Dusk turned the steam columns pale gold. The mountain breathed slow and steady around him, its vents cycling with the same rhythm he'd been counting all night. Four minutes calm. Thirty seconds blast. The pattern hadn't changed.

  Akilliz approached the last Dragon's Breath specimen with his rig in one hand and his knife in the other. The treated vial hung from the cord assembly, swinging gently. The metal clamp waited to grip the stem. Gravity would do the rest.

  The heat was the same as before. Dry. Enormous. The corruption on his left hand barely registered it while his right hand felt every degree. But both hands were steady. The Soul's Breath had healed him true and the acceleration potion had started to fade, leaving him raw, clear and feeling numb once again.

  Better this way. Feel the mountain, read its rhythm. Don't fight it. Work with it.

  The blast phase ended. Steam settled to its gentle curtain.

  He moved in.

  Three feet from the plant. The shimmer of heat distortion made the flower dance in his vision. He reached out with his left hand and fitted the metal clamp around the stem, just above where he'd make the cut. The treated vial dangled beneath, mouth open, waiting. The cord was taut. The angle was right.

  Two feet. The heat pressed against his face like a living thing. Sweat ran into his eyes. He blinked it away and brought the knife up to the base of the stem.

  One clean cut. The rig does the rest. Trust the physics.

  He cut.

  The blade bit through the stem but not cleanly. The angle was wrong, off by a fraction. Instead of severing in a single motion, the knife caught on the plant's dense inner fibers and twisted. The stem split instead of separating. One half dropped toward the vial. The other half swung outward, its cut surface spraying volatile fluid in a fine mist that caught the vent's heat and ignited instantly.

  The explosion was worse than the first.

  Not a pop. A concussive blast that threw him backward off his feet and slammed him onto volcanic rock. The world went white. Then orange. Then a searing, blinding brightness that burned through his closed eyelids and scorched across his face like a wave of liquid fire.

  He screamed. Couldn't hear it. His ears were ringing, a high pitched whine that swallowed every other sound. His face was burning. His hands flew to his eyes and the skin they touched was hot and raw and weeping.

  He rolled onto his side. Tried to open his eyes.

  Light. Blinding, formless light. No shapes. No color. Just a white hot nothing that sent pain lancing through his skull.

  He squeezed them shut again. The pain didn't stop. It lived behind his eyelids now, a deep throbbing heat that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

  Breathe. Just breathe. The Soul's Breath is in your pack. You brewed it yourself. It's twenty feet behind you on stable rock. Just get to the pack.

  He crawled.

  Hands on stone, feeling his way forward. The volcanic rock was hot in places, cool in others. He couldn't see which was which. Couldn't see anything. The world was gone, replaced by white noise and searing pain and the rough texture of stone beneath his palms.

  His left hand, the corrupted one, felt more than his right. The gray skin transmitted texture and temperature with a clarity that his burned, human skin couldn't match. He used it like a blind man's cane, sweeping ahead, finding edges and gaps.

  The ground trembled.

  Not the steady breathing of the vents. Something deeper. The kind of tremor that came from below, from the mountain's roots, from whatever furnace burned at its core. The rock shifted beneath him. He heard the sound of something sliding, scraping, heavy objects moving across stone.

  His pack. The workstation. Everything he'd set up on what he'd thought was stable ground.

  He crawled faster. His knee caught on a crack in the rock and he pitched forward, catching himself on his forearms. The impact sent a bolt of pain through his burned right arm. He kept going. Following the memory of where he'd left his supplies, counting paces on his hands and knees.

  His fingers found the pack's strap. He pulled it toward him. It came heavy and wrong, the weight shifted, something inside clinking and grinding in a way that made his stomach drop.

  He opened the main compartment by feel. His fingers found the cloth wrapping where the Soul's Breath vials had been cushioned.

  Wet cloth. Sharp edges. The unmistakable feel of broken glass beneath soaked fabric.

  No. No, no, no.

