Salt came first.
Soft, nothing like the acrid reek of the temple that smelled of the ashes of others' lives. The salt smelled of the sea and had soaked into everything: the air, the hide, the furs upon which Marak lay. Then came the scent of fish boiled with herbs, and smoke tinged with the bitterness of seaweed. Somewhere far beyond the tent walls, the sea mumbled steadily — a heavy, unbroken sound, as though the earth itself were breathing in its sleep.
Marak opened his eyes.
A ceiling of stitched hides — the seams crooked, yet strong. A skilled hand had worked them. The walls were covered with shells and large fish bones that knocked dully against one another in the draft, like timid bells. At the far wall, a small hearth burned, casting reddish flickers across the furs.
He tried to sit up, but his arms would not obey. Wrapped in bandages to the elbows, they throbbed with a dull ache, as if someone had packed them with hot sand. His legs felt distant, barely his own. In his mouth lingered the metallic taste of blood or medicine — perhaps both.
— Lie down.
The voice came from the right — calm, without intonation, like an order spoken so many times it had ceased to be an order and become a simple fact.
Marak turned his head.
An orc sat beside him, old but not frail. His skin was grey, not green like the orcs Marak had known before, but faded, like an old log cast upon the shore. His hair was pale, his eyes dark as a storm-laden sky. A large knife hung at his belt, plainly visible — displayed there with deliberate intent.
The old one was grinding something in a stone mortar, slow and measured, without looking at Marak.
— Where am I? — The hoarse words came with difficulty. His voice had been worn thin by hunger and sleepless nights in the snow.
— Among the Vorgars, — the old orc replied, continuing his work without raising his eyes.
The word meant nothing to him. Marak had never heard it before — not in the temple, nor in settlements, nor on campaign.
He tried to rise again, slower, more cautiously. But when he braced himself, his arms buckled, and he fell back onto the furs, breathing heavily.
— Frostbite, — the old one said at last, rising and taking up a wooden bowl, which he handed to Marak. The liquid within was cloudy and smelled bitter. — Stand now, and you will lose your fingers. Drink.
Marak took the bowl in trembling hands and swallowed in one long draught. The taste was foul, worse than any remedy of the temple. Warmth spread through his body at once, driving out the cold lodged deep within his bones.
The old orc took the bowl back and set it aside without a word.
— What will happen to me?
— The captain will decide.
— When?
— When you recover. Or die.
The old one gathered the herbs into a leather pouch, without wasted motion. He slung it over his shoulder and moved toward the exit. At the entry, he paused briefly and, without turning, said:
— My name is Torgal. Do not rise, and do not run. There are guards outside.
He left.
Marak remained alone. Furs beneath his back. A bowl of water by his head. A piece of bread upon a wooden board. Nothing else. Not even a cloak. His status was clear without words — not a guest, but a prisoner. He lay and listened to the distant sound of the sea.
Food was brought in the evening. A young Vorgar woman with fair hair braided into a long plait set down a bowl and left swiftly, without looking at him.
Boiled fish. Porridge with seaweed — strange in taste, slightly bitter, yet filling and dense. The bread was hard and salty, nothing like that of the temple.
Marak ate slowly and carefully: his fingers ached with every movement, the skin cracked and bleeding beneath the bandages. When the bowl was empty, he tried to stand. His legs held — barely, trembling under his weight, yet they held. He made his way to the tent wall and leaned heavily against the pole supporting the hides.
“Weak.”
In the temple, such weakness earned a beating. Rosheek did not forgive weakness, neither of the body nor of that which lived within and was harder to conceal.
Marak clenched his fists. Pain flared, and he slowly forced his fingers open again.
“No longer a monk.”
Darkness fell outside. The voices of the Vorgars around the fire sounded calm and even. Someone began to sing in a low voice — a melody mournful and lingering, like the surf. Marak did not understand the words, but he felt their mood, and soon fell asleep to that song.
The third day among the Vorgars.
Torgal came at dawn. He unwound the bandages, examined the skin carefully, pressed on the fingers, and nodded with approval.
— You heal quickly. Strong body.
Marak watched the sure, practised movements with which the old orc bound fresh cloth around his arms.
— Pa’agrio teaches to break the body for strength. We learned to preserve it, for without the body there is no strength, and a broken tool does not serve.
— How do you preserve it?
— Experience. Hundreds of years at sea. The sea forgives no mistakes, neither great nor small. A weak body dies quickly. We learned to hear it before it begins to scream.
Torgal slung the pouch over his shoulder and moved toward the exit. As yesterday, he paused briefly at the entrance.
— You renounced Pa’agrio. That is why you live.
The words settled slowly, like dust after a collapse. The Vorgars had lived without Pa’agrio for hundreds of years, which meant the god was not the only pillar. One could be strong without him. But how does one live without faith, without purpose, without a bearing? There was no answer.
By midday, a guard entered the tent. Marak recognised him — this was the orc who had found him in the snow. Large, broad-shouldered, with an old scar across his neck. The orc gestured toward the exit.
— If you need to relieve yourself, I’ll escort you. Call me Grok. — He did not wait for a reply and strode ahead.
Marak rose, feeling steadier on his legs than yesterday. He drew back the tent flap and paused.
The tents stood in a semicircle among ruins — ancient stone walls worn by time, their roofs collapsed inward. A fire burned at the centre, around which Vorgars sat sharpening weapons, mending nets, speaking quietly. Two children, no older than five, darted between the tents, shouting to one another and laughing.
Marak did not move further. He stood and watched.
There were no children in the temple. Eleven-year-old boys were taken from settlements and raised in barracks. Apart from families, apart from warriors, apart from life. The system was strict: first childhood, then service. Here, an old man shaved the shaft of a spear while a small child sat at his feet, watching intently as a weapon was born from a piece of wood. No one drove him away. No one said it was not for children’s eyes.
A family, not an army.
By the fire, a woman mended a fishing net. Nearby, another woman sharpened flint arrowheads, and the bow at her feet seemed an extension of her — adorned with the same shells woven into her hair. Here, women bore weapons as equals.
Something within Marak shifted slowly and heavily, like ancient snow preparing to fall in an avalanche from a mountain slope. In the temple, there were no women. Pa’agrio was a god of male strength, of fire and war. Women bore warriors, raised them, and delivered them to the temple — and there their role ended. So it had been, so it was right, so it had always been. Marak had never questioned it.
One of the Vorgars turned, and Marak saw the bow upon his back. Strong and curved, it hung openly, like a sword — a weapon of honour worn with pride. Marak closed his eyes and opened them again. The bow was still there.
For nine years, he had been taught that it was a weapon of shame. The arm of the weak and the coward, of those afraid to meet an enemy’s gaze. Yet this orc wore it without disgrace, and none looked upon him with contempt. Something important within Marak gave way quietly — like a tall tree cut at its base, slowly falling to earth. For nine years, he had believed in unshakeable foundations. In a single instant, they collapsed.
At the edge of the camp stood a wooden pillar, thrice his height. Carved waves and spirals wound along it, fish with open mouths, and at the summit — a bird or sea-creature with outstretched wings. Care and strength were felt in every line that had shaped it. It marked the territory: we live here, and this place is ours.
Marak looked at the pillar and felt no fear. The Eternal Fire of Pa’agrio had burned within, demanded, forced guilt for every improper thought, every doubt. This pillar demanded nothing. It simply stood, visible from any point in the camp. The only landmark among scattered tents.
— Enough, — Grok nudged his shoulder. — Do what you must and return.
Marak nodded and moved behind the tents. The Vorgars watched him in silence. Without open hostility, yet without warmth. A stranger. A mainlander. A monk of Pa’agrio.
When he returned, Grok escorted him back to the tent. For the rest of the day, Marak sat, reflecting upon what he had seen. Children grow up among warriors and learning from them. Women bearing weapons as equals. Vorgars wearing bows openly, without shame. They simply lived — for hundreds of years without a god — and still survived, became strong.
“So… it is possible. So… there is a path.”
The fourth day among the Vorgars.
Marak woke to singing.
Around the pillar at the centre of the camp stood a circle of Vorgars — twenty, perhaps more: men, women, older children. Before them stood an old man with a grey beard woven with shells and fish vertebrae. He raised his hands toward the low grey clouds and sang in a hoarse, low voice:
A thousand years ago, we left…
All joined him — voices merging into a single hum, not a choir but a dense, vibrating current:
Paagrio burned — we chose the sea… Fire broke us — the waves teach us to bend… We are excited. The sea — our home.
They sang the words three times, slow and solemn, then fell silent. No grand speeches, no ritual — only a quiet reminder of who they were. Each returned to their tasks as though nothing happened.
Marak stood still at the entrance to the tent.
They had renounced the fire of Pa’agrio and chosen the sea. No god had saved them, no miracle had spared them from his will — they had left of their own choosing, when all around demanded obedience. Hundreds of years ago. And he, Marak — only yesterday.
— I am not the first.
For the first time since fleeing the temple, the emptiness within receded. In its place came neither joy nor hope — but certainty, unshakable as rock. Someone had walked this path before and survived. Lives. Breathes air that smells of the sea. And each morning sings of that choice.
Means he also can.
When Grok came at midday, Marak was still thinking about the Vorgars’ song.
— The captain calls.
They walked through the camp, past fires and tight tents, past Vorgars busy with their work. Eyes followed Marak — heavy, clinging. Someone spat in his direction. Whether it was a sign of contempt or merely a superstitious gesture was unclear.
A young Vorgar stepped forward, blocking the path. Broad-shouldered, his hard face marked by a scar. Grok raised a hand.
— Skeld. Not now.
The young orc looked at Marak with undisguised hatred.
— Monk.
Marak said nothing.
— How many villages did you burn? — His voice was quiet and level, more frightening than a shout.
— I am no longer a monk.
— Words are cheap. — Skeld stepped closer and swung straight at his face.
Instinct moved faster than thought: Marak slipped left, blocked with his forearm — the blow glanced aside. Skeld struck again, this time to the chest. Marak blocked once more, yet did not answer. That restraint angered Skeld more than resistance would have, and he lunged again.
— Enough!
A sharp female voice crashed down upon them. Both froze.
A woman emerged from the large tent.
The first thing Marak realised: a woman. The second — that she was the captain and commanded men. By the laws of the temple, that was unthinkable. Here, it was a fact, as undeniable as the sun rising in the morning.
She approached, and in every step there was assurance and strength.
Grey skin with a bluish hue, like all Vorgars. Pale hair braided into a thick plait adorned with shells and metal rings. When she turned her head, numerous earrings chimed softly.
Her body bore the marks of a lived life: a web of fine scars covered her neck, and a thick scar running from her eyebrow to her cheek crossed her left eye, standing out against her skin.
Her left shoulder was guarded by a heavy pauldron, scratched and dented. Her leather armour, reinforced with rivets, fitted close to her chest.
As she came nearer, eyes the colour of storm-clouds studied Marak closely. When she spoke, sharp lower tusks flashed between her lips.
— Skeld.
She stepped between them and regarded the young Vorgar for a moment. There was no anger in her gaze, yet it remained firm and unyielding.
— I understand you. But he is my prisoner, not your prey.
Skeld breathed heavily, fists clenched.
— The monks killed...
— I know. That does not give you the right. Step back.
