"Before fire, before thunder, before the Riftborn — there was silence. And frost. And two broken things walking uphill."
The wind did not howl.It whispered — soft and thin, like breath caught between clenched teeth. Not cruel. Not kind. Only cold. And old.
Rei and Kaia stood at the edge of Druvadir — where the sky met stone, and the stone remembered everything. Before them rose a jagged spine of mountain, sharp and solemn, like the back of a buried god. The old dwarven roads coiled downward into silence, into strongholds long since swallowed by frost.
They did not turn back.
Blackstone Keep was behind them now — the furnace where men were broken and tested, where names were stripped and pain was law. And Frostfang Grove, with its roots sunk deep in grief and memory, had offered no solace. Only whispers. Only weight.
Kaia walked ahead, as always. And Rei followed — cloaked not in his own past, but in hers.
The cloak that hung from his shoulders was rough-spun grey, hem torn, fur-lined along the collar. Woven with faded silver thread — not beautiful anymore, but still remembered. She had wrapped it around him in the grove. Not from pity. Not warmth. But something older. The way wolves mark kin. The way silence chooses to share its weight.
His blade — still blunt — hung at his side. Not from neglect. But because it was waiting. Like him.
One sleeve of his tunic was stitched shut, burned away in the Keep and left unrepaired. The fabric clung to him like memory — quiet, stubborn.
Kaia's armor was lean and layered, dyed in crushed ashberries, patterned with frostleaf spirals and old tribal weave. Bone knives crossed her back — worn from battle, thirsty for more. Her silver-white hair caught what little light the sky offered. And when her eyes glanced back at him, once cold, they did not harden.
They softened.
Not always. Not for long.But enough.
The mountains of Druvadir did not welcome. They endured.They watched.
Runes long forgotten were carved into the cliffs, half-erased by time, but not by memory. Wind rose up to meet them — sharp and thin, like a warning. Or a question.
"This place hates us," Kaia murmured without turning.
Rei exhaled. "So did the last one."
She smirked. "And we're still here."
They pressed on.
Below them, the scars of old wars still lingered. Dwarven forges buried in the cliffside — long cold, their stone chimneys split by frost. Statues cracked in half. Chains rusted and humming faintly with forgotten enchantments, like ghosts too stubborn to fade.
Kaia paused beside one: a half-buried anvil, still faintly glowing at the edges. A forge rune pulsed beneath the ice, slow as a dying heartbeat.
"My brother would've loved this place," she said.
Rei glanced toward her. "He was a smith?"
She shook her head. "No. Just liked being above people."
A beat.
"Like me."
He let the silence linger before he stepped past her — a small smirk, barely there. But it stayed.
Then — ahead.
A sound.
Not thunder.
Drums.
Low. Heavy. Like stone cracking. Like the earth welcoming no one.
Kaia tensed. "They know we're here."
Rei adjusted the cloak at his shoulders, fingers curling beneath the worn collar. His eyes — violet and quiet — did not flinch.
"Let them," he said."This time… I'm not kneeling."
The valley narrowed as they descended into frost, where the roads were no longer roads, but veins of old war. The path bent downward into the throat of the mountain.
And behind them, the wind carried a name neither of them spoke.
A name that still lived in the seams of Rei's cloak. The name the world had not yet remembered.
But soon would.