They said the boy had died three nights ago.
Sergeant Orin Vex didn't believe it. The mountains didn't swallow a name as old as Virel without echoing something back.
He stood knee-deep in snow at the lip of the burned valley, steam curling from the cracks in his armor, and stared at what had once been a fortress. The air still smelled of melted iron and blood—two scents he would know even in his sleep.
The younger soldiers behind him shuffled, whispering through their scarves. The wind caught fragments of their words—"ghost fire," "flesh light," "no bodies"—but none spoke loud enough to finish a sentence. The snow underfoot was glassy where the heat had scorched it.
Orin crouched and picked up a lump of blackened stone. It was warm. He dropped it quickly.
The snow hissed where it fell. "Still bleeding," he muttered.
Lieutenant Deral, a thin man whose uniform fit like borrowed skin, stepped up beside him. "Orders are to confirm extermination. The purge seal's already been marked complete. We just need proof."
Orin spat into the snow. "Proof of what? That the Empire kills what it can't control?"
Deral's eyes flicked toward him. "Careful."
"Careful's for priests," Orin said. He straightened, shaking the numbness from his fingers. The cold had teeth today. The storm had cut visibility down to thirty paces—perfect weather for losing men to cliffs or conscience. "You think the boy's alive?"
Deral didn't answer.
He didn't need to. The Empire didn't pay for guesses, only bodies.
They descended into the ruin. What walls still stood were hollow ribs blackened by flame. The resonance cannons sat like dead giants half-buried in ash. Every so often one of the Oathbound technicians would pry a crystal shard from the ground and whisper a hymn before pocketing it. Orin had stopped asking why. He didn't like the sound of prayers made to weapons.
When they reached what had once been the lower sanctum, the heat returned. The ground steamed where snow met stone. Orin knelt beside a melted pool and dipped the edge of his glove.
The water vibrated.
"Sir," he said, voice low. "Feel this."
Deral crouched. When his fingers touched the surface, the vibration stopped.
Then it started again—slower, stronger.A pulse.
Both men drew back at once.
"Residual energy?" Deral asked.
"Maybe. Or something still alive down there."
The lieutenant pulled his scarf tighter. "Don't say that."
Orin didn't. But he watched the ripples spread across the molten water, each one measured, deliberate. Like breathing.
They made camp higher up the slope before dark. The mountain's shadow swallowed the last color from the sky. Orin sat by the fire cleaning the frost from his rifle, though they both knew it wouldn't help much in this weather.
Across the flames, Deral unrolled a thin sheet of parchment etched with red sigils—the Empire's mission seal. He touched it with a gloved hand, and the symbols glowed faintly.
"The purge order came straight from Veyr Sol," he said. "They called it sanctioned isolation."
"That's a fancy way to say slaughter."
Deral ignored him. "Command said the Virel bloodline carried corrupted Lines. Something about contamination."
Orin snorted. "Everyone carries contamination if you ask the right priest."
He stared into the fire until the coals blurred. He'd seen too many clean orders that left dirty ghosts. "You ever wonder why the Oathbound get all the easy explanations?" he asked quietly. "The rest of us just get frostbite."
The lieutenant's gaze drifted toward the valley below. "Our job isn't to wonder."
"Good thing," Orin said. "We'd be executed for it."
The wind rose again, carrying fine ash that glowed faintly as it drifted.Deral frowned. "Still warm?"
Orin stood and brushed snow from his coat. "No. The mountain's breathing different tonight."
He walked a few paces from camp. The ground under his boots was firm, then suddenly hollow. He knelt and pressed his ear to the snow.
There it was again—the low hum, deep beneath the surface. Slow. Rhythmic. It wasn't wind. It wasn't water.
He stood abruptly. "Pack up."
"What? Why?"
Orin's eyes were fixed on the valley. The snow there was rising—not blowing, rising, lifting in thin streams like smoke.
Something under the crust was moving.
By the time the alarm spread through the camp, half the men were already backing away from the slope.The snow heaved once, then split open. Steam erupted, rolling over them in a wave of heat that made the air taste of copper. Orin shielded his face. When it cleared, the valley floor had cracked wide like a wound. At its center glowed a circle of faint red light.
"Resonant aftershock!" someone yelled. "Fall back!"
Deral's voice cut through the panic. "Form ranks! We hold the perimeter—"
He stopped. The light was spreading, threading outward from the crack in thin glowing lines that crawled up the slope like veins.
Orin's chest tightened. He'd seen what happened to men who stood too close to Ecliptic fractures: the Lines under their own skin responded, called like iron to a magnet. The body couldn't always tell which pulse was its own.
He grabbed the lieutenant's arm. "We move now!"
"But the boy—"
"The boy's gone," Orin snapped. "Whatever this is, it isn't human anymore."
He didn't wait for permission. He barked orders—short, sharp, survival words—and the company began to retreat. The wind tore at their cloaks, scattering embers from the fires.
Behind them, the crack closed with a sound like a sigh.
Hours later, when the storm had settled into a steady whisper, Orin climbed the last ridge and looked back. The valley was dark again, smooth and silent, as if nothing had ever happened.
Only one thing marked it now: a faint trail of footprints winding away from the ruin, small and deliberate, half-filled with snow.
He didn't tell anyone he saw them.He just turned toward the camp, jaw tight, and muttered to himself, "You're not gone, are you, boy?"
Then he spat into the wind, as if to cleanse the thought, and followed his men into the white.