He held her gaze, then slowly turned his eyes to Marak. In them burned a promise: “We will meet again”. Without another word, he turned and left.
The woman faced Marak once more.
— Follow me.
She moved toward the large tent, and Marak followed, feeling the weight of the Vorgars' stares upon his back.
The woman drew back the flap and stepped inside, then turned and gestured for him to enter. Marak stepped into the tent, feeling a tight anxiety constricting his shoulders and back.
Inside, the air was warmer. A strong hearth burned at the centre. Against one wall stood a wooden table fashioned from broken planks. Upon it, covered with a hide, lay a map. Weapons adorned the walls — bows, spears, knives.
— My name is Dragan. I command this camp.
She stepped to the table and pointed to the floor in front of her.
Followed by habit, Marak sat, straightened his back, and placed his hands upon his knees.
A faint smile touched the corner of Dragan’s mouth.
— The Temple of Fire teaches fine discipline.
She circled him slowly, studying him as though weighing what to do. Marak remained still, not turning his head.
— Marak. — She said, stopping in front of him.
— Yes.
— Where are you from?
— The Temple of Pa’agrio.
— A monk.
It was not a question.
— Was.
Dragan returned to the table, poured water from a jug, and took a swift drink.
— Why did you flee?
Marak spoke briefly, without embellishment: of Grey Brook, of the dead infant in his arms, of Bone Spear who had slain his family, of the order to butcher a village and his refusal, and the breakout that followed.
Dragan listened without approval or condemnation. When he finished, she set the cup down softly.
— Bone Spear killed your clan.
— Yes.
— You could have taken revenge. Slaughtered their village.
— I could.
— But you did not. — She stepped over to the map and spread it out fully. — Why?
Marak met her eyes.
— The children were not guilty.
Dragan gave a short nod, as if satisfied, and pointed to a mark on the map.
— Look.
Marak rose and approached. The coastline, plains, and mountains were marked in charcoal and red, along with unfamiliar signs.
She touched one point.
— We are here. Five years ago, a storm cast us upon these shores. The Storm of Oblivion raged for three days, smashing ships against the rocks and taking our warriors.
She turned from the map, her gaze drifting beyond him.
— I awoke on the shore among bodies. Around me lay those I had grown up with, trained with, sailed with. We buried a hundred in the first week. — Her voice softened, like a storm receding. — Only those who learned to bend survived. The sea does not forgive obstinacy.
She poured a second cup and handed it to Marak.
— Drink.
It was cold water with a faint taste of salt.
— Your temple, — she said, touching a point farther south, — sends monks from here each year. They burn villages, kill, and plunder. Three years ago, they attacked ours. Twenty-three Vorgars died.
Marak tensed.
Dragan slowly traced the rim of her cup.
— Among them was Skeld’s mother. And his little brother.
Marak lowered his gaze.
— I was not there.
— I know. You are still young. — She set the cup aside. — But you would have come in a few years, had you been ordered. Wouldn’t you?
Marak paused for a moment, then answered honestly.
— Yes. If I had been ordered...
— Because you are a monk.
— Was.
Dragan removed a bow from the wall and laid it upon the table before him.
— This is the weapon of the Vorgars.
She crossed her arms.
— A thousand years ago, we renounced Pa’agrio and chose freedom and the sea. — She plucked the string. It sang beneath her fingers. — Pa’agrio demanded blood upon the hands: kill the enemy up close, look into his eyes, feel his death. The sea taught us to kill at a distance.
She looked at him.
— In your temple, they teach that the bow is a coward’s weapon.
— So my master said.
She gave a faint, sorrowful smile.
— Fools. To kill in close combat is easy: fury guides the hand, blood boils, the body moves of its own accord. To kill at a distance is harder. It requires focus, a clear mind, and a steady hand. You must choose the moment, rather than let rage choose for you. Monks strike with fists because it is simple.
She stepped closer to Marak as she spoke.
— We shoot because it is effective. A warrior’s purpose is not to feel the enemy’s death in his hands, but to kill and remain alive. That is not cowardice. It is wisdom.
She lifted the bow and handed it to him.
Marak studied it in silence. For nine years, he had been taught it was a weapon of shame. The Vorgars had used it for a thousand years without god and without disgrace — and survived.
Dragan returned to the table.
— You exited the Pa’agrio. Good. But exiting does not mean arriving. You are an outsider. How am I to be confident you are not a spy?
Marak opened his mouth — and closed it. He could not be certain. His words meant nothing.
— Exactly. Anyone can speak.
She paced the tent.
— For three days, we watched you. You did not attack, did not attempt to flee. You stayed quiet, accepting treatment. Skeld provoked you, yet you did not strike back. — She walked over to the wall lined with weapons and turned around. — Krag, as ever, speaks in riddles: says you are caught between fire and sea. You will find a path or drown. He is usually right, though his words seem strange.
She stepped close and met his eyes.
— I have made my decision. You may stay.
Marak exhaled, only then realising he had been holding his breath.
— Listen to the end. — She raised a hand. — You will be neither guest nor prisoner. You will become one of us. You will share our life, our work, our dangers. If the camp is attacked, you defend it. If we hunt, you go. If someone is wounded, you help. Do you understand?
— Yes.
— And more. You came from Pa’agrio. All your life, you were taught only one thing: fire, destruction, pain through force. If you wish to live among us, you will prove you can learn differently.
— How?
— Three trials. Each will show whether you are ready to release the old and accept the new. The first — a hunt. You will bring down game for the camp not with your hands, but with a bow, as a Vorgar.
Marak flinched.
— I do not know how.
— You will learn.
Her indifference sent a chill along his spine.
— …Or you will die. The beast does not care.
— The second?
Dragan returned to the table and traced her finger along the drawn line of the sea.
— Humility. A night upon the shore. Alone — no weapon, food, or fire. Pa’agrio shouts commands. The sea whispers lessons. To hear it, you need sharp ears.
— And the third?
She smiled faintly.
— I will tell you when you pass the first two. If you pass them. Refuse — and you leave for the snows. You will be given food for three days, clothing, a knife, and directions to the nearest village.
— And if I succeed?
Dragan regarded him thoughtfully.
— You will become one of us. A Vorgar not by blood…
She turned toward the window covered with translucent fish-skin.
— A brother by choice. That matters more. Blood is chance — you do not choose where or to whom you are born. Choice is fate. You choose who you are.
She faced him. Her white tusks glinted in the firelight.
— A monk or a free man. A slave of fire — or a son of the sea.
Thoughts whirled in Marak’s mind.
Behind him — the temple. If he returned, execution awaited. Ahead — the snows, and likely death, cold and swift. Here — the Vorgars, the only chance. And Reni in his memory: alive, smiling, saying, — Go. Do not be afraid.
— I agree.
Dragan inclined her head.
— Go. Grok will escort you.
Marak rose, set the bow upon the table, and turned to leave — but paused at the entry.
— Thank you.
She stood with her back to him, studying the map.
— Do not thank me. I have not yet decided whether I acted rightly. We shall see. If you live, then I was right. If you die, then I wasted my time.
The wind drove snow between the tents. The sun dipped toward the horizon, staining the sky in orange and rose, utterly indifferent to earthly cares.
Grok waited outside.
— Well?
— I must pass Three Trials to stay.
The taciturn Vorgar nodded.
— Good. She gave you a chance. Do not ruin it.
He extended his hand — not for a handshake, but in some Vorgar gesture. Marak hesitated, unsure how to respond. Grok lowered his hand and smirked.
— I found you in the snow and dragged you here. Thought you’d die on the way.
He clapped Marak’s shoulder.
— Do not thank me. If you die, I’ll regret hauling you.
With a thoughtful glance, he turned and left.
Marak looked up at the sky. One by one, stars appeared — bright, cold, distant. For the first time since fleeing the temple, he felt hope — faint, uncertain, yet warming.
Evening settled upon the camp. Vorgars gathered by the fires — mending nets, sharpening weapons, talking. The air was rich with the scents of food, smoke, and sea.
Marak approached the carved pillar at the centre. Waves and fish, the winged figure above with outstretched wings. Shells chimed softly in the wind. The scent was strange — rot, herbs, something unfamiliar. From somewhere to the right came a low mumble.
He turned.
At the edge of the camp, beside a half-ruined hut of shipwreck planks, a thin stream of smoke rose. Around it lay amulets, bones, shells, and unrecognisable objects. An old man sat at the entrance — gaunt, bent, his face marked with strange sores. He fingered amulets one by one as if counting them, lips moving soundlessly.
Marak stopped a few paces away.
The old man lifted his head. His gaze was empty, as though he looked through Marak at something unseen.
— The voices spoke, — came a whisper, like wind through stone fissures. — Someone would come.
Marak did not answer.
The old man tilted his head, listening to something inaudible.
— Stuck. There, beneath the stone… do you hear?
Marak listened. Wind between tents. Fires crackling. Distant voices.
— No. I hear nothing.
— They scream.
Slowly, the old man turned toward the mountain, where dark openings of old mines gaped.
— They crawl out. Through the cracks.
He moved another amulet to his ear.
— I seal them. But there are many. Too many.
He set the amulet down, staring into emptiness. Then suddenly, he looked at Marak.
— You are stuck as well. Between fire and sea. Not there. Not here.
He rose slowly and shuffled toward the hut.
— The voices say… You will find a path.
He vanished inside. From the darkness came his calm voice:
— Or you will drown.
Marak stood, unsettled. Who screamed beneath the earth? The shaman’s words were obscure, yet heavy, like a coming storm.
Grok emerged from behind the hut.
— That is Krag, our shaman. Strange, but useful. If he speaks — listen. Meaning comes later. Come, you need food. You can barely stand.
Marak nodded and cast one last glance at the hut. Smoke still curled into the evening sky.
Night fell upon the camp.
Marak lay awake, listening. Far off, Vorgars sang — the words lost in darkness, leaving only the melody, steady and deep as river waves.
He closed his eyes and saw Reni — alive, smiling.
“Go. Do not be afraid.”
He opened his eyes.
Nearby, Dragan’s voice carried: calm, assured, issuing orders as one accustomed to command in battle.
A hunt with a bow awaited him. In the temple, the bow was the weapon of cowards. Among the Vorgars, the tool of the wise. Marak did not yet know which truth was real. But he would learn.
He turned onto his side and peered through the narrow gap between the tent flaps. Through it, he could see the pillar, a figure atop it spreading its wings over the sleeping camp, as though guarding those within. Shells chimed in the wind, soft and unhurried, as if time did not exist here.
He watched the winged figure, listened to the singing and the measured clatter of shells, until his eyelids lowered of their own accord. For the first time in many days, he slept without nightmares.
He dreamed of the sea.
The fifth day among the Vorgars.
Dragan found Grok by the fire while the camp still slept. He sat alone, sharpening a knife with slow, measured strokes, as though it were part of a morning ritual. The air was quiet, broken only by the faint crackle of embers and the soft whisper of wind.
She approached without greeting, calm and assured, as if speaking to him were a natural continuation of the dawn. Grok did not turn, yet there was a shared readiness in the air.
— The orc from the temple, — she said. — I want you to take him.
Grok lifted his gaze from the blade and regarded her in silence.
— He can barely stand.
— He stands well enough to hunt.
— My condition, — Grok said, sliding the knife into its sheath. — No less than a week. And I decide when he’s ready for the beast. Not you, not Skeld, not the council. I teach — I decide.
