The Whitewater Ridge was not a river; it was a liquid glacier tearing through the spine of the valley.

  When Greta led the squad over the steep, frosted embankment and into the shallows, the physical shock hit Arjun like a warhammer to the sternum. The water was waist-deep and moving with violent, chaotic speed. It didn't just freeze the skin; it seized the muscles, driving the air from their lungs in ragged, involuntary gasps.

  Elena cursed violently as the current nearly swept her legs out. Frederick grabbed her harness, his massive frame fighting the rushing water.

  "Keep moving!" Greta ordered over the roar of the rapids, water churning around her chest. "Center of the channel!"

  Arjun waded behind them. His rusted iron chains dragged in the current, pulling his wrists down with agonizing weight. His summer armor, already frozen, now felt like an anvil dragging him toward the riverbed. But he didn't fight the weight. He let the brutal, mathematical rhythm of survival take over. Step. Plant. Breathe. Step. Behind them, the forest tree line erupted.

  The horn didn't blow again. It didn't need to. The Vanguard hounds had arrived.

  "Down!" Arjun rasped, his voice tearing. "Get under!"

  They didn't look back. The squad dropped to their knees, submerging themselves to their necks in the freezing rapids, hiding behind the jagged crest of a submerged boulder.

  Arjun turned his head just enough to see the embankment.

  Three Ash-Crawlers broke through the pines, their scuttling, unnatural gaits tearing the snow to shreds. They were nightmares of alchemical engineering. They had no eyes, only smooth, pale bone plating over the top of their skulls. Their bodies were hairless, the skin resembling charred, cracked wood.

  They did not sniff the dirt. They moved with their horrific, unhinged jaws open, their heads snapping in jagged, mechanical jerks as they "tasted" the air.

  Arjun knew exactly what they were sensing. The deep-recessed pits along their snouts were flaring, drinking in the kinetic ozone Isabella had left in her wake. They were tracking the radiation of shattered atoms.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The largest Crawler slid down the muddy bank, its iron-laced claws clicking against the river stones. It stopped exactly where the squad had entered the water. It whipped its eyeless skull back and forth, the jaws snapping shut on empty air.

  The water is grounding the scent, Arjun thought, his teeth grinding together as the freezing current numbed his legs. It can't see the radiation.

  Beside him, Isabella shuddered violently.

  The kinetic mage was already operating on a deficit. Her shattered right hand was pressed against her chest, but the freezing water was sending her traumatized nervous system into a terminal shock. Her lips were entirely blue. Her dark eyes rolled back, the lids fluttering.

  She was going to pass out. If she passed out, the current would take her, and she would thrash. If she thrashed, the Crawlers would hear the splash, and the Vanguard would have them.

  Arjun didn't think. He calculated the variables.

  As Isabella’s knees buckled and she slipped backward into the rushing channel, Arjun moved. He couldn't grab her—his hands were chained together. So he threw his entire upper body over hers.

  He drove her down into the shallow, rocky bed of the river, pinning her beneath the freezing surface. The rushing water immediately engulfed his own head.

  Total, freezing darkness.

  The current roared in his ears, ripping at his clothes, trying to tear Isabella away from him. Arjun locked his chained wrists around a jagged river stone beneath her, using his own body weight and the heavy iron cuffs as a literal anchor.

  His lungs screamed for air. The cold was a physical blade carving into his chest. Beneath him, Isabella spasmed, her survival instincts fighting the submersion. Arjun held her down with the ruthless, unyielding pressure of a Vanguard general. He forced himself to endure the agony, counting the seconds in his mind.

  Hold. Let the monsters pace. Hold.

  Ten seconds. Twenty. The blood pounded behind his eyes. His vision began to spark with black stars. If he let go, they died. If he held on too long, he drowned them both.

  At thirty-five seconds, the heavy, metallic clack-clack of the Crawlers' claws faded from the riverbank vibrations.

  Arjun broke the surface, dragging Isabella up with him.

  He gasped, choking on the freezing air and river water. Beside him, Frederick and Greta breached, their faces pale and horrified. Elena was already dragging herself toward the opposite bank, shivering violently.

  The embankment behind them was empty. The hounds, losing the kinetic trail in the glacial runoff, had scuttled back into the tree line to search the perimeter.

  "Move," Greta choked out, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. She grabbed Isabella’s tunic, helping Arjun haul the half-conscious mage out of the rapids. "Smuggler's Cut... fifty yards up the bank. Move!"

  They dragged themselves out of the Whitewater Ridge, collapsing onto the frozen mud of the far bank. They had survived the hounds, but as the freezing wind hit Arjun's soaking wet armor, he knew the math had only shifted.

  The Vanguard couldn't find them anymore. But hypothermia would kill them in less than an hour.