The fire had burned low.
Ash clung to the edges of the hearth, the embers barely breathing. The cabin smelled of old smoke and bitter herbs. Morning—if it could be called that—seeped through the crooked windows, a pale, sickly light that flattened everything it touched.
Nikolai stirred under the patchwork blanket. His body protested, stiff and aching, but the worst of the cold had been driven from his bones. He sat up slowly, listening. The silence felt different now. Not empty. Not expectant.
Weighted.
Across the room, Wanda stood at the table, grinding something with a slow, deliberate rhythm. The sound was too normal, too mundane, against the thrum of everything else pressing at the edges of the cabin.
She didn't look at him when she spoke.
"You asked for more than you know."
No greeting. No kindness. Just the truth, dropped like a stone into deep water.
Nikolai shifted, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders. His throat was dry, but he said nothing. He wasn't sure what words could fix the wrongness curling in the pit of his stomach.
Wanda's hands moved with precision, the grinding sound steady. The fire cracked once, sharp and loud in the heavy air.
"You speak of outlasting the dark," she said. "Of walking without fear. But endurance changes those who cling too long."
She turned then, her blue eyes catching what little light the day offered. They weren't cold, exactly. But they weren't soft either.
"Do you understand what outlasting means, rat-who-would-be-stone?"
He met her gaze. Forced himself not to look away.
"I know what dying looks like," he rasped. "I know what breaking feels like. I don't care what comes after, as long as I'm still standing."
Wanda studied him for a long moment. Then she set the mortar down with a soft thud.
"When the thing that endures is no longer you..." she said, voice low, almost thoughtful. "When the life that continues feeds on things you have not yet craved... when the silence you outran becomes a colder silence within..."
She stepped closer, shadows pooling around the hem of her long dress.
"What have you truly gained then, little rat?"
Nikolai's hands tightened around the blanket. He thought of the fingers tapping on glass. The taste of ash. The endless night stretching beyond the river.
He swallowed.
"I don't care," he said, voice rough. "If there's something left of me—even if it changes—it's better than rotting in some ditch, forgotten."
A faint smile ghosted across Wanda's lips. Not kindness. Not mockery. Something older.
She turned back to her work.
"Power twists what it touches," she said. "Life stretched beyond its span rots, just as wood warps in endless rain. You will outlast. But the light will flee from you. The hunger will come. And you will not stay... untouched."
The grinding resumed. Slow. Steady.
The words pressed into the room like another presence. Heavy. Inevitable.
Nikolai let the warning burrow under his skin. Let it carve itself into the marrow of his bones.
He did not flinch.
Wanda spoke again, quieter now.
"There is no payment to me," she said. "The price is written into the act itself. You are the offering."
He heard the shift of fabric as she moved, collecting ingredients from the shelves. Dried roots, powders that shimmered faintly when caught by the light, vials of thick, viscous fluids. Things he couldn't name.
Each sound was precise. Measured. As though she was assembling something inevitable.
"Most who find their way here," Wanda continued, "seek to undo their mistakes. To reverse time's arrow. To reclaim what is already lost."
She set a small bowl on the table with a deliberate click.
"But you, little rat—you ask for something different."
Nikolai's mouth was dry, but he forced himself to speak.
"I ask to survive."
"No," she said, almost gently. "You ask to become something that survival cannot break."
She looked over her shoulder, studying him with an unreadable expression.
"Understand this: the world you knew, the rules that bound you, the fears that chased you—none of them will hold the same weight after this. You will cross a threshold few can even imagine."
He thought of the Frozen River. Of the crackling ice. Of the moment he chose to step onto it, knowing it could shatter under him at any time.
"I already crossed," he said. "I'm not turning back."
A flicker of something—approval, perhaps—passed through Wanda's gaze.
She turned away again, her voice steady.
"Rest. Eat if you can. Tonight, we begin."
Nikolai sat there, listening to the scrape of stone on stone, the dying sigh of the fire, the slow, inevitable tick of his own heartbeat.
The warmth of the cabin no longer comforted.
It felt like the mouth of something vast, waiting to swallow him whole.
And still—
He would walk willingly into it.