Dragan nodded, as though she had expected nothing less.
— Agreed.
She disappeared into the pre-dawn gloom. Grok drained his flask without haste, rose, brushed the snow from his cloak, and went to wake Marak.
It was barely light outside when a kick to his side brought Marak upright before he had fully remembered he had been asleep. The kick was light — the way one wakes those who are not meant to linger in furs.
— Up. Time to learn.
Marak rose. His body answered with a dull, spreading ache — deep and heavy, but no longer sharp as it had been three days earlier. The frostbite was retreating, leaving behind itch and tight skin. He clenched and unclenched his fists, testing his fingers.
— Now? — His voice came out hoarse.
— Now.
Grok pulled aside the tent flap, and cold air flooded in.
— You have a week. Then the hunt — if I decide you’re ready. The beast won’t wait for you to sleep.
Outside, the camp was stirring. Smoke climbed above the fires. Vorgars stepped from their tents and stretched, unhurried, accustomed to the morning chill. The smell of porridge mingled with fish. Somewhere, a blade scraped rhythmically against stone.
Grok handed him a piece of bread and a flask.
— Eat fast. There won’t be a second breakfast.
Marak tore at the hard crust with his teeth and washed it down with icy water tasting faintly of metal. The cold tightened his stomach, his body woke reluctantly, every movement heavy.
— Come, — Grok said when Marak finished.
The training ground lay between two crumbling walls of some ancient structure. Moss and frost clung to the stones. The walls broke the wind, and here it was almost still. Targets stood at varying distances — bundles of hay bound with rope and fixed to wooden stakes. The nearest at twenty paces, the farthest fading into the pale morning gloom.
A wooden rack held several bows. Grok chose one, strung it, and handed it to Marak without explanation.
Marak accepted it with both hands. The polished wood gleamed softly in the light. The grip was darkened by sweat and years. It felt alien — a thing shaped for other hands.
Grok slung a quiver over his shoulder and took up his own bow.
— Watch and remember.
He set his stance, squared his shoulders, and raised the bow. An arrow was nocked. His elbow drew back slowly.
— Back straight. Elbow out. String to the chin.
He held for a breath — then released. The arrow struck the far target with a dull thud, quivering at its centre.
— Now you. Without an arrow first.
Marak hooked three fingers over the string and pulled. It did not yield. He forced it back further, muscles straining. The string bit into skin still tender from frostbite.
— To the chin, — Grok said evenly.
Marak drew until the string touched his chin. His back burned.
— Three breaths.
His arms trembled before he reached the third.
— Release.
The string snapped forward and lashed his forearm. Pain flared. He hissed and nearly dropped the bow.
Grok allowed himself the faintest smirk.
— Forgot to warn you. Turn the elbow. — He adjusted Marak’s arm. — Like that.
They tried again. This time the string passed cleanly.
— Better. Now shoot.
Grok showed him how to set the arrow to the string, how to hold it — three fingers, the index above, two below, firm but not clenched. The string must slide. Marak nocked the arrow, drew the bow, took aim at the nearest target twenty paces away, and released.
The arrow veered right and struck the ground.
— You jerked your hand, — Grok said. — Release smoothly.
The second arrow went left. The third — above the target. The fourth — low. On the fifth, Marak paused and looked at his fingers: the skin had reddened, in places split, a trace of blood showing through. Grok glanced at them, frowned, and pulled from his bag a set of leather finger guards, darkened with age.
— Put them on.
It helped. Marak shot again and again. Grok sat on a stone, fletching arrows, glancing up only occasionally. He neither hurried nor encouraged. His silence held no judgment — nothing like the silence of the temple.
After ten arrows, Marak’s shoulders burned as though nails were driven into them. Twenty paces — absurdly close; in the temple, he could strike a mark with a stone from such a distance. But the bow demanded something else. Not strength — control.
— Tired? — Grok asked.
— No.
Grok narrowed his eyes slightly, as if weighing his words, then nodded.
— Then shoot.
Marak set the arrow to the string, drew back — and heard a voice.
“The bow is a coward’s weapon.”
Drak. The teacher’s voice in his head — loud, scornful, as though he stood behind him and spoke straight into his ear.
“A true warrior looks into his enemy’s eyes. Feels bone break beneath his fists. And you hide behind wood and string like a wretched elf.”
His hands began to tremble. Marak gripped the bow tighter, but the shaking did not stop — his muscles twitched on their own, refusing to obey.
“You betrayed the temple. Betrayed Pa’agrio. Now you shoot like a coward.”
The arrow slipped from the string.
Marak stood with the bow drawn, unable to release: his arms had locked, his breathing faltered, his throat tightened. Grok rose from his stone and approached slowly, as one would a wounded beast that ought not be startled. He held his gaze on Marak’s face, studying it.
— You hear voices.
Not a question. He knew.
Marak nodded slowly, still unable to lower his arms. Grok helped him ease the string and took the bow from him. Setting the weapon on the ground, he pointed to the stone.
— Sit. Relax.
They sat side by side on the cold, frost-covered stone, silent, listening to the wind whistling between the rocky walls. Grok pulled out a flask, took a sip, and handed it to Marak. Marak drank — icy water burned his throat. In the distance, a bird cried out sharply, anxiously — and then fell silent.
— I heard voices too, — Grok said at last. “When I first came to the Vorgars.
Marak looked at him, startled.
— You’re not one of them?
— No. Born on the mainland.
Grok turned the flask in his hands.
— My clan served Tralg the Bloody Fang. Tralg demanded you kill the beast with your bare hands, prove your strength with your body, not weapons — spears and knives are for the weak. A true warrior strangles his prey, breaks its spine with his hands, tears its throat with his teeth.
He traced a scar on his neck with his palm. Wide, pale, stretching from ear to collarbone, the scar seemed to hold a memory of pain.
— That’s how I lived for fifteen years — strangling deer, snapping wolves’ necks, proud. Thought I was the best. Until I met a bear: huge, three times my height, weighing as much as ten men. I was a young fool, full of pride. I decided to strangle it with my bare hands, to prove I deserved to be Tralg’s warrior. The first swipe of its paw nearly killed me; the second tore my throat open. I lay there, choking on blood, thinking I was going to die.
Grok fell silent for a moment.
— At that moment, my brother Grol appeared with a spear and, in a single thrust, pierced the bear’s heart from ten paces. He saved me. I lay there while my brother bound my neck, and I thought: “Tralg is an idiot. A chief who demands killing with bare hands when there are spears — an idiot. He does not want hunters to survive: he wants them to die. To be proud, but dead.”
He looked Marak straight in the eyes.
— Smart men use tools: spears, bows, traps — whatever works. Because the goal is not to prove strength. The goal is to survive and feed your family.
Grok rose and brushed the snow from his cloak.
— As soon as the wound closed, I left the clan, and some time later, I met the Vorgars. They taught me to shoot. — He tapped the bow slung across his back. — Now I kill bears from sixty paces — quickly and safely, without a single needless scar.
His heavy hand tightened on Marak’s shoulder.
— Your teacher is dead to you, whether in body or not — that doesn’t matter. His voice is an echo. An old, useless echo.
Grok released his shoulder and sat down.
— You can listen to the echo of the past, or you can live. Choose.
He picked up the shaft and feathers again and went back to work, as if he had just said nothing important.
Marak sat, turning the words over in his mind. Drak is dead. Not in body — but to him, and his opinion means nothing now.
He rose, took the bow, and set an arrow to the string. Drak’s voice whispered again — quieter now, but still insistent.
“Coward. Weakling. Traitor.”
“Be silent — you are dead, and I am alive. I chose to live.”
Marak exhaled slowly, aimed at the target, and released the arrow. The arrow struck the very edge of the target. Not the centre, not even close to the centre — but it hit.
Grok lifted his head, looked at the target, then at Marak. He said nothing, only nodded and lowered his head back to his work.
For Marak, that was enough.
By midday, he was hitting three out of ten shots and five by evening. He had not become a master, but the progress was clear. His hands ached so badly his fingers could barely bend, his back burned, his shoulders throbbed with every movement, and his neck stiffened from the strain.
Grok came over and took the bow.
— That’s enough for today.
— I can keep going.
— No.
Grok unstrung the bow and set it back on the rack.
— If you overdo it now, tomorrow you won’t be able to lift your arms. Clean up.
He returned to the stone where he had been sitting. Gathering the fletched arrows from the day, Grok added without looking at Marak:
— Five out of ten is fine for the first day. Vargar's children train for a year before they reach that result.
It was not a compliment — just a fact. But from Grok’s mouth, those simple words sounded like praise.
They walked back to camp in silence, leaving the clearing and its mute targets behind. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, bleeding orange across the sky, and long shadows spilt from the ruins. Marak moved heavily, weariness settling into every muscle. Yet beneath the fatigue, something warm and vital flickered — a quiet, stubborn spark of pleasure. He had been striking the mark with a bow, the very weapon he had despised for nine long years.
The night camp grew quiet.
Marak lay in the tent on the furs, staring into the darkness. His arms and shoulders ached; sharp pain burned in his raw fingers with every movement. But it was a familiar pain — the pain of a living body engaged in work. Not the pain that remains after loss.
Marak closed his eyes and saw Grok sitting on the stone, fastening a feather to a shaft and speaking of the bear and of the brother with the spear. Of weapons. Of how the goal is to survive.
“Be silent — you are dead, and I am alive. I chose to live.”
He repeated the words until he fell asleep.
Sixth day with the Vorgars.
The next morning, Grok visited him again.
They went to the far end of the shore, where the wind blew more steadily, and there was no camp smoke, no children’s voices to distract. Grok set Marak before a target made of broken planks and, for a long time, watched him shoot in silence.
— Your hands, — he said at last. — You’re dropping your elbow. You’re pulling the bow toward yourself instead of simply releasing the string.
Marak tried to rework it. Grok shook his head, stepped closer, and adjusted his posture — with a single movement, he turned Marak’s elbow outward, shifted his shoulder, and Marak felt the tension spread more evenly, the fine tremor he had taken for fatigue disappear.
— Inhale — until half draw. Hold. Release the arrow — exhale. Not after. Together.
Grok stepped back.
— Again.
Marak shot again and again until his fingers burned beneath the leather guard. By midday, Grok stopped him, examined his hands, said nothing, and took a small leather pouch from his belt, tied with a cord.
— Before sleep, rub this on your fingers. All of them, not just the sore ones. — He handed the pouch to Marak. — Hella makes it. Fish oil and something else, I don’t know. Smells bad, but the skin heals fast.
Marak took the pouch. The salve smelled sharp and unpleasant. He thanked Grok and tucked the medicine inside his cloak.
— We continue, — Grok said, nodding toward the target.
The next day, Grok brought him to the shore again, but set the target differently: not in front of Marak, but to the side. He told him to shoot not standing still, but in motion — three steps forward, shot, three more steps, shot.
The first attempts failed: arrows flew wide. His body refused to move and hold aim at the same time. His legs broke his breathing, his breathing broke his hands. Grok watched in silence, and there was no judgment in that silence, only expectation.
— You’re looking at the target, — he said at one point. — Don’t look. Know where it is, and shoot. Eyes lie in motion.
