The announcement of the annual pilgrimage to Rakelstake fell upon the Avarosan settlement like the first heavy snow of winter: with a mixture of solemn reverence and practical anxiety. It was the Winter's Truce, the event that defined the social, political, and economic calendar of the entire Freljord, a rare moment when axes were sheathed and words, however sharp, took their place. For Grena, the Warmother, it was a diplomatic duty as heavy as her axe. For Morgana, another dangerous responsibility to be navigated with care. And for Ashe, it was Christmas, her birthday, and the promise of a sunny day, all wrapped up in a single event.
"Sejuani will be there!" she confided in me the night before our departure, as she was 'helping' me pack provisions, which mainly consisted of rearranging my scrolls into illogical piles. Her eyes, normally the calm blue of a winter sky, shone with an expectation that was almost painful to behold. "The pilgrimage is the only time our mothers let us see each other. Warmother Kalkia says we Avarosans are weak, full of stories and little strength. But Sejuani doesn't believe that. Not really. She's just… a bit rough."
<'Rough' is a charming euphemism for the Winter's Claw philosophy, which can be summarised as 'what's yours is mine, and what's mine is still mine, but now I'm also going to break your legs',> I thought, as I tied a pouch of herbs with a precise motion.
My own interest in the journey was purely academic. Rakelstake was the largest living repository of Freljordian oral history and runic knowledge. A 'data-gathering' opportunity that I could not, under any circumstances, miss. Grena, for her part, had formally requested that Morgana accompany Ashe. "Keep an eye on her," she had said to Morgana. "Her curiosity is a double-edged blade." By extension, I was part of the package. A convenient symbiosis.
The journey was a lesson in logistics and monotony. We travelled as part of the Avarosan caravan, a line of carts and warriors on foot, a noisy, resilient group that measured distance in songs about dead heroes and the number of Elnuks consumed. Ashe was my cultural guide, pointing out rock formations that were, according to her, sleeping gods and winds that were the sighs of forgotten heroes. I appreciated her enthusiasm, though my geological and meteorological analysis disagreed with her romantic conclusions. Morgana walked in silence, a protective shadow at the edge of our group, her violet eyes constantly scanning the horizon.
After days that felt like an eternity of snow and wind, we saw it. Rakelstake.
It was not a city. It was a graveyard turned metropolis, a monument to the Freljordian ability to find life in death. The colossal ribs of leviathans, slain in an age when an ocean covered this plain, rose from the snow, forming natural arches beneath which hide tents and bone structures huddled together. Skulls the size of houses served as great mead halls, their empty eye sockets now lit by enormous bonfires. The place smelt of roasted drüvask, strong ale, wet furs, and a thousand years of frozen history. The Winter's Truce was absolute here; ancient runes carved into the giant bones punished any act of violence with elemental fury.
We had barely set up our camp in the area designated for the Avarosans—a patch of relative quiet and whispered stories—when another delegation arrived. They did not arrive silently. They came like a winter squall, with the sound of war drums and the snorting of giant war-boars. The Winter's Claw. Leading them, mounted on her enormous bristleddon, was Kalkia, the Warmother, a woman with a face that looked as though it had been carved from mountain ice by a very angry artist. An immediate tension settled, a hostile silence falling over our part of the camp like a sudden frost. But in the midst of the hard-faced warriors was a girl with a wild plait and eyes that burned with a defiant fire: Sejuani.
Ignoring the disapproving glares of the adults, Ashe let out a whoop of joy and ran. Sejuani dismounted her boar and ran to meet her. Their reunion was a collision of playful shoves and affectionate taunts. They were genuinely friends, two islands of affection in an ocean of ancestral mistrust.
"You've got taller," Sejuani said, pushing Ashe's shoulder.
"And you still smell like a wet pig," Ashe retorted, laughing.
Then, Ashe's eyes found me. "Sejuani, this is Azra'il!" she said, pulling me forward with possessive pride.
Sejuani's smile vanished like the sun behind a storm cloud. She looked me up and down, her eyes appraising my slender build, my outsider's aesthetic, my lack of obvious scars. I saw the jealousy there, the irritation of having to share her friend.
"What is it?" Sejuani asked Ashe, as if I were some exotic pet Ashe had found in the snow. "Does it know how to hunt? Fight? Or is it only good for telling boring stories like the old folk in your tribe?"
"She's clever," Ashe defended me fiercely. "She speaks to the wind and reads the stones!"
"The wind doesn't save you from an ice-wolf's fangs," Sejuani scoffed, crossing her arms. "Come on, Ashe. Let's go see the new axes the forgemasters' clan have brought. Leave your… skinny friend… behind."
I watched the rift form. It wasn't anger; it was the collision of two worlds. For Sejuani, worth was measured in demonstrable strength, in spilt blood. For Ashe, worth was beginning to include wisdom.
"A wolf can be defeated by strength or by cunning," I said, my voice calm and level. "To insist on using only a hammer when you have an entire toolbox is a poor survival strategy, no matter how strong your arm is."
