Lovro raised his head. His face was gray, smeared with blood from his nose and ears, and his eyes were so bloodshot they looked like two rubies. His right hand was one big, pulsating burn. “What?” he slurred, squinting as if looking through fog. “Louder. My head is ringing like you’re sitting inside whistling.”

  Nayden looked at his hand. Skin was peeling off in sheets. He grabbed a handful of clean snow from a windowsill and pressed it to the burn. Lovro hissed but didn’t pull his hand away.

  “Are you... okay?” Nayden asked stupidly, seeing his friend shaking with chills.

  Lovro spat bloody phlegm. “Do I look like I’m okay?” he rasped, trying to focus his vision. “But we’re alive. For now. We have to disappear. Others are coming.”

  “Where?!” Nayden looked around, terrified. The roar in the market was growing louder. “We won’t make it to the barracks!”

  Lovro pointed a shaking, burned hand at the iron-bound, low doors on the other side of the alley. “Winery cellar,” he rasped, leaning heavily on his friend’s shoulder. “Thick walls. Deep underground. Maybe... maybe they won’t smell us.”

  Nayden nodded. “Take the kids!” he threw to the oldest girl, who was staring at the dead monster in mute horror. “Fast! To the door!”

  Then a silhouette emerged from the smoke in the square. A young boy, maybe sixteen, ran toward them blindly, tripping over his own legs. He had a cut brow and his mouth open in a scream that didn’t leave his throat. “Runn...” he started, but the word stuck in his throat.

  A mass fell from above. A shadow obscured the lantern. The Zmey slammed into the ground. Its paw drove the boy into the cobblestones. Blood and fragments of organs shot out from under the paw under pressure, spraying Nayden from the waist up. Warm, sticky goo glued his eyelashes together, blinding him for a second.

  The children started squealing, backing away in panic. Two of the youngest fell into the mud. Nayden wiped his eyes with his sleeve, smearing someone else’s blood on his face. The Zmey was turning its head toward the prone little ones.

  Clang!

  Nayden struck a tin gutter with the flat of his sword. The sound was pathetic, squeaky, but in that silence, it sounded like a gong. “Hey!” His voice cracked, went into falsetto. “Over here, damn it!”

  The Zmey froze. Its head turned slowly. Yellow, pus-filled eyes narrowed.

  “What are you doing?!” Lovro stood beside him. He was corpse-pale.

  “Buying time.” Nayden took a step back, drawing the beast away from the alley. “Let them get the hell out.”

  The children didn’t wait. They sprinted through the mud toward the low, iron-bound doors. The oldest girl yanked the handle. “Inside!” Lovro yelled, not taking his eyes off the monster. “Bolt it! Barricade the door with barrels and do not fucking come out, whatever you hear!” The door slammed. The scrape of a bolt. Silence.

  The Zmey lashed its tail. The impact was like a battering ram. Nayden felt ribs crack under his armor. Air fled his lungs. The force of the blow threw him against the wall of a house. Plaster rained on his head. He fell to his knees, unable to catch his breath. The world went dark. Only a quiet, painful moan escaped his lips.

  “Nayden!” Lovro’s scream sounded like it was coming from behind a wall of water.

  Lovro seized the moment. He leaped, driving his blade into the monster’s thigh, where the scales seemed thinner. Mistake. The steel snapped. The Zmey twisted with impossible speed for such bulk. It swatted Lovro with its wing. His friend flew across the street, smashing into a pile of rubble from the collapsed shed.

  “Are you alright?!” Nayden scrambled to his feet. Every breath was like a knife in his side.

  Lovro didn’t get up. He tried to lift himself on his elbows but collapsed into the mud. “Legs...” he choked out, spitting blackness. “I can’t feel my legs. Run!”

  Nayden, consumed by fury, threw himself at the beast. No plan. No technique. The Zmey easily dodged the slash. It opened its maw. It didn’t breathe fire. It spat. Thick, yellow phlegm hit Nayden in the shoulder. A sharp, chemical stench hit his nostrils. The metal of his pauldron began to bubble like melting wax. Acid ate through the steel, burning the skin underneath. “Fuck!” Nayden fell, frantically clawing at straps to throw off the burning armor.

  The Zmey loomed over him. Yellow eyes shone with triumph. The beast’s shadow covered him like a shroud.

  “Nayden...” The voice was quiet. Dry. Final.

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  Nayden looked sideways. Lovro had pulled himself up to his knees. He was blue. His body had nothing left to pay for magic with, so it began collecting the toll from his life. He held out both hands—one charred, the other healthy. His fingers trembled in spasms. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. It lifted in a weak, crooked smile. Red stained his teeth, but for a split second, that same cunning glint as always flashed in his eyes. “Apologize to Mila for me,” he rasped, looking his friend straight in the eye.

  Nayden froze. Cold gripped his stomach tighter than the frost. “What the fuck are you saying?!” he screamed, taking a step toward him. “Get up, dammit! No time for jokes!”

  “Tell her I’ll be late.” Lovro winked. One last time. And turned his palms toward Nayden.

  “No!!!”

  A wave of kinetic energy hit Nayden in the chest. He couldn’t defend himself. The force threw him like a rag doll. He flew several meters back, landing in thick, thorny holly bushes, far from the beast’s maw.

  The Zmey lunged at the only threat left. At Lovro, who now stood defenseless, arms dropped, waiting for the end.

