I had multiple paths and entrances into the Wall. Today I chose one that didn’t pass directly by the Winterwall living quarters. It was the fastest way inside — and more importantly, it would get me out of the rain.

  This entrance wasn’t widely known. In fact, I was fairly certain there were still passageways even Sandy and I hadn’t discovered yet.

  The Wall had originally been designed as a moat. That was the plan, at least. But an unexpected influx of masons had altered everything once construction began. Instead of a trench filled with water, the foundation became a two-floor underground structure.

  The Wall itself rose anywhere from three to five stories depending on where you stood in the city. Only the Red Post Manor, the clock tower, and Bruno’s Cathedral pierced above its height. Everything else lived under its shadow.

  Inside, the Wall’s width was roughly the depth of my father’s shop — but it stretched endlessly. On either side stood the true exterior barrier: nearly four feet of mortar and stone that climbed all the way to the patrol path above. That path was wide enough for a full city watch rotation and wrapped around Melrose in an unbroken circle.

  It was brilliant design. Hundreds of families could have lived there comfortably.

  But when the Red Post began offering coin, food, and housing to its recruits, the Wall’s free living quarters were slowly abandoned. Convenience always wins.

  Sandy and I had spent hours playing hide-and-seek through those corridors with Grandpa Prosic and Anastasia. No matter how clever we thought we were, the two dwarves always found us. They knew the Wall like it was a second heartbeat.

  The memories softened as I reached the old military supply shop.

  It had closed before I was born. Too far from the market to survive, people said. Now it was just another boarded-up relic among dozens of stalls selling hats and trinkets.

  Behind the building sat an unremarkable door leading to a narrow staircase. Most would assume it led into the shop’s old storage.

  They would be wrong.

  The door was locked.

  But I knew its secret.

  I reached toward a loose stone tucked into the frame of a boarded window. I shifted it carefully aside. Beneath it rested a small copper-forged key — aged, but well maintained.

  I slipped it into the lock.

  The click was soft.

  I opened the door just wide enough to slide through, returned the key to its hiding place, and replaced the stone exactly as I’d found it.

  Rain muffled behind me.

  Stone swallowed the sound.

  I descended the narrow staircase, the air growing cooler and drier with every step, until I reached the quiet halls inside the Winterwall’s domain.

  I cast a minor spell as I descended the staircase into the dark.

  I took a slow breath and spoke the incantation carefully, just as Father Tilden and Graysia had taught me.

  “Vickss–sis.”

  A small, glimmering flame bloomed in my palm.

  It brightened the corridor in a soft radius, no harsher than torchlight. The flame itself was mostly for show — you could press parchment straight through it and it wouldn’t scorch. Warm to look at, harmless to touch.

  Graysia had once told me that spells should be tied to something. A memory. A feeling. A person.

  Nearly all of mine were.

  Each of my incantations carried the name of someone I loved — or one of Grandpa Prosic’s old allies.

  When I’d explained that to Sandy, she’d looked horrified.

  “You know that could be taboo in some circles, right?” she’d said.

  Maybe it was.

  I didn’t care.

  Vyxis was a Thu’nul. Fire barely touched his kind. And besides… there was another, admittedly embarrassing reason.

  The short time I met him, he had lit up the room.

  That was the connection.

  The little flame in my hand flickered brighter as the memory of that night rose in me — Vyxis, Tristan, Xar’kul, Ed… Prosic at their center. Brothers in everything but blood.

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  I wondered where they were now.

  Fighting bandits? Slaying horrors? Sitting around a campfire somewhere beyond the borders of Lindor, arguing about whose turn it was to cook?

  The flame swelled for a brief moment at the thought.

  Father Tilden had spoken of that night many times. It hadn’t been without tragedy. During the battle with Tar’Tesh, protective sigils painted along the walls had been washed away. Two Kenith’La’Quil elves — lodged in a chamber too close to the confrontation — had lost their lives.

  He never gave me details.

  He didn’t have to.

  The weight of it lived in his eyes whenever he spoke of it.

  But my questions were always about them — the five who stayed with me by the brazier, who told stories until I slept.

  Bruno had told me little. Only that they would return someday.

  “And they’d be fools not to take you along when they do,” he once muttered with a wink.

  That part was a secret between him and Prosic.

  I planned to ask.

  When they came back, I would ask to join them.

  That certainty had once felt bold.

  Now it felt heavy.

  I was struggling in my training. Healing had stalled. My tracking lagged behind. The Guild barely knew my name.

  And the strangest part?

  No one else seemed to know theirs.

  Over the years, I’d grown close to the Draughts. I’d asked them about Prosic’s allies more than once. They thought I was making the group up.

  It infuriated me.

  These were men who had faced cave trolls and creatures of lycanthropy. They had bled for Lindor.

  Their names should be sung.

  Instead, it was as if they had never existed.

  The corridor narrowed as I slipped around a fallen doorframe. Repairs in this section of the Wall had clearly been neglected. Loose mortar crumbled underfoot. But the charcoal dust scattered along the floor told me someone had at least tried to keep the damp at bay — an old trick to absorb moisture in the lower levels.

