The storm broke as if the sky itself had been split.Snow fell in sheets that erased footprints faster than thought. Wind drove it horizontally, blurring cliffs and swallowing sound. Selric rode hard, the gray destrier straining beneath him, hooves thudding against wind-slick rock. The temple's silhouette behind him was already a smear of white.
He had expected hunters; he had not expected the quiet to threaten him so fully. The mountain seemed to close its mouth. Even the hum that had followed him felt dampened, pressed flat beneath the weather.
Trail and memory both thinned. He navigated by instinct and by the shard's slow pulse under his skin—a rhythm that had become as necessary as breath.
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They found him at noon.First, a shadow on a ridge: swift, black against white. Then another. Then the sound—soft but precise—of someone dropping through snow like a hunter. Two figures moved with the economy of practiced killers: one in a cloak of dark leather trimmed with blood-red thread (a sigil Selric recognized from his father's guard), the other wrapped in pelts, fur matted with frost and the faint scent of wolf.
He had little time. He slid his horse behind a boulder, tied the reins, and crept down the lee of the ridge. The ridge offered slope and cover; the world below was a pale plain of glazed snow.
From the ridge, the two approached separately—assassin first, silent as a shadow, blade hidden inside her sleeve. Her armor bore the crest of Nocturne; she moved like someone who had killed for a living and never asked forgiveness. The wolf-scout followed at a distance, ears back, teeth bared, eyes bright with the fever of claim.
They circled the ruins like predators scenting a new trail. Selric watched them through slitted lids, sword at the ready.
"Prince Selric Varian?" the assassin murmured, voice a blade in velvet. "You don't hide well."
Selric didn't answer. He watched the wolf-scout's posture—balanced to lunge, waiting for a sign.
The woman bowed her head once. "Orders from the Citadel. Bring him back dead or alive."
Behind the wolf-scout's breath, Selric heard other sounds he could not see—muffled thuds and the faint scrape of many sets of feet. Scouts. A hunting party. The mountain did not hunt alone.
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He moved before they did.A cloud of snow erupted from a hidden gully as he leapt, blade whispering free. Surprise, he knew, could become victory. The assassin reacted like a stream of water—flowing, diverting; the wolf-scout's lunge missed by inches. The first blade cut air; Selric's counter cut flesh. The assassin hissed, a sound swallowed by wind, even as the scout's claws found his cloak and ripped him toward the ground.
They fought close and close: steel and fang, breath and frost. Selric tasted iron and snow and something older, the shard's voice threading through his skull like a second mouth. It did not speak words. It fed images—red moons, hands touching stone, two people kneeling and binding. A promise. A memory.
He almost believed it was a promise made to him.
His shoulder took a blow that sent him to one knee. Pain flared hot and bright—pure, immediate. Blood warmed the snow. The shard's pulse surged in answer, quick and urgent, and with it, something like power rushed through his muscles. Strength came with a small, terrible clarity: his blade moved like lightning, and the wolf-scout's neck opened under the arc. The assassin staggered back, hand pressed to a traitorous wound she had not thought to expect.
For a breath, Selric stood over them, chest heaving, blood cold on his skin. The shard hummed at the edge of his hearing: You chose. You are chosen.
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But choice has a cost.The shard's energy thinned the world's edges. Shapes wavered and smeared. Selric felt the line between himself and what he had just done blur: the wolf's last look, the assassin's small, incredulous gasp—each imprinted like an ember on his mind. He tasted lives upon his tongue. He had fought to control hunger for years, to keep blood from dictating morals; now an alien hunger pressed at his thoughts: not for blood, but for the shard's memory itself—its voice.
Voices came then from the ridge—shouts muffled by wind, commands in a dozen languages, horse hooves slapping hard against snow. Reinforcements. He had bought himself minutes, no more. He had to move.
He wiped his blade on frozen fleece and dragged the assassin's cloak over the wolf-scout. She breathed shallowly and would live—if she had mercy. He slipped into the white and ran.
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The storm was indifferent. Snow scoured his tracks almost before he made them. He moved on muscle and will, climbing ridges with a weapon's weight in his hand and the shard's song in his blood. The shard's voice rose and folded — sometimes a lullaby, sometimes a drum calling to battle. It whispered images of the temple's mural: two figures, hands joined, the shard between them. It showed him the sigils carved into stone and the way the air had sounded, the moment the altar had cracked.
And one thought threaded through the other visions, soft as breath: Return what was taken.
He didn't know whether it was a command, or a memory, or a plea. He only knew it pulled like tide.
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At dusk he faltered, breath rasping in his chest, shoulder wound raw and slick beneath his coat. He found a shallow cave and hid the horse in a ravine, then sank to the cold rock and pressed his palm to the wound. Blood steamed against his fingers. The shard's hum beat against his ribs like a second heart.
He fell into that hum and nearly slept. The shard's voice was sweeter in the dark: We were two. Make us whole.
He turned his head away, jaw clenched. "Not yet," he whispered to the cold. "Not like this."
Outside, distant and maddeningly clear, he heard the hunters above him pause. Someone shouted—words of anger, orders, the clatter of men reshuffling. For a moment, the mountain held its breath with him. Then the wind rose again, and the shouts were gone.
Selric let the night take him like a tide. Pain blurred into the dark; the shard thrummed like a small sun under his sternum. He slept in broken bites, dreams laced with red moonlight and half-remembered faces.
When he woke, dawn was silver and clean. The world looked new for an instant, and he realized with a cold clarity what he had become: an exile with a weapon in his blood and a shard in his bones, hunted by those he once called kin and those he once called enemy.
He swung to his feet, sword heavy but steady. The mountain called him onward. The shard sang, and with it the promise of a path that might end crowns or begin empires.
Selric Varian set his jaw and walked into the rising wind.