Three Days Later
The stone never cooled.
Grog kept it in a small leather pouch tied to his belt, close enough to feel its warmth through the fabric. He checked it constantly—first hour, then every hour, then so often it became unconscious. A hand drifting to his hip. Fingers brushing the pouch. Confirming.
Still warm.
Still warm.
Still warm.
"What does that mean?" Lira asked on the third day. They sat behind the supply tents, supposedly organizing inventory, actually hiding from prying eyes. "The warmth. Is it good? Bad?"
Grog pulled the stone out. It sat in his palm, dark and smooth, radiating gentle heat like a banked coal.
"I don't know."
"Have you shown it to anyone?"
"No." He tucked it away again. "Not yet."
Lira nodded. They'd agreed—tell no one until they understood more. The wrong person seeing it could mean questions they couldn't answer. The right person seeing it could mean danger they couldn't predict.
For now, the stone was their secret.
Their only proof that any of this was real.
---
Aldric found them an hour later.
He'd been doing that more often lately—showing up where they least expected, with that earnest smile and those too-perceptive eyes. Grog didn't think it was suspicion. Aldric just... liked being near people. Liked the comfort of familiar faces.
But it made watching him complicated.
"There you are!" Aldric dropped onto the ground beside them, slightly out of breath. "I've been looking everywhere. Captain Voren wants a training exercise this afternoon. Skirmish practice. He said you two have to be there."
Lira groaned. "Again? We did skirmish practice yesterday."
"And the day before. And the day before that." Aldric shrugged. "He says we need to be ready. The Vargr are getting bolder."
Grog remembered this. The border raids would continue for another three years before the Vargr finally sued for peace. Small skirmishes. Minor deaths. Nothing compared to what came later.
"Fine," Lira muttered. "We'll be there."
Aldric grinned. "Good! I'll save you spots." He started to rise, then paused. Looked at them both.
"What?" Lira asked.
"Nothing." But his eyes lingered on Grog. "You just—never mind."
"What?"
Aldric shook his head. "It's stupid. You've just seemed different lately. Both of you. More serious. Like you're carrying something heavy." He shrugged again, uncomfortable. "Probably just the training. I'm imagining things."
He left before either could respond.
Lira stared after him. "He notices too much."
"Always did." Grog's hand drifted to the pouch at his belt. Still warm. "That's how he survived so long. Noticing things."
"Survived until he didn't."
Grog said nothing.
---
The skirmish practice was brutal.
Captain Voren ran them through drill after drill—formation fighting, retreat maneuvers, shield walls, flanking attacks. Grog's body screamed protest with every movement. His muscles burned. His lungs heaved. His young legs trembled with exhaustion.
But he didn't stop.
Couldn't stop.
Every time he wanted to quit, he remembered: this body had to carry him through twenty-five years of battles. Through wars and monsters and the final slaughter. It had to be strong enough to fight when the time came.
So he pushed.
Harder.
Faster.
Longer.
Until Lira grabbed his arm mid-drill and hissed: "You're going to collapse. Ease up."
Grog shook her off. Kept going.
Behind them, Aldric watched with furrowed brow.
---
That night, Grog couldn't move.
He lay on his bedroll, every muscle on fire, staring at the tent ceiling while his body slowly destroyed and rebuilt itself. The pain was familiar. Comforting, almost. It meant he was getting stronger.
The stone pulsed warm against his hip.
He reached for it. Held it up in the darkness.
Still warm.
Always warm.
"What are you?"
The stone didn't answer. It never did.
But in the silence of the tent, with his tentmates breathing softly around him, Grog could have sworn he felt something else. A presence. Watching.
He sat up sharply. Looked around.
Nothing.
Just shadows.
But the shadows seemed deeper than they should be. Darker.
Grog's hand found his axe.
He waited.
Nothing moved.
After a long time, he lay back down. Didn't sleep. Just watched the darkness until dawn finally crept through the tent flap.
---
The next full moon was eighteen days away.
Grog counted them obsessively. Eighteen days until they could watch again. Eighteen days to prepare, to plan, to figure out what the hell they were actually going to do.
He spent those days in a haze of training and research.
Training was easy. His body slowly adapted to the demands he placed on it. Each day, he could swing his axe five more times before his arms gave out. Each week, he could run a little farther before his lungs burned. Small improvements. But they added up.
Research was harder.
The camp had no library. No scholars. No one who knew anything about ancient shadows or deals made by grieving children. Grog asked careful questions—too curious about local legends, interested in old stories—and got nothing useful.
Farmers told tales of spirits in the woods. Soldiers shared campfire stories of ghosts and demons. None of it matched what Grog had seen.
The stone stayed warm.
Lira helped when she could. She had a sharper mind for details, a better memory for names and places. She asked different questions, in different ways, and slowly built a picture of the region's history.
"What did you find?" Grog asked on the fifteenth day, finding her behind the supply tents with her journal open.