  Tee Tee chirped softly, uneasy.

  I reached up and stroked his tail.

  “Almost there, bud.”

  The little flame hovered obediently in my palm as I reached the staircase leading up toward the Winterwall living quarters.

  I turned the old brass doorknob that led into the pantry.

  The door creaked open to a well-stocked, warmly scented room. Hints of barley and mint drifted through the air. My stomach growled in protest, unimpressed with the lonely cashews it had been given.

  I rang the small bell mounted beside the door. A soft symphony of distant chimes echoed through the stone halls — a quiet notification system for when someone entered from one of the not-so-secret entrances.

  I placed Danni’s basket carefully on a shelf before moving through the inner door.

  “Greta? Annie?” I called, a sisterly grin already forming.

  Tiny footsteps pattered across stone.

  I stood in their kitchen and dining area — a cozy space carved into the Wall. A stone hearth glowed softly, small cauldrons and pans hanging neatly above it. An old wooden table meant for six was cluttered with papers and charcoal drawings.

  Annie’s work.

  The footsteps grew louder, and I turned toward the living quarters just as she burst around the corner.

  She was barely three feet tall and looked so much like her mother it made my chest ache sometimes. Slim for a dwarven girl, with dark curls bouncing wildly around her head like vines trying to escape. Her wide brown eyes locked onto me, and she launched herself forward.

  “Benson!” she squealed.

  I knelt just in time to catch her.

  She pulled back to beam at me, and there they were — Prosic’s eyes. The same spark.

  She was technically half-dwarf; her father was human. One day she would tower over her mother. But right now, she was all small limbs and oversized excitement, still dressed in the pajamas she’d likely woken up in.

  “You excited for the sleepover, Pidge?” I asked.

  “So ready!” she declared, practically vibrating.

  Another figure emerged from the hallway.

  Ol’ Greta.

  To put it simply, she was Melrose’s beloved “old hag.” She could have been sixty. She could have been a hundred. With liver spots and deep wrinkles, it was impossible to tell. But she was one of the kindest women in the city and the unofficial caretaker of half its children.

  She wore a long tan cloak and a familiar head wrap covering what little hair she had left. A children’s book rested in her hands — a raccoon man holding a wrench on the cover.

  “All good, then? I’ll be off, Benethasia,” she said in her tired but steady voice.

  “Yes, Greta. I’ll take it from here.”

  I looked down at Annie. “Say goodbye.”

  “Thank you, Greta! Have a good night!” Annie chirped.

  Greta smiled warmly, waved once, and disappeared down the corridor.

  Before I could ask Annie what she wanted to do, she grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the cluttered table. Tee Tee chirped indignantly at the sudden movement.

  “I made one for you!” she announced. “Poppi helped with some of it, but I wanna make sure it’s good enough.”

  “A gift? It’s not my birthday!” I teased.

  She scrambled up onto a chair — clearly modified with extra wooden pegs to give her height — and began frantically shuffling through the stack of papers.

  When she found it, she shoved the drawing toward me with all the seriousness of a royal presentation.

  My heart melted.

  It wasn’t a good drawing — not by any objective standard.

  On the left was a crude figure that was apparently me. Two straight lines for hair. An enormous smiling face. Over-saturated colors. Tee Tee perched on my shoulder, colored brown instead of his proper reddish hue.

  Next to me stood “Poppi” Prosic — young, brown-bearded, wearing armor I had never actually seen him wear. A shield in one hand. A hammer in the other.

  Beside him was what had to be Tristan — grey armor, angry eyebrows, one arm disproportionately raised with a sword.

  Then Vyxis, holding what looked like a guitar… or maybe a violin. Cartoon musical notes floated around him.

  Her attempt at Xar’kul might have been my favorite. She clearly didn’t know how to draw a dragon’s snout, so he looked more like an overgrown bird-man. But the staff in his clawed hand was surprisingly detailed.

  And finally, Ed — who looked like a Red Post soldier with the most outrageous curly mustache imaginable.

  Above them all, in large crooked letters, it read:

  Benson’s Briqade

  All the E’s and S’s were backward. The G was definitely a Q.

  But it was perfect.

  Warmth spread through me. The stories Prosic had told me my whole childhood… they had already begun passing down to her. And Prosic, in his mischievous way, had started weaving me into them.

  I smiled wide and lifted the drawing carefully.

  “This,” I said solemnly, “is without a doubt the best gift anyone has ever given me. Thank you, Pidge. It’s beautiful.”

  She looked like she had just been knighted.

  I truly loved that little girl.

  Last year, Anastasia and Doug had asked if I would be Annie’s sponsor — an unwritten oath to protect her should anything ever happen to them.

  I had agreed instantly.

  Annie began speaking at a mile a minute, explaining every detail of the drawing — who was winning, who was casting spells, how Tee Tee saved the day twice. I listened patiently, smiling, letting her live in the moment.

  For a few minutes, in that warm stone room beneath the rain-soaked city, I wasn’t a struggling ranger or a doubtful cleric.

  I was her hero.