The clearing blazed with motion—steel flashing, claws scraping, hooves stamping the frozen ground.
Three Snow Triants encircled them, darting in and out of the trees like phantoms. One already lay dead by Gladus's blade, its body half-buried in churned snow. The other two flanked them with eerie coordination, heads twitching, tails lashing like serpents.
"These things aren't just beasts," Odin growled, spinning his golden-edged staff defensively. "They're thinking."
"Then let them think through pain," Lonnie muttered, lifting her twin hammers and stepping into formation beside him.
"Fall into triangle formation!" Gladus barked. "Odin, drive the flank! Lonnie, collapse the outer line on my signal!"
The three warriors moved without hesitation—years of battlefield instinct snapping into place.
The largest Triant dropped from above, aiming straight for Odin again, claws outstretched. Odin pivoted and sidestepped, catching it mid-drop with the blunt end of his staff across its ribs—thud—then rotated and slammed the sharp end into the joint of its hind leg. It howled, stumbling.
"Now!" Gladus shouted.
Lonnie surged forward, slamming one hammer into its side and using the other to trap its opposite arm. The Triant snarled and snapped its teeth toward her helmet, but she headbutted it square between the eyes with a sickening crack.
"DOWN!" she roared.
Gladus appeared like a shadow behind her, his heavy longsword rising high—then cutting clean through the beast's exposed spine. The sword struck with a sound like thunder—KRANG—splitting the creature from the back of its neck straight down to its ribs.
The beast collapsed in two jerking halves, black blood steaming in the snow.
"Last one!" Odin called, pointing toward the treeline.
The third Triant—the biggest—hadn't moved. It waited. Watching. Its breath curled from its snout in long hisses, tail coiled behind it like a serpent about to strike. Pale frost clung to its matted fur, and its eyes—black pits with glinting white rings—tracked each of them with murderous clarity.
Then it moved.
Fwhoom.
One leap took it to the wagon roof. The next—directly above Lonnie.
She turned just in time, crossing her hammers to catch the claws descending toward her face. The force sent her skidding back, boots tearing into snow, but she didn't fall.
"ODIN, WITH ME!" Gladus barked.
Odin surged in from the right, stabbing upward at the Triant's ribs. It twisted with unnatural agility, evading the strike and swiping low. Odin ducked, but the edge of its claws tore through his coat and left a red gash along his shoulder.
"Close it in!" Gladus snapped.
Lonnie retaliated, hammering into the Triant's left leg with a crunch of bone. It screeched in rage and spun, trying to flee—but Gladus was already there. His blade cleaved down in a diagonal slash across the beast's back, carving a deep wound that sent black ichor spraying across the snow.
The Triant staggered, dripping blood, panting—but it was not done.
Its breath came in ragged hisses. It scanned the battlefield, trembling.
Then its gaze locked onto Silius.
There was no logic in it. No strategy. Just fury.
The wounded beast tilted its head back—and released a howl.
But it wasn't a sound born of any wolf or beast.
It was human.
A piercing, bone-shaking wail that echoed with the overlapping voices of both man and woman—anguished, broken, desperate. It sounded like a mother wailing for a lost child, a soldier sobbing in frostbitten agony, a thousand regrets torn loose in a single cry. It clawed at the spine, tore through the marrow. It made the fire seem colder. Even Lonnie, unmoving in battle, flinched at the sound.
It was the cry of someone who had died alone in the snow… and never stopped screaming.
Then, in a blur of grey and hate, the creature launched itself toward the boy standing alone beside the fire.
"SILIUS!" Gladus shouted, breaking formation, too far to intercept.
Odin was limping. Lonnie tried to give chase—but it was too fast.
Silius's eyes went wide as the beast barreled toward him, its limbs stretching, claws dragging grooves into the ice.
He stepped back.Stumbled.
But something inside him flared.
No.
He couldn't run.
He couldn't cower.
Not again.
His fingers found the hilt of the sword—the one his mother had made. His heart pounded, his core screamed.
He drew.
SHHNNNK.
The blade erupted in white light, flaring like lightning given form. Sparks surged along the steel, dancing across the etched symbols and rushing toward the tip. The snow around him hissed, melting under the radiant heat.
The Triant leapt, claws raised.
Silius moved—faster than thought, faster than fear.
He pivoted, drew the sword low, and drove it upward, the blade catching the creature beneath the jaw, piercing straight through the base of its skull—out through one of its eyes.
A CRACK like thunder echoed through the clearing as white lightning arced down the blade, exploding outward in a shockwave that sent snow blasting in every direction.
The Triant twitched once—then fell.
Dead.
Silius stood there, panting, eyes wide. The white light faded from the blade, but faint sparks still pulsed in the steel like a heartbeat.
He looked at his hands.They weren't shaking.
Odin let out a long, slow whistle. "Well… I'll be damned."
Lonnie approached, lowering her hammers slowly. "That… was not beginner's luck."
Gladus said nothing. He looked at his son—not in shock, nor disapproval—but something more difficult to name.
Not pride.Not yet.
But something was shifting.
The snow fell softly again.
And the clearing, once more, went still.