For a moment, I thought the danger had passed. Then the wind screamed.
It came barreling through the cracks in the gate, whipping snow into blinding arcs. The temperature dropped so fast my breath turned solid in the air. The torches guttered out, and every rune faltered.
And then I saw them.
The Frostwraiths didn’t move like living things. They didn’t have faces—just smooth planes of ice shifting beneath a layer of mist, their shapes more suggestion than form. They drifted through the storm, tall and narrow, leaving ripples of silence in their wake.
One passed directly through a torch still struggling to burn. The flame froze mid-flicker, then shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
Kaelith stepped forward, frostlight flaring along his armor. His blade ignited in his hand—not fire, not ice, something in between, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Hold formation,” he said. “Do not break ranks. Do not—”
The nearest Frostwraith struck.
It hit like lightning, a wave of wind and shards, knocking three soldiers off their feet. One screamed as frost climbed his skin like veins of glass.
Kaelith spun, bringing his sword down in a clean, blinding arc. The air cracked, a burst of white radiating from the impact. The wraith split in two, but instead of dying, it dissolved into snow, reforming yards away.
It was playing with him.
I ducked behind a low wall, heart hammering. The soldier I’d saved earlier was struggling to crawl away. His breath came in ragged clouds. I reached for him again, tearing fabric from my cloak to wrap around his hands.
His pulse fluttered weakly beneath my fingers. “Stay awake,” I whispered. “You’re not dying on me now.”
Another scream broke the air. I looked up and saw a guard flung against the far wall, motionless. Kaelith barked an order—two words I didn’t understand—but the runes along his arm flared bright enough to sting my eyes.
It seemed like the storm obeyed.
The snow froze midair, suspended like glass dust. Every wraith went still.
Kaelith turned toward me then—eyes rimmed with faint light, jaw tight. “Get back inside!”
“I can’t!” I shouted. “They’re—”
One of the Frostwraiths turned its head. If it couldsee, I felt its gaze. The air around me thickened, colder than breath. Kaelith’s eyes flicked toward it—then back to me, realization dawning.
“Stay still,” he said sharply. “Don’t move.”
The wraith glided closer, the snow around it whispering in circles. It stopped halfway across the yard, as if scenting the air.
Shoulders tense, Kaelith moved between us, blade raised. His voice dropped to something quiet and dangerous. “You’ll touch no one under my guard.”
The wraith lunged. The sound was thunder and ice and screaming wind.
Then the world shattered into sound and motion.
Kaelith moved faster than I thought possible. One heartbeat, he was still; the next, he was a streak of light and frost.His sword met the Frostwraith mid-lunge, the impact sending shockwaves through the yard. The creature’s shriek wasn’t sound—it was pressure, a vibration that rattled my bones.
Every rune in sight flared to life, the snow lifting in spirals. The wraith reformed again, taller this time, as if it had learned his rhythm.
Kaelith’s power tore through the storm in arcs of blue-white. His armor caught the light, edges glowing like a constellation of knives.He didn’t just fight; he commanded. The air itself seemed to bend to his will.
But for all his control, the Frostwraiths were multiplying. Three. Four. Seven. Each one stronger, faster, hungrier.
A shout from my left broke my focus—the soldier I’d tended earlier was on his knees, another wraith closing in.Kaelith saw it, too.“Vale! Stay back!”
But the man’s face—the sheer, terrifiedhumanityof it—broke through reason.I ran.
