Long before dawn, the marsh lay in a terrible hush. Mist moved in slow curtains over dark, brackish water, so dense it was hard to tell earth from sky. Beneath that endless, drowning grey, something ancient moved. It slipped through reeds and black water, stirring no ripples.
It had no shape, no face, only hunger and memory. But when the Widow's soul was torn apart, it had heard. It had woken.
And now it turned its attention to Frostfang.
In the battered keep, sleep was impossible. The walls seemed to sigh, as if they too ached from the weight of death. Aldric lay in his chamber, eyes fixed on the beam above his bed where a crack had opened from a catapult's strike. He could not stop thinking of the men and women who would never see their families again.
He rose, wincing from the wound in his ribs, and dressed slowly. Frost clung to the windowpanes. Down in the yard, the dying fires of the burial pyres still glowed faint and red.
He stepped into the hall, finding Kaelin already awake, sharpening her sword with steady, relentless movements. She looked up, dark circles under her eyes.
"You should rest, my king," she told him.
"I cannot," he answered. "There is too much yet undone."
She didn't argue. After everything, there was no need to say that none of them would truly rest again.
The city felt haunted that morning.
The peasants went about their rebuilding with mechanical determination, patching walls, re-thatching roofs, clearing away splintered carts and shattered doors. No one laughed. Children moved quietly, holding their mothers' hands, eyes wide and unblinking.
Rowena had taken up residence in the infirmary, which stank of herbs and burned poultices. One after another, wounded soldiers were brought in, men missing limbs, boys coughing up blood, farmers with half-healed burns from the Widow's witchfire.
Rowena worked among them, sleeves forever rolled, hair tied back, eyes tired but unyielding.
"Easy," she said to one man as she braced his leg for amputation. "Look at me, not the saw. Breathe, good… good…"
She sang softly, a lullaby from her grandmother, something about green fields and summer rain. It was the only sound in the room besides the rasp of metal and the quick, terrible screams.
Near the cathedral, priests burned incense and prayed over the stones, trying to drive away the Widow's lingering corruption. But no matter how they chanted, the shadows seemed to cling to the arches and pillars, as if unwilling to be banished.
Maerlyn watched from the balcony above, hands gripping the rail so hard her knuckles whitened. The arcane marks left by the Widow pulsed, barely visible but horribly alive, as if they had sunk claws into the very bones of the cathedral.
"Curse magic this deep doesn't die with the witch," she muttered.
A page approached timidly. "Lady Maerlyn, the king wishes to see you in council."
She nodded, still staring at the marks. They will only grow worse, she thought grimly. Unless we learn what truly awoke beyond the marsh.
In the great hall, Aldric sat with his captains, their faces pale and drawn, maps spread before them.
"The marsh is the heart of this," Maerlyn told them, striding in. "I've read the omens, I've read the bones, and I've spoken to what spirits will answer me. Something older than the Widow has been roused. The dark knows we are weak."
One of the younger knights slammed his fist on the table. "Then we ride out and kill it!"
Kaelin shook her head. "Ride into the marsh? You'd drown before you ever found your enemy."
Maerlyn nodded grimly. "It is a place of illusions. It will eat your thoughts, twist your heart. The only way to fight what lives there is to understand it."
Aldric took a slow breath, shoulders slumping. "Then what do we do?"
Maerlyn looked at him, and for the first time since the siege, her voice held real fear.
"We learn. We study it. We gather every tale, every scrap of legend, every dream whispered by madmen. Because if it is what I suspect — something born before even the first kings — steel alone will not save you."
Aldric stood, pain making him sway for a moment.
"Then bring me every wise woman, every hedge mage, every lorekeeper," he commanded. "I will not let this city fall because we chose to remain blind."
Maerlyn bowed. "I will send word tonight."
The next day, frost bit hard. Snow began to fall, thin and cold, whitening the ruins.
In the prisoners' pens, those enemy soldiers who had not yet died shivered under threadbare blankets. A few had begun praying, others simply rocked back and forth, their minds broken by the Widow's final curse.
Kaelin visited them with food — a thin gruel, but warm. Some refused it. Others snatched at the bowls like starving dogs.
One woman, tall and scarred, met Kaelin's gaze through the bars.
"You show us pity?" she asked in a dead voice.
Kaelin shrugged. "You fought. You lost. That doesn't mean you should starve."
The woman stared long and hard, then dipped her head in something close to respect.
As night fell again, Maerlyn gathered the few other mages in Frostfang — a hedge wizard, a wild-eyed hermit who claimed to read dreams, and an old woman from the marsh tribes with half-rotted teeth but keen eyes.
They stood around a brazier in the crypts, the air thick with strange herbs and coppery incense. Maerlyn traced runes in the dust, murmuring in a tongue no one else could name.
The marsh, through their scrying, showed itself: endless, endless, endless — a slow swirl of grey water and rotting islands. And something there, coiled like a serpent, so huge it made the land seem like a child's toy.
The hermit nearly fainted.
"Gods preserve us," he choked.
Maerlyn's voice was iron. "No gods here. Only the old ones. And they are waking."
Up on the walls, Aldric kept his lonely vigil. Snowflakes landed on his pauldrons, melting on warm metal. The marsh lay black and silent in the distance, an ocean of mud and fog.
He thought of all who had died in his name. Of all who would still die.
Kaelin joined him again, wrapped in a ragged cloak.
"You should rest," she repeated, though even she sounded too weary to believe it.
Aldric did not answer at first. Finally he spoke, voice raw.
"Do you think we can win? If something older comes for us?"
Kaelin met his eyes, fierce and certain.
"We are men and women. We have hearts that burn. I will put my faith there, and nowhere else."
Aldric felt the corner of his mouth twitch. "Then I shall put my faith in you."
In the night, something laughed beyond the marsh. No human throat could have made that sound.
The soldiers on the western tower heard it and crossed themselves, teeth chattering, while the wind rattled the broken gates.
Aldric turned his head, and though the darkness was thick as pitch, he thought — only for a moment — he saw eyes out there.
Watching. Waiting.
At dawn, Maerlyn came to him with news.
"The spirits refuse to answer me," she confessed, breathing hard. "They are afraid, Aldric. I have never known that before."
He set his jaw. "Then we will give them something to believe in. We hold the line here. We make this city stand so tall that even the dead will find courage."
Maerlyn lowered her head in awe, tears shining on her lashes. "Then let us begin."
And so the people of Frostfang — battered, broken, but unbowed — began the work of fortifying anew.
Walls were patched with green wood and stone, gates remade with iron harder than before, towers repaired by the hands of villagers who had never held a hammer until now.
Rowena led prayers over every foundation laid, blessing them against nightmare and witchfire. Kaelin drilled recruits until their arms shook, teaching even old men and young girls how to hold a spear.
In the keep, Aldric wrote letters, summoning allies from far and wide. From the North, from the Eastern river cities, from forgotten mountain holds — he called all who might stand with Frostfang.
And beyond the marsh, the ancient thing stretched itself, roused fully from its long slumber. It had no name mortals could speak, but it remembered Frostfang. Remembered the blood spilled there centuries before.
It would come.
The marsh whispered its promise on every chill gust.
Soon.