Sejuani turned to me, surprised by my audacity. Before she could reply with a veiled threat, a commotion drew our attention. A group of Winter's Claw youths, eager to impress their future leader, were trying to corner a creature near a pile of bones. It was a Snapper, a nimble, dog-sized ice-lizard with scales that glinted like mica. They chased it, shouting and brandishing small spears, but the beast was too quick, dodging them with mocking ease, using the bone piles as a playground.
"See?" Sejuani said with a smirk, seizing the opportunity. "It takes strength and speed to get anything in this land. Things your friend doesn't have." It was a clear challenge.
Ashe looked at me, her eyes pleading. I sighed.
"It's fast," I observed aloud, ignoring Sejuani and speaking directly to Ashe. "But look at the snow around it. It melts a little when it stops. Its breath forms clouds of steam."
"It's warm?" Ashe asked, confused.
"No. Quite the opposite," I explained, walking to an open area. "It's cold-blooded. Its movement is fast, but it relies on bursts of energy, absorbing heat from the environment to move. Every dash makes it colder, slower. It's desperate for a heat source to replenish its energy."
While the Winter's Claw youths continued their humiliating chase, I instructed Ashe. "Get those smooth stones near the fire. The darkest ones."
Under Sejuani's confused gaze, we built a small pile of stones. With everyone's eyes on the chase, I knelt and, disguising it as if I were just arranging the rocks, channelled a thin thread of Qi, activating a subtle, glow-less heat rune in one of them, a technique I'd learned from Morgana. We stepped back.
The Snapper, exhausted from its run, stopped. It sensed the emanation of heat, a promise of rest and energy in the cold air. Cautiously, it approached our pile of stones and, with a hiss that almost sounded like relief, it settled on the warm rock, its body becoming sluggish, docile, almost entering a torpor. With a net borrowed from a trader, we caught it without the slightest difficulty.
Sejuani was stunned into silence. She looked from the Snapper, now placidly trapped, to me. The contempt in her eyes was replaced with a reluctant, deeply confused respect. She had expected to mock my weakness and had instead witnessed a problem being solved with pure observation.
"That was… efficient," she grumbled. The highest praise she could manage.
That night, the city of bones came alive. The three of us sat together, in a circle of precarious peace, eating the meat from the Snapper we had caught.
"My mother says I will have to unite all of the Freljord one day," Sejuani said. "With a single spear. The weak tribes must be absorbed."
"Avarosa taught us to build alliances," Ashe countered. "A chain made of many strong links is harder to break than a single spear."
Inevitably, they turned to me. "What about you, Azra'il? You read so many old books. Which one is right?" Ashe asked, with genuine curiosity.
I took a deep breath, needing not to draw from memories of distant worlds, but from the history etched into the very land beneath our feet. "You don't need stories from faraway places," I said, my voice calm and level. "You only need to look south."
They both looked confused.
"Think of Shurima," I said. Sejuani scoffed, as if the name of a sandy empire were irrelevant to the strength of ice. "They had the strongest spear. An army of Ascended, god-warriors who could move mountains. They conquered everything the sun touched. Their spear was so powerful that no enemy in the world could break it." I paused, ensuring I had their attention. "And then, their last Emperor, Azir, at the height of his power and with nothing left to conquer, saw betrayal where there was none. The strongest spear turned inwards and broke the empire itself in a single, glorious afternoon. What was left? Sand and ghosts."
I turned to Ashe, whose eyes were wide, seeing the ancient legend in a new light. "But before the spear, there was another age. An age of priest-kings who united the desert tribes with promises of prosperity, knowledge, and water. They built the longest chain. They shared everything. But they became so confident in their unity, so slow in their counsels, and so complacent in their power, that they were devoured from within by dark sorcerers and a horror from the Void that they refused to see as a real threat until it was too late."
I let the seed of that thought plant itself in the ensuing silence, a silence not even the crackling fire dared to break.
"Perhaps the problem isn't the spear of conquest or the chain of unity," I said, looking from one to the other. "Perhaps the problem is believing that there is only one answer for all seasons. A spear is useful for hunting a drüvask. A chain is useful for building a city. A wise leader is not the one with the best tool. It is the one who knows which tool to use, and when. And, most importantly," I concluded, "knows when to forge a new one."
Ashe looked awestruck. Sejuani looked annoyed, but you could see in her eyes that she was, for the first time, truly thinking.
The next day, I went in search of my own answer. Amidst the Storytellers, I found a blind elder of the Frostguard. Trading a tale of a golem for legends of the Freljord, he gave me what I was looking for. He recognised the legend of the bridge and gave me the final clue: "Look for the valley where winter forgot to scream, Hjorthar's Silence. But the bridge does not guard a treasure, star-child. It guards a prison."
Our departure from Rakelstake was different from our arrival. I saw Ashe and Sejuani say their goodbyes.
"Until the next winter," Ashe said.
"Try not to get too soft," Sejuani replied, but then she looked at me. "And you… try not to think too much." A piece of advice that was almost a compliment.
As the Winter's Claw caravan pulled away, I watched the two future queens.
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AUTHOR'S NOTES
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I was only going to release the next chapter in a few days, but since I was happy with the interactions and comments in the poll, I decided to post the chapter early.