Trials in the Freljord are not events; they are the very fabric of life, stitched with threads of ice and blood. Every sunrise is a trial against the cold that creeps into the lungs. Every hunt, a trial against the hunger that gnaws at the stomach. But there was one ritual, held with an almost sacred solemnity by Grena's Avarosan tribe, that rose above all others: The Kiss of the Frost-Matriarch, the night when the young men were cast into the embrace of the first great winter to emerge as men, or not to emerge at all.
The preparations began at dusk, the settlement steeped in a heavy, reverent quiet. I saw Bjorn, a strong lad of sixteen with shoulders as broad as a young bear's and a smile that seemed to defy the winter itself, standing beside two other youths. Their faces were masks of forced determination, but their eyes betrayed the primal fear of facing the oldest and most unforgiving goddess of their land. The tribe's shaman, a wrinkled man named Kjell, painted the Avarosan spiral on their faces with clay and the ashes of the last winter, muttering blessings and pleas to the spirits of the winds and the mountains.
The tribe gave them only the essentials: a bone knife, a leather flask filled with melted snow, and the furs on their backs. Nothing more. No bow, no spear, no shelter. The task was not to conquer the winter that was the hubris of the Winter's Claw. It was to survive it, to prove they were worthy of its respect, that their hearts beat to the same slow, powerful rhythm as the frozen land itself.
I watched from the mouth of our cave, the vapour of my breath mingling with the cold mist that rolled down from the mountains like the breath of a slumbering dragon. I respected their resilience, forged in ice and necessity, but the harshness of their lives caused me an old ache, a melancholy that the chains on my wings knew as an old friend. So many young lives, forged and broken by the same merciless blade.
I saw Azra'il talking with Ashe near the ritual circle. Ashe, her white hair in braids and her face filled with an almost palpable worry, was twisting a piece of leather in her hands, her knuckles white. Bjorn was her friend, her oath-brother.
"It's a dreadful plan," I heard Azra'il's clear, cutting voice on the cold air. "Giving a boy a knife and telling him to go and have a chat with a blizzard… The winter doesn't negotiate. The guest list for this 'kiss' seems to require suicidal optimism. At least give him a proper coat. It's bad form to freeze to death without being well-dressed."
"It's not about the odds, Azra'il," Ashe retorted, defending the tradition with a passion that would one day make her a great Warmother. "It's about proving your spirit is strong. It's about the winter knowing you and deciding you belong here."
"The winter seems to have dreadful selection criteria, then," Azra'il concluded. "It prefers brute force to intelligence. A flawed system." A faint, nervous smile touched Ashe's lips, and I saw the tension in her shoulders ease. Azra'il's absurd logic, her complete inability to comprehend faith without questioning its parameters, was somehow a comfort. To see my child, my lonely star, trying in her own twisted way to comfort someone… a strange, fierce warmth bloomed in my chest, a feeling I had learned not to question, but to simply accept as the only sun in my own long winter.
The trial began. The young men said their farewells, not with hugs, but with a firm touch to the shoulder, a look of acknowledgement. Each departed in a different direction, vanishing into the white expanse like a ghost, swallowed by the mist. Night fell, and with it, the blizzard. It was no ordinary storm; it was a howling wall of wind and ice, the very scream of the Frost-Matriarch, shaking the very stones.
We spent the night in the Great Tent. The fire crackled loudly, the flames dancing wildly as if they were afraid. No one slept. Each gust of wind was a blow to the tribe's collective heart. Grena sat on her Warmother's seat, her face as impassive as a mask of ice, but her hands gripped the haft of her axe with a force that whitened her knuckles. Everyone was lost in their own silent prayers.
The next morning, the world was blanketed in a pristine, silent white. The hours crawled by like a glacier. Finally, two staggering figures appeared on the horizon. The other two youths. They were caked in snow, their skin cracked, their eyes wild, but they were alive. They had become men. But Bjorn did not return.
The snow began to fall again, now in soft flakes, like the tears of the sky. A solemn mourning began to set in. It was the winter's will. Ashe, her face a mask of despair, ran to her mother. "We have to send a search party! He could be hurt, trapped!"
"No," Grena said, her voice firm as ice, but her eyes betraying her deep pain. "He has faced his judgement. If we interfere, we steal his honour, whether in life or in death. The winter has claimed him. We mourn, but we do not defy the judgement."
Their philosophy clashed with my own nature. I understood it, I respected it. But the chains that bind me to this world, to the pain of mortals, refused to abandon a soul to the cold.