  He pulled the cloth out. Glass fragments fell onto the rock, tinkling like tiny bells. The sapphire liquid had soaked into the padding, into the dried herbs, into everything. Gone. Absorbed by cloth and stone and wasted on supplies that didn't need healing.

  Both vials were shattered. The tremor had bounced his pack across the rock, and the vials had broken against each other inside.

  His hands shook as he felt through the wreckage. Fingers searching with the desperate precision of a man looking for a pulse. Glass bit into his thumb. He didn't care, he kept searching.

  There. Something small. A vial cap, upside down, caught in a fold of cloth. He lifted it with trembling fingers. Liquid shifted inside it, the tiniest pool, barely enough to fill a thimble. He could feel it, cool against the glass, and when he brought it close to his face he caught the scent. Clean. Pure. Mountain air before dawn.

  Soul's Breath. A sip. Maybe less.

  He drank it like a dying man.

  The warmth spread thin. Not the full embrace of a proper measure but a ghost of it, a whisper of healing that touched the worst of the damage and couldn't quite finish the job. The searing pain across his face eased from agony to something merely terrible. The burns on his right arm cooled. The deep tissue damage in his eyes shifted, loosened, changed.

  He opened his eyes.

  Shapes. Blurred and formless, like looking through water stained glass. The world was smears of color, dark here, glowing red there, the faintest suggestion of structure in the rocks around him. No detail. No depth. Just enough to tell light from dark and danger from safety. The red glows were vents. The dark was stone. Everything else was fog.

  He could see. Barely. Enough to move without crawling.

  Then, from somewhere down the mountain, a wolf howled.

  The sound cut through the ringing in his ears like a blade. Long and rising. The kind of howl that carried for miles and told everything that heard it exactly where the prey was.

  His blood went cold. Lumara. The demon wolf in the snow, when he was thirteen and sure he was going to die. It had been the same exact sound. Primal terror that bypassed every rational thought and went straight to his reptilian brain.

  He was terrified.

  Flashes came back to him. Back home on Frosthelm, the wolf had stopped. Had backed away. Had bowed its head because Taimon was there, and the mountain's creatures recognized their master's mark.

  That was a long time ago, and Taimon was already with him.

  Focus. Think. What do I have?

  He dug through the pack by feel and blurred sight. Frostbane was still strapped across his back. Good. His knife was gone, lost in the blast. The spheres were intact, thankfully harder than the delicate vials. He found a potion bottle, one of the bottles still full of acceleration base, and dropped a sphere in. The compressed ball swirled and broke apart. He drank.

  The euphoria hit and the world sharpened just enough to matter. His thoughts cleared. The pain didn't disappear but it organized itself, moving from overwhelming chaos to a list he could manage. Burns on face and right arm. Eyes damaged, vision at maybe ten percent. Ears still ringing but functional. Left arm, chest, and left leg unburned. The corruption had insulated them the same way it had insulated his hand during the first harvest.

  Taimon's territory was the only part of him that still worked properly.

  Another howl. Closer. And beneath it, the sound of others answering. A pack.

  He needed to move. Needed to get off this mountain, into the Mistwood, where the trees might slow them. But the Vent Fields were a maze of fissures and hot vents and one wrong step with ten percent vision would put him in boiling water or open air over a magma flow.

  Give me your eyes.

  The voice came soft. Almost casual. The way you'd offer a coat to someone standing in the rain.

  Akilliz went still.

  I can let you see, child. Through rock and stone, into hearts and minds.

  I have been holding the change at bay, waiting for you to be ready. Let us finish what the mountain started and give you dark elven eyes.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "No."

  The word came out cracked and raw, his throat scorched from the blast. He pushed himself to standing. Swayed. Steadied. Frostbane's weight across his back was an anchor. He could do this. He could navigate by color, by heat, by sound. He'd climbed Frosthelm blind in a snowstorm at thirteen.

  He was not thirteen anymore.

