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"Lynn Korde."
The name hit me like a blade between the ribs.
Not the name I'd been wearing for three weeks in this frozen hell. The name I'd left behind in a car wreck and a world that had spreadsheets instead of spears.
"Who the hell are you?" I didn't reach for my weapon. The woman standing in the blue glow looked like she could snap my wrist before I cleared leather.
White hair. Dark eyes. Furs that didn't match any clan I'd seen. And a smile that said she knew exactly how hard my heart was hammering.
"Thera Frostspeaker." She didn't bow. Didn't even blink. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine."
"You're lying." She stepped closer. The blue light crawled up the frozen ground between us like veins under ice. "The wound on your side opened again when you threw that parchment. You've got maybe an hour before you pass out."
Virrak moved up beside me, blade still drawn. "My lady, step back."
"No." I didn't take my eyes off Thera. "How do you know that name?"
"Which one? The name you had before you died, or the name you're pretending fits now?"
My throat went dry. "Before I—"
"Died." Thera tilted her head. "Car. Rain. You swerved for a dog and hit the guardrail at sixty. Took four minutes to bleed out. You spent three of them trying to save your laptop."
The cold wasn't outside anymore. It was in my chest, spreading.
"That's not possible."
"It's extremely possible. You're not the first." She crouched down and touched the glowing ground with bare fingers. The light pulsed, and I saw lines spreading out from her hand like a map etched in ice. "You're not even the most interesting."
Virrak's voice was low and sharp. "My lady, this is a ruin-walker. They're dangerous."
"She's also the only person who knows what the hell is happening to me." I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. Don't let her see you panic. "Why are you here?"
"Because you lit up every warning sigil from here to the Iron Spine when you read that battlefield three days ago." Thera stood, brushing frost off her palms. "You see the numbers, don't you? Morale. Supply lines. Terrain advantage. You look at a camp and you know exactly where to put the knife."
"I—" I stopped. Virrak was staring at me.
"You've been calling them instincts," Thera said. "Telling yourself you're just good at tactics. But you're not, are you? You're reading the game."
The game.
My chest tightened. "What game?"
"The one you're playing whether you want to or not." She walked past me, toward the edge of camp where the wounded were laid out under torn tarps. "Seventeen soldiers left. Nine of them can't march. Your old general's shoulder is rotting from the inside. And Aldric Ironvow's going to come back in two days with three times the men and an actual siege engine."
I turned, following her. "How do you—"
"Because I can see the same numbers you can. Difference is, I know what they mean." She stopped in front of a soldier who'd taken an arrow through the thigh. The man was shaking, pale, fever-bright. "This one dies tonight. Infection."
"We cleaned it—"
"Not well enough." Thera knelt, pressed two fingers to the man's throat. "Pulse is already thready. He's got maybe three hours."
The soldier's eyes cracked open. "My lady—"
"Rest," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. I looked at Thera. "Can you fix it?"
"I can. Question is, what are you willing to trade?"
Virrak's blade came up. "We're not bargaining for a man's life."
"You are if you want him to keep it." Thera didn't even glance at the steel. "Everything costs. That's the rule. You want the answer, you pay the price. You want the soldier, you give me something worth his breath."
I stepped between them. "What do you want?"
"An hour of your time. Tonight. At the ruin."
"What ruin?"
"The one you've been avoiding since you got here." She pointed north, toward the ridge where the old stone columns stuck out of the snow like broken teeth. "The place that makes your head ache every time you look at it."
She wasn't wrong. I'd felt it since the first night. A pull, low and sick, like a wound that wouldn't close.
"Why?"
"Because I need to show you what you are. And because if you don't figure it out soon, Aldric's going to gut you like a summer trout and hang your body on the clan gates as a warning."
Virrak's voice was rough. "My lady, don't—"
"He's dying, Virrak." I didn't look away from Thera. "She's right. I can see it."
