One week passed like a slow-draining wound.

  The wart spread. Thin black veins crept from his sole toward his ankle, like roots seeking purchase in frozen ground. Ma changed the fish-tape bandage every morning, her hands gentle but her silence heavy. He watched her fingers tremble slightly when she wrapped the fresh cloth, and she never once mentioned it.

  The itch came in waves. Sometimes ignorable, a dull background throb he could push to the edge of his thoughts. Other times it flared so intense he had to bite his cheek to keep from tearing the bandage off and clawing until he hit bone.

  And Ma got worse.

  The cough she'd been hiding wasn't hidden anymore. It came in fits that left her breathless, gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles went white. Dark circles deepened under her eyes. She moved slower, like every step cost her something precious she couldn't afford to spend.

  But she still brewed and healed. She continued to smile when he got a potion right.

  Until she didn't.

  The morning started wrong.

  Akilliz woke to silence. No humming from the garden or clink of glass from the brewing table. He didn't hear the soft murmur of Ma's voice talking to the herbs like they were old friends.

  He found Pa in the kitchen, staring at the cold hearth with his massive hands clenched into fists.

  "Where's Ma?"

  "Garden." Torin's voice was rough. "She insisted on harvesting rosemary before the frost got too heavy."

  Akilliz grabbed his cloak and limped outside.

  She was on her knees between the rosemary beds, shears slack in one hand. The basket beside her held maybe three sprigs. Her other hand was pressed to her mouth, shoulders shaking.

  "Ma?"

  She looked up. Blood stained her palm.

  "Aki." Her voice came out thin and reedy. "I just need... a moment..."

  Then her eyes rolled back and she folded sideways into the herbs.

  "MA!"

  He hit the ground beside her, hands hovering over her body like he could hold her together through will alone. Her skin was cold. Too cold. Her breathing came in shallow, rattling gasps.

  "Pa!" The scream tore out of him. "PA, HELP!"

  They laid her on the bed. Pa pressed a blanket over her, then another, then a third. She still shivered, her lips faintly blue.

  "Cupboard." Her eyes fluttered open, cloudy with fever. "White bottle. Top shelf."

  He was across the room before she finished speaking. His stomach dropped.

  Empty. Three useless drops clinging to the bottom.

  "It's empty." He turned, holding it up. "What was in here?"

  "Lightspire extract." Each word cost her. A wet cough. Blood flecked her palm when she pulled her hand away. "Keeps the sickness at bay. But it only grows... on Frosthelm."

  The room tilted.

  Frosthelm Mountain. Where the witch had appeared.

  "I'll go. Tell me where."

  "No." Pa's hand clamped down on his shoulder. "You're thirteen years old, boy. That mountain-"

  "Look at her!" Akilliz whirled on his father. "What if she gets worse through the night?"

  "Torin." Ma's whisper cut through everything. "Let him go." A breath. "He's the only one who can harvest it." Another breath. "You'd just crush it with those big hands."

  Pa's face crumpled. Akilliz only saw it for a second, but the sight nearly broke him. The forge had gone silent for the first time he could remember. No hammer ringing. No heat drifting from the back room. Just cold and quiet and his mother dying in their bed.

  Torin crossed to the wall and took down the sword.

  "You wanted a name for it." His voice was rough, his grimace hidden behind the set of his jaw. "Frostbane. For the mountain you're about to climb." He pressed the hilt into his son's hands. "Use it to come home safe."

  Ma's fingers found his wrist. Weak grip. Fierce eyes.

  "My journal." A breath. "Everything you need is written there." She paused, "Near Aurelia's shrine... white petals...at dusk." A wet cough. "Sing the Song of Dawn. Three pure notes. Cut clean at the base."

  "I will. I'll bring it back and you'll be fine—"

  "Aki." She pulled him down, pressed her lips to his forehead. Fever-hot and ice-cold at the same time. "I love you more than anything. You're my little star."

  The words felt like goodbye.

  He grabbed her journal, buckled Frostbane across his back, and ran.

  The southern woods swallowed him whole.

  Pines pressed close on either side, branches heavy with snow. Wind screamed through the trees with voices that sounded like words. The wart throbbed with every step, like it knew he was heading back toward the mountain.

  He climbed.

