Macus didn't wait for the cold to leave his bones. He scrambled up from the mud, his boots slipping on the wet stones of the King's Road. He ran. He didn't check his compass. He didn't check the stars. He just put as much distance as he could between himself and the woman with the void in her eyes.

  She let me go, his mind raced. She looked at me... and just let me go.

  The mist was thicker now, swirling like oil. The silence of the Deadlands was heavy, pressing against his ears. He rounded a sharp bend in the pass—and slammed directly into a wall of rusted iron.

  CLANG.

  Macus bounced back, landing hard on his tailbone. He looked up. It wasn't a wall.

  Standing in the center of the narrow path, looming out of the fog like a jagged scar on the world, was a figure. It was massive. Armor plates were fused to the flesh beneath. Macus froze. Recognition flashed through his panic.

  Siege-Breaker.

  He had seen this design before. Just weeks ago, in the pass at Riverwood. The monster Caelthon had crushed. It’s a Flesh Golem, Macus analyzed. Soulfather tech. Heavy. Iron fused to skin.

  He remembered the fight in the mud. He remembered Caelthon laughing: "Golems are always slow. That's why they need us to be fast."

  Macus scrambled backward. He knew the stats. It relies on mass. It moves like molasses. I can outrun it.

  But then, the wind shifted. Macus frowned. He sniffed the air, expecting the thick, cloying wall of rot. There was no rot. Instead, the air tasted sharp. Stinging.

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  Ozone.

  Macus paused. It smells clean. Like lightning. Like the stories of the Soulfather’s personal guard. A pristine Construct, he realized. Not a scavenger like the one in the pass. This is a newly made guardian left to protect the Bride.

  The figure didn't move. It stood perfectly still, a statue of war blocking the only path forward. Then, a light flickered in the darkness of its helm.

  Eyes. Two of them.

  They weren't the cloudy voids of the Bride. They were burning, molten orange. They didn't look like magic. They looked like coals burning in a grate that had been left untended for too long.

  They looked like pure, distilled agony.

  Macus stared into those orange eyes. He braced himself, waiting for the construct to crush him. But the giant didn't strike.

  It just breathed.

  A sound escaped the creature's throat—a wet, rattling wheeze, like a pair of old bellows struggling to pump air into a dying forge. The figure took a half-step forward. The motion was stiff, jerky.

  The orange eyes flared, widening as they locked onto Macus’s face. The giant’s hand twitched, raising slightly, reaching out—not in a fist, but open.

  Macus didn't wait to see what the Golem wanted. It’s too heavy, his logic dictated. I have the speed advantage.

  He scrambled to his feet, feinted left, and then bolted right, diving into the narrow gap between the giant and the cliff face. He felt the heat radiating off the armor as he squeezed past—a wave of feverish, unnatural warmth.

  He braced himself for a blow. But nothing came.

  Macus sprinted into the mist. He ran until his lungs burned, confident in his calculation that the heavy husk was left far behind. Only then did he risk a single glance back.

  The figure hadn't turned. It hadn't chased him. It was still standing there, facing the empty road where Macus had been, the glowing orange eyes burning in the grey fog.

  It looked... lonely.

  Macus shook his head, tearing his eyes away. Don't think about it, he told himself. It’s just a construct.

  He didn't know then that the construct was guarding Maeve, but not so to protect her.