MAGNUS
We watch the Storm Eagle rescue patrol disappear into the morning sky with Jace, their powerful wings carrying the broken boy toward help. Lyra stands beside me, close enough that I can feel her warmth despite the frigid mountain air. Her face is tilted skyward, tracking the patrol until they’re just specks against the clouds.
“He’ll make it,” I say, though I’m not sure if I’m reassuring her or myself.
“Elena will help him,” she agrees, but her voice carries the weight of what we both know—Jace is lucky to have escaped at all. Others haven’t been so fortunate.
The boy’s directions echo in my mind:North. Always north. Down into the ice where the world goes blue and cold.
I turn to study the terrain ahead. The deep ice wastes are treacherous even for Mountain Cats. Crevasses that can swallow whole hunting parties, storms that rise from nowhere, cold so intense it can freeze a shifter mid-transformation. And now, apparently, a laboratory where someone is creating abominations.
“We should move,” Lyra says, already adjusting her pack. “Every hour we delay is another hour those people suffer.”
She’s right, but I find myself hesitating. Not from fear of the danger ahead, but from something else, a protective instinct so fierce it makes my chest tight. My snow leopard is practically screaming at me to take her back to safety, to not walk into what’s obviously a trap.
But she’s already moving north, and I follow because the alternative of letting her go alone, is simply unthinkable.
The trail Jace left is faint but readable. Blood drops frozen in ice, scuff marks where he dragged himself over rocks, the scent of fear and chemical wrongness that makes my nose burn. We follow it backward, moving deeper into territory that even Mountain Cats rarely patrol.
By midday, we find it.
Northern Gamma Station squats against the mountainside like a cancer—all harsh angles and metal that doesn’t belong in this landscape of ice and stone. The facility should be dead, decommissioned years ago according to the faded Haven’s Heart logos on the outer walls. But I can see power signatures, heat bleeding from ventilation systems, and fresh tracks in the snow.
“Supposedly abandoned three years ago,” Lyra says quietly, reading the station markers. “Part of Haven’s Heart’s research network before the integration treaties.”
We circle the perimeter carefully, staying low, using rocky outcroppings for cover. My ice magic spreads out in thin tendrils, reading heat patterns, checking for guards or surveillance. The upper levels seem truly abandoned—broken windows, snow drifted through doorways. But below...
“There’s extensive underground structure,” I report. “Multiple levels carved into the mountain. Heat signatures, but they’re... wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Fluctuating. Like whoever’s down there can’t maintain consistent body temperature.” Like the Broken Jace described, beings caught between forms, neither fully human nor animal.
We find a concealed position among the rocks where we can observe the facility. As the afternoon light fades, patterns emerge. No regular patrols. No visible guards. But occasionally, shadows move behind the frosted lower windows—jerky, unnatural movements that make my leopard’s hackles rise.
“My clan has legends,” I find myself saying as we watch. “Stories passed down from the old times, before the barriers, before the separation of wild and civilized.”
Lyra turns to look at me.
“We called them the Broken Ones,” I continue. “Monsters born from meddling with nature’s laws. Shifters who tried to steal forms that weren’t theirs, or force transformations that shouldn’t exist. The legends said they were cursed by the spirits, trapped forever between shapes as punishment for their arrogance.”
“Cautionary tales,” Lyra murmurs.
“That’s what I thought. Stories to frighten cubs away from dangerous magic.” I gesture toward the facility. “But someone’s making the legends real. Deliberately creating what our ancestors feared most.”
“Not creating,” Lyra says, her voice hard. “Torturing. There’s no creation in forcing someone into a shape that causes constant agony.”
The fury in her voice makes me look at her more closely. She’s trembling, but not from cold. From rage.
“You saw more,” I say. It’s not a question. “In your vision. When you touched Jace. You saw more than you told me.”
She goes very still.
“You’re hiding something,” I continue, keeping my voice gentle but firm. “Since the cave. Since before that, actually. Sincethe moment we met, you’ve been seeing things. Knowing things. What aren’t you telling me?”
She wraps her arms around herself, looking small suddenly despite the strength I know she possesses. “I can’t?—”
“Lyra.” I move closer, not touching but near enough that she can feel my presence, my solidarity. “We’re about to walk into that place. I need to trust you completely, and you need to trust me.”