  He started walking. Slow, careful steps, testing each one before committing his weight. Dark shapes meant safe stone. Red glow meant danger. The blurred world swam around him as he picked his way between vents, steam brushing his skin like wet breath.

  A third howl. Very close now. Below him. Between him and the tree line.

  His hand found Frostbane's hilt. Drew the blade. The familiar weight settled into his left hand, the corrupted one, because that was the hand that worked. The sword felt different held this way. The balance shifted. But Taimon's strength ran through the arm like current through copper, and the grip was iron.

  The bottled flame. He had that too, clipped to his belt. He unhooked it with his burned right hand, fumbling the catch, and uncorked it. The steady orange flame rose from the neck, casting a warm glow that his damaged eyes could just barely resolve into shape and shadow. Firelight. Something to hold them back. Animals feared fire. Wolves feared fire.

  These weren't normal wolves.

  The first one appeared as a dark blur moving fast between the rocks. Low to the ground. Silent. It circled left and he turned with it, Frostbane raised, the bottled flame held out in his right hand like a torch.

  A second blur, right side. Flanking.

  Three more materialized behind the first two. Five total. Moving in that patient, coordinated way that said they'd hunted together before and they'd hunt together again and the thing in the middle always died.

  The closest one lunged.

  Frostbane caught it mid-leap. Taimon's strength drove the blade through fur and muscle and the wolf yelped and fell sideways, not dead but wounded enough to pull back. Blood, black in the dim light, spattered across volcanic rock.

  The others didn't flinch. They tightened the circle.

  He swung the bottled flame at the one on his right. The wolf dodged back. He swung again, wider, and his burned hand spasmed. The bottle slipped from his fingers.

  It hit the rock and shattered.

  The liquid fire spilled across the volcanic stone in a bright orange pool that ignited immediately, spreading in a thin sheet of flame that ate its fuel in a steady burn. The wolves backed away from the fire. Two feet. Three. Buying him space.

  In the flickering light, the shapes resolved just enough for him to see. Five wolves, slate gray, larger than any natural animal. Eyes that caught the firelight wrong, reflecting it a sickly yellow instead of green. Mountain wolves. Frosthelm breed. The kind that hunted in the dark places where normal predators wouldn't go.

  The fire would last a few minutes. Maybe five while it consumed the bottled liquid. After that, he would have nothing.

  His eyes found the broken bottle. Most of it was shards, scattered and useless. But the bottom was intact, a thick disc of glass with the dwarven rune etched into its underside.

  He picked it up. The glass edges above the base were jagged and sharp. He slipped it into his pocket, a spare weapon if it came to that. He hoped it wouldn't.

  The fire was dying. The orange pool shrank as fuel was consumed, the flames lowering, the shadows creeping back in.

  The wolves watched. Patient. They'd been patient their whole lives. They could wait five more minutes.

  Akilliz gripped Frostbane and faced them. Five wolves. One working arm. Ten percent vision. No fire. No healing. No options that didn't involve teeth and blood.

  The fire guttered.

  A wolf lunged from the left. He swung Frostbane with his corrupted arm and the blade connected but the angle was wrong, slicing across the wolf's shoulder instead of its neck. It yelped, twisted, sank its teeth into his right forearm.

  The pain was extraordinary. Like the burn all over again but with pressure, with the grinding of teeth on bone, with the hot rush of blood that meant something important had torn. He drove his knee into the wolf's ribs and it released, stumbling back, his blood dark on its muzzle.

  A second wolf hit him from behind. Jaws clamping onto his right calf. He went down hard, the volcanic rock slamming into his burned face, and the world went from dim to black for one terrible second before the acceleration potion dragged him back to consciousness.

  Frostbane. Still in his left hand. He twisted on the ground and drove the blade backward into the wolf on his leg. It released with a shriek. He rolled, slashed at the shapes closing in, felt the blade catch flesh.

