(POV: Aretia Exemplar)
The embers of our first fire had turned to cold grey ash, and we dragged our feet upward through the rugged passes of the Mountains of Silence.
The frost gnawed mercilessly at our limbs, yet its bite faded before the agonizing hunger twisting our bellies. Hours of trudging uphill on an empty stomach left our insides burning with acidic cramps, and constantly gasping in the thin, freezing air parched our throats until it felt as though we were swallowing ash.
I halted abruptly, crouching low behind a protruding rock.
A dozen paces ahead, nestled between two jagged stone outcrops, a white hare huddled in the snow, invisible against the endless white drifts save for the ink-black beads of its small eyes. I raised a hand behind me, signaling Justitia to freeze, and held my breath.
Carefully, I drew the wooden stick I had painstakingly sharpened and hardened over our earlier fire.
Fixing my gaze on its small chest, I braced my weight onto my back foot and hurled the stick forward with every scrap of strength left in my exhausted arm.
The sharpened point whistled through the air and pierced deep into the hare's chest. It shuddered for a fleeting heartbeat before slumping lifeless into the snow.
"Got it!"
I breathed out a thick plume of warm vapor, my chest heaving violently from the exertion.
I lunged forward, sinking to my knees in the soft powder. Tugging out the makeshift spear, I drew the small knife from my belt and prepared to dress the kill, but my fingers were shivering uncontrollably from the cold and exhaustion, unable to steady the blade.
"Step aside," Justitia's voice came from behind me, hoarse and weary, yet carrying a firm edge. "Let me do it. I'm far better with blades than you are."
I looked up at her skeptically. "Since when do you know how to dress game?"
She offered a wry, familiar smirk. "While you were buried with your nose in books and scrolls, I was down in the kitchens, actually learning how to cook with my own two hands."
I fell silent and handed her the hilt without an argument.
Justitia gripped the knife with apparent confidence and raised her hand to begin the incision. Yet, the biting frost betrayed her; her stiffened wrist shook, the hilt slipped from her numb fingers, and the dagger plunged into the snow.
A faint, mirthless smile touched my lips. "Seems practicing in palace kitchens doesn't quite prepare your tendons for mountain frost."
A flush of embarrassment cut through the pale chill on her cheeks, and she snapped irritably:
"Shut up! My hand just slipped."
She snatched the dagger from the snow, wiped the blade against her sleeve, and knelt with both knees firmly planted, clamping both hands around the handle to steady it.
This time, she genuinely astonished me.
With intense focus and steady precision, she sliced open the skin and peeled it back without puncturing the entrails. Her shivering fingers worked the joints, cleanly severing the tendons until the carcass was neatly quartered into clean cuts of meat, faint steam rising from the fresh warmth of the flesh alongside the metallic scent of raw blood.
Justitia wiped the blood from her hands onto her ragged grey dress and looked at me. "What now?"
"I spotted a dead tree a short climb above," I said, eyeing the cuts of meat. "I'll try to kindle a fire so we can cook it."
Justitia sighed wearily, her shoulders drooping. "Kindling a fire in this freezing gale will take forever while we freeze to death... By the way, where is the spatial storage ring? I thought you had it."
My shoulders stiffened, and a suffocating lump rose into my throat. "Mother was wearing it... when she burned."
A heavy silence fell between us. No tents, no rations, nothing to shield us from the wilderness save the rags on our backs and this small knife.
Justitia broke the silence, her voice edged with desperate resolve. "What if we eat it raw?"
My eyes widened. "Raw?! Cold blood could carry parasites and sickness our stomachs can't fight, and you'll never stomach the nausea!"
"And can you stomach collapsing from starvation?" she cut me off sharply, her eyes darting nervously across the surrounding slopes. "Look around you, Aretia... Listen carefully."
I fell quiet, straining my ears.
The silence on this high ridge was unsettlingly absolute. No chirping of birds, no rustle of rodents, not a single beast or creature roaming these vast white plains.
Justitia continued in a hushed whisper, "Since we started climbing, we haven't seen a single thing alive except this lone hare and a few withered trunks. There is nothing here! This kind of quiet is an omen of horror. Either a terrifying monster rules this land and chased everything away, or the ground itself is cursed. Lingering here to scavenge firewood is pure suicide."
