There were grand criminal networks out there. Not just traitor mercenaries, thieves’ rings, black-market wizards, or slave traders of humans and beastkin. No, there were entire collaborations of crime, as old and entrenched as the adventurers’ and merchants’ guilds. They operated on a scale beyond anything the bormen pulled in the settlements. Tria had told him. She had spoken of them — syndicates that ran beneath the Midlands cities like blood beneath the skin.
What if all of them are part of a syndicate?
It’s all of them.
All of them are in on it.
All of them are part of it.
What if all of them
are part of a syndicate?
It’s all of them.
All of them are in on it.
All of them
are part of it.
Yu swallowed. His throat was raw from the cold.
What if this is only the beginning?
What if they were still coming — more of them, sliding in, day by day. A slow, cold takeover. Not one that shattered walls or set fire to towers, but one that was unheard. One that just, ever so quietly, replaced the people. Kept the banners flying. Kept the fires lit. Kept the food warm. Who would notice a few missing guards if travellers were still greeted and fed and housed and let through? Who would question anything, if the guild still looked and worked like the guild?
And this place — it was not just shelter. It was control. A strategic chokehold on the Snowtrail. The only refuge between the western Moors and the eastern Barnstreams.
What if that was the point?
What if that was the plan?
What if they were gathering? Criminals from all over, pulled here to prepare. A raid. A swarm. A full purge. Every settlement overrun in a day. And Yu — he was in the middle of it. He was trapped, surrounded, inside with all the monsters —
Yu had not enough air. The more he gasped for it, the worse it got. Ice-needle air stabbed down his throat and ripped through his lungs. His chest seized.
Stop it! Shit, just stop for a moment!
He clamped his beak shut. Clenched his jaw until it hurt. Held the breath. Locked it in. Forced it still.
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