The Frost Marches began where mercy ended.
Mountains rose like broken teeth along the northern horizon, their slopes drowned in mist. The land below was a wasteland of pale grasses and black ice — the color of graves that never thawed. Wind howled through the ravines, carrying with it the scent of ash and the faint cry of wolves.
Selric had been riding for five days.He hadn't seen another soul since the girl, Lira.
At night, he slept in ruined watchtowers or hollow trees. He didn't light fires; light drew attention, and attention meant death. His sword, once polished to ceremonial perfection, was now dull with grime. His cloak had stiffened with frost.
He rode with the posture of a man who had stopped pretending to be a prince.
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By the sixth night, the snow began to fall.It came without sound, soft and heavy, erasing his tracks before the wind could.
The hunger returned.
He'd ignored it for days, distracting himself with motion, with exhaustion. But hunger had its own patience — a slow, steady pulse at the back of his mind. The world dulled when it rose; colors drained, sound warped, time bent.
By the time he reached the next village, he was shaking.
The place was barely more than a scattering of huts, clustered around the shell of an old inn. Smoke drifted weakly from a few chimneys. He dismounted at the edge of the square, letting his horse drink from a frozen trough.
Children watched him from behind doorways — thin, pale, their eyes wide.
A man approached from the inn, wrapped in furs that had seen better centuries. He looked Selric over with the weary suspicion of one who'd buried too many strangers.
"You from the south?"
Selric nodded once. "Passing through."
"Name?"
"None that matters."
The man grunted. "We don't get travelers anymore. Wolves, bandits, sickness. Take your pick. We're dying slow."
"Then I'll pay for a bed."
"Coin?"
Selric drew a small pouch from his belt and tossed it to the man. The jingle was faint, but enough.
The innkeeper caught it, squinting. "Gold. Real?"
"Real enough for one night."
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Inside, the inn smelled of damp wood and despair.
Three men sat near the fire, their faces hard with the kind of hunger that came before violence. A woman scrubbed tables with trembling hands. No one spoke.
Selric sat in the corner, removing his gloves. His fingers were pale, almost luminous in the dim firelight. The woman noticed. He saw her hesitate, eyes narrowing.
Vampires were stories here — but everyone knew the scent.
He forced himself to breathe shallowly. His voice came out low, calm, human. "Water. Bread, if you have it."
She nodded quickly and hurried away.
He leaned back in his chair, watching the flames. The warmth made his skin ache. He'd forgotten what simple heat felt like.
Behind him, the three men murmured. Their voices were too quiet for mortal ears — but Selric was not mortal.
"…coin in his purse… alone… southern accent…"
He smiled without humor. "If you're going to rob me," he said without turning, "wait until I finish eating."
The room went still.
The largest of the three — broad-shouldered, scarred — stood up, hand on his knife. "What makes you think we'd rob you, stranger?"
Selric looked over his shoulder, eyes like dull silver. "Because I would."
The man hesitated. Then, slowly, he sat down again.
The woman returned with the bread. It was hard, stale, dusted with frost. Selric tore it apart carefully, pretending to eat. He couldn't taste it anyway.
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Later, when the inn was quiet, he went upstairs. The floorboards groaned under his boots. His room was small, the window cracked, the air cold enough to see his breath.
He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands.
The veins stood out dark against pale skin — not blue, but black, like ink beneath glass. He flexed his fingers and felt the strength there, the unnatural pulse of blood that wasn't his.
A vampire without a court, a prince without a throne.
The hunger whispered again. Feed.
He clenched his jaw until it passed.
Outside, the wind howled across the mountains. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf cried back.
He closed his eyes.
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At dawn, he was gone.
The village woke to find the inn's door ajar and the southern stranger's bed untouched. Only a few coins remained on the table.
No one saw him leave. No one noticed the three men by the fire, sleeping too still, their faces pale, the faintest trace of blood at the corner of one's mouth.
Selric rode north.
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The terrain changed as he climbed — forest giving way to stone, rivers freezing mid-flow. Snow covered everything in silence.
He'd stopped counting the days.
Now and then, he'd take small mercenary work — hunting beasts, clearing bandits, escorting traders who couldn't pay for real guards. The jobs kept him fed, in coin if not in blood. He told himself it was survival, not atonement.
The truth was, he didn't know what else to do.
He was following something.
A sound, faint and constant, buried beneath the wind — a low hum that seemed to come from the mountains themselves. It had started the night he'd found the shard beneath the roots of the Frost Marches.
It hadn't stopped since.
Sometimes, when the world was very quiet, he could feel it vibrate in his bones. It wasn't language, not quite, but it had rhythm. Intention.
He told himself it was madness. That exile had finally stripped him of reason.
But the further north he rode, the louder it became.
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That evening, as he crossed a narrow pass, he saw light ahead — a campfire flickering weakly behind a ridge. He slowed, listening. Voices drifted through the snow.
"…two days since Nocturne fell… said the prince's head was for sale…"
Selric dismounted, moving like a shadow between the rocks.
There were four of them, mercenaries by their look — armed, weary, clustered around the fire.
One of them held a piece of parchment. He could make out his own likeness drawn in rough charcoal.
Wanted. Alive.
He smiled faintly. "Alive's ambitious."
The man with the parchment turned too late.
By the time the others drew steel, Selric was already behind them. His movements were quiet, efficient — not rage, not hunger, just calculation.
When it was done, the fire hissed in the snow, and Selric stood alone again.
He stared down at the parchment, the ink already smearing in the cold.
"So they remember," he murmured. "Good."
He fed the paper to the flames and watched it curl to ash.
Then he turned his gaze north, toward the mountains that whispered with light and stone, and spurred his horse onward.
The hum deepened, like something ancient stirring beneath the earth.
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He didn't know yet what was calling to him.Only that it had waited centuries for someone willing to listen.
And Selric Varian — the Exiled Prince of Nocturne, the mercenary who refused to die — was already listening.