Marak did not understand at once what that meant, but he tried — not focusing on the target, but knowing it was there, to the right and slightly ahead, and releasing the arrow without checking. The result was better. Not good, but better: the arrow struck the edge of the plank instead of vanishing into the stones.
By evening, five out of ten shots in motion were hitting the target one way or another, and Grok nodded in approval as they walked back to camp.
The salve truly helped: the fingers torn into bloody blisters on the first day of training began to heal more quickly. The skin beneath no longer burned when he drew the string, only stretched — and it was a good pain, a working pain, the kind one could grow used to.
Eighth day with the Vorgars.
On the third day, Grok brought a rope and a wooden log wrapped in burlap. He hung it from the rope between two stakes driven into the ground and set it swinging. The log moved from side to side, slow and steady, and Grok told Marak to shoot at it without stopping.
The first hour was exhausting. Marak shot where the log was — and missed, because by the time the arrow flew, the target had already moved. Grok explained once, briefly: you must shoot where the target will be, not where it is. Marak tried for a long time to catch that moment — to guess the meeting point, to account for speed, angle, distance. Each time he missed by a little, fell short of the right instant by a breath.
At some point, he stopped thinking. He was simply tired — too much to carry in his head at once. He let his thoughts slip away the way he had let his gaze slip the day before, when he stopped staring straight at the target. He just watched the log, the steady rhythm of its swing. He felt that rhythm as something alive — like breathing, like the pulse of a wave. And when he drew the string again, he loosed the arrow not at his mind’s command, but in answer to some other, deeper signal.
The arrow struck the log with a dull wooden thud.
Marak lowered the bow and watched the arrow quivering in the swaying wood. Then he lifted the next arrow, found that same deep signal — and struck again. Not every time, not even every other time, but he struck, and each hit was not an accident, but something he was forming to understand.
When the sun began to sink toward the horizon, Grok ended the training. He took down the log bristling with arrows, coiled the rope, and they walked back to the camp.
By the fire, Skeld was waiting for them. He sat with two other Vorgars, sharpening a knife, drawing the blade across the stone with a harsh, grating sound, slow and deliberate.
— Hey, monk. Learning to shoot?
— Yes, — Marak answered calmly.
— And how is it going? Do you hit anything at all? — Skeld dragged the knife across the stone again. — Or is it all wide?
— Sometimes I hit.
— Sometimes. — Skeld rose and stepped forward three paces, exactly to the edge where presence becomes threat. — Vorgar children hit every time from twenty steps. Every time, without exception. And you, a monk with nine years of training, sometimes.
— They’ve trained since birth, — Marak said. — I’ve trained for three days.
Skeld paused as if weighing the answer. Something sharp flickered in his eyes.
— Do you know what you’ll be hunting? — His voice dropped, almost ominous. — An ice wolf. Fast. Dangerous. It snaps a spine in one bite like a dry twig. Miss, or fail to kill it with one shot, and it will tear you apart while you’re setting your second arrow.
He smiled coldly.
— I’ll watch you die, monk. And I’ll savour every second. Because monks killed my family three years ago. My mother and my younger brother. Burned our house at night while they slept. — His voice hardened. — You weren’t there, I know that. You’re still young. But if the temple had ordered it, would you have gone?
Marak was silent for a moment. Then he answered quietly:
— Then — yes. I would have.
— Exactly. — Skeld returned to the fire. — Die on the hunt, monk. It will be just.
He sat and resumed sharpening the knife, making it clear the conversation was over.
Grok touched Marak’s elbow and drew him aside.
— Don’t listen. Skeld is angry, but he’s not a fool — he won’t interfere. Dragan forbade it.
He paused, then added more quietly:
— His family. That part is true. Remember that when you feel like answering him.
Marak nodded. The words lodged in his mind like a splinter — small, but felt with every movement.
At sunset, as the campfires flared and the Vorgars gathered for their evening meal, Marak walked to the shore, sat on a stone at the water’s edge, and watched the sea. Today it was calm. The waves came and went — small and lazy. On the horizon, the sky shifted from orange to deep blue, and the first stars were already piercing through the darkening expanse.
Quietly, Grok settled down beside him. He sat, stretched out his legs, and remained silent. Marak didn’t turn to look — he simply knew it was him, just as he had begun to sense the location of a moving target without looking.
They sat silent for a long while. The sea muttered low and steady. Somewhere in the camp, someone laughed, and the scent of fried fish drifted on the wind. Beneath the old bandages, Marak’s fingers no longer burned — they only throbbed dully. It was bearable, almost comforting, like the familiar ache in a muscle after a good day’s work.
— Did they ever praise you at the temple? — Grok finally asked.
— Rarely. Only if there was a reason.
— Today, there was a reason, — Grok said evenly, without inflexion, gazing at the water. — You stopped thinking and started listening. That’s harder than hitting a target.
Marak said nothing. Words would have been unnecessary.
After some time, Grok rose silently and returned to the camp. Marak remained, watching the horizon fade, the sea grow dark and calm, and for the first time since he had arrived, he thought neither of the temple, nor of what had come before, nor of the trials that awaited him. He simply sat, feeling the dull, familiar fatigue in his hands after a good work, and sensed that somewhere deep within, not outside, but truly inside, something had finally stopped worrying and fallen quiet.
Not the peace of resignation — that which comes when one ceases to resist. Something else, firmer: the peace of someone who knows their skill and needs no validation.
The ninth day among the Vorgars.
Grok woke him early — a sharp, precise kick to the side.
— Up. Time to hunt.
— You said a week, — Marak muttered, pulling on his cloak.
— I did. — Grok stood at the tent flap, already dressed, bow over his shoulder. — But I watch. I don’t count days. Today you hunt with me — next lesson. You’ll see what it is to shoot at living flesh. Learn or die.
He paused, then added in the same tone he had once used when speaking of the bear:
— I’ll be there.
Marak stepped out into the cold. The sky was still dark, only a faint band of blue in the east — that hour when night is leaving but day has not yet arrived. Wind lashed his face with needles of snow.
Grok waited by a melting fire. The gear lay ready: bow, quiver, knife in sheath, coil of rope.
— Ten arrows. If that’s not enough, you’re dead.
He handed Marak a strip of smoked meat, hard and reeking of ash.
— Eat. We move.
Marak chewed quickly while Grok checked the equipment with swift, well-trained movements — tightening straps, testing the string, selecting arrows.
— Ready?
— Yes.
— Then walk. And be silent. Beasts hear better than you think. You still move like a monk, not a hunter.
They went silent — Grok ahead, stepping lightly, almost without sound. Marak followed, placing his boots where Grok’s had pressed the snow, avoiding brittle branches. The snow still crunched beneath him, but Grok did not turn.
Soon, the camp was far behind, swallowed by trees. Bare branches clawed at the sky like drowning hands. Snow lay deep between trunks, forcing them to choose each step.
Grok halted at a drift and crouched. Marak joined him: tracks, large, with claws. Deep in the crust.
— Wolf? — Marak whispered.
— Ice wolf. — Grok traced the edge of the print with a finger. — Fresh. Two hours, maybe less.
They followed the traces slowly, nearly noiseless. The forest thickened, light thinning to a grey hush beneath the branches.
Grok raised a hand.
Marak froze, holding his breath. Grok pointed ahead, between the trees: there, some fifty paces away, something white and large was moving.
The beast was enormous — nearly the size of a bull, with massive paws, a long muzzle, and a white coat that almost merged with the snow. Only the tips of its ears and tail darkened against it. It stood over the half-gnawed carcass of a deer and ate unhurriedly, tearing off chunks of flesh and crunching through bone, unaware of them.
Marak felt his heart begin to pound faster and heavier.
Grok leaned to his ear and whispered so softly he could barely make out the words:
— One shot. Neck or chest. Do not miss — there will be no second chance. I’m here, but this is your lesson.
He stepped back, leaving Marak alone.
Marak slowly raised the bow, careful not to make any sudden movements. He drew an arrow — his hands trembled slightly, but he forced them to steady. He set the shaft to the string and felt it settle between his fingers. Drew. The muscles of his back tightened, aching from yesterday’s training, and the string came to his chin.
The wolf, fifty paces away, stood unmoving, tearing at the deer carcass, unaware of the danger.
Marak breathed slowly, evening out his heartbeat. Inhale. Exhale. Drak’s voice began to whisper:
“Coward. Hiding behind a bow. Not looking your enemy in the eye.”
“Shut up — you’re dead. I chose to live.”
He aimed at the wolf’s neck, at the place where beneath the white fur the artery pulsed, and released.
The arrow leapt from the string and flew forward — hissing, almost invisible in the half-light. It struck, but not the neck: the shoulder, higher than he had aimed. The wolf howled, sharp and piercing. The sound tore through the forest silence, sending birds bursting from the trees. The beast jerked, spun, and Marak saw the arrow jutting from its shoulder.
The wolf turned toward them, found Marak between the trees — one second, no more — and pounced.
Fifty paces. Forty. Thirty — the white beast came like an avalanche, snow exploding beneath its heavy paws. Marak snatched a second arrow. His hands trembled, but he set it to the string, drew, and tried to aim at the charging beast.
Twenty paces. Shot. The arrow flew over its head and thudded into a tree trunk.
Ten paces. Marak threw the bow into the snow and dropped into a fighting stance: feet shoulder-width apart, hands raised, centre of gravity low, as Rosheek had taught him.
The wolf leapt — a massive white body hurtling straight at him. Jaws open, fangs aimed at his throat. Marak stepped sharply aside and ducked, just as he had slipped blows in sparring. The wolf flew past: its jaws snapped air where his neck had been a heartbeat before. It hit the snow, wheeled with incredible speed, and attacked again — low, aiming for his legs.
Marak jumped, pushing off with both feet, rising over the wolf and landing full weight on its back. The beast howled, bucked, trying to throw off the unexpected burden, but Marak locked his forearms around its neck and squeezed — a chokehold, a technique Rosheek had forced him to drill thousands of times until it became reflex.
The wolf thrashed, rolled in the snow, snapping at him and raking its claws against the crust. Marak held on — legs clamped to its sides, arms tightening around the throat, cutting breath, crushing arteries. Harder. Harder. The wolf began to weaken: its movements slowed, grew uncertain, its breathing ragged and broken. Then it went still.
Marak held a while longer, to be certain. The beast did not breathe, did not move. He released his grip and rolled into the snow beside the dead wolf, breathing hard. His hands shook, his whole body ached with fatigue and adrenaline.
Above the treetops, the sky was low and grey — an ordinary sky, no sign, no answer.
Grok approached and stood over him. He looked at the wolf, then at Marak.
— You hit. Didn’t kill with the first shot, but you hit.
His voice was calm, as if he were judging an ordinary training session.
— The bow failed — your body remembered old lessons. For the first time against a living beast, that’s a fair result.
He crouched beside him, resting his hands on his knees.
— Vorgar hunters train for months before facing an ice wolf one-on-one. You went out on the fourth day and did not die.
After a pause, he added quietly, without mockery:
— Your mentor taught you well. It is not always wrong to remember what you can do.
He held out his hand, palm up. Marak took it and rose with effort — his legs trembled, but he held. Before him lay the dead wolf — a huge white beast with an arrow in its shoulder. Something stirred inside him: warm, quiet, without pride. He had struck. He had done it.
Grok was already pulling out a rope.
— Move. We need to bring it back to camp.
