His voice echoed twice—once in this world and once in something deeper.
“Katria Vale,” I said, and was proud that it didn’t tremble.
“Mortal.” He said it like a curse, like a word that didn’t belong in his mouth.
My knees wanted to give way, but I forced them straight. The frostlight beneath my feet flared faintly, answering something I didn’t understand.
He noticed. Of course, he did. His gaze slid to the faint golden shimmer and back to me.
“The thaw speaks through you,” he murmured. “A warmth that should not linger here. Tell me, what are you?”
I swallowed. “A healer.”
“A breaker,” he corrected softly.
Something flickered across Kaelith’s face at that—a flicker gone as soon as it formed. His eyes were fixed on the Frostfather, but the tightness in his jaw said everything.
“Your village,” the Frostfather continued, “offered you to stay my wrath. Do they believe you can soothe the ice that guards them?”
“I believe they wanted me gone,” I said. “Peace was the excuse.”
The Court stirred. A few murmured—not laughter, exactly, but something close enough to echo like it.
The Frostfather’s expression didn’t change. “Honesty is rare among mortals.”
“Honesty’s easy when you have nothing left to lose.”
That earned a sharper hum through the room—the frostlight flickering like candle flame before it steadied again.
Kaelith shifted slightly. His gloved hand brushed the hilt of his blade—not in threat but in caution. He was measuring every word that passed between us, weighing its consequence.
The Frostfather leaned back, his eyes distant and unfocused now. “Heat begets change. Change begets ruin. The last thaw nearly drowned us all. And yet here you stand—breathing, warm, alive. Perhaps the world remembers its mistakes.”
He tilted his head as though listening to something beyond me. When he spoke again, the words came slower, more fractured. “The Veil thins. The Dreamstone stirs. The frost remembers. All things do.”
A hush fell across the hall.
Kaelith’s voice broke it. Controlled. Careful. “Father.”
The Frostfather’s gaze snapped back, sudden and too sharp. “You question?”
“No.” Kaelith bowed slightly. “Only observe.”
“Observe, then,” the Frostfather said. “And learn what warmth does to stone.”
His attention turned to me again. “Step forward, mortal.”
My pulse stumbled. The frostlight beneath me brightened in response, golden threads flickering faintly through the silver. The Court leaned in, a collective inhale ofcuriosity and dread.
I took one step, then another. The cold climbed up my legs, biting but not enough to stop me.
The Frostfather’s smile was thin. “It lives,” he whispered. “It remembers.”
And then the ice at my feet cracked—just once, a hairline fracture spreading outward in a circle before sealing itself again. The noise was small, but it carried through the hall like thunder.
The crack’s echo hadn’t died before the Frostfather laughed.
It was a quiet sound, too thin to fit the shape of his mouth. “The frost remembers,” he murmured again, more to himself than to anyone else. “It keeps every touch. Even the ones it hates.”
