Winter in Verdwood was not a season; it was a siege.
The snow didn't fall gently; it piled up in heavy, wet drifts that buried the fences and turned the village roads into trenches. The wind howled down from the mountains, stripping the heat from everything it touched.
For everyone else, it was just cold. For me, it was starvation.
I was nine years old. I had spent the last two years training with Master Dren, pushing my body harder than any child should. I ran until my lungs burned. I sparred with wooden swords until my hands blistered. I built muscles and reflexes that belonged on a teenager, not a kid who hadn't hit double digits yet.
But strength cost energy. And energy cost heat.
The Hollow inside my chest—that invisible, sucking void that had been with me since birth—was changing. When I was a baby, it was a leak. When I was five, it was a pool. Now, at nine, it was a furnace that demanded fuel constantly.
And in the dead of winter, fuel was scarce.
I sat on the edge of my bed, shivering. It was the middle of the night. The fire in the main room had died down to embers. My breath clouded in the air before me, white puffs that vanished into the dark.
I was wearing two wool sweaters and wrapped in a thick quilt, but I felt like I was naked in a blizzard. My bones ached with a deep, throbbing cold. The Hollow was growling, a physical shaking in my ribs.
More, it whispered. I need more.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to pull heat from the dying fire in the other room, but the distance was too far, and the fire was too weak. I tried to pull from my own body, but I was wiry from training. There was nothing left to burn.
My teeth chattered. Click-click-click.
I couldn't stay here. If I stayed in this bed, I was going to freeze to death in a warm house.
I threw off the covers. I pulled on my boots and my heavy cloak. I needed a source. A big one.
I slipped out of my room. The floorboards were freezing against my socks. I crept past my parents' door. I could hear Toren's steady snoring and Miren's soft breathing. They were warm. Safe.
The Hollow lurched. It sensed their heat. For a split second, a dark, ugly thought flashed through my mind.
Go in there. Touch them. Just a little. Just a sip.
I slammed a mental door on that thought. Never. I would rather freeze than feed on them.
I unlocked the front door—my hands steady despite the shaking in my core—and slipped out into the night.
The cold hit me like a hammer. The wind bit at my exposed face. But I didn't turn back. I headed for the village square.
The village was asleep, buried under white silence. But the square was lit.
The Elders had installed new streetlamps last autumn. They weren't oil lamps; they were mana-lamps. Expensive, brought in from the capital. They were glass globes sitting on iron posts, each one holding a crystal charged with sun magic.
To normal eyes, they were just bright lights casting a warm, yellow glow on the snow.
To me, they looked like feasts.
The Silver Seam around the lamps was thick and knotted. The magic inside was dense, packed tight into the stone. It was pure heat. Pure life.
I walked toward the nearest one. The snow crunched under my boots.
The hunger in my chest roared. It wasn't asking anymore; it was demanding. My vision narrowed. The rest of the world faded into grey; only the lamp existed. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
I stopped at the bottom of the iron pole. I looked up. The globe was just out of reach.
I didn't think. I jumped.
My enhanced legs launched me upward. I grabbed the iron rim of the lamp holder. The metal was freezing, burning my fingers, but I didn't care. I pulled myself up, wrapping my legs around the post.
I was face-to-face with the globe. The light was blinding. The heat coming off it was amazing.
I reached out. I pressed my palm against the glass.
Mine.
I opened the gate inside me. I didn't sip. I didn't carefully pull the waste energy like I usually did. I gulped.
I pulled with everything the Hollow had.
The reaction was violent.
The silver light inside the crystal didn't flow; it rushed. It slammed into my hand, tearing through the glass as if it wasn't there.
CRACK.
The glass globe shattered. Shards rained down on my face, stinging my skin.
But I didn't let go. I was gripping the crystal itself now. The raw magic poured into me—hot, spicy, overwhelming. It filled the Hollow in a second and kept coming. It flooded my veins. It burned through my nerves like lightning.
It felt good. It felt like power.
For a second, the cold was gone. I felt like a giant. I felt like I could melt the snow for a mile around.
Then the pain hit.
My arm seized up. A sharp, jagged ache shot from my hand to my shoulder. I looked at my arm.
The veins weren't blue. They were black.
Thick, dark lines were pulsing under my skin, spreading from my hand like poison ivy. The violet light of the magic was fighting with the black stain of the Curse.
I screamed.
I let go of the post.
I fell ten feet, landing hard on my back in a snowbank. The air left my lungs.
I lay there, gasping, staring up at the broken lamp. The light was gone. The crystal was dead, drained dry. A thin wisp of smoke curled into the night air.
My arm was burning. I clutched it to my chest. The black lines were fading, sinking back under the skin, but the ache stayed.
Too much, I thought, panic rising. I took too much.
"Ren."
The voice was soft, but it cut through the wind like a blade.
I froze. I rolled over in the snow.
Miren was standing there.
She was wearing her nightgown and a hastily thrown-on cloak. Her feet were bare in boots that were unlaced. She held a lantern in one hand, but the light was dimmed.
She looked at the broken streetlamp. She looked at the glass shards in the snow. She looked at me, shivering and holding my arm.
She didn't look angry. She didn't look like a mother catching her son breaking things.
She looked like she was inspecting a failed experiment.