  On his feet. Barely. Right arm hanging, blood running from forearm to fingers. Right leg buckling, the calf muscle torn, the bite deep enough to scrape bone. Left arm raised, Frostbane catching the last of the firelight, its edge dark with wolf blood.

  Three wolves still standing. The two he'd wounded had pulled back but hadn't fled. They circled, tighter now. He could hear their breathing. Low, steady, like the mountain's vents. Like the mountain itself had sent them.

  He was losing. He could feel it in the way his right leg wouldn't hold weight. In the way his vision was narrowing again, the edges going dark. In the way the acceleration potion was burning through his system faster than it should because his body was using everything it had just to stay upright.

  One more lunge and he'd go down. And once he was down, he wasn't getting up.

  You know what you need to do.

  Taimon's voice was warm. Gentle. The voice of the only friend left in a room where everyone else had gone home.

  Give me your eyes and I will let you see. Give me your legs and I will let you stand. Give me the rest, and I will save your life.

  The wolves circled. One feinted forward. Akilliz swung and missed, the blade cutting air. His right leg gave and he dropped to one knee. Frostbane's point braced against the ground, the only thing keeping him from falling completely.

  Blood pooled beneath him. His blood. The wolves could smell it. They were salivating. He could hear the wet clicking of their jaws working.

  If you refuse, you will die on this mountain. And everything you've suffered will have been for nothing. Your mother's death. The girl's love. The potion you brewed. All of it, wasted. Because you were too proud to accept what you already are.

  "I'm not..." His voice was barely a whisper. "I'm not going to die here"

  You're bleeding on a mountain with wolves at your throat. You are dying.

  A wolf lunged. He raised Frostbane. Too slow. Jaws closed on his right shoulder and the weight drove him flat onto his back. He screamed as teeth sank in, feeling the wolf's hot breath against his neck, feeling its body press down on his chest, and for one crystal clear moment he was thirteen again, in the snow, with the demon wolf above him and death one bite away.

  Except this time no one was coming to save him. No last second miracle. No pact he hadn't already made.

  There was only Taimon. There had only ever been Taimon.

  The other wolves moved in. He could feel them gathering close. Could feel their heat, their breath, their ancient patience running out.

  "Take it." The words came out choked, pressed through a throat pinned under wolf weight, spoken to the demon inside him while the mountain listened. "Take everything. I can't die here! Not yet."

  Taimon answered with warmth.

  The wolf on his chest went rigid.

  Every muscle in its body locked. Its jaws released his shoulder. Its sick yellow eyes, inches from his face, went wide with something that looked nothing like hunger.

  It looked like recognition.

  The wolf stepped off him. Slowly. Carefully. The way a dog backs away from something much larger than itself. It lowered its head. Tucked its tail. Retreated five steps and sat.

  The others followed. One by one. Jaws closing. Bodies lowering. Tails tucking. Five wolves, spread in a loose semicircle, sitting on volcanic rock in the early morning light, tongues lolling, watching him with eyes that had gone from predatory to something almost submissive.

  Akilliz lay on his back. Staring at the sky he couldn't see.

  Something was happening inside him. Not the sudden violence of the pact on Frosthelm. Not the slow creep of corruption he'd grown used to. This was different. This was Taimon unfolding. Like a fist that had been clenched inside his chest for four years was finally opening its fingers, and each finger reached into a different part of him.

  His eyes first.

  The blurred nothing, sharpened. Color returned, but not the colors he knew. The sky wasn't blue. It was a gradient of heat, cool purple at the zenith shading to warm amber at the horizon. The volcanic rock wasn't gray and black. It was alive with thermal patterns, rivers of deep red flowing beneath surfaces of cooling blue, the mountain's entire circulatory system visible in a way that no human eye had ever seen.

  The wolves blazed. Bright shapes of orange and white heat against the cooler stone, their hearts glowing like small furnaces in their chests. He could see the blood moving through their bodies. Could see the wound on the one he'd cut, the damaged tissue cooler than the flesh around it.

