How does one man stop a hundred?
You do not fight them.
You become the mountain.
And you fall.
His next target was General Tiberius.
They called him the Iron Bull of the Order. A name earned in the fires of a hundred battles, his skin like tanned leather, his heart a cold, hard stone.
He was fiercely loyal to Grandmaster Valerius. A dog loyal to a cruel master.
He was there that night. The night of red snow. His sword had tasted the blood of Adrian's people. His laughter had echoed in the burning air.
Now, Adrian would make him taste his own.
Three days.
For three days, Adrian was a shadow in the forests of the North. The air at this altitude was thin and cold, a razor's edge against his exposed skin. The trees were ancient and gnarled, their skeletal branches reaching for a gray, unforgiving sky.
He did not sleep. He did not eat.
Hate was his bread. Vengeance was his water. His rage was the only fire that kept the frost from his bones.
He moved through the wilderness with an unnatural ease. A ghost in a land of rock and pine.
He read the tracks in the mud—the deep, arrogant ruts of the heavy supply wagons, the sharp hoof prints of the warhorses. He could tell their numbers. Their speed. Their lack of fear.
He smelled the smoke of their campfires from miles away, a faint acrid tang on the wind that was an affront to the clean, cold air of the mountains. His amber eye, a gift from his mother's bloodline, pierced the gloom of the forest, seeing what normal men could not.
He was more wolf than man now, his senses honed to a razor's edge by six years of survival.
The boy who once marveled at the warmth of a hearth was dead, buried under a pyre of grief and fury.
The hunter remained.
On the evening of the second day, he found their camp.
He lay on a ridge overlooking the clearing, a silent observer wrapped in his dark cloak. The soldiers of the Order were laughing, sharing stories around a dozen blazing fires.
They were loud. Arrogant. They posted sentries, but their guard was lazy. They believed no army could touch them here.
They were right. No army could.
But Adrian was not an army.
He was a reckoning.
He watched General Tiberius emerge from his large command tent. The man was built like his namesake, a bull. Broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with a graying beard that could not hide the cruel set of his jaw.
Adrian felt the hate rise in him, a familiar, burning tide. He did not fight it. He let it wash over him. He let it sharpen his focus.
He memorized the General's face. The way he walked. The way he commanded respect from his men with a single glare.
He would see that face again. Up close.
On the third day, he moved ahead of the caravan. He knew their path now. They were heading for Blackwood Pass.
Adrian knew the pass. He and his father had hunted there, once, in another lifetime. A lifetime of warmth and safety.
He crushed the memory before it could fully form.
The past was a poison. The mission was the only antidote.
He found the place.
Blackwood Pass. A deep scar carved into the earth by some forgotten god in a fit of rage.
A narrow canyon with sheer, jagged cliffs rising on both sides like broken teeth. A natural bottleneck. The road at the bottom was barely wide enough for two wagons to pass side-by-side.
A deathtrap.
Adrian's lips pulled back in a grim, mirthless smile. It was perfect.
He climbed the cliffs as the sun began its slow, bleeding descent toward the horizon, painting the clouds in shades of orange and blood.
His fingers, raw and scraped, found purchase in the smallest cracks in the rock. The wind howled around him, a mournful dirge, trying to tear him from his perch.
It failed.
His will was stronger than the wind. His hate was harder than the stone.
He reached the top and surveyed his killing ground.
Below, the pass was a narrow ribbon of dirt and stone. Above him, a massive overhang of loose rock and dead trees clung precariously to the cliff face. It was an avalanche waiting to happen, a titan held in check by a web of ancient, straining roots.
He had found his weapon.
His trap was set.
All he had to do was wait.
Patience was a weapon, and for six long years, Adrian had sharpened it to a razor's edge. He found a spot, a small crevice hidden from view, and became as still as the stone around him. The cold seeped into his bones, but he ignored it. The hunger gnawed at his belly, but he ignored it.
He was nothing now but a pair of eyes and a burning purpose.
The sound came first. A low rumble that vibrated through the rock beneath him.
The tramp of marching boots. The creak of heavy wagon wheels. The jingle of armor and harness.
The caravan entered the pass, a steel serpent slithering confidently into his snare.
At its head rode General Tiberius.
He sat atop a massive black warhorse, his polished armor gleaming even in the fading light. His banner, a golden eagle clutching a sword, flapped arrogantly in the wind.
He rode as if he owned the world.
He did not know he was already a dead man.
Adrian watched, his breath frosting in the cold air. His heart was a slow, heavy drum in his chest. A predator's calm before the strike.
The front guards passed beneath him.
Then the first supply wagons, their drivers looking bored.
Then, the General's command carriage, a box of steel and wood, surrounded by his personal guard, the best and deadliest of the lot.
The serpent's head was in the noose.
Now.
Adrian drew his dagger. Not to fight a man.
To kill a mountain.
He moved to the thickest root, the anchor holding the overhang in place. He did not hack at it. That would take too long.
He plunged his blade into a deep fissure he had found earlier, right beside the root. He used the dagger as a lever.
He put his entire weight into it.
The root groaned, the sound like an old man's last breath. It screamed.
SNAP!
For a single, deafening heartbeat, there was only silence. The wind held its breath.
Then, a deep, guttural roar echoed from the cliff face as the mountain began to die.
Thunder erupted.
Boulders the size of houses rained down upon the caravan. The front of the column was crushed in an instant. Men and horses disappeared under tons of rock and splintered trees.
A cloud of dust and death, thick and choking, filled the pass.
The rear of the caravan, trying to retreat, found its path blocked by the debris.
They were trapped.
Wood splintered. Steel screamed.
Men cried out, their voices sharp with terror and pain before being abruptly silenced.
The soldiers of the Adamantine Order, so proud and disciplined moments before, were now just terrified men, scrambling like insects in a tomb of their own making.
Their training had not prepared them for the wrath of a god.
But this was not the wrath of a god.
It was the wrath of a boy who had lost everything.
Above the chaos, a figure stood on the clifftop.
Unmoving. A dark silhouette against the dying, blood-red sun.
His silver-blonde hair whipped in the wind created by the landslide.
His mismatched eyes—one gray, one amber—burned with a cold, merciless fire as he surveyed the tomb he had created.
It was Adrian Volkov.
The ghost.
The hunter.
The hunt had just begun.