His hand was slick with blood—thick, warm, and dark—and not even the heavy rain could wash it away. He relished the sound of steel breaking flesh, the wet crunch and gasp that came after.
By the time he reached the last man, the elder was awake, dragging himself backward through the mud, eyes wide with terror.
Thrax crouched, gripped his leg, and plunged the blade into his thigh. The man’s scream tore through the downpour, sharp and beautiful in its agony. Thrax twisted the blade, then spun him aroundusing the same leg, forcing him onto his knees before plunging the knife into his neck.
The cries stopped, but his fury didn’t. It gnawed at him still, screaming louder in the hollow where his beating heart used to be, demanding more blood.
More blood.
He tossed the knife aside and straightened. The world swayed, his hair clinging to his face, plastered by rain. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, leaving streaks of red across his skin.
And then, he began to walk away. From death, from the carnage that now painted the ground. He could barely see where he was going. The world was a blur of rain and darkness. Still, he walked, stumbling and pausing to lean against trees whenever his body refused to move, his mind finding it hard to register that she was gone. Truly gone.
As much as the pain festered inside him, it was the only thing pushing him forward.
Towards The Crater, towards the one who had started all this.
Selvanyra.
It took hours. By the time he reached the mouth of The Crater, the rain had stopped, and the pale edge of dawn brushed against the clouds.
He climbed the jagged steps leading into the hills as he had countless times before, the hills that had never changed in all the centuries he’d walked it. He’d rushed out of the house earlier, uncaring about his coat or gloves, and for the first time, he felt the hills’ cold unfiltered against his skin, biting and cruel.
He couldn’t bear to return home to get them. Not to that house where her presence still clung to every corner.
The higher he climbed, the colder it grew.
At first, it was bearable. But then, the air turned into something else. It wasn’t cold anymore; it was...alive, almost as though the wind that howled through these hills had claws.
When he reached the midpoint, frost clung to his lashes. His breath came in shallow bursts, each exhale forming clouds that immediately froze into dust. His skin stung with every step, burning and freezing all at once. His veins felt sluggish, like ice water was crawling through them instead of blood.
Then the cold began to eat deeper. It ran beneath his skin, sinking into the marrow, until he couldn’t feel his limbs properly. His fingers stiffened, curling inward until they wouldn’t straighten. His jaw ached when he tried to clench it, his lips cracked, the cold making sounds as the frost formed on his sleeves and spread like roots up his arms.
When he crossed the invisible line—the point where he always stopped—the air itself seemed to change density. It thickened, heavy with an unnatural chill that went past flesh and into the brain.
Thrax gasped as the cold sank its talons into his scar, burrowing deep. His chest burned from the inside, as though ice and fire had joined hands inside his ribs. His muscles trembled violently. He could feel nothing below his elbows. His fingers had become glass, a lifeless dead weight hanging beside him.
He fell once, face-first into the stone, the impact jarring. The world tilted, his vision dimming. But even then, he pushed himself up. He couldn’t stop.
Hewouldn’tstop.
Every inch forward felt like dragging his body through shards of glass. The frost cracked on his back as he moved, his hair stiff and clumped with ice. His heartbeat slowed, each thud echoing faintly in his ears, distant and fading.
At one point, he collapsed again—fully this time. His body refused him, paralysed from cold. Frost had taken him entirely; it was plastered to his eyelashes, his brows, his throat. His skin had turned a marble shade of grey, his lips nearly blue. He lay there, unable to move, eyes half-lidded as he stared at the grey mist swirling above.
A sweet, merciful, and eternal sleep called unto him, but he couldn’t take its hands. Not yet.
He had to fight it. Fight the cold, fight the exhaustion, fight death itself. And though his vision of Sanora behind his closed eyes tempted him to surrender—to die and follow her—it also drove him to crawl back to his knees.
He dragged himself forward.
Daylight had come and gone, meaning he’d walked for almost a full day. His body was ruined, his mind a haze, but his will remained. Until, at last, through the blinding frost, he saw a dark space ahead, and beyond it, there was nothing but blackness.
He knew what that darkness was.
The Crater.
He had spent centuries studying the terrain, spent years sending drones, sketching his own maps, memorising the patterns of magnetic shifts that destroyed every machine he sent. He had walked these same hills so often that he could navigate some paths with his eyes closed.
