She nods into my chest. “Faster route south.” Acceptance laces tone; argument spent.
I pick path along ridge heading downward, testing holds. Muscles burn from fight and earlier climbs, but pace must stay steady to outrun shrine anger if it rouses again. Behind us, the temple rumbles like distant thunder—slugs rebirthing, maybe, or memory grumbling.
Carmilla murmurs as we walk. “Sacrifice sanctifies site… but original price predated dragons.”
“Which means?”
“Means altar demanded blood long before binding ritual. Something deeper than species. Perhaps realm itself takes tithe.”
I consider silent. Snowflakes drift, gentle now. My vow locks firm: I will not allow her to be that tithe.
We descend switchbacks, reaching narrow ice tongue bridging two spurs. I pause. “Can you walk?”
She nods, sliding down from arms, shaky but upright. I loop rope, guide across. Halfway she slips; I catch harness, steady. She exhales gratitude.
Once on safe ledge I dress wound on her palm with cloth strip. She watches, eyes clouded by exhaustion. “Guardian darts pierce soul more than flesh.”
“I’ll pierce them back next visit,” I mutter.
Frost crunches as we continue. Midmorning sun barely warms, but light lifts spirits. Carmilla’s color returns faintly, though lattice remains bright.
“We head south to pack valley,” I say. “There’s a ley-gate hidden beneath alder roots. Could cut two days.”
“Good.” She tightens cloak. “Faster to council, faster to new answers.”
I cast glance at her pale profile. She faces sunrise, face etched with pain yet shining with purpose. Respect shifts into something larger—admiration edged with fierce protectiveness.
My mantra updates. Protect her. Purge shard. Save pack. And now: shield her from shrines and ghosts alike.
We press on, leaving frost-veiled temple behind. Its song lingers in blood, but the mountain around us thrums approval, as if granite senses we carry truths needed for another dawn.
Somewhere ahead the council waits, and beyond them storm of realms. But for this hour, we walk together on hard-won snow, and my vow rings clearer than morning air: I will keep her breathing until stars themselves decide fate, and perhaps snarl at the stars if they try to disagree.
9
CARMILLA
Cold incense billows from the broken gate long after Kylan and I retreat to the snow shelf, but dawn’s gold heat has eased the tremor in my bones. For an hour he paces, shoulders knotted as if the shrine still scores him from afar. I sip remedies, breathe glyphs to quiet the lattice, and watch shadows shorten. When the sun reaches mid-sky he stops pacing.
“Your color’s better.” He crouches beside me, studying the frost bloom on my cheek as a healer might inspect wound edges.
“Salve helps. So does daylight.” I flex fingers; crystalline veins remain bright, but ache less. Inside my skull the translation trance still tugs, incomplete. “There’s more beyond the guardian hall. The worst defenses lie broken; I felt that when the slug fractured.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. “You expect me to let you step back into that tomb?”
“We leave before twilight. I can finish reading before then.” I place hand on his leather sleeve. “The sphere cavity opened new passages. They want to be read.”
He hates the idea, but the fight taught him enough about prophecy’s gravity to relent. Finally he rises, offers me hiscanteen. “Eight bell tolls, we’re gone, no matter what text remains.”
“Agreed.”
We reenter through the Frostglass Gate, still cracked from our combined heartbeat, shards glittering at our feet like tiny souls. The antechamber lies quiet except for dust motes dancing in the colored light. No fresh darts circle. No slugs writhe. Guardians sleep, drained by dawn.
At mural pedestal I pause. The broken slug fragments shimmer faintly on the tile map. Kylan sidesteps them with unmistakable contempt, then positions himself beneath an archway flanking the main hall. Wild protectiveness radiates off him—steel tempered by last night’s shared dream.
The inner sanctum stretches beyond: a circular chamber thirty paces wide, its domed ceiling intact and sheathed in dragon scale mosaics that pulse when my boots cross threshold. The air grows warmer, scented with copper and distant thunderstorms. Floor tiles give way to concentric rings of rune-inscribed marble, each ring depicting a year of the first Convergence. At the center stands a plinth carved from fused fang and crystal, its top cupping a basin of what appears to be frozen starlight.
The sanctum pulls words from my lungs. “Kah’thalan,” I whisper—the Old Tongue name for this place: Heart-That-Remembers.
