3.6 KiB
The storm was not made for mortals.
Each step scraped Sari's lungs raw. The slope was pure ice and crumbling stone, the wind slicing open the world with a shriek that never ended. Her breath froze on her lips; her fingers cracked inside her gloves. Still, she climbed. She climbed until her knees bled and her legs numbed and her voice vanished into the gale.
At last, the wind broke.
It didn’t stop—it withdrew.
Sari stumbled into the eye of the storm, a hollow ring of silence atop the jagged summit of Mournpeak. The snow no longer fell, but hovered—crystals suspended midair, unmoving, watching.
And in the center: Telaryn.
She lay half-buried in frost, one hand curled around Ashmire’s hilt, the other clawed against the stone as if trying to hold on to the world. Frost webbed across her lips. Her skin had gone pale blue, veins inked darker than blood. She was barely breathing.
Sari collapsed to her knees beside her.
“No,” she whispered. “Ryn—no, not like this.”
A whisper answered her. Then a second. Then more.
Shapes emerged—not from the storm, but of it. The first was formless, until it wasn’t: a shifting presence of shrieking gusts and spiraling frost, like a falcon of shattered ice. The second rose from the ground, slow and terrible—a living column of stone with a crown of basalt shards and arms thick as tree trunks. A third emerged last: invisible but felt, a pressure like the silence before a cliff falls, a cold so absolute it made the soul ache.
The spirits of air, stone, and ice.
Sari bowed. “I ask—no. I beg—your mercy. Your aid.”
They did not speak in words. But she felt them.
Why?
“To save her,” she said, voice breaking. “She is the Queen Returned. The one who bears Ashmire. If she dies, all is lost.”
The wind howled around her.
Why should we save the one who draws the blood-blade?
“She will restore balance. She will bring down the invaders. Return the land to its roots. Isn’t that what you want?”
Stone rumbled beneath her, unimpressed.
Balance was broken by her kind long ago.
“She is not them!” Sari pleaded. “She was born of the lowlands, but the mountains remember her. She is your heir! She climbed to meet you—”
She fell.
That silenced her.
The wind tore at her clothes now, testing her weakness. The stone leaned forward, shedding dust like ancient bones. Ice pressed close to her heart, chilling every word before she could say it.
She tried again.
“Then take me,” she gasped. “I offer my life for hers. I offer my body, my soul—my service—”
We do not want death.
We want return.
Sari blinked. “What do you mean?”
The stone stirred.
A place stolen. Taken from mountain. Hollowed by fire and iron. Winter’s Edge.
The wind coiled tighter.
Restore it. Erase it. Let ice and stone and root reclaim what was ours.
Sari hesitated. Her thoughts flashed to the refugees, the warmth of its halls, the lives saved there…
And then to Telaryn, barely breathing.
She bowed her head, heart breaking, frost on her lashes.
“I swear it. I swear it by blood and breath. Winter’s Edge will fall. The stone will return.”
The pact sealed.
The air cracked like thunder, and the wind dove into Ashmire like a serpent made of snow and scream. The stone pressed its weight into the blade’s spine, warping the metal with veins of ancient silver. Ice webbed the crossguard, bleeding frost into the grip.
Sari reeled, nearly falling—blood streaming from her nose and ears.
But Telaryn gasped.
Her fingers clutched the blade. Her eyes opened, shining with crimson fire.
And the wind whispered, this time in awe.
Queen.