The cold beyond the Iron Scar was not natural.
It did not merely cling to skin or stiffen fingers — it pressed inward, as if the land itself exhaled frost directly into the marrow. Ryon felt it immediately, a dull ache beneath his ribs where the system slept and watched. Each breath came sharp and thin, fog curling from his mouth like a dying thing.
The white plains stretched endlessly, broken only by low ridges of ice-crusted stone and the skeletal remains of trees long dead. Snow lay unevenly over the ground, thin in places, thick in others, as though something beneath the earth shifted restlessly, refusing stillness.
Their horses slowed, hooves crunching softly.
Neither spoke.
Behind them, the Iron Scar loomed like a severed wound stitched shut by shadow. Ryon did not look back. He could still feel it — the echo of the thing that had spoken his name, the way its fingers had brushed his soul without touching flesh.
The vessel breaks twice.