They felled a few thin trees and built a drag, then laid the wolf upon it. Taking their places at either end, they set off toward the camp.
Grok held the right pole, Marak the left. The white carcass was dragged behind them through the snow, leaving a broad furrow. Marak stumbled but did not stop. His arms burned, his back throbbed, his legs buckled. Still, he pulled.
— Grok, — Marak spoke somewhere in the third hour of the march.
— What?
— You said we would go in a week.
— I did.
— Why today?
Grok did not answer at once. He walked, eyes forward, stepping over drifts.
— Because yesterday evening, you did not run from Skeld. You listened. You answered honestly. That is harder than hitting a target.
Marak had nothing to say. They walked on in silence, and the silence between them had changed — not the emptiness between strangers, but the kind shared by people who do not need to fill it with words.
The camp saw them from afar.
The Vorgars gathered by the central fire in silence — men, women, children. Skeld stared at the wolf for a long moment, then glanced at Marak. Something flickered in his eyes — surprise, perhaps, or a shadow of respect.
Marak and Grok lowered the carcass by the fire. Marak straightened, breathing hard.
Dragan emerged from the large tent. She walked around the wolf, bent, touched the arrow in its shoulder, straightened, and looked at Marak.
— He hit it. Didn’t kill it with the first shot. Finished it by hand. — Grok’s voice carried neither praise nor condemnation. — That’s honest. Old habits don’t vanish in a day. And that isn’t a weakness. Weakness is freezing and doing nothing.
He fell silent. The camp’s ringing stillness was broken only by the crackle of the fire.
— Old habits, — Dragan said with the faintest hint of a smile. — Habits change. The main thing — you are alive, and you brought down the beast.
She turned to the Vorgars.
— Marak has passed the first trial: he took a beast with a bow — not perfectly, but he took it, as a Vorgar.
No one applauded, no one shouted. The Vorgars gave short nods — respectful, without excess, the way one nods to those who have done what they were meant to do.
Dragan stepped toward Marak.
— Rest today. The second trial is the evening after tomorrow.
She turned toward the tent. At the entrance, without looking back, she said,
— Grok, you may teach him further, as you see fit.
She disappeared behind the hide that covered the entrance.
Grok clapped Marak heavily on the shoulder.
— Go eat. You hunted — you take the first piece. Tradition.
An old Vorgar with a grey beard approached and held out a blood-scented chunk of meat.
— Eat, hunter. It’s yours.
Marak took the meat and bit into it — tough and sinewy. The old man nodded approvingly and walked away. Marak chewed, standing by the fire, and looked at the camp: children running between tents, women sewing or mending nets, men butchering the wolf, someone laughing by a distant fire.
Not a guest. Not a captive.
Skeld still sat by the fire. He did not look at Marak. But he was no longer sharpening his knife.
Marak lay in the tent. His whole body ached — every muscle, every joint. His hands were swollen, fingers stiff, shoulders burning. But there was more than pain within him. A warm, living, quiet feeling, something like pride, rose through it.
He closed his eyes and saw the sea — endless and grey, crested with white — and the wolf running across its surface as if over land. He stood on the shore with a bow in his hands, shooting, and every arrow struck true.
A voice sounded at the edge of consciousness, but Marak did not listen to it, and he fell asleep.
The tenth day among the Vorgars.
Marak woke when the sun was already high. Before he opened his eyes, he heard it — the rumble of the sea: low, unbroken, like the breathing of some vast beast. It had followed him through his dreams, and now he could not tell where sleep ended and waking began.
He opened his eyes. Narrow shafts of light slipped through the seams of the tent, lying across the furs in warm, golden streaks. His body ached with a familiar, dull pain.
He lay still and listened to the camp outside — the voices of the Vorgars, children laughing, the steady thud of an axe, the hiss of meat over fire. The smell of smoke and fish drifted through the canvas. Wind tugged at the tent walls. And beyond it all, at the very edge of hearing, gulls cried in the air — sharp, restless, as though reminding him that the harsh world still waited beyond this small island of calm.
He rose, dressed, and stepped outside.
The camp lived as it always did. Vorgars worked by the fires, crafting and sharpening weapons, and mending nets. Children ran between tents with sticks in their hands, pretending to be hunters. No one watched Marak with curiosity or suspicion. He was not a guest to be studied, nor a prisoner to be guarded. Simply another inhabitant of the camp stepping into the morning air.
He went to the fire where Grok sat. Without speaking, Grok nodded towards the pot of porridge. Marak took a bowl and sat on a nearby cold stone. The thick porridge with seaweed warmed him from within.
Grok shaved an arrow shaft, thin curls of wood falling at his feet and scattering in the wind.
— You rest today, — he said without looking up. — Tomorrow evening — the second trial.
— What will it be?
— Dragan will tell you. — Grok set aside one shaft and picked up another. — Rest. Gather strength. You’ll need it.
Marak finished his meal, rinsed the bowl, and wandered through the camp, watching. They worked without haste, yet every movement was precise, economical — nothing wasted. An old man mended a net, fingers moving swiftly, knots forming almost of their own accord. A woman cleaned fish with a single, sure stroke of her knife. A man sharpened an axe, the stone gliding along the blade in a steady, almost meditative rhythm. Efficiency without violence. Flexibility without weakness. In the temple, it had been different.
He stopped before the carved pillar at the centre of the camp. It was tall, covered in patterns of waves and fish. At the top, a bird spread wide wings over the settlement. Shells strung on cords chimed softly in the wind. At its base lay amulets and pierced stones. In the temple, there had been the Eternal Flame — bright, fierce, demanding sacrifice and obedience. Here, there was only wood. It demanded nothing. It simply stood.
— Beautiful, isn’t it?
He turned. A young Vorgar woman stood beside him — the same who had brought him food on his first day. Pale hair braided tightly. Grey eyes, like the sea under cloud.
— Yes, — Marak said.
— My grandfather carved it, — she nodded towards the pillar. — Three years of work before he died. He wanted to leave something behind. And he did.
She looked at the patterns for a moment.
— He used to say: wind bends the tree, but it does not break. Stone is hard, yet the wind wears it down. Water is soft, but it cuts through rock. She looked at him.
— Do you understand?
Marak hesitated, then nodded.
— Then you’ll survive tomorrow. — She smiled briefly and walked away.
Marak remained by the pillar, turning her words over in his mind.
Wood bends. Water wears stone away. The Vorgars returned to that thought again and again. In the temple, they had taught the opposite: be hard as steel, never bend, endure through force — pain makes you stronger. Drak had repeated it daily, hammering the words into the novices like nails driven into timber.
The Vorgars were alive. Marak’s temple was ash.
Evening came slowly, painting the snow in gold and rose. The Vorgars gathered by the central fire. Someone told a story of a seal hunt. Someone laughed. Children played under watchful eyes. Marak sat slightly apart, eating fish and listening.
When darkness had fully settled, Dragan emerged from her tent and beckoned him towards the edge of camp, away from the firelight and voices.
— Tomorrow evening, — she said without preamble, — your second trial. A night by the sea.
Marak nodded.
— Alone, — she added. — No food. No fire. Only you and the sea.
— Why?
— To listen. — She regarded him steadily. — Pa’agrio shouts commands. It does not allow thought, only obedience. The sea is different. It whispers when it chooses. You need attentive ears and a calm mind to hear it.
— What am I meant to hear?
A faint smile touched her lips.
— If I tell you, you will search for my words instead of your own. Each hears what is needed in that moment.
She turned towards the dark water.
— It will be cold. Very cold. By morning, your fingers will barely bend.
— And if I cannot endure?
— You may return to camp at any time, — she said with a slight shrug. — No one will stop you. But if you refuse the trial, you remain an outsider. And you will have to leave.
Marak said nothing.
— You did well in the first trial, — she continued. — You struck with the bow. You brought down a beast. You showed you can learn. That was a trial of the body. This one is of the spirit. Do not fight. Endure.
She laid a hand on his shoulder.
— Grok will take you to the shore tomorrow evening. Stay until dawn. I will come when the sun rises. Prepare yourself.
Then she turned and walked back towards the fire without looking back.
The eleventh day among the Vorgars.
All day, Marak waited. The waiting made it difficult to rest or think of anything else. He watched the sea from afar, listened to the waves reaching even to camp, and tried to imagine sitting an entire night on the shore without fire, without food, alone.
At sunset, Grok approached and gave a silent nod. The time has come. Marak pulled on his cloak. They left the camp, leaving its lights and voices behind.
They walked without speaking — past ruins, past forest, along a narrow path towards the coast. Snow crunched beneath their boots. The wind strengthened with each step. Soon the sea’s voice grew clear — a low, steady rumble like the breathing of some immense creature. The path opened. The sea lay before him — dark, almost black in the dusk, only the crests of waves whitening with foam. The shore was strewn with smooth, heavy pebbles. Black, sharp rocks rose above it, moss-covered and severe. Cold salt spray touched his face and lips.
Grok stopped and pointed to a flat stone near the water’s edge.
— Here. Sit until dawn. Dragan will come.
He surveyed the shore, then looked at Marak again.
— Your body will want to move to keep warm. Don’t. Sit. Listen.
— What am I meant to hear?
Grok gave a brief grin.
— Each hears his own thing. I heard one thing. You’ll hear another. Good luck, monk.
He turned and walked back along the path.
Marak remained alone. For a time, he stood listening to the waves — steady, both soothing and unsettling. Then he went to the stone, sat, and wrapped his cloak tight to his chin. The last strip of grey on the horizon faded. Darkness came from sea and sky alike.
The first hour was bearable.
The cloak held the warmth, muscles tensed out of habit kept his body heated. Marak sat and watched the sea, listening to the waves. They rolled in one after another, hissed over the pebbles, withdrew, and returned again — and the cycle did not break for a single second.
Above him, the sky had darkened to black, and stars flared in whole scatterings—bright, cold, distant. In the temple, he had never seen them so clearly: there had always been the light and the smoke of the Eternal Flame, veiling the sky.
After a time, the moon rose — a thin, almost invisible crescent.
The waves roared, the wind howled in the treetops.
Marak listened and wondered: what was he meant to hear? What lesson was he supposed to find in these sounds?
He tried to listen deeper, to seek some hidden meaning in the rumble of the surf, but he heard only water: splashing, hissing, a monotonous drone. No whispers. No revelations.
By the third hour, the cold had become a serious problem. The cloak no longer helped — the wind off the sea cut straight through the fabric, and a fine, relentless shiver took hold of Marak, impossible to still by sheer force of will.
His teeth rattled despite clenched jaws. His fingers and toes had gone so numb they barely obeyed him. He would rise, pace along the shore, swing his arms, trying to drive the blood back into motion. It helped, but not for long.
His thoughts began to wander. He remembered the temple — the warm, almost stifling barracks: the Eternal Flame burned without cease, heating the building from within. He remembered Drak standing by the fire: “Pain makes you stronger. Cold tempers you. Whatever does not kill you makes you a warrior.” Back then, Marak had believed those words.
He remembered Reni — small, with wide eyes and a constant smile. She was often ill, catching a cold from the slightest draft, yet she never complained: she would simply lie beneath her blanket and smile when he came to visit her. Reni did not fight illness through force — she accepted it and waited for it to pass. And it did pass. Reni was flexible, not unyielding.
