"They're coming."
Kael's voice cut through the quiet before dawn, low and urgent.
Aurea didn't ask who. She already knew.
The pulse last night—the voice in her head—wasn't just an echo. It had been a signal. A summons. And whatever had answered it… was moving fast.
She scrambled to her feet, heart slamming in her chest. Frost coated the ground around their camp like spilled starlight, unnatural for this latitude. The air itself had changed—crisp and biting, filled with an electric edge like the calm before a lightning strike.
"North," Kael said, eyes locked on the horizon. "Movement. Big. Not local fauna."
"Hostile?" Eryan asked, already pulling his daggers free.
Kael nodded. "Very."
Riven grunted as he tightened his coat around his blood-stained shirt. "Well. Nothing like a chase to start the morning."
They moved—fast and silent through the underbrush, heading for the icy cliffs to the north. According to Riven's salvaged map, the Temple of Ice was somewhere beyond the glacial barrier known only as the Weeping Spine—a sheer wall of frozen waterfalls, petrified mid-collapse.
But they wouldn't make it if they didn't survive the next ten minutes.
Behind them came the first whisper of metal—not footsteps, but dragging. Chains.
Aurea spun. The trees behind them were dissolving into frost. Entire trunks turned pale, split apart with a crystalline groan.
And from within the encroaching white mist—figures emerged.
Not soldiers. Not beasts.
Wraiths.
Pale, translucent, cloaked in robes stitched from shredded shadow, their faces obscured by veils of ice. Where they moved, heat died.
"They're not alive," Aurea breathed.
"No," Kael confirmed grimly, blades sliding free in a whisper of steel. "They're Soul-Bound. Trapped between death and magic. Elsera must have left them behind as sentries."
"Or they're answering someone else," Riven muttered.
Eryan was already moving—silent as a ghost himself, slicing through the trees in a wide arc. Kael flanked left. Riven pulled Aurea down into a crouch.
"Don't burn them unless you want to light up the entire damn forest," he whispered.
"I'm not sure fire even works on them," she replied, eyes narrowing as she felt inside for the glyphs. "They're... cold. Old cold. Like they're from before warmth was a thing."
The first wraith raised a hand. The trees around it cracked. Frost splintered across bark.
Then it screamed.
Not aloud—mentally—a wave of anguish and hatred that hit them like a sonic boom. Aurea staggered, nose bleeding.
And the others charged.
Kael met the first with brute force—steel striking frost, sparks flying. Eryan flickered through the mist like a shadow, every strike precise, controlled.
Riven shoved Aurea sideways just in time to avoid a spike of ice erupting from the ground.
"Do something," he growled.
Aurea didn't hesitate.
She reached inward, into the glyphs. Into the flame. Not the wild inferno of the temple—but the controlled spark Elsera had left inside her. The part that didn't just burn—it illuminated.
She drew it out and whispered:
"Flame, see them."
Light burst from her palms—not fire, but revelation. The wraiths staggered, caught mid-motion. And for a moment, their true forms were visible beneath the frost.
Men. Women. Children. Bound in chains of lightless ice.
Their souls.
Aurea faltered.
They weren't just enemies.
They were prisoners.
Then one of them lunged—and Kael was there. Blade through its chest, the wraith dissolving into ash and tears.
"They'll kill us, Aurea," he said quietly. "Even if they don't want to."
She nodded, face pale. "Then we end it fast."
They fought.
Together.
Kael at her right, Riven on her left. Eryan above—leaping from frost-covered branches like death itself. Aurea unleashed spirals of pure flame-light, burning through the illusion and stunning the wraiths long enough for steel to end their pain.
By the time the sun rose—
It was over.
The air reeked of scorched ice.
"Report," Kael said between breaths.
"No wounds," Eryan said, wiping his blade. "One sprain. Nothing broken."
"I'll live," Riven muttered, holding his ribs.
Aurea stood slowly, light fading from her fingertips. "We need to move. Whoever sent them will know they failed."
Kael looked back toward the still-smoking glade. "That was a test."
"And we passed," Eryan said.
"For now," Riven added.
By midday, they reached the base of the Weeping Spine.
It was more terrible—and beautiful—than any of them expected.
A sheer wall of glacial ice, hundreds of feet tall, carved into impossible shapes by wind and time. Frozen cascades clung to the cliffs like silver knives, and embedded in the ice were statues—or perhaps bodies.
Old ones.
Guardians.
Kael stared up. "This is it. The Temple of Ice is beyond this wall."
"No entrance," Riven said. "Unless we fly."
"We don't fly," Aurea said, frowning. "But we melt."
"You'll trigger a landslide," Kael warned.
"I don't mean the ice," she said, stepping forward, eyes glowing faintly. "I mean the wards."
She reached out and pressed her hand against the ice.
And the wall... responded.
The frozen cascades shifted subtly. The entire glacier shuddered.
Then a voice whispered from within—
"Only those who have died in fire may pass through frost."
Aurea staggered back.
"What does that mean?" Riven asked.
"It means," Kael said grimly, "someone's going to have to die."
Silence.
Then the sound of cracking ice.
Deep. Near.
Not from the wall.
From behind them.
They turned.
A single figure stepped from the trees.
Cloaked. Hooded. Familiar.
Aurea's heart stopped.
"...Father?"