  He'd memorized the path before leaving: straight up the main trail to the broken pine, west at the three standing stones, follow the ridge until you smell cedar. The shrine sits in a clearing, white stone, Aurelia's hands outstretched. The Lightspire Bloom grows in the rocks behind her.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He passed the broken pine, it's massive trunk split by lightning. He turned west. Followed the ridge as the path narrowed and the cliff dropped away on his right into shadows that swallowed light.

  The smell of cedar found him. Sharp and clean.

  Snow fell heavier as the wind picked up. His foot ached, each heartbeat sending fire up toward his ankle.

  Then, ahead through the whiteout, a pale stone was glowing soft against the storm.

  Aurelia's shrine.

  The statue stood no taller than Pa, carved from white marble veined with quartz that caught what little light the storm allowed and gave it back tenfold. Snow had drifted against her feet, but her outstretched hands were clear. Beneath them, words chiseled in the old tongue “She who lights the peaks sees all” .

  Akilliz stumbled forward and collapsed against the plinth. The stone was warm, radiating heat into his frozen chest.

  "Please," he whispered through chattering teeth. "Aurelia. I need to save her. Please let the Bloom still be here."

  The wind died.

  Just for a moment. One long enough for the storm to part and moonlight to fall across the rocks behind the shrine.

  There.

  Tucked in a crevice between two boulders, a cluster of flowers glowed like captive stars. White petals veined with gold, pulsing gently as though breathing.

  Lightspire Bloom.

  A sob of relief tore out of him.

  He drew his knife, steadied his breathing, and sang. Three notes. Rising, falling, rising again. Just like she taught him. His voice came out cracked from cold and fear, but the flowers heard it. They leaned toward the sound, petals brightening slightly.

  He cut clean at the base. The stem separated with barely a whisper. The bloom's light pulsed once, twice, then settled into a steady glow.

  Akilliz wrapped it carefully in cloth and tucked it inside his tunic, right over his heart where his body heat would keep it safe.

  The path down should've been easier. But snow had covered his tracks, and the storm made everything look the same. Trees that had seemed familiar on the way up now loomed strange and far too similar.

  He was perhaps halfway down when he heard it.

  A growl. Low, hungry and wrong.

  He froze.

  A shadow detached from the whiteout ahead. Massive. Black as wet coal. Eyes the color of rotten lanterns.

  Wolf. But wrong and too big. The air around it rippled with sickly yellow haze, and where its paws touched snow, the white turned gray and died.

  It lunged.

  He swung Frostbane in a desperate arc. The blade caught its shoulder, opening a gash that bled smoke instead of blood. The creature yelped and twisted away, but it didn't run.

  It circled.

  Akilliz backed up until his shoulders hit a pine trunk. The wolf tracked him with rotten eyes, patient, reading his weakness the way a hunter reads a limp.

  It came again, lower this time, and faster. He got Frostbane up but the impact drove him sideways, boots skidding on ice beneath the snow. The blade scored its flank. More black smoke flew into the freezing air. The wolf snarled, shook itself, and circled wider.

  It was learning him. The next charge would come from an angle he couldn't cover.

  His arms were shaking. His foot was on fire. The bloom glowed against his heart and all he could think was that if he died here, Ma died too.

  And the ground trembled.

  Not an earthquake. Something else. A deep thrumming that rose through his boots, into his bones.

  The wolf's ears flattened. It whined, high and thin, and backed away.

  Violet mist boiled up through the snow.

  The air folded open, and something stepped through.

  It was tall. Taller than Pa. Skin like cooled lava, black and cracked, glowing faintly orange in the fissures. Horns curled back from a brow where eyes the color of fresh blood fixed on Akilliz.

  The wolf padded to the demon's side and sat, tongue lolling, as the creature reached down and scratched behind its ears with clawed fingers.

  "Well, well." The demon's voice was gravel dragged across bronze. "The little thief returns. And what's this?" Red eyes flicked to Akilliz's chest, where the bloom's glow showed faintly through his tunic. "Lightspire Bloom. How industrious."

  Akilliz couldn't speak. Couldn't move.

  The demon smiled, showing teeth like shattered obsidian.

  "I am the mountain. Keeper of secrets buried deep." He took a step closer. "And that pretty flower you carry? It won't save her."

  "You're lying." The words burst out before he could stop them.

