Fingering a piece of Diaval’s ritual chalk, I began to draw a large circle around the area. From as far as behind the boulders near the burrow the others rested in and as close to Fjalar’s lair as I dared without getting close enough so that the rooster itself couldn’t step into the circle. My hand drew like it wasn’t a part of my own body. Something inside me filled me up as I took each symbol and each line and chanted words unfamiliar to me. A brilliant type of floating feeling in my body seeped out with every type of symbol I drew. Magic leaked out of me and coated the symbols with invisible color and invisible power and something else that I couldn’t grasp yet.

When I finished drawing and chanting, I went back by the boulders to wait. The sun was beginning to rise, and for the first time in Niflheim, it looked like a clear, non-misty day. Coincidence or an omen? I hoped for the latter but steeled myself for it to be the former.

But then he came. Walking out of the dissipating mist with a slight limp but still holding himself up with no need for anyone’s help. He didn’t stumble or veer off in a random direction or snake-like line, but walked straight toward me until I was staring at him, drinking in his features since I’d seen him last.

Much was the same. Soren’s hair was still short and braided across his scalp. His skin was still the pale blue-gray color of the sky right before the dawn truly hit, and his eye was still lilac. But he stood with confidence once more, and the bandage over his eye had gone, leaving a clean if not new and pink scar across his permanently closed eyelid.

He took a long breath before speaking. “Hi.”

I slapped him across the face as a response.

“Yeah, I guess I deserved that.”

“Do you know how upset you made me?” I whisper-shouted, trying to keep my voice down not to wake Fjalar but also unable to contain all my rage.

“I’m going to assume a lot,” he said hesitantly.

“A lot!” It was getting hard to keep my voice from rising as it collected all the emotion and heartache I’d suffered the past two days. “Cutting off contact, disappearing in the middle of the night. I thought you left us, left me, I thought you were going to kill yourself from exposure. And now you see my flaming arrow, and you come back like everything is fine? Explain yourself.”