The beast emerged from the treeline on the far side of the pass.

It was big wolf with white fur that beautifully blended with the snow around. It was about the size of a large dog but leaner, with a thin ridge of frost crystals along its spine. Its muzzle was pointed, its ears tall, its eyes a flat colourless blue that reminded me too much of Cecilia when she was in a mood.

It was alone which made it less dangerous for Kira.

It lowered its head when it saw us. A long thin snarl came up out of its chest.

"A Rimeclaw," Kira said under her breath. She’d already drawn the dagger. "A powerful ambush hunter at E-rank. Fast on the first burst, tires quickly if you can survive the opening move."

"Sounds like your kind of fight."

"That’s the goal."

Kira stepped forward. The Rimeclaw’s ears tracked the sound of her boot in the snow. Its shoulders dropped in the small load-up before a charge. Kira flipped the dagger in her hand and let the blue mana crawl along the edge in a thin skin of light.

The Rimeclaw took action first.

It came down the pass in a low sprint that ate the distance between us in the space of a few breaths. Its claws threw fine sprays of snow behind it. Its jaw hung open just enough to show a row of sharp white teeth.

Kira flicked her wrist.

The dagger left her hand.

It flew across the pass at the flat trajectory she’d shown me on the pine tree.

The Rimeclaw twisted sideways mid-sprint, the same spine-rotation the frostpanther had done, and the dagger passed a hand’s width off its shoulder.

Instead of panicking at her missed attack, a smirk grew on Kira’s face. She lifted her palm and the dagger stopped mid-flight.

Then it reversed direction.

It came back on a bent arc, spinning end over end, and buried itself in the base of the Rimeclaw’s neck from behind at the exact moment the beast finished its dodge.

The blade drove down through fur and hide into the space between the shoulder blades. The Rimeclaw’s front legs buckled.

It went down in the snow with a thin whine cut short in its throat.

The mana coat on the blade dimmed and went out.

Kira tried to recall her dagger, but failed. "That’s a problem.. huh?" I muttered. The skill’s disadvantage had revealed itself. Once the dagger hit the enemy on the return passage, Kira would no longer be able to recall it.

Kira nodded her head, "The returning attack should either kill, or not touch the target. Otherwise, I would be left without a weapon."

"Yes, it’s probably better to find or craft you a second dagger, even if it’s of worse quality. It’s better than being without a weapon all-together."

We walked towards the wolf, which Kira confirmed was a corpse. She plucked the dagger free of the corpse.

Kira’s dark eyes stayed on the dead wolf for a beat before they lifted to me.

"I can bend the return path a little, yeah. Not much. Ten degrees, maybe. Enough to hit something behind the target if the target dodges the first line." She turned the dagger over in her palm. "The mana draw is heavier on a bent return. I probably have four or five of those in me before the pool runs dry."

"That’s plenty for a fight."

She wiped the blade on the hem of her uniform and slid it back into the sheath. A small colour had come up into her cheeks that wasn’t the cold this time. She was trying to hide the smile at the corner of her mouth and losing the fight by inches.

I crossed to the Rimeclaw and opened my storage ring. The body dissolved into the pocket dimension.

Unfortunately, no system points were gained for the kill, since it wasn’t my kill.

I closed the ring and stood.

"Nicely done. First solo kill of your career."

"Thank you."

I turned back up the pass and started walking again. Kira fell in beside me at a half-step behind, close enough that her arm brushed mine every third stride.

We’d made it another hundred metres up the slope when I stopped.

The path ahead bent around a shoulder of dark rock. Just past the bend, where the wind had cleared a strip of the surface down to bare stone, something dark had been etched into the flat.

It was a rough but old symbol, cut into the rock by something that had known what it was doing.

Kira’s breath caught beside me.

"Ash."

She’d already seen it.

Her hand came up and closed on the sleeve of my uniform.

"That’s a warding mark."

Kira crouched at the edge of the exposed stone. She didn’t touch the mark. Her fingers hovered over the deepest cut in the pattern, tracing the shape in the air a centimetre above the surface.

The mark was maybe half a metre across. Three concentric arcs cut into the stone, broken at even intervals, with a smaller angular figure at the centre that could have been an eye or a mouth or nothing at all.

The lines had been worn soft at the edges by weather.

"A warding mark is a boundary sign."

Kira spoke quietly. Her eyes hadn’t come off the stone.

"People used to carve them at the edges of their settlements. A ward told anything with intent, human or beast, that the ground past the mark belonged to someone. If you crossed a warding line, the settlement’s protector, whatever guardian they had, would come for you."

I looked at the mark again. Then at the pass around us. Nothing else in sight but wind and snow and the dark line of pine below.

"So there is a settlement here..."

"Or... there was a settlement somewhere close before it was destroyed. Wards get placed at the outer edge of a claimed area, not the centre. If this is one border of it, the settlement was further in." Her eyes lifted to the slope above us, then to the rocky shoulder past the bend. "Uphill. Wards face outward. This one’s cut on the downhill side of the stone."