  "Am I?" The demon's head tilted, curious. "The bloom will buy her days. Perhaps a week if you're lucky. But the rot in her lungs is old magic, boy. Binding and cruel. A simple mountain flower won't touch it."

  Akilliz's chest tightened. "No. Ma said—"

  "Your mother is dying, child. Has been for years. The bloom merely delays. It does not cure." The demon crouched, bringing those terrible red eyes level with his. "But I can give you something better than delays. I can give you knowledge."

  He waved one clawed hand, and the air shimmered.

  Images formed in the violet mist. A laboratory, golden and gleaming. An elf with silver hair working over a cauldron that burned with pure white fire. Ingredients appeared one by one, each more impossible than the last

  The potion that formed glowed like bottled sunrise, pure and perfect and impossible.

  "This," the demon whispered, "is what would truly save her. The cure your village herbs cannot touch."

  Akilliz stared at the vision, heart breaking. "I can't... I don't have those things. I don't even know where—"

  "No. You don't." The demon's smile widened. "But I can give you the knowledge. Every step. Every measure. Every word of power needed to brew it." He extended one clawed hand. "All I ask in return is a small thing. Blood for knowledge. A pact between us."

  "What kind of pact?"

  "Simple. You give me your blood to seal our bargain. I give you knowledge beyond anything your mountain village could teach. And when the time comes…perhaps tomorrow, perhaps years from now… I will call on you for a service. One task. Nothing that would harm those you love."

  "What if I say no?"

  "Then you go home with your pretty flower. She drinks it, smiles, tells you how proud she is. And in three days, she dies anyway." The demon's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "And you spend the rest of your life knowing you could have saved her. That the knowledge existed. That you were just too afraid to take it."

  Tears burned hot down Akilliz's face. "That's not true! You have to be lying."

  "Am I?" A parchment materialized in the air between them. "Read it yourself. Every ingredient. Every step."

  He took it with shaking hands. The recipe was there, written in script that seemed to shift and breathe. He recognized some herbs from Ma's journal, but twisted, elevated, combined in ways he'd never imagined. And the ingredients from the vision were listed, phoenix ash, Aurelia's light, soul-weaver root.

  It was real. This was the cure. And he had no way to make it.

  A small knife appeared in the demon's palm. Obsidian blade, handle wrapped in something that looked like bone.

  "One cut. Your blood on the parchment. And all the knowledge you want is yours."

  Akilliz looked at the bloom. Days. Maybe a week.

  He thought of Ma's smile when he'd gotten the chamomile potion right. The way she'd wiped glaze from his chin in the market. Her voice saying I love you like it might be the last time.

  "If I sign," he said slowly, "Will I be able to save her? Really save her?"

  "The knowledge is true," the demon said. "What you do with it is up to you."

  Not a yes. Not quite a promise. But close enough to hope.

  "What's the task?" His hand shook. "The one you'll call me for."

  The demon's smile was sharp as winter. "Does it matter? Would you refuse even if I told you?"

  No. He wouldn't. They both knew it.

  Akilliz pressed the blade to his thumb. Blood welled, bright and hot.

  He smeared it across the parchment, right under the recipe, right over the blank line waiting for his name.

  Then he knelt, clawed through snow to frozen earth, and pressed the blood-stained soil into the letters, sealing them deep.

  The mountain exhaled.

  A low, shuddering rumble that shook snow from the pines. The parchment dissolved into violet smoke, and the demon's laughter echoed like calving glaciers.

  "Wise choice, boy." The demon straightened, towering over him. "The knowledge is yours. Use it well."

  Then he was gone. Wolf and demon both, vanished into mist that dissipated on the wind.

  Akilliz stood alone in the snow, his thumb bleeding and his mind racing.

  The pact burned in his veins like poison.

  Or promise.

  And in his mind, burning bright and terrible and perfect, the demon's knowledge unfurled. Every ingredient. Every measure. Every impossible step.

  He knew now. Knew exactly what it would take to save her.

  And knew, with sick certainty, that he'd never get any of the ingredients in time. The only place they could be found was in Luminael. He turned and ran down the mountain, hope and despair warring in his chest. Behind him, far above, something cracked.

  He didn't stop to look. Didn't see the hairline fracture that had appeared in Aurelia's outstretched arm, spider-webbing from wrist to shoulder.

  The statue's golden glow flickered once.

  Then died.