Deep in the night, when the cold reached bone, and his body cried to return to camp, Marak did what Drak had taught him: he tensed every muscle, clenched his fists white, and forced himself to endure by sheer will. He fought the cold. It did not help.
The harder he resisted, the worse it became. The cold seemed to answer defiance with greater cruelty.
“Why does this not work?”
The girl’s words by the post in the camp rose in his memory. The tree yields to the wind and therefore does not break. The stone seems unshakable, yet water patiently wears it away. The Vorgars spend their whole lives by this sea and survive not because of strength, but because of their ability to accept the cold. The waves do not fight the shore — they come, they break, they retreat, and they return again, without malice.
Something clicked inside him, like a lock for which a key had finally been found.
Marak slowly unclenched his fists, loosened his shoulders, released the jaws he had ground tight enough to ache — and stopped fighting the cold. He simply accepted it, let it in, allowed it to be.
It did not grow warmer. The cold remained as merciless as before. But it became easier: his body stopped crying out, his muscles slackened, the shivering faded, as if the organism had finally understood that the struggle was useless and ceased wasting its strength in vain.
Marak closed his eyes and allowed himself to hear the sea — not straining for revelation, but simply listening. The waves rolled onto the shore — shhh, shhh, shhh — steady, rhythmic, endless. They came, shattered against the stones, withdrew, and returned again. They never broke; they only returned, again and again.
A wave does not fight the stone. It comes, it goes, it returns — slowly, patiently, without struggle. The stone is hard. The wave wears it down.
He opened his eyes and saw the dark sea, the crests of the waves pale in the uncertain moonlight. Inside him, there was quiet — for the first time in many days, perhaps in his entire life. Simply quiet.
So he spent the rest of the night: without moving, simply listening to the sea, until the darkness began to thin, giving way to a new day.
Dawn came slowly, stealthily, as if afraid to disturb the silence. The sky in the east turned grey. Then pale pink. Then gold. The stars faded one by one. When the rim of the sun rose above the horizon — bright, almost unbearable after the night’s darkness. Marak felt its gentle rays on his face and hands. There was no warmth yet, the sun still hung low, but seeing it was enough.
He had survived the night. He had not defeated the cold — he had accepted it.
Behind him, the pebbles rustled softly — light but steady footsteps. Marak did not turn. He knew who had come.
Dragan walked around him and stopped before the stone. She looked at him for a long time, attentively, her face serious, as though trying to read his thoughts.
— You have passed the trial, — she finally said.
Her voice was quiet and calm, like the sea on a windless day.
— You stayed until dawn. You did not run. You did not break.
She crouched down and looked into Marak’s eyes.
— Did you understand?
— Yes.
— What?
Marak was silent for a moment, choosing his words — he did not want to repeat someone else’s phrases. He wanted to speak his own, what had been revealed to him in the night.
— All my life I was taught to be hard, not to bend, to endure by force, to fight pain, — he said, his voice hoarse after a night of silence. — But what is hard breaks. I tried to fight the cold — it only grew worse.
Dragan listened without interrupting.
— The sea does not fight the shore, — he continued. — The waves come, break, retreat, and return again.
Marak looked straight at her.
— One must bend, not break. Accept, not fight. It is not weakness — it is another kind of strength, one they know nothing about in the temple.
Dragan nodded slowly. A faint smile flickered across her face — not joy, but satisfaction.
— Good, — she said, rising to her feet and holding out her hand. — Get up. Let’s go back to the camp.
Marak took her hand and rose with effort. His legs buckled, but he held. He leaned on the stone and waited until feeling returned to his muscles.
They walked slowly along the path through the forest. Dragan moved beside him, silently supporting him, simply being there.
The sun climbed higher, painting the world in bright colours. The wind had fallen still. The birds began to sing — softly, cautiously, as if they too hesitated to break the quiet of that moment.
At the camp, Torgal examined Marak. — Mild frostbite. It will pass, — he said, and sent him to the fire.
Marak sat close to the flames, held his hands out to the heat. The pain flared at once — sharp, searing, but he endured it. He did not pull his hands away. He simply sat and waited.
Grok brought hot porridge and ordered him to eat slowly, in small portions — otherwise his stomach would not manage it. Marak ate, feeling the warmth spread inside him, driving out the cold that had lodged deep in his body.
The Vorgars did not congratulate him, but a few nodded as he passed — briefly, with respect. And that meant more than any words.
Dragan stopped by the fire.
— Rest for two days, — she said. — Then—the third trial. The last one.
— What will it be?
— You’ll find out.
She turned and walked slowly back to her tent.
Marak finished his porridge and looked at the camp around him: the Vorgars were at work, paying him no particular attention. That was right. He was no longer a stranger — almost.
The thirteenth day among the Vorgars.
Marak lay by the fire, warming his feet wrapped in furs, when Dragan arrived.
Torgal fussed beside him, changing the bandages on his frostbitten hands.
— Up, — she said without preamble. — We’re going to the water.
Torgal lifted his eyes from Marak’s fingers.
— His hands haven’t thawed yet.
— I know. — Dragan looked at Marak, not at Torgal. — Have your feet?
— Yes.
— Then we go.
Torgal muttered something under his breath and wound the bandages tighter — so tight that Marak felt a sharp pressure. He stood, tested the bend of his knees, took a few steps: his legs obeyed, though not entirely.
Dragan was already walking toward the shore, without looking back.
They went down the path, and Marak heard the sea — the same muffled roar as at night, yet now it sounded different.
In daylight, the shore seemed changed. The pebbles shone with moisture — grey and brown, streaked with white, some almost translucent. There was no wind, and the waves rolled in quietly one after another, tracing a lace ribbon of foam across the stones.
Dragan stopped at the water and began unfastening her armor.
— Undress. Keep your shirt.
Marak looked at the water — it was plainly icy. Even three steps away, he felt the cold breathing off it.
— Why now?
— Because after a night on the shore, you already know what cold is, and you no longer fear it. — Dragan removed her pauldron and set it on the pebbles. — There will be no better moment.
Marak took off his cloak, boots, and outer garments, leaving his shirt and under-breeches. The cold air bit instantly into his skin.
— Go into your waist.
The first step burned his ankles with such cold that Marak nearly sprang back out. On the second step, the water reached his knees, on the third — his waist, and he felt it press from all sides, heavy and alive. Each oncoming wave rocked him slightly, testing his steadiness.
Dragan entered after him without wincing.
— How do you breathe? Show me.
Marak breathed evenly, from habit, with his chest and shoulders spread, as they had taught him in the temple.
— Wrong. — She laid her palm against his chest, barely touching, only to indicate. — Your chest rises. In the water, that works against you.
— Why?
— Because fear tightens the chest, the breath turns short and quick, you waste strength and begin to drown before you’ve even gone under.
She moved her hand lower, to his belly.
— Breathe here. Inhale — the belly forward, exhale — back. Slowly.
Marak tried — his body resisted. It had not moved that way all his life. It had not been taught so in the temple, where proper breathing was chest-deep, full, with open shoulders.
— Again. Slower.
They stood waist-deep in icy water, and Dragan made him breathe — again and again, until the breath grew low and even, until the waves pushing at his side no longer broke his rhythm.
— Good. Now lie on your back.
Marak looked at her.
— Just lie down, — she repeated. — I’m here.
He lowered himself onto the water, expecting at once to sink. The water received him, cold and dense, enclosing him on all sides. Dragan slid her hand beneath his back — not grasping, only barely supporting.
— Spread your arms. Relax your neck. Look at the sky, not at the water.
The sky was grey and low, heavy clouds slowly drawn along by the wind. Marak looked into it and felt his body begin to behave strangely — not sinking, not swimming, simply suspended in the water, swaying with the waves.
— You’re tensing your legs. Let them go.
— I’ll sink.
— No. With your lungs full, the body holds itself. Take a deep breath, belly forward, and keep it.
Marak inhaled as she had taught him, held the air, and felt his legs slowly, reluctantly rise, and the water cease dragging them downward. He hung in the sea, arms spread, gazing into the grey sky, and the world from that angle was different: flat and immense.
“So this is what it means — the sea holds you.”
— Good, — said Dragan. — Now your arms. Stroke like this, slowly.
She lay beside him on the water without effort, as if she had spent her whole life at sea, and showed the motion — smooth, from the shoulder, the palm pushing the water back.
— Don’t slap, don’t strike the surface — push.
Marak tried, and his body moved forward — unevenly, more to the right than straight.
— Good. Now watch how to move your legs.
Marak lowered his feet to the bottom and turned to her.
In the water, she was entirely different. On shore, she was the captain — straight-backed, arms folded, gaze stern. Here, two steps from him, she lay upon the surface calm and natural, as if upon land — arms slightly apart, face turned to the sky, fair hair drifting in a cloud around her head. The scars — one long, running from collarbone down along the ribs, and several shorter on her shoulder — did not mar the sight. They were part of her, as the rings of a tree speak of winters lived.
— Watch the hips, — she said without turning her head. — The movement comes from here.
Her hips moved slowly and powerfully — not sharp kicks, but something wave-like, rising from deep within the body, and the lower legs followed, as a tail follows a fish. Each motion was strong, yet restrained, without splashes — the water accepted it without resistance.
He found himself admiring her — and did not try to hide it, for there was nothing to hide: she looked at the sky, not at him, and in that silent space between her words he allowed himself simply to see.
Not the captain. Not a Vorgar woman with a knife at her belt and a voice that suffered no objection. A woman in cold water, lying upon the surface as if the sea itself upheld her.
The cloud of her hair stirred; she turned her head and caught his gaze.
Marak did not look away at once.
Dragan looked at him for a second — attentively, without a smile, yet without the usual hardness that kept all at a distance. Something else flickered across her face, swift as sunlight on water — and vanished.
— Did you come to learn, or to stare? — she asked in a calm voice.
— To learn, — Marak answered.
— Then learn.
Marak lowered himself onto the water and tried to repeat her motions. After several strokes, he felt his body cease fighting the water and begin to slide along the waves.
— Swim along the shore, — said Dragan. — I’m beside you.
She began teaching him to dive only in the second half of the day, when Marak could already swim twenty paces on his own without sinking too soon.
— Afraid? — She asked, standing chest-deep beside him.
— No, — said Marak.
She was silent — she knew he lied, yet did not argue.
— Three calm breaths before the dive. The last full, but without zeal. — She showed it herself: three breaths, even, low, from the belly. — Then bend — hands down, head between the arms, hips up. Don’t jump — slide. The water will draw you in.
Marak took a deep breath and went under.
The world vanished. In its place — dark-green silence, clouded, with slowly circling particles. Below — pebbles, blurred patches of many colours. Diffused light from above.
Marak opened his eyes wider — the salt burned, but he looked and saw: another world, quiet and inhuman, so vast that his throat tightened. He stayed there a dozen seconds, until his lungs demanded air, and surfaced, coughing.
— My eyes burn.
— You’ll grow used to it, — Dragan watched him closely. — What did you see?
— Almost nothing. It was murky.
— It is always murky here — near the shore, there is much sand. Farther out, it is clearer. There you can see far: fish, rocks, everything. — She gestured toward the sea. — When you know how to look underwater, you can learn what others do not. Where the fish are, where the shallows lie, where danger waits.
Dragan watched the waves thoughtfully.
— Dive again. This time, do not hurry to surface. Look at the bottom.