  Nayden didn’t close his eyes. He watched. The monster descended on his friend. Massive fangs sank into his shoulder and neck. Crunch. The sound of crushing bone was louder than the roar. Lovro’s scream cut off halfway, turning into a gurgle. Blood sprayed into the air in a thick mist, painting the snow and branches black. The beast jerked its head like a dog playing with a rat, and with a dull thud hurled the limp body against the winery wall.

  Nayden scrambled out of the bushes. Thorns sliced his face, but he didn’t even feel it. The pain of broken ribs burned with every breath, but it was the sight of his friend’s body that made his lungs refuse to obey.

  Lovro lay in the rubble. Bent at an angle anatomy didn’t allow. The armor on his torso was dented, pressed with his sternum into a single, bloody pulp. His eyes were open. His face, gray with dust, stared at the deaf, smoke-choked sky. Nothing flowed from his torn neck anymore.

  Nayden rushed to him. Grabbed his pauldron. “Get up.” His voice trembled, breaking on syllables. “You said we’re alive. You said...”

  He tried to lift him. The body was limp. Sloshing through his hands like a sack of wet sand. No muscle resistance. No warmth. Under his fingers, through the steel of the armor, he felt the soft, spongy squelch of crushed organs. His friend’s head lolled back helplessly, hitting the stone with a dull, hollow thud. Empty eyes still looked up, accusing the silent gods.

  “Lovro! Stop fooling around!” he screamed, shaking him by the collar. His friend’s head offered no resistance. It flopped loosely to the side, the back of the skull hitting the stone with a dull, hollow knock. Nayden let him go abruptly. His hands hovered in the air, shaking. He wiped them nervously on his thighs, as if trying to scrub that feeling off his fingers. The feeling of dead, inert weight. He took a step back. Then another.

  Suddenly, the night deepened. Something huge obscured the smoking sky above his head, cutting off the last weak glow reflecting off the snow. The darkness thickened, became a physical weight. The Zmey stood right there. A squeal and the crunch of scales filled the silence. Yellow eyes, glowing with their own corpse-light, tore away from the corpse and slowly, with lazy satisfaction, focused on the last living guard.

  Nayden fell backward into the mud. He began to crawl backward, pushing with his elbows. “Help!” he screamed. His voice was raw, pathetic. “Anyone, for fuck’s sake! Gods! If you can hear me! I’ll do anything!”

  His scream drowned in the beast’s roar. No one came. But someone flew in.

  A rush of wings cut through the smoke. The raven. The same one. Large, with feathers shining like oiled steel. It didn’t land. It dived straight into the cloud of dust. The Zmey raised a paw to crush Nayden, but suddenly recoiled, shaking its head. A black lightning bolt zipped past its ear. The raven circled the monster’s snout, elusive as a shadow. It pecked its nose, scratched its eyelids with talons, forcing the beast into chaotic, furious snaps.

  The Zmey’s massive jaws clamped centimeters from the bird’s tail. The raven didn’t even speed up. It executed a lazy, almost dismissive loop right over the monster’s nose, brushing it with a wing. It flew a bit away, perched on a protruding piece of wall right in front of the crawling Nayden’s face, and let out a cackling, mocking sound. It wasn’t a bird’s squawk. It was a cackle. Brazen, dry laughter, as if the bird were mocking the clumsiness of a thousand-year-old predator.

  The Zmey roared. Steam burst from its nostrils as the monster jerked its head side to side, trying to target the small, black target that dared to mock it.

  Nayden froze. “You...” he rasped, choking on smoke. “You knew.”

  The bird lifted a foot, scratched lazily under its wing, then looked at the boy with pity. As if to say: You only just noticed?

  “You...” Nayden rasped, choking on smoke. “You are not a bird. You are His eye.”

  The Zmey got bored with the game. It ignored the annoying feathered thing and focused its gaze on the boy again. Slime dripped from its claws straight onto Nayden’s boots. The beast wound up for a strike.

  Nayden looked at the sky. Gray. Empty. Deaf to prayers. Perun didn’t give a damn about them. Perun allowed Lovro to turn into a bloody stain on a wall. Then he looked at the raven. It didn’t fly away. It preened its feathers, glancing at him with that same brazen anticipation.

  Rage flooded Nayden in a hot wave, displacing fear. “Perun is silent!” he screamed, spitting blood toward the sky. “He doesn’t give a shit about us!”

  The Zmey roared. The shadow of the paw began to fall. Nayden didn’t flinch. He bored his gaze into the bird’s black eyes. “So screw the Sun!” His voice was raw, full of blasphemous fury. “Do you hear me, Horned One?! If you are here... Take me! Take my soul! I will do anything!”

  The raven stopped preening. Tilted its head. Listening. “Just kill this filth!” Nayden pointed at the Zmey with a trembling hand. “Kill him for Lovro! Let him die in agony! That is my price!”

  The raven ruffled its feathers. It let out a short, cackling squawk and nodded. Then it snapped its beak like a judge’s gavel.

  And then reality cracked. The sound resembled the tearing of thick canvas, only a thousand times louder. The pressure in the square dropped in a split second. Snowflakes and smoke stopped in the air, and then were violently sucked into a single point between Nayden and the beast.

  Nayden squeezed his eyelids shut, waiting for the crushing weight of the paw. Instead of pain, he felt a wave of cold. Not wind—vacuum. Frost that penetrated armor and froze the marrow in his bones. The same frost he had felt in the crowd.

  “What the...?” The voice was unfamiliar. Male. And clearly annoyed.

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