The Frostfang left the ground in a single smooth leap.
Snow exploded where it had been standing. For a heartbeat all Alaric saw were jaws and pale fur rushing toward Elaina.
Light flared in front of her.
Elaina thrust both hands out and shouted something in High Script. A curved wall of pale radiance snapped into being, like a sheet of milky glass. The Frostfang hit it with its full weight.
The barrier shook. Cracks of light spider‑webbed from the point of impact.
The two smaller wolves darted around the sides. One went for the open field on their left, the other for the road behind them, aiming to circle and cut off escape.
"Back, all of you, back," Elaina shouted.
The children stumbled a step, flour and potatoes and firewood shifting in their arms.
The wolf on the left lunged first, going for Rin, who was closest to the gap in the wall.
Kellan dropped the firewood without thinking and swung the topmost log like a club. It struck the wolf in the muzzle with a crack. The animal yelped and skidded sideways, snow spraying.
The second smaller wolf charged at Alaric.
He ducked on instinct. The flour sack nearly slipped from his arms. Claws raked past his shoulder and caught the edge of the sack instead. Cloth tore. White powder burst into the air like smoke.
The wolf landed, coughed, and shook its head, blinded for a moment by the cloud.
Alaric did not have time to think, only to move.
He threw what was left of the flour aside to free his hands and pulled mana up from his chest, along his arm.
"Creo Ignis," he said.
A small flame jumped into his palm. He flung it into the drifting flour without aiming for anything in particular, only trying to put light and heat between them and the wolf.
The floating powder flashed.
Not a true explosion, not like the stories in his other memories, but a sudden fierce bloom of fire in the wolf's face. It yelped and rolled in the snow, paws clawing at singed fur and seared eyes.
Rin gaped. "You set the flour on fire."
"Move," Kellan snapped. "Talk later."
The Frostfang hit Elaina's barrier again. The light bent inward, almost touching her robes. Her teeth were clenched. Sweat beaded on her forehead in the freezing air.
"Behind the wall, toward the chapel," she barked. "Now."
They staggered sideways along the road, keeping Elaina between them and the largest wolf. The broken flour sack lay smoldering in the snow. The half‑blinded wolf limped away, whining.
The other smaller wolf, the one Kellan had clubbed, shook blood from its nose and came at them again, angling for Mira this time.
Alaric felt mana coiled in his chest, thin from the fire spell.
He did not have much left, but he had something else.
"Confirma," he whispered.
Aura flooded his legs and arms, sharper this time, filling muscles that already ached from the long day. He grabbed Mira's sleeve and yanked her back just as the wolf's jaws snapped where her arm had been.
He shoved her toward the wall, then braced himself between her and the wolf.
The animal lunged again.
Alaric grabbed the nearest object, which happened to be one of the fallen pieces of firewood, and swung.
The world narrowed to teeth and frozen breath and the weight of the stick in his hands. The aura wrapped around his arms caught the impact, channeled it, turned a clumsy swing into something that actually hurt the beast.
The log cracked across the side of the wolf's head. It staggered, snarling, dazed.
"Get down," someone yelled.
An arrow hissed past Alaric's ear and buried itself in the wolf's throat.
The animal crumpled.
Alaric blinked.
Hunters were running up the road, snow spraying from their boots. Torren led them, spear leveled, breath steaming in hard bursts.
The Frostfang tore itself free from Elaina's weakening barrier and wheeled to face this new threat.
"Circle it," Torren shouted. "Keep it off the children."
Two hunters split left and right, staves and short blades ready. Torren went straight for the Frostfang, spear point aimed at its chest.
The big wolf snarled and met him head on.
Spear and fangs clashed. Torren's strike slid along the creature's shoulder instead of its heart, ripping a long shallow gash. Pale blood streaked the fur. The Frostfang tried to clamp down on the spear shaft; Torren twisted away, using the haft to shove its head aside.
Another arrow whistled in and stuck in the beast's flank.
The Frostfang's snarl turned shriller. It glanced once at the chapel, once at the cluster of hunters, then threw its head back and loosed a short, furious howl.
Then it turned and bounded for the trees, snow flying beneath its paws. In a handful of breaths it vanished between the trunks, the remaining smaller wolf limping after it.
"Hold," Torren snapped when one of his men started to pursue. "It knows the woods better than we do. We don't chase it into deep cover with the light this low."
The hunter cursed softly but obeyed.
Elaina's barrier collapsed with a dull shimmer. She sucked in a breath and leaned against the wall, face pale.
Kellan, Rin, Mira and Alaric stood very still, staring at the space where the Frostfang had been.
Torren strode over, spear still in hand. His gaze swept the children, taking in the torn flour sack, the burned patch of snow, the dead smaller wolf at their feet.
"You four move," he said. "Now, to the chapel. Corwin will want a look at you before night falls."
He glanced at Alaric's flour‑dusted hands, at the faint scorch marks in front of them, and added, "And you, boy, can explain what you just did with that fire once we're all behind a door."
He turned toward the chapel, making it clear that explanations would wait.
The hunters formed a loose ring around the group, and together they started toward the bell tower, leaving bloody tracks in the snow.