"Hmmm," he muttered, voice strained. "Rewards are less and somewhat useless compared to last time…"
He winced, a spear of pain behind his brow.
"…but from its memories I know places in the Gift where people never ventured. Places with resources."
He shut his eyes again and pictured the warm stream. The iron ridge. The deer hollow.
Useful.
And he could also feel something else, threaded through the wolf's memories near the end.
Weakness.
It had been hungry for too long. Its hunts had grown closer to Hollow. It had been limping in one memory, favoring a leg.
Final stage, his mind supplied, using the wrong words for the world.
Old. Dying. Desperate.
"So it's not hunting deep forest anymore," Edrin whispered. "It's hunting village outskirts. Easy targets."
He swallowed.
"Me," he said, flat.
His mouth twisted.
Survival Instinct (Trash), the system had said. It had replaced it with Awareness, but the insult still stung because it had been earned.
He sat for a long moment, letting the direwolf's memories settle into something he could use rather than something that made him want to claw his own eyes out.
Then his mind circled back to the dragon memory.
That shadow.
That scream.
That sense of the world holding its breath.
He had read enough to know dragons were not common, not even in "earlier Targaryen." By Robert's time they were gone. By this time....
If this was truly before Robert, before even the Dance--
He forced himself to slow down.
Do not leap to conclusions.
But the thought was already racing.
Silverwing?
Queen Alysanne?
Jaehaerys the Conciliator?
It fit too well and not enough at all. Dragons flew over the North sometimes. Alysanne had visited the Wall. Silverwing had refused to cross it. That was a story.
If that memory was real, then...
Then this was centuries before Robert.
No.
The dreams,
His dreams had shown Robert's Rebellion. Ned. The battlefield. The arrow storm.
Unless the dreams were not "future" but "routes." Unless the system could show possible lives across time.
He rubbed his temples until pain flared.
"Let it be," he muttered. "First problem. Wolf."
He stood, shakier than he wanted, and began to prepare again.
He would not go into the den like a fool this time.
He had the wolf's memories now. He knew some of its paths. Its habits. Where it circled. Where it liked to sleep. Where it drank.
He knew the terrain better.
And more than that, he knew one brutal truth.
He could die and return.
It was not comforting.
It was a tool.
A cruel one.
He left Hollow before first full light, moving like a shadow. No one stopped him. No one cared.
He found the wolf's trails again easily now. Not only with Awareness, but with the wolf's own instincts layered on top of his.
The track led to the ridge and along it, and he knew, with sudden certainty, where it would end.
The den.
The stinking mouth in stone.
He did not go in.
He circled above it instead, climbing higher, feeling his calves burn, feeling the cold bite his lungs.
He found the ledge.
A narrow shelf of rock overlooking the cleft, half-hidden by scrub and snow.
The wolf had used it as a lookout sometimes. He knew because he had been the wolf.
He lay flat and waited.
Hours passed like slow torture.
He listened to the wind. To the faint cries of distant birds. To the endless, gnawing hunger of his own stomach.
Finally--
Movement below.
A shadow slipping out of the cleft.
The direwolf emerged, shaking snow from its fur, huge and dark, its breath steaming like smoke.
It moved with a subtle stiffness now, favoring a hind leg.
Weak.
But still faster than anything Edrin was.
Edrin's heart hammered.
He had no bow. No spear. No real weapon.
Only a knife and a second knife and a brain full of bad ideas.
He waited until it moved away from the den, angling toward a patch of brush where rabbits sometimes hid.
Then he moved.
He slid down the slope like a man descending into his own grave, careful where the ice lay, careful not to send stones clattering.
He reached the mouth of the cleft and pressed himself to stone.
The stink rolled over him again.
He forced himself to breathe through his mouth.
Not because he was brave, but because he had decided he would rather be cold and alive than dead and rewarded.
He did not go deep.
He only went far enough to see.
Bones. Carcasses. The scraped floor.
Then he saw something else.
A narrower crack in the stone at the back, half-hidden behind a fallen slab. A place the wolf had used to slip out in emergencies. A second exit.
It had killed him from behind because it had circled through that crack and come out behind him like a ghost.
Edrin's mouth tightened.
He backed out and moved quickly, climbing again, heading to where that crack would emerge on the slope above.
He found it after some searching: a narrow slit between rocks, just wide enough for the wolf's shoulders if it turned sideways.
If he could block it…
He found stones. Heavy ones. He dragged them, grunting, tearing his gloves, scraping knuckles.
He stacked them. Not a perfect wall. Not even close.
But enough that the wolf could not burst through fast. Enough to slow it. Enough to make it choose.
Then he went back down.
He did not go into the den.
He crouched near the mouth, knife in hand, and waited.
He waited until he heard it.
The scrape of claws on stone.
The low huff of breath.
The direwolf was returning.
Edrin's throat went dry.
He looked at the den mouth like a man looking at a door that might open into death.
He thought, briefly, of not doing it.
Of living.
Then he remembered Hollow. Hunger. Winter. The system's lever in his hand. The fact that a direwolf was hunting near the village and would kill again.
Maybe not him next time.
Maybe a child.
Maybe Old Rusk.
Maybe the woman with raw red cheeks who nodded without smiling.
Edrin breathed in cold air until it hurt.
And then he did the stupidest brave thing in the world.
He stepped into view.
The direwolf froze at the mouth of the cleft, pale eyes fixing on him.
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
Then the wolf lunged.
Edrin ran.
Not away, not into open ground like prey.
He ran past it, toward the slope where he had blocked the crack, forcing it to choose between the easy kill and the safe retreat.
The wolf snapped at him, teeth grazing his cloak. He felt fur brush his back like a promise of death.
He threw himself down a narrow path between rocks where a beast that big would have to slow, twist, compress.
It followed anyway.
Of course it did.