And I could. The numbers hovered over the soldier's chest like a countdown I didn't want to read. Morale: 2. Combat effectiveness: 0. Time remaining: 2.7 hours.
Thera smiled. "So. Do we have a deal?"
I wanted to say no. Wanted to tell her to take her cryptic ruin-walker nonsense and disappear back into whatever hole she'd crawled out of.
But the soldier was looking at me with eyes that knew he was dying, and I was the only thing between him and the frozen ground.
"One hour," I said. "You fix him first."
"Deal." Thera pulled a small leather pouch from her belt, shook something dark and powdered into her palm, and pressed it into the wound.
The soldier screamed.
Virrak lunged, but I caught his arm. "Wait."
The scream cut off. The man's breathing steadied. The numbers over his chest flickered, shifted. Time remaining: 48+ hours.
"It'll hurt for a day," Thera said, standing. "But he'll live. Assuming you do."
I swallowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you've been playing the game on easy mode. Picking off supply lines, reading weak points, calling it tactics." She wiped her hands on her furs. "But the game doesn't stay easy. It scales. And the people running it are very interested in what happens when someone like you tries to break the board."
"Someone like me."
"Someone who died and came back with the interface still attached." She met my eyes, and for the first time, I saw something that looked like pity. "You think you're special because you see the numbers. You're not. You're a glitch. And glitches get patched."
My pulse was a drum against my ribs. "What does that mean?"
"It means you need to see the ruin. Tonight. Before Aldric comes back and you run out of moves."
Virrak stepped closer, voice low. "My lady, I don't trust her."
"I don't either." I looked at the ridge, at the broken columns half-buried in snow. "But she's right about one thing. We're out of time."
Thera turned, already walking toward the edge of camp. "I'll be waiting at the stones. Come alone, or don't come at all."
"And if I don't show?"
She glanced back over her shoulder. "Then Aldric kills you, the clans forget your name, and I go find the next poor bastard who got dropped into the game without a manual."
She disappeared into the dark.
Virrak was still staring at me. "You're not actually going."
"I am."
"She could kill you."
"She could've killed me thirty seconds after she showed up." I pressed a hand to my side, felt the sticky warmth of blood soaking through the bandage. "She's right. I'm running out of time. Out of options. And if she knows how I got here, maybe she knows how I survive what's coming."
"Or maybe she's leading you into a trap."
"Then you'll avenge me." I tried to smile. It didn't land. "I need to know, Virrak. I need to know what the hell I am."
He didn't answer. Just looked at me with something that might've been respect or might've been grief, and then nodded once.
"I'll have the men ready to move at first light," he said quietly. "In case you don't come back."
"I'll come back."
"You'd better." He turned, walked toward the fire where the others were huddled. "I didn't follow you into exile just to bury you in the snow."
I waited until he was out of earshot, then started toward the ridge.
The stones loomed closer with every step. Old. Older than the clans, older than the kingdom, maybe older than the ice itself. They didn't look like they'd been built. They looked like they'd grown.
Thera was waiting at the base of the largest column, arms crossed, breath misting in the frozen air.
"You came," she said.
"I said I would."
"People say a lot of things." She turned, gestured toward the stone. "Put your hand on it."
"Why?"
"Because I need to show you what's underneath the game. And because if you don't, you'll never understand what you're fighting."
I stepped forward. The stone was cold under my palm, rough and ancient and humming with something I didn't have a name for.
Thera moved beside me, placed her own hand on the column. "Now look."
The world broke open.
Lines of light exploded out from the stone, racing across the snow, across the hills, across the horizon. A map. Not drawn. Living. I saw supply routes glowing like veins. Troop movements pulsing like blood. The kingdom's entire infrastructure laid bare in ice and fire.
And at the center of it all, a name I knew. A name I'd worn in another life.
Lynn Korde.
Thera's voice was quiet beside me. "Welcome to the grid. Now let's talk about who's been watching you play."