logic flowed effortlessly into a solution.
'If she runs, she brings the guards. If the guards come, they see the heir beaten. They investigate. They find Balg. The training ends. The secret is out. My agency... vanishes.'
There was a simple, efficient calculation to fix this.
'Kill her.'
It was visceral.
He could almost feel the fragility of her neck in his hands. A single, sharp shove against the granite wall. A quick twist of the vertebrae. Drag the body into the shadows of the kitchen alcove. It would look like an accident. A fall. Or just another servant lost to the cold.
No witness. No risk. No noise.
Brandt blinked.
The thought hung there in his mind, icy and distinct.
'What... what is wrong with me?'
He had been a forensic psychologist. He hunted monsters; he didn't become them. He understood the geometry of darkness that defined killers like Lilith, but he had never invited it in.
'But maybe...' he thought, looking at his trembling hands. 'Maybe that is changing...'
He crushed the impulse.
He looked at Elara. She was still shaking, waiting for him to collapse, or scream, or die. She saw the blood on his face, the swelling of his jaw, the way he favoured his left leg. To her, he was a dying boy.
He needed to change the narrative.
He took a slow, deliberate step forward.
"I am fine," he said, forcing his voice to be steady. "Elara. Look at me."
She gulped, her eyes darting to the bruises on his neck, then back to his eyes.
"I am not in danger," he said slowly, enunciating every syllable. "This... is training. Nothing more."
"Training?" she whispered, the word trembling in the air. "But... Young Master... you look..."
"Like I lost?" Brandt finished dryly. A grim smile touched his swollen lips. "Which I did. Repeatedly."
He took another step. He was close enough to smell the faint scent of woodsmoke clinging to her shawl, and the sharper, acrid scent of her fear.
"I need to ask you something, Elara."
She nodded jerkily, too overwhelmed to speak.
"The well," he said. "That morning. You pulled me out. You saved my life."
He paused.
"Why?"
She blinked, confused by the question.
"Because... because you're the Young Master," she stammered, her voice small. "It's... it's my duty."
"Duty," Brandt repeated. "And now? You want to run for help. Is that duty too?"
"Yes! You're hurt! You're bleeding!"
"I don't need help," Brandt said softly.
He leaned in, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"I need silence."
Elara stared at him. The panic was receding, replaced by a bewildered confusion. The dying boy wasn't acting like a victim.
"I am training in secret," Brandt lied—or told a half-truth. "To protect this house. If you call the guards, you end that. Do you understand?"
He needed a sweetener—a hook.
"I need a personal servant," he said suddenly.
Elara's mouth opened slightly.
"Someone who doesn't ask questions," Brandt continued, his gaze locking onto hers. "Someone who can keep a secret. Someone loyal. Someone... I don't have to worry about."
He let the offer hang in the cold air of the corridor.
"The position comes with a warm room in the family wing. Better food. And protection."
He saw the physical reaction. Her shoulders dropped. The mention of a warm room... in Rimescar, that wasn't just a perk. It was survival.
"Me?" she squeaked. "But... Young Master... I'm just... I'm a cleaner."
"And I am a punching bag," Brandt muttered, touching his bruised jaw where Balg's fist had connected.
Elara blinked.
The strange combination of words seemed to short-circuit her panic for a brief second.
"Punching... bag?" she whispered, confusion warring with fear. "I am not familiar with that tool, Young Master."
"It doesn't matter," he said, waving the anachronism away. "We all start somewhere."
He watched her. He analysed the micro-expressions flickering across her pale, round face. Hope. Disbelief. Fear. And finally... acceptance.
She nodded.
"I... I would be honoured, Young Master."
"Good."
Brandt relaxed his posture. The crisis was averted. The loose end was tied.
He looked at her shivering form. She was still hugging the iron grate, trying to absorb the dying heat of the ovens. The thin, patched shawl she wore was threadbare. Her lips were a shade of blue that bordered on dangerous.
"Why are you out here, Elara?" he asked.
She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, looking down at her worn shoes. Shame flushed her pale cheeks.
"It's... the dorms," she whispered. "The frost... it gets inside the stone at night. The blankets are thin. The kitchen grate... it stays warm until midnight. I just... I couldn't sleep."
Brandt felt a flicker of cold anger. It was the anger of inefficiency. How could the keep operate if its servants were fighting hypothermia instead of working? It was a waste of resources.
And Elara... she was his resource now.
"Meet me at my door tomorrow morning," Brandt commanded. "Before dawn. You start then."
"Yes, Young Master," she stammered.
Brandt sighed.
He reached up with raw, aching fingers and undid the clasp of his cloak.
It was a heavy garment, lined with thick, grey wolf fur. It was warm. It smelled of him, of the library, and faintly of Balg's cheap spirit.
He pulled it off. The cold air hit him instantly, biting through his torn tunic, but the alcohol in his blood kept him numb.
He threw the cloak at her.
Elara caught it instinctively, the heavy fur nearly knocking her over. She clutched it to her chest, staring at the garment in her hands, then up at him, her eyes bulging.
"Bring it back," Brandt said, his voice flat. "And wear it. I don't want a frozen servant."
He didn't wait for her thanks.
He turned and began to walk away, his boots scraping on the stone. He walked stiffly, every step a negotiation with his battered thigh, but he kept his back straight.
As he navigated the darkness, the thought returned.
'Kill her.'
It had been so loud. So ready.
It would have been easier. Cleaner. But he had chosen the more challenging path. He had decided to build an asset rather than remove a liability.
'Maybe I am changing,' he wondered, feeling the throb of his bruises.
He didn't have the answer. He reached his door and opened it, stepping into the familiar, stale chill of his granite box.
He collapsed onto the bed, the fur blankets rising to meet him.
As sleep finally, mercifully, dragged him down, a final thought surfaced.
'At least I didn't freeze.'