49 lines
No EOL
3.9 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
No EOL
3.9 KiB
Markdown
The next morning the sun never really rose. It had vanished entirely by the time they crested the final ridge—if it had ever truly been there. In its place hung a bruised, pewter sky, swollen with unfallen snow. Wind pushed at their backs, less a blessing than a command: _move, or die_.
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They obeyed.
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The road ahead was barely a road at all. Just a flattened scar across the windblown rise, half-lost beneath drifts and scattered cairns that marked long-dead trails. But beyond it, nestled in the crags where the Mourning Peaks gave way to the outer cliffs, **Winter’s Edge** held fast to the living world.
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At first it was only a jagged shadow behind sheets of blowing ice. Then came the signs of life: a flicker of orange flame behind battlements, a dark banner flapping in the wind, the shimmer of torchlight refracting through frost-covered watchtowers.
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Telaryn paused to take it in, her breath fogging the air. The sight made her knees weak.
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“They’re watching,” murmured Halven behind her, his voice barely audible above the wind. “We’ve been seen.”
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Ahead, shapes began to move—figures emerging from the town’s outer slope. A **scouting party**, five riders in snow-dappled cloaks, their lanterns swinging like captive suns. They carried long spears and shields of old wood marked with the glyph of Winter’s Edge: a mountain peak crowned in ice.
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“Hold!” a voice called out from the lead rider—sharp, commanding, not unkind. “Name yourselves!”
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Telaryn moved forward, her posture instinctively straightening, though her body ached and her boots were soaked through. The others slowed behind her, the wounded leaning on each other, their clothes stiff with frozen blood and soot.
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She did not shout her answer. Instead, she let her words drift across the silence, a single name carried by the wind:
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**“Telaryn of House Talpis.”**
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For a heartbeat, nothing. Then:
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“The princess?” one rider whispered, disbelief crackling in his breath.
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Another dismounted, hurrying forward on foot, his eyes darting across their faces as if unable to reconcile what he saw with what he’d thought dead and buried. A horn blew from the ramparts above—a long, low note that trembled in the snow like something sacred remembered.
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Torches flared along the battlements. Townsfolk began to gather, wrapped in layers of wool and fur. A boy stood atop a half-buried cart, pointing. An elder dropped her sack of wood with a gasp. A girl whispered the old chant of winter kings beneath her breath. Even the guards, hardened men and women of the border clans, stared as though beholding a myth returned.
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**The gates creaked.**
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Heavy, groaning things of iron and pine, carved with ancient runes half-buried by rime. They opened slowly—not with the panicked rush of fear, but with the weight of reverence. As they parted, warmth spilled out into the cold. Not heat, not safety—**hope**. Fragile. Flickering. Real.
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Alisha brushed against Telaryn’s shoulder. Her eyes shimmered. “They thought you dead.”
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“So did I,” Telaryn whispered, not taking her eyes off the firelit path before her. Her hand found Alisha’s again, this time without shame.
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They passed beneath the arch. Inside, bells tolled—not in mourning, but in welcome. Atop a nearby wall, a soldier saluted. Another fell to one knee. Snow blanketed the courtyard, but here, within the walls, the air felt different—**charged**, as if the mountain itself had been waiting for her return.
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Winter’s Edge had endured.
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Now, it would remember.
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Telaryn walked in silence, her face pale but unbowed. Behind her trudged the last of her loyalists, half-frozen, hollow-eyed, bearing the weight of all they had lost. Somewhere behind them, buried beneath snow and ash, Enric slept his final sleep. The smoke of Talpis still curled on the horizon.
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But here, at the edge of the world, a gate had opened.
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And not even the Empire could close it again. |