By sixteen, Zank had grown tall and quiet, a shadow among warriors.
He no longer laughed with the others, but his aim never missed.
Brynja had seen to that.
After Torven's death, she'd sought a way for him to fight without touch, without death. She found it in an old hunter named Rurik, whose hands shook with age but whose eyes still tracked snow hares in a blizzard.
"Steel's too close for you," Rurik had said, pressing a bow into Zank's hands. "Arrows kill from afar. Maybe that's mercy enough."
Under his guidance, Zank learned to draw in silence, to breathe with the wind, to let the arrow become an extension of his will.
He became Frostfall's ghost — a watcher on the cliffs, protector unseen.
But no amount of distance could change what he was.
The attack came two winters later.
A rival clan, the Bjornskarn, descended at dawn — fifty warriors clad in bear hides, axes gleaming. They'd long coveted Frostfall's forges and stores.
By the time the alarm horns sounded, the walls were burning.
Zank was on the ridge when he saw them. His hands trembled as he drew his bow.
Arrows sang, and men fell. Again, and again. But there were too many.
Down below, Brynja fought like the storm itself, blood on her axe and snow in her hair. Yet she was being surrounded.
Zank leapt from the ridge, landing hard, snow exploding around him. He nocked one last arrow—
—but the world blurred. Pain bloomed in his chest.
He looked down.
An arrow had found him.
It jutted from beneath his ribs, fletched with black raven feathers.
Through the haze, he saw the archer who had loosed it — a young man, barely older than him, standing frozen in horror at what he'd done.
Zank stumbled forward, breath ragged, each step melting snow beneath his feet. The Bjornskarn warriors parted, their rage fading to dread as they saw the glow in his eyes.
He stopped before the archer, blood staining his furs.
The boy raised his bow again, shaking.
Zank only whispered, "It's okay… you can sleep now."
He pulled off his gloves.
The wind went silent.
He reached out and touched the archer's face — gently, like a blessing.
For an instant, the man's expression softened. Then his eyes turned silver, and he crumpled to the ground without pain, without breath.
Every warrior around them staggered back. Some dropped their weapons. The snow darkened where they stood.
Brynja watched from the battlements, her heart breaking and swelling at once.
Zank stood there, blood and frost and death swirling around him, his bare hands open to the cold.
And in that moment, the clan understood:
The boy they'd feared was their salvation — and their curse.