Her words struck a nerve of chilling truth.
Closing my eyes, I recalled the ancient maps of Stasis I had memorized back in our family library. I calculated our path, aligning our heading against the jagged peaks of the Mountains of Silence. When I opened my eyes, a cold shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the snow.
"You're right," I whispered, staring out across the barren white expanse. "According to the old records... a dense forest of ancient pines was supposed to blanket this entire slope."
"A forest?!" Justitia took a step back.
"Yes. Miles of thick woodland," I said, pointing toward the shattered stumps buried deep under the ice. "A catastrophic force tore the trees up by their roots and sheared the ridge flat. We must push to the summit immediately, skirt around the crest, and descend toward the valley. We cannot afford to waste a single breath."
I glanced down at the bloody chunks of meat. "We eat it raw."
I picked up a piece. It was cold and slick, the thick iron stench of blood filling my nostrils. I forced it into my mouth and began to chew.
A wave of nausea seized my stomach, the raw meat tough and rubbery beneath my teeth. My gorge rose, threatening to heave it all back up, but the lingering memory of Mother's final command echoed in my skull: 'Live, Aretia...'
I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowed hard, and forced the cold mass down my throat.
Justitia watched me with undisguised revulsion, then shut her eyes, stuffed a piece into her mouth, and chewed with clenched cheeks, silent tears welling at the corners of her eyes from the foul texture and chill.
Bite after bite, wrapped in grim silence, we choked down what we could to force life back into our starving bodies.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. The moment the meat settled in my stomach, an agonizing thirst struck me. The blood, rich with salt, drained the moisture from my tongue, leaving my throat parched like hot coals.
I turned to Justitia; her lips were already white and cracked from dehydration.
"Justitia."
"What?"
"I think... we need to light a fire after all."
Her eyebrows shot up in profound irritation. "What?! Why?!"
"How else are we supposed to drink without melting snow?"
Justitia's jaw dropped, her eyes blazing with raw outrage.
"Are you telling me I choked down that disgusting raw filth... for nothing?! If we were going to make a fire anyway, we could have roasted the meat and spared ourselves swallowing cold blood!"
I looked away, defensively trying to sidestep her glare. "It was your idea in the first place!"
She stormed toward me, stepping right into my face. "And who was the 'genius' supposed to think about how we were going to drink?! And why didn't we store water back at the first tree when the flame was still burning?!"
"How was I supposed to store it, in my bare hands?!"
"Didn't you think of wood?!" Justitia shouted, brandishing the dagger. "I could have hollowed out a thick branch with this knife to make a canteen!"
I froze. I blinked slowly.
She was completely right, and in my theoretical calculations, I had foolishly overlooked the simplest necessity of survival.
"I... I didn't think of that," I admitted in a small voice, rubbing my forehead in shame. "I made a mistake. Next time, we consult each other before doing anything."
Justitia let out a long breath, her anger cooling. "Fine... Let's head to that dead tree."
We climbed toward a weathered pine trunk wedged between two rocky clefts.
Justitia sat on the snow, wedged a thick piece of pine between her thighs, and began carving and hollowing it out with the knife, crafting a sturdy canteen with grooves for a strap and a fitted wooden stopper. Meanwhile, I sat across from her, preparing a dry hearth board and a straight wooden drill.
Placing the tip of the stick into the notch, I began spinning it vigorously between my palms.
I was bracing myself for an agonizing struggle that would drain what little energy I had left—in this freezing, damp air, coaxing a spark should have taken an exhausting effort. Yet what happened defied every law of nature.
After only a few rapid spins... a thick coil of smoke billowed from the contact point. An unnatural crimson ember flared, and within seconds, a bright flame burst forth, eagerly devouring the kindling!
My hands froze mid-air, my eyes wide with disbelief. "This... makes no sense."
Justitia looked up from her carving. "What's wrong? It's burning, isn't it? That's good!"
"It ignited way too fast!" I said warily, staring at the lively flame. "The wood is freezing cold, and in this weather, it takes immense friction just to get a wisp of smoke! A dead branch doesn't just burst into flame from three rubs!"