She walked over to me. She knelt in the snow, ignoring the cold soaking into her gown. She reached out and took my arm. She pulled my hand away from my chest.
She looked at the fading black lines on my wrist.
"It hurts," I whispered. I sounded like a child. I was a child.
"I know," Miren said quietly. "Raw magic is heavy. It has dirt in it. You can't just drink it straight, Ren. It clogs the veins."
She touched the black mark. Her fingers were warm.
"You followed me," I said.
"I always hear you leave," she said. "A mother knows when her nest is empty."
She looked into my eyes. "The cold is getting worse, isn't it?"
I nodded. Tears pricked at my eyes—not from sadness, but from being so tired of fighting the Hollow. "I'm always cold, Mama. No matter how many blankets. It eats everything."
Miren sighed. She sat back on her heels, the snow crunching.
"Toren thinks it's a curse," she said softly. "He thinks you were touched by something dark. He loves you, but he's afraid for your soul."
She squeezed my hand.
"But I know better. It's not a curse, Ren. It's a hunger. It's a stomach."
She stood up and pulled me with her. "Come home. We can't fix this in the snow."
Back in the house, Miren didn't send me to bed. She built up the fire until it was roaring. She sat me down at the kitchen table—her workshop.
She went to her shelf of jars. She didn't pull out the usual herbs. She pulled out a small, black stone jar I had never seen her open.
She sat across from me. She opened the jar.
Inside was a thick, grey paste. It smelled like wet earth and old iron.
"Give me your hand," she said.
I put my arm out. The black lines were faint now, like old bruises.
Miren dipped her finger in the paste and smeared it over my wrist. It tingled.
"My grandmother taught me this," Miren said, working the paste into my skin. "In the Sump, the air is poison. The water is poison. Everything you touch tries to kill you."
She looked at me.
"Most people think the Sump kills the weak. That's true. But it also changes the strong. We didn't just live through the poison, Ren. We learned to eat it."
I watched her hands. Eat the poison.
"We have filters," she said, tapping her own chest. "Inside us. We learned to take the water and leave the mud."
She pointed at my chest.
"You have a big appetite. You pulled that magic from the lamp like a drowning man gulping air. That's why it hurt. You swallowed the glass with the water."
"How do I stop it?" I asked. "It hurts when I don't eat. It hurts when I do."
"You have to filter," Miren said sternly. "You are not a drain, Ren. You are a sieve."
She wiped her hands on a rag.
"Close your eyes."
I closed them.
"Find the Hollow," she said. Her voice changed. It wasn't Mom anymore. It was the Teacher.
I looked inside. I found the cold spot. It was shaking, buzzing with the raw energy I had stolen.
"Now," Miren said. "Imagine a net. A mesh. Fine as silk, strong as iron. Put it over the hole."
I tried. I pictured a net. A filter.
"When you pull," Miren guided, "you don't just open the mouth. You pull through the net. You catch the heavy stuff. You catch the anger. You catch the burn. You only let the heat through."
I focused. The energy inside me was churning. I imagined pushing it through a sieve.
It was hard. My mind wanted to just let it flow. But I forced the image. I separated the jagged, spicy feeling of the raw magic from the pure warmth.
I pushed the "mud"—the black feeling—out. I imagined breathing it out.
I let out a breath. A tiny wisp of dark grey smoke escaped my lips.
The pain in my arm vanished. The buzzing in my chest smoothed out into a steady hum.
I opened my eyes.
Miren was watching me, her eyes shining with pride and a little bit of fear.
"You did it," she whispered. "You cleared the line."
I looked at my hand. The black marks were gone.
"The Sump Way," I said.
"The Survivor's Way," she corrected. "We take what kills others, and we make it fuel."
She stood up and kissed my forehead. "Go to bed, Ren. The lamp will be missed tomorrow. We'll have to be careful."
I nodded. I stood up. I felt... steady. For the first time in months, I wasn't shaking.
But as I walked to my room, my builder's brain started turning.
The filter worked. It stopped the damage. But it didn't solve the problem.
The problem was size.
The Hollow was growing. My body was growing. I needed more fuel every day to keep this boosted state. If I kept pulling from lamps, I'd eventually get caught. Or I'd drain something that fought back.
I couldn't keep storing the energy inside me. It was too dangerous. It was like carrying a bucket of liquid fire.
I sat down at my small desk. I pulled out a piece of charcoal and a scrap of paper.
I needed a tank.
I needed something outside my body. Something I could fill up when magic was everywhere—like near a big fire or a strong ley line—and then drink from slowly when I was cold.
I drew a circle. Then a series of shapes—the same geometry I had seen in Lysara's books, but changed.
A battery, I thought. I need to build a Mana Battery.
I looked at the drawing. It would need something that could hold the charge. Stone was okay, but it leaked. Wood burned.
Gemstones, I thought. Or maybe... bone.
I tapped the charcoal against the paper.
I had fixed the immediate danger. I wasn't going to explode. But the hunger wasn't going away. It was just waiting.
I looked out the window at the snow-covered village. Somewhere out there was the material I needed.
I just had to find it. And to find it, I had to hunt.
Next project, I wrote at the bottom of the page. The Reservoir.
I blew out the candle. The room went dark, but for once, I wasn't afraid of the cold. I had a filter. And I had a plan.