Marak dove once more, deeper this time, and hung in the water, holding himself with small strokes. He looked at the pebbles beneath him — grey, black, white, with streaks of dark sand between the stones. He noticed something small shift, almost invisible. His lungs began to tighten, demand air, but he held himself a moment longer, then another — and only then rose.
Dragan waited.
— Longer this time, — she said without praise, simply stating a fact. — The body remembers. Each time will be a little longer.
Marak stood chest-deep, breathing deeply, looking at the sea. It no longer seemed merely cold and hostile: there, beneath the surface, was another world, quiet and inhuman, and he had just been in it.
— Why swimming? — he asked. — It isn’t needed for hunting.
Dragan looked at him.
— We live by the sea. A storm overturns the boat — you must swim. The ice cracks beneath your feet — you must swim. You fall overboard — you must swim.
She turned toward the shore.
— A Vorgar who does not keep himself upon the water is a corpse that has not yet fallen.
Dragan came out of the sea without looking back. There was no cruelty in her words, only simple, everyday truth.
He remained standing in the water. He looked at the bottom beneath his feet, where the pebbles swayed slowly with the waves, and thought of Paagrio, who had taught him to look only forward and upward — to fire, to the enemy, to the god. No one had taught him to look down, into the dark silence where life followed its own laws.
“The sea demands a different sight.”
Marak came ashore. The pebbles grated beneath his feet, cold and hard, and his wet shirt clung to his chest. Dragan stood a little apart, pulling on her armor, and her earrings gave a brief chime when she turned.
— Tomorrow you train alone, — she said. — The day after — the third trial.
For two days, he spent himself in the water — almost entirely, from dawn until dusk, until his fingers whitened with cold and Torgal drove him to the fire with the look of a man weary of contending with another’s stubbornness.
When Dragan left, Marak began to dive on his own, without count and without aim, simply descending into that dark-green silence and hanging there as long as breath allowed, gazing at the bottom.
Growing somewhat accustomed, he discovered that the sea was full of life: crabs busily crawling between stones, fish that stilled at his appearance and regarded him with the same curiosity with which he regarded them, thickets of seaweed swaying in the current like a forest on a quiet windy day. It was another world — slow, soundless, indifferent to earthly affairs — and each time Marak surfaced reluctantly, as though leaving behind something for which he did not yet know the name.
The fifteenth day among the Vorgars.
Voices woke him before he opened his eyes — the camp was alive with unusual stir. Marak lay in the darkness of the tent, listening to the hum, and understood that the two days of rest Dragan had promised were over.
He rose, dressed quickly, pulled on his boots, and stepped outside.
The Vorgars stood in a circle around the central fire — all the dwellers of the camp had gathered. Even the children were hushed behind the adults, peering over shoulders. Dragan stood at the centre — arms crossed over her chest, face grave, without a trace of a smile.
When she saw Marak, she gave a short nod and beckoned him into the circle. The Vorgars parted in silence, respectfully, as one parts before something of weight. Skeld watched Marak with his usual hatred in his eyes, but said nothing, fists clenched. Beside him stood Grok, his heavy hand resting on the young Vorgar’s shoulder.
When the last voices faded, and silence fell — broken only by the crackle of the fire and the distant roar of the surf — Dragan spoke, quietly, yet so that every word carried to the farthest ears.
— Marak has passed two trials. He took a beast with a bow, as a Vorgar, proving he can accept the new. He spent a night upon the shore and survived, learned to hear what the water whispers.
She paused. The wind toyed with her hair, tugged at the edges of her clothing, but no one stirred.
— The third trial is the last. The sea itself must judge.
She looked Marak in the eyes — long and measuring.
— Neither weapon will test you now, nor endurance. The sea itself must decide: whether it accepts you, lets you into its depths and returns you, or takes you forever.
— What must I do? — His throat was dry with strain, but his back remained straight.
Dragan turned to the Vorgars and motioned for all to follow.
— Come.
They walked in silence through the camp — past fires where the night’s coals still smouldered, past the post with the carved bird that someone had adorned with fresh seaweed. The path led farther, between ruins rising on either side — ancient, cracked, overgrown with moss. The stones beneath their feet were slick with morning damp. The wind strengthened with every step, carrying the scent of salt, seaweed, and something else — deep, unsettling, like the smell of a place from which none return alive.
Marak reached the edge of the cliff and stopped.
Before him spread the sea — boundless, dark. The waves rolled toward the shore heavy and measured. Amid those waves, a few hundred paces from land, masts jutted up: four wooden pillars, bleached by time and salt, plunging into the water at different angles, like gravestones in a cemetery of giants. One was broken in half — its splintered end bared like teeth. Two others leaned almost horizontally. The fourth stood upright, rising high above the waves, as if piercing the sky.
— Our ships, — said Dragan, without turning. Her voice was barely audible over the waves.
She stood at the very edge of the rock and looked long at the masts, as though seeing not only the wood, but what lay beneath it, on the bottom. The shells woven into her fair hair chimed softly in the wind.
— Five years ago, the Storm of Oblivion shattered our fleet upon these rocks. It raged, and a hundred Vorgars drowned in this water.
Gulls circled above the sea with plaintive cries.
— My ship lies there. — Her finger pointed to the upright mast, the farthest from shore. — At a depth of twenty paces, perhaps more.
Marak looked down. From this height, the water seemed utterly impenetrable — dark, almost black. The waves broke against the rocks below in white foam that hissed and settled.
— What must I bring up?
— The helm is broken — a wave struck so hard the wood split in two. Bring me its handle.
— Why? — Marak knew the question might sound bold, yet he could not restrain himself; the logic was unclear. — If it has lain there five years, it cannot be vital to the camp’s life.
Dragan’s lips curved — faintly, without anger, rather with approval that he thought and did not merely obey.
— Not vital for life — that is true. But vital for memory.
She walked slowly around him, looking straight into his eyes.
— Any Vorgar in this camp could dive there and bring it up. I could. Grok could, Torgal as well. But we do not, because our dead are there — brothers, sisters, children. To descend to them is to touch their final moments. Not all are ready to bear that.
She stopped before him.
— Will you risk your life for our memory? Will you dive into a grave and return what was precious to the dead? Or is our pain to you nothing more than stories that do not touch your heart?
Marak looked at the masts rising from the water, motionless as drowned fingers reaching toward the sky in a final mute plea. A hundred lives. Three nights of storms that spared none. Reni would have wanted him to honour память with the same reverence as his own.
— I will bring it, — he said firmly.
Dragan nodded and stepped aside, clearing space.
— Undress. Wet clothing will hinder you.
Marak removed all his garments and boots, leaving only his under-breeches. The icy wind struck bare skin at once; gooseflesh ran along his arms and back.
Behind him, Skeld gave a short laugh — evidently not believing that a mainland monk would master a Vorgar trial.
Grok approached first and held out a small knife in a worn sheath — a short blade with a bone hilt carved with waves.
— Just in case. Underwater, anything may happen: you may tangle in seaweed or ropes — you will have to cut.
Marak accepted the knife, tied the sheath to his belt, checked the knot twice, and nodded in thanks.
Torgal came from the other side and looked at him thoughtfully — like a healer before a perilous operation.
— The water there is frigid as mountain ice — even in summer, it warms no deeper than five paces. Two minutes underwater is the limit for a healthy man. In the third minute, the cold will begin to seize your muscles, and you will not move. Do not linger a heartbeat longer than you must.
— How far to the ship?
— One hundred and fifty paces from shore. — Torgal pointed downward, where the rocks sloped more gently toward the water. — Swim to the mast, dive along it. The ship lies on its side, split in half. The helm is at the stern.
Marak memorised every word — his life depended on them.
Dragan looked at him once more and turned toward the sea.
— No one will help. No one will follow if you do not surface within five minutes. We will stand here and watch — either you return by yourself, or the sea takes you forever.
Her gaze was cold as seawater.
— Go. Show whether you are worthy to be called a Vorgar.
The descent along the rocks was long. Moss-covered stones were slick; his feet barely found purchase. Several times Marak nearly slipped, catching himself at the last instant, feeling his heart pound. The Vorgars remained above, on the cliff’s edge — dark, motionless silhouettes against the grey sky, like silent wardens.
The shore was narrow — a strip of pebbles and sharp stones between cliff and sea, three paces wide. The waves rolled in and withdrew with a heavy crunch, hissing over stone.
Marak stepped into the water, and the burning cold stole his breath. Wading to his waist, he pushed off the bottom and swam — broad, sweeping strokes, legs working strong and even. The cold stiffened muscles, seeped inward, slowing motion. Marak swam faster, not allowing his body to freeze. The upright mast ahead served as a stark marker against the grey horizon where sky merged with sea.
The distance lessened slowly: a hundred paces, then seventy, then fifty… His breathing faltered, lungs burning with effort, but the mast drew nearer — a vast beam thick as a man’s body, crusted with shells and long brown seaweed swaying on the waves like a drowned woman’s hair.
Marak grasped the mast with both arms and pressed against it, catching his breath. The shell-crusted wood scratched his palms. His heart pounded so loudly he thought the Vorgars on shore might hear it.
He took several deep breaths, flooding his blood with air — deep inhale, exhale to the bottom, inhale again. Dragan’s method. The last breath — lungs filled to the limit — and he dove.
Silence covered him at once — absolute, crushing, broken only by the rush of blood in his ears and the hollow beat of his own heart. Marak swam downward along the mast, pulling himself by it, aiding with his legs. Pressure grew in his ears — first slight, then painful, as though fingers pressed against the drums.
Five paces down, ten, fifteen — light dimmed gradually, sunrays turning greenish, ghostlike and frail. The cold deepened. Here, at depth, the water was different — not merely cold. Like liquid ice, it bound movement, thick around the body.
Ahead loomed the ship — immense, massive, lying on its side like a sleeping giant. The hull split in the middle, planks thrusting outward in sharp edges. A second mast, broken at the base, lay beside it. The sails had long rotted into grey, torn tatters, drifting in the current.
Marak reached out and touched the hull. His hand felt wood — loose-grained and rough.
The world vanished.
A storm raged. Lightning tore the black sky, and waves rose higher than the masts. The wind howled so that words drowned in it before birth. Marak was upon the ship — not himself, but as if someone else, someone standing at the helm, gripping it with both hands so tightly the knuckles blanched white. Vorgars on deck shouted, clung to whatever would hold, but the wave swept them one by one into darkness.
He shouted commands. His voice overrode the wind’s howl — briefly, less with each gust.
— Hold! All of you, hold!
A wave struck the hull with monstrous force. The ship shuddered and heeled, nearly lying flat. Water surged across the deck. He still held the helm — even when water rose to his chest, even when the ship began to overturn entirely, his hands did not loosen. Marak felt it in his hands — smooth wood polished by thousands of touches — felt his despair: the knowledge that the ship was sinking, all would die, nothing could be changed. But his hands held. To the last breath.
Water rushed into the mouth, nose, and lungs. Suffocation — burning, unbearable. The body convulsed. Death’s cold seized all at once, and in that cold, there was nothing but darkness.
Marak jerked back in near panic, shoving away from the hull. His heart hammered so hard his ribs ached. He almost opened his mouth, but bit his lip in the final instant.
Another’s death. He had lived it as his own — every second, every breath that became the last.