  Then his legs.

  The torn calf muscle tightened. Not healing. Reinforcing. The corruption spreading down from his thigh, gray skin flowing over the wound like water filling a channel, black veins threading through the damaged muscle and pulling it taut. The pain didn't stop. It changed. Became something more distant, more manageable, as if the nerves themselves were being rewired to report to a different authority.

  He stood. Not because he chose to. Because his legs straightened beneath him, Taimon lifting him the way a puppeteer lifts a marionette, and his body rose from the bloody rock with a smoothness that had nothing to do with his own will.

  His right arm hung at his side. The wolf bite was deep, the shoulder torn. The corruption hadn't reached that arm yet. It was still his. Still human. Still damaged.

  Taimon didn't touch it. Left it hanging. A reminder of what belonged to whom.

  Akilliz stood on the volcanic slope in the gray dawn, Frostbane in his left hand, wolf blood on the blade, his own blood soaking his right side. Five wolves sat before him like obedient hounds. The world blazed in heat and color that no human had ever seen.

  Then his head turned.

  Not because he told it to. His neck rotated smoothly to the left, his new eyes focusing on a massive boulder twenty feet away. The heat vision shifted, deepened, and the boulder became transparent. Not invisible. Just less solid. He could see through the rock the way you could see through murky water, shapes resolving in the density beyond.

  Three Dragon's Breath plants. Growing in a protected alcove on the boulder's far side, fed by a deep vent that ran straight down to the mountain's core. Large specimens. Mature. Their stems thick with pulsing red lines that his old eyes had never been able to see.

  His legs carried him forward. Around the boulder, steady and sure, stepping over fissures with a confidence that didn't belong to him. The wolves parted to let him pass.

  The plants were different through dark elf eyes. Not just flowers and stems. Living systems, each one a complex network of internal channels and circulatory paths. The red lines pumped through the stem in a slow, steady rhythm. Something liquid. Something volatile. The compound that every alchemist feared, the thing that ignited on contact with air, flowing through dedicated veins inside the plant like blood through arteries.

  He watched it pulse. Watched the flow pattern, the way it moved from roots to flower and back again, a closed circuit of volatile chemistry that the plant used for thermal regulation, or defense, or simply because that was how it had evolved in the furnace heat of the vents.

  His hand reached out. Not his choice. Taimon's.

  Two fingers found the main vein where it ran close to the surface, just above the base of the stem. The gray skin pressed down. Firm. Precise. The way you'd pinch a garden hose to stop the flow.

  The red line went still above the pinch point. The volatile compound stopped moving, trapped below his fingers. The upper stem went dark, its circulation cut.

  The knife was already in his left hand. Taimon had moved it there without asking, Frostbane sheathed on his back in a motion Akilliz didn't remember making.

  The blade cut through the stem above the pinch point. Clean. Single motion.

  The cut surface met open air.

  One second. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

  Nothing. No hiss. No reaction. No ignition. The volatile compound was trapped below the pinch, and the upper stem held nothing but inert plant matter. The Dragon's Breath specimen sat in his corrupted hand, still and harmless, its petals shimmering with residual heat but showing no sign of the deadly reaction that had burned him twice and killed three of Nicodemo's colleagues.

  The treated vial came from his pack. His right hand found it, fingers just functional enough to hold it steady while his left hand placed the specimen inside. The vial sealed. The Dragon's Breath glowed faintly through the dark glass, captured and contained.

  He stood there holding it. A boy on a mountain, holding the thing he'd come for, in a body that was no longer entirely his.

  Taimon laughed.

  Low and warm and satisfied, the sound rolling through Akilliz's chest like distant thunder. Not cruel. Not mocking. The laugh of someone who had waited a very long time for something inevitable to finally arrive.

  And somewhere deep inside his own skull, behind eyes that glowed faintly red in the morning light, Akilliz understood that the price of survival was always the same.

  It was everything.