"She's wrong," Azra'il said at my side. Her voice was as cold as the mountain wind. "That isn't honour. That's letting the bureaucracy of tradition get in the way of common sense. The winter doesn't care about 'honour'. It only cares about being cold and killing things. Letting a good hunter become an icicle because of a stupid rule is a bad deal for the tribe."
"Get your supplies," I told her. "We're going to find him."
Our first challenge was discretion. As the tribe gathered to mourn for Bjorn, we crept to the storehouse. I didn't feel the cold as a threat, merely as a fact, but Azra'il would need more than her furs, and a wounded boy would need everything we could carry. I took snowshoes, a thick rope, and my bag of medical supplies. The responsibility for her was a flame that kept me warmer than any fire. It was then that a small figure blocked our exit. Ashe.
"He's my oath-brother!" she insisted, tears freezing on her eyelashes. "You!" she turned to Azra'il. "You always know things! Please, you have to help!"
Azra'il's gaze met mine, and I saw in it a decision that mirrored my own. I nodded, and Ashe joined us, her face a mixture of fear and fierce determination.
Our search was a white nightmare. The world was a formless swirl of snow and wind. Ashe, with her Freljordian instincts, guided us, avoiding the ice crevasses hidden under the fresh snow. I, with my connection to the earth, felt for the pulses of life, trying to isolate Bjorn's faint, desperate spark in the midst of the vast, cold indifference of the tundra.
"His tracks end here," Ashe said, pointing to what looked like a wall of rock and ice.
"They don't end," Azra'il said. "They go up. The depth of the notches in the rock indicates the use of a bone knife for climbing. He was being hunted. He went to higher ground for the advantage."
The climb was brutal. At one point, the rock under Ashe's feet gave way. I caught her just in time, my arm a strong band around her waist.
"I told you to stay close!" my voice came out harsher than I intended, fear sharpening my words.
"And I told you I wasn't abandoning my friend!" she yelled back, stubborn.
"She's right," Azra'il said calmly, to my surprise. "Think about it, Morgana. What's the worse option? A stubborn, noisy child following us, or a stubborn, noisy child frozen in a ditch halfway back to the settlement because she tried to return alone? At least with us, we know where she's making noise."
The logic was cold, irritating, and undeniable. I sighed. "Alright. But you stay between us."
We pressed on. During a pause to catch our breath, huddled behind a large rock that shielded us from the wind, Ashe and Azra'il talked.
"It's because of the bridge, isn't it?" Ashe asked Azra'il. "You want to be strong enough to cross it."
"Strength isn't enough," Azra'il replied, looking out at the distant mountains. "The legend says the girl's song soothed the guardian. Sometimes, kindness is a sharper weapon than an axe."
I listened to them, a small smile forming on my lips. This child of mine, who seemed to have been born with an old and weary soul, was somehow learning to speak the language of hope with a Freljordian girl.
It was Azra'il's unnatural perception that found him. "The life-flow is faint, but concentrated," she whispered, pointing to an ice fissure that looked like just another shadow. "In there."
We found Bjorn. His leg was broken at a nasty angle, his lips blue. He was barely conscious. Near him lay the carcass of an ice-wolf, slain by the boy's bone knife. He had not run from the storm. He had fought.
We worked as one. While I used my magic to warm his body and prepare a splint for his leg, Ashe cleaned the wound with the steadiness of a seasoned healer. And Azra'il, with silent efficiency, built a small shelter against the wind and, using a heat rune, warmed stones to place around Bjorn's body.
The journey back was a trial in itself. When we finally reached the settlement gates, carrying Bjorn between us, the silence that greeted us was one of pure shock.
Grena walked slowly towards us. Her eyes went from Bjorn, alive, to the makeshift stretcher, then to me, and finally, to her daughter. I expected anger.
Instead, she came close and touched Bjorn's face. Then she looked at me, and for the first time, I saw not the Warmother, but just the mother. "The winter judges," she said, her voice hoarse with emotion. "But a mother's heart… protects." She put a hand on my shoulder. "Your tribe is small, Keeper of Shadows, but its strength is great."
That night, the celebration was the loudest I had ever witnessed. Songs were sung of Bjorn's courage and the stubbornness of his 'soul-sisters'. I saw Azra'il sitting with Ashe, patiently explaining why hunting a Drüvask in a blizzard was a tactical decision with a questionable success probability, while Ashe just laughed and called him the luckiest man in the Freljord. The logic of survival sometimes required one to break the rules. And what was my life, if not a long and stubborn breaking of divine rules, in the name of something more earthbound, warmer, and somehow, infinitely more true?