His lungs burned: a minute and a half had passed, perhaps more. Torgal had said — two minutes the limit. Marak pushed from the ship and swam upward, sparing no strength.
He broke the surface, drew air greedily — cold, harsh, but more desired than anything in life. He coughed, gasping again and again. He clung to the mast, pressed against it, restoring breath while his body shook violently from what he had endured.
On the rocks, the Vorgars still stood in silence.
A second time. Bring the handle — or die there.
Marak breathed deep and quick, filling his blood with air: he could not wait — the cold stole something with every second, tallying a debt the body would later pay. A final full breath — and he dove again.
The second descent was faster. He had grown somewhat accustomed to the pressure and no longer dwelt on it. The cold bound his body, but he drove himself through it and soon reached the ship.
Making straight for the stern, Marak slipped between the mast’s broken remains, grazing his shoulder against a sharp edge, and saw the helm. It stood upon the tilted stern, half-buried in silt. The wheel was broken — one half torn away, lying nearby, overgrown with seaweed.
Beside the helm sat a skeleton.
Leather armor still held its shape. The arms — white, bare bones — clasped the broken handle, fingers locked around darkened wood in a dead grip neither water nor five years of darkness had undone. The captain who had held to the end.
Marak stretched out his hand and touched the handle.
Darkness swallowed his mind again.
The mines. Somewhere beneath the sea, beneath the cliffs where light never reaches. Pickaxes strike the stone in a steady rhythm, sparks flaring in the darkness, lighting faces for a heartbeat at a time. The air is thick, heavy with dust. Warm. Hard to breathe.
A blow — dull, terrible, somewhere in the distance. Stone cracks, the sound racing through the tunnels in echo, swelling, turning into a roar.
— Out! Everyone out!
The dwarves run — short, broad figures in leather armor, lanterns in their hands. But the ceiling gives way: massive slabs crash down, sealing the passage, pinning bodies to the ground. The darkness becomes absolute. Voices cry out, fading one by one. The air dwindles slowly, drop by drop; with every breath, there is less and less of it left. Days pass. Weeks. The last dwarf died in complete silence—he simply closed his eyes and did not open them again, and there was no one left to see it. They remained trapped between life and death forever.
Marak opened his eyes — and saw them.
At first, it was only the sense that something in the water had changed: it had grown thicker, heavier. Then the shadows. Vague, blurred, moving slowly and soundlessly among the wreckage. He blinked, thinking the lack of air was deceiving his sight.
But the shadows did not vanish. They grew clearer.
Short, broad, wide-shouldered figures, with beards braided in plaits — the spirits of the dwarves from the ruined mine. They emerged from cracks in the seabed rock — slowly, one by one — rising from beneath the earth through fissures that fell away into bottomless dark.
One was close, no more than ten paces away. The spirit turned its head and looked at Marak.
They both froze.
Terror rose from his stomach to his throat in a cold surge — not imagined, but real, primal. The spirit saw him. Looked straight at him. And began to move — slowly, cautiously drawing nearer, lifting a hand: half-transparent, long-fingered, reaching toward his face. Marak did not move. His muscles would not obey; his legs had turned to stone. He could only watch as the ghostly hand approached. One more second — and the fingers would touch his skin.
With a violent jerk, he recoiled backwards.
The spirit paused for a heartbeat, then slowly lowered its hand, turned, and drifted back toward the fissure from which it had come — and dissolved into the darkness as though it had never been. The others followed: one by one, they slipped into the cracks, descending beneath the earth. The last turned for a moment — and was gone.
And then Marak understood.
A double grave. The dwarves had suffocated in darkness beneath tons of stone, trapped between life and death. The Vorgars had drowned in the cold abyss five years ago and remained upon the seabed. Two layers of death, two layers of memory, lie one upon the other. Sea and earth were bound together here — the water seeped into the mines through cracks, the spirits rose from the depths. Krag sealed them, held the balance as long as he could. That was what he had meant when he said they were crawling out through the fractures.
The handle was finally in Marak’s grasp — the skeleton’s fingers loosened, as if allowing him to take the precious thing.
His lungs burned with fire. His muscles were beginning to stiffen — the cold did not wait. Up. Now.
He pushed off the deck and swam.
The first fifteen strokes were steady. His left arm pulled wide, his legs drove strongly, his right hand pressed the handle to his chest. The surface above was already visible — far, but visible. Greenish glimmers of light flickering invitingly on the waves.
Five strokes remained when the cold finally seized his body.
His left arm barely obeyed. His movements grew slow and useless. His legs scarcely moved. The burning in his chest became unbearable — his diaphragm convulsed, demanding breath, and the urge to open his mouth, to gulp anything at all, was so fierce that all his will was spent holding it back. Darkness crept across his vision. Three strokes to the surface.
Marak thrashed wildly, striking the water like a drowning child, and it only made things worse. Strength drained faster, and the darkness swallowed more.
And then he remembered.
The night on the shore. The cold that seeped into the soul. The struggle that achieved nothing only made it worse. The moment he stopped resisting, let the cold in — and it withdrew.
The Vorgar song: “Fire teaches you to break — waves teach you to bend.”
Reni’s face in his memory, alive and smiling: “Go forward. Don’t be afraid.”
The sea was not an enemy. It simply was.
Marak stopped beating at the water. He relaxed his body completely, let his muscles go slack, released the panic, and released control. He did not fight the sea.
And the sea began to carry him upward.
Slowly, smoothly, naturally — his body rising of itself, as all living things rise, for the living are lighter than the dead. The current caught him and nudged him higher. A wave rolled beneath, lifting him toward the light. Two strokes, one — and Marak broke the surface.
Air burst into his lungs in a great, convulsive gasp — cold, salt, burning his throat. He coughed, choked, greedily seized the air, unable to get enough. The waves rocked him steadily. In his right hand, he held the wooden handle above his head — raised it high so as not to lose it, so that all could see.
On the way back, Marak floated on his back, the handle pressed to his chest, sculling with his right hand and kicking with his legs. The waves helped him, carrying him toward the shore, and he did not resist them — he let them do their work, just as he had done in the depths.
When his feet touched the bottom, he rose with difficulty — his body shaking violently, his teeth chattering, his skin turned blue. He took one step through the shallows, then another, and came out onto the shore. He lifted the handle above his head with both hands.
The Vorgars were silent. But it was a different silence — not expectation, but acknowledgement.
The climb up the rocks was torment: his fingers could not feel the stone they grasped, his feet slipped, he fell to his knees and rose again. Halfway up, Grok came down to meet him — descended himself, seized him firmly by the forearm, and silently pulled him upward, expecting no thanks.
At the top, Marak dropped to his knees before Dragan and held out the handle with trembling hands.
She took it slowly, carefully, as one takes something sacred. Ran her fingers over the wood shining in the sun — and her eyes glimmered with sudden moisture.
Then she looked at Marak.
— The sea has accepted you. It let you into its depths, showed you its secrets, and returned you alive.
She helped him to his feet, offering her hand.
— Now you are one of us. A brother by choice, not by blood.
The Vorgars murmured — low, approving, their voices blending into a single hum. Skeld, standing apart with a grim face, did not rejoice with the others — he watched, accepting the new reality.
Krag stepped forward from the crowd. Slowly, he approached, stopped before Marak, and looked him straight in the eyes — it seemed his gaze reached into the very soul.
— Did you see them?
Marak nodded.
— Good.
Krag turned toward the sea and looked at the waves for a long time.
— Now you understand. Everything here is bound together: earth, sea, life, death — one passes into the other. The earth remembers the dwarves who suffocated in the dark. The sea remembers the Vorgars who drowned in the storm. You passed through both memories, touched both deaths, felt their pain. — He turned back, and in his eyes flickered something like approval. — The voices say you have found your path. Between fire and sea. You did not drown. You did not burn.
A bowl of seawater was brought to Krag. He dipped his hand, touched Marak’s forehead with wet fingers, and slowly traced a sign — three waves, one beneath the other. Water ran down his temples, dripping onto his shoulders, mingling with the salt that soaked his whole body.
Dragan raised her voice so all could hear.
— Marak has passed three trials. He brought down the beast with a bow. He endured the night upon the shore. He descended into the grave of the ancestors and returned alive. The sea has accepted him. The earth has accepted him. We accept him. He is no longer a stranger, no longer a man of the mainland, no longer a monk of Paagrio. He is a Vorgar by choice. A brother.
The Vorgars answered in unison — low, but firm voices:
— Brother.
That evening by the fire, Marak approached Dragan. She sat a little apart from the others, gazing thoughtfully into the flames. The ship’s wheel handle lay beside her on a flat stone.
— What will you do with it now?
— Mount it by the post, beside the carved bird, — she nodded toward the central figure of the camp. — Next to the symbol of our ancestors, so all may see and remember. The captain has come home — not whole, but a part of him is here, with us.
She looked at Marak through the firelight, and the flames were reflected in her eyes.
— He was my uncle. He taught me to steer a ship when I was ten. He would put me at the helm, teach me to use the compass, and say: “The helm is the heart of the ship, Dragan. Watch it closely, feel every movement, and the ship will obey you like a part of your own body.”
Her voice did not tremble, yet the usual hardness was gone.
— He stayed with the ship until his last breath. Even when all the others had already drowned or been swept overboard.
She held out the handle, darkened by time and sea, to Marak.
— Now it is yours. The memory you returned to us. The pain you shared.
Marak accepted it carefully from her hands.
— Thank you, — he managed at last, his voice hoarse.
— Don’t thank me. You earned it — you risked your life, dove into a grave, came back alive. Few are capable of that.
She extended her hand across the fire — a Vorgar greeting. Marak clasped it, felt the warmth of her palm, the strength in her fingers.
— Brother, — Dragan said simply and firmly.
— Brother, — he repeated — and for the first time the word did not sound foreign.
Night settled over the camp, wrapping the world in darkness. The fire burned bright. Leaping shadows brushed against the tents and the ruined stone walls that surrounded them. The Vorgars sang — old songs of the sea, of battles, of those they had lost and those who had survived.
Before going to sleep, Marak stopped by Krag’s hut. The shaman sat among his amulets, sorting them, muttering to himself.
— Will they return? — Marak asked quietly. — The spirits?
— They always return. — Krag did not lift his eyes, continuing to sift through bones and stones. — They are caught between worlds, unable to leave completely — neither to the realm of the dead nor the realm of the living. So they wander, come out through the cracks, searching for something. I seal them back, hold the balance, as long as my strength lasts.
He fell silent — retreated into his inner world, no longer responding.
— As long as you live, — Marak said softly, not expecting an answer.
Krag did not reply. But he nodded—barely, as if not to him, but to someone unseen.
Marak sat by the fire, wrapped in a cloak that no longer felt alien. Weariness descended like a heavy blanket. His eyes closed, his body demanded sleep. Yet he did not hurry to leave — for the first time in a long while, he felt he had found his place.
Reni appeared in his memory, as she always did at such moments — alive, smiling.
“I found the path, Reni. The true one. I did not drown. I did not burn. I found my way — between the fire of Pa’agrio and the sea of the Vorgars. I found a family.”
The sea murmured beyond the walls of the camp — steady, even, lulling. Marak leaned back onto the furs, closed his eyes, and fell asleep to the voices of brothers by choice, no longer feeling either lost or alone.