She looked up. Her face was pale.
"Something," she said quietly. "I don't know if it's something useful or something terrifying."
"Tell me."
Lira gestured at the journal. "I've been asking about the clearing. The one where Aldric goes during full moons. No one knows it by that description, but—" She pointed at a rough map she'd drawn. "There's a place. About two miles from here. The locals call it the Hanging Grove."
Grog frowned. "Hanging Grove?"
"Because of the trees. They're old. Really old. And they grow in a circle, with branches that hang down like—" She made a gesture. "Like weeping. Like mourning."
Grog's skin prickled. "What else?"
Lira hesitated. "Stories. Old ones. From before the kingdom was founded. They say the Grove was a holy place once. For the people who lived here before us. They'd go there to—" She checked her notes. "To commune with the dead. To ask favors of spirits. To make offerings."
"Offerings of what?"
The hesitation again. Longer this time.
"Blood," Lira said quietly. "Sometimes more."
Grog stared at her.
"The old stories say the Grove was a door," Lira continued. "A place where the veil between worlds was thin. You could ask things there. Powerful things. And sometimes—" She swallowed. "Sometimes they answered."
"A door," Grog repeated.
"A door. That's what the old people called it." Lira met his eyes. "Grog, if Aldric's been going there since he was seven—if he's been talking to something through that door—"
"Then the thing isn't just watching him from the shadows." Grog's voice was rough. "It's been waiting. On the other side. For twenty-five years."
They sat with that horror.
The stone pulsed warm against Grog's hip.
---
That night, Grog dreamed.
He was in the clearing again. The one from the full moon. Moonlight poured down like water, silver and cold. Aldric stood in the center, head tilted back, lips moving silently.
But this time, Grog wasn't hiding behind an oak.
He was in the clearing with him.
Standing right beside him.
And Aldric's eyes—open, empty, staring at the moon—slowly turned toward Grog.
"Grog," Aldric said. But it wasn't his voice. It was older. Deeper. Wrong. "You've been watching."
Grog tried to move. Couldn't.
"You've been learning." The thing wearing Aldric's face smiled with Aldric's mouth. "Good. I was hoping you would."
"What are you?" Grog forced the words out.
The smile widened.
"Patient."
Grog woke gasping.
The tent was dark. His tentmates slept. The stone burned against his hip—hotter than ever before, almost painful.
He grabbed it. Held it up.
For just a moment, he could have sworn he saw something in its depths. Two points of light. Red as dying embers.
Then they were gone.
The stone cooled to its normal warmth.
Grog sat in the darkness, breathing hard, until dawn came.
---
The next morning, Lira found him at the training ground.
He'd been there for hours. The practice dummy was reduced to splinters around him. His axe dripped with sweat, not blood.
"You look worse than yesterday," she said.
Grog lowered the axe. Turned to face her.
"It spoke to me," he said quietly. "Last night. In a dream. It knows we're watching."
Lira went still.
"It said it was patient," Grog continued. "It wants us to learn. To prepare. To—" He stopped. Swallowed. "To spend twenty-five years getting strong enough to fight."
"Why would it want that?"
Grog had been thinking about this all night.
"Because it's been waiting longer than that," he said slowly. "Since before the kingdom. Since before the old people. It's patient because it has to be. Because whatever it's waiting for—" He met her eyes. "It needs Aldric to be ready. Strong. A hero. A vessel worth taking."
Lira's face went pale.
"So everything we do—training, preparing, getting stronger—"
"Makes him a better prize." Grog's voice was hollow. "Twenty-five years from now, when Aldric's at his peak, when he's saved kingdoms and killed monsters and become everything he ever dreamed—that's when it takes him. That's when we all die."
Lira was silent for a long moment.
Then, quietly: "So we stop training? Stay weak? Hope that makes him less appealing?"
Grog shook his head slowly.
"Can't. The wars are coming. The monsters are coming. If we're weak, we die before the end." He looked at his hands—young hands, growing stronger every day. "We're trapped. Train and make him a better target. Don't train and die too soon to help."
Lira sat down heavily on a supply crate.
"That's fucked," she said.
"Yeah."
"That's really, really fucked."
"Yeah."
They sat with it.
The sun climbed higher. The camp stirred around them. Somewhere, Aldric was probably waking up, stretching, smiling at the new day, completely unaware that his best friends were learning just how doomed they all were.
Finally, Lira spoke.
"So what do we do?"
Grog thought about the stone. The dream. The red eyes. The twenty-five years stretching ahead like a road to the gallows.
"We do what we were going to do anyway," he said. "Train. Prepare. Learn everything we can." He looked at her. "And we find another way. Something it doesn't expect. Something it can't plan for."
"Like what?"
Grog didn't have an answer.
But somewhere, deep in his chest, the stone pulsed warm.
Almost like it was listening.
Almost like it was waiting to see what they would do.