"Maybe the rabbit blood on your palms gave you better traction and grip?"
"Even if the blood helped my grip, blood is a liquid!" I said, rising halfway and scanning the surrounding rocks with growing dread. "Wood doesn't ignite like this in sub-zero frost. Something is wrong with this place... It's as though latent, supernatural heat is trapped within the stones, like a cataclysmic inferno swept across this ridge and left its scorch on the very fabric of the air."
"All that matters is that we have a fire," Justitia said with exhausted pragmatism, handing me the finished wooden canteen. "Here, let's drink."
"Remarkable craftsmanship," I said with genuine admiration.
I scooped a handful of clean snow and held it toward the flame, while Justitia held the canteen beneath my fingers to catch the runoff.
Then came the second anomaly.
The moment the clump of snow neared the glow of the flame, it didn't melt gradually. It disintegrated in the blink of an eye, flashing instantly into a rush of warm water that filled the wooden canteen to the brim without emitting a single trace of cold vapor!
We both recoiled, staring at each other in sheer horror.
"Did you see that?" I whispered, goosebumps prickling across my skin. "It melted as if dropped into molten lava!"
"We need to get out of here right now!" Justitia gasped, scrambling to her feet and clutching the dagger. "This mountain isn't normal!"
I jammed the wooden stopper into the canteen, lashed it securely to my waist, and kicked snow over the unnatural flame. We hurried upward, rounding the shoulder of the ridge toward the upper pass.
The path soon narrowed into a treacherous, sheer slope of polished glacial ice, smooth as a mirror and angling down toward jagged rocks far below.
Suddenly, a thunderous crash echoed from the peaks above!
A violent shockwave slammed into our backs, like an enormous blast had erupted beyond the crest and hammered the ridge with compressed gale-force winds.
My footing gave way instantly.
My boots slipped on the glassy ice, and I crashed hard onto my side.
"Aretia!" Justitia screamed.
My body began sliding at terrifying speed down the slick incline toward the lethal rocks below! I clawed desperately at the ice, but the surface was hard as stone, snapping my fingernails as gravity dragged me helplessly toward the edge.
No... I won't die here! I promised Mother! my mind screamed in terror.
"Grab my hand!"
Justitia's voice pierced through the howling gale.
She had thrown herself flat on her stomach, jamming her legs and torso behind a sturdy, jagged boulder at the top of the slope to anchor herself, and reached her right arm down along my slide path.
I flashed past her in a blur.
In the final split second before the drop... Justitia's fingers locked around my right wrist!
Her entire frame violently jerked, and a ragged scream of agony tore from her throat as the full momentum of my falling weight slammed into her shoulder and arm. Her ribs scraped hard against the rock, and her fingernails dug deeply into my flesh, yet her grip never loosened.
"I won't... let go!" she snarled through gritted teeth, veins bulging in her temples.
With every ounce of desperate will, she pulled, leveraging her weight against the boulder. I managed to reach up with my free hand, catching the lip of the rock, and scrambled upward on my knees until I tumbled into the safe hollow beside her.
We collapsed together on the snow, panting with ragged, burning breaths, our hearts hammering against our ribs in cold terror.
I looked down at my wrist. Five dark, purplish bruises were already blooming into my skin—a permanent stamp of the grip that had dragged me back from the void.
"Justitia..." I managed between gasps, looking at her pale face. "I'm sorry. I was a fool who thought she knew everything. I should have listened to you... I should have asked."
She sat up, chest heaving, and looked directly into my eyes. "You're welcome."
I blinked in surprise. "Why are you saying that?"
"Because you just thanked me, even if your stubborn mouth didn't say the word."
Our eyes met, and a faint, genuine smile broke across my lips.
I untied the wooden canteen from my waist, pulled out the stopper, and held it to her mouth. Justitia took a long, deep draught of the warm water before handing it back to me. I drank the rest, feeling the soothing warmth seep into our stiffened veins.
I extended my hand to her, and she gripped it firmly as I helped her to her feet.
Shoulder to shoulder, we planted our boots firmly into the snow and continued our climb toward the silent summit above.