As the night deepened, the mountain didn't just grow colder; it grew heavier.
Aether stood in the center of the darkened camp, the weight of his Sun-Steel greatsword familiar and grounding. Beside him, Sir Silas of Mordrake gripped his obsidian staff, his head tilted as if listening to the very heartbeat of the earth.
"Golems," Silas whispered, the word rattling in his throat. "Grave-born. They are hunting for meat, Your Highness."
From the treeline, the first Grave Golem lumbered into the dim moonlight. It was a massive, staggering construct of compressed earth, tombstone fragments, and rusted iron, held together by a core of stagnant, oily mana. It stood ten feet tall, each footfall vibrating through the soles of Aether's boots.
"Form the wedge!" Aether commanded, his voice a crack of thunder that snapped his men into motion. "Target the joints! Do not let them close the distance!"
A Grave Golem was a siege engine made of refuse and spite. Spears glanced off their rocky hides; ordinary arrows simply vanished into their mass. Aether stepped forward, his onyx eyes tracking the slow, deliberate arc of the lead Golem's arm—a limb the size of a tree trunk.
Aether didn't retreat. He lunged.
He moved with a deceptive, low-gravity grace, sliding beneath the Golem's swing. The friction of his boots threw up a spray of sparks against the permafrost. As he rose, he channeled the Solite energy from his armor into his blade. The Sun-Steel roared, glowing with a searing white heat.
With a single vertical cleave, Aether sliced through the Golem's knee. The creature let out a low, grinding groan as it pitched forward.
Aether didn't pause; he used the falling monster as a stepping stone, leaping high into the freezing air. He brought the hilt of his sword down like a hammer, the pommel—embedded with a high-grade magic stone—striking the center of the Golem's chest. The core shattered. The creature dissolved into a heap of inanimate rubble and ancient dust.
"More from the west!" a knight shouted. Four more Golems emerged from the fog, their sheer mass threatening to overrun the perimeter runes.
Aether wiped a smear of grit from his brow, his expression as frozen as the peaks above. To him, these were a mere annoyance—a test of stamina rather than skill. He braced his feet, resetting his grip for the next charge.
Then, the sky didn't just brighten—it screamed.
A bolt of pure, crystalline violet light descended from the ridge above, trailing a wake of ionized air. It didn't strike like a flame; it struck like a railgun. The lead Golem vanished in an explosion of purple fire and pulverized stone.
Aether froze.
His eyes tracked upward.
Against the bruised purple of the pre-dawn sky, a silhouette stood framed by the moonlight.
She wasn't standing on the ground; she was perched atop a jagged spire of rock, her mantle fluttering in the mountain gale. She held a massive, elegant longbow of shimmering white Ironwood, but it had no string and no quiver. Her left hand was outstretched, weaving threads of raw mana directly from the air into a jagged, shimmering arrow of light.
She released.
The second arrow whistled over Aether's head, so close the static charge made the fine hairs on his neck stand up. It pierced the remaining Golems in a single, blinding line of destruction, reducing the siege engines to scorched earth.
The archer leaped from the ridge, her mantle snapping behind her like wings. She landed twenty paces from Aether, her boots hitting the snow without a sound.
Aether stood motionless, his sword still drawn. His face remained a mask of stone, but deep within the onyx of his eyes, there was a slight, unmistakable wavering. He knew that silhouette. He knew the way she tilted her head when she looked down a line of sight.
She pulled back her hood.
Lyriel.
The quiet, studious girl he once knew. Her skin was pale, and her eyes—a sharp, piercing violet—held a coldness that rivaled the North.
Her blond hair, once soft, was now braided tight for combat like a silk cord. Unlike other Sylvaris mages who focused on mending flesh, she radiated a volatile, sharp power.
She didn't offer a smile. She didn't acknowledge the ten years of silence between them.
"My apologies for the lateness, Your Highness," she said, her voice raspy but carrying a rhythmic authority. She lowered her Ironwood bow, the mana-string fading into mist. "We were stalled briefly by another cluster of these constructs."
Aether's grip tightened on his sword. The girl he remembered had been fragile. This woman looked like she had spent the last twelve years killing everything in her path.
"You're early," Aether said, his voice level despite the pulse drumming against his armor. "We didn't expect the Sylvaris unit for another week."
"The monsters didn't want to wait," Lyriel replied, her gaze sweeping the camp with a look of detachment. "And neither did I."