Closer, closer. He paused at another statue—a tsar whose gilded crown and scepter disintegrated into rust and gold leaf beneath his spoiling touch. The malachite pedestal split in two as the statue came crashing to the floor in pieces, and the air between us was filled with a smothering cloud of marble dust. He was just a shadow now in the moonlit haze.

“The Grozniy encroachment appeared inevitable at that point. Even with the deployment of bogatyr regiments, it seemed only a matter of time before the Grozniy troops marched deeper into the Edge. So, by order of the crown, we would leave nothing behind that they could use. I was young and spirited, and it was in that moment, I made a decision. It was in that moment, I killed, and I found what I am today.”

A shiver racked my body, and a slow, nauseating horror dawned on me. It was him. He was the one who had come from the wilds, the one who had made my home what it was today—a steppe of bones and decay. He was the one Galina had seen during her last moments.

He was the monster.

Koschei prowled even closer still, and more stone chips nipped into my scalp. Cracks spread through Voyna’s face and shoulders; her head split apart and her chest caved in. As chunks of marble rained down on my shoulders like a barrage of beating fists, I darted out from behind the statue and rushed at Koschei.

“This is for Galina!” I snarled, driving the sovnya toward his stomach.

My sleeves were the first to fail, disintegrating to loose threads even as the inked runes upon my arms persisted. Gold dust flaked from the honed edge of the sovnya’s blade.

He sidestepped my thrust of the weapon. As I swung the sovnya in a sweeping curve, he raised his own shashka and met me head-on.

Sparks rained to the floor as my polearm and his sword clashed against each other. In the hazy moonlight, his eyes radiated an eerie inhuman radiance.

“There you are,” he purred, boring down on me. I darted out of the way as his blade came crashing down. He was stronger, but I was faster, and the sovnya had three times the range of his saber. And I would prove to him what I had learned during those years in the wilderness. I would show him what it meant to survive out there.

“Ah, I see how you have persisted for so long,” he said, striding forward. “The Strannik you were with, the one my men killed—did he teach you those?”

The marks were almost gone now, and I could feel the weight of Koschei’s power crashing down on me, as though by the second I was sinking deeper and deeper into some deep-sea void.

In the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of movement flicker behind the statue to my right. Keeping my gaze trained on Koschei, I stepped backwards, luring him closer still.