She rose, gathering her resolve like armor around her heart.The room felt impossibly crowded in the dim light—five women sharing a space meant for two.Luna's small form was barely visible beneath her blankets, curled toward the wall.Ashe lay straight as a blade on her narrow cot, her breathing so measured that Thalia couldn't tell if she truly slept.
And on Thalia's own bunk, surrendered weeks ago when her mother and sister arrived with nothing but the clothes they wore, Celeste and Mari slept pressed together like spoons in a drawer.Mari's face was half-buried against her mother's back, black hair spilling across the pillow in waves that reminded Thalia of a younger, more carefree version of herself.
Thalia moved toward the door but found herself pausing at the foot of the bunk, her eyes drawn to the small table beside it.There, catching the moonlight in its tarnished brass casing, lay her father's compass.The only thing she had of his—a man whose face grew dimmer in her memory with each passing year, fading like ink exposed too long to sunlight.
She reached out, fingers hovering above the compass without touching it.Its needle always pointed true north, yet in the years since his death, she had found it to be an unreliable guide for navigating the complexities of her life.Still, it remained her most precious possession, a talisman connecting her to a past that sometimes felt more dream than memory.
A soft murmur from Mari sent a pang through Thalia's chest.Her sister's brow furrowed in sleep, lips moving in silent conversation with dreams that Thalia hoped were kinder than reality.She had brought her family to Frostforge believing it to be the safest place in a world rapidly falling to darkness.Now, with each day bringing news of more coastal towns lost to black waters, with factions fracturing within the academy's walls, that certainty wavered like a flame in crosswinds.
Yet it was precisely this uncertainty that drove her toward the door, toward the risk she was about to take.If the Council would not act to unify their scattered forces against the true enemy, then she would forge those alliances herself, beginning with the Wardens imprisoned on the plateau above.
With one last glance at her sleeping family, Thalia slipped into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind her with barely a whisper of sound.The stone passage stretched before her, dimly lit by wall sconces spaced too far apart, their flames guttering in drafts that whispered through Frostforge's ancient bones.
She moved with the silent efficiency that five years of training had instilled, keeping to the shadows between pools of torchlight.At this hour, the corridors were largely deserted—most inhabitants seeking what rest they could find before another day of dwindling supplies and mounting tensions.
Those few she did encounter—guards making their rounds, kitchen staff preparing for morning—barely glanced her way.In her plain clothing, without the silver insignia that had once marked her rank, she had become invisible.Another faceless refugee in a fortress overflowing with the displaced and desperate.
Thalia ascended through the levels of Frostforge, following less-traveled passages that wound upward through the heart of the mountain.Her breath came harder as she climbed, the air growing colder with each level she gained.By the time she reached the uppermost corridor, frost rimed the stone walls, sparkling in the muted glow of her lantern.
The gate to the Crystalline plateau lay at the end of this final passage, a massive construction of iron-reinforced oak meant to withstand both the elements and enemy assault.Two guards should have been stationed there, but Thalia had spent days observing their patterns, noting the precise time when the shift change occurred and the five precious minutes when the post stood empty as the old guards departed and the new ones ascended from the barracks below.
Her timing proved perfect.The gate stood unattended, its huge bolt drawn but not locked—ready for the incoming guards to secure once they arrived.Thalia slipped the bolt free with a grunt of effort, eased the gate open just enough to slide through, then pulled it closed behind her, leaving the bolt unsecured.Her return route, if all went according to plan.
The cold was a shock as she stepped onto the plateau, stealing her breath and sending a violent shiver through her frame despite her layers.Here, exposed to the full fury of mountain winds, temperatures dropped far below the already bitter cold of Frostforge's interior.The plateau stretched before her, a vast expanse of ice-glazed stone and frozen earth that shimmered beneath a sky strewn with stars like scattered diamonds.
In daylight, the plateau served as Frostforge's primary training ground, its unforgiving terrain perfect for hardening recruits against the worst conditions they might face in combat.Now, under the cold light of a waning moon, it resembled something from a forgotten legend—a realm of ice and silence where mortals dared not tread.
Thalia pulled her cloak tighter and began her crossing, lantern held low to illuminate the treacherous footing.Each step required careful consideration; what appeared to be solid ground often concealed patches of black ice capable of sending even the surest-footed tumbling.The sparse grass that somehow survived in this harsh environment crackled beneath her boots, frost shattering with tiny sounds that seemed thunderous in the stillness.
She cursed under her breath with each betraying crunch, though rationally she knew the sound couldn't carry to the distant watchtowers of the prison camp.Still, every instinct screamed that she was too exposed, too vulnerable in this open space where the moon cast shadows sharp as blade edges.
After what felt like hours but could only have been minutes, the prison camp came into view—a stark construction of timber walls reinforced with bands of steel, surrounded by fences inscribed with glowing runes.Four watchtowers rose from the corners, silhouettes of guards visible against the night sky.
Thalia dropped into a crouch behind a jutting rock formation, studying the camp's defenses.The main gate faced Frostforge, a heavy portal flanked by two guards currently engaged in their shift change report—exactly as her observations had predicted.Their attention was focused on the clipboard one held, heads bent together as they reviewed the night's events.
Using their distraction, she circled wide around the camp, keeping low and moving in short bursts between what little cover the plateau offered.She reached the northern edge of the fence, the side furthest from both Frostforge and the guards' immediate attention.
Here, a snowdrift had built up against the fence, partially burying its lower section.The runes inscribed along the metal glowed with an eerie blue light, but Thalia noted with interest that several in this area flickered unevenly, their power seemingly disrupted by the extreme cold or perhaps poor maintenance.A weakness in Virek's carefully crafted prison.
She knelt beside the fence, brushing frost from the metal with her gloved hand to better examine the sigils.The design was familiar—similar to those Virek had used to suppress Roran's storm magic during his trial.Magic-dampening runes, specifically calibrated to neutralize the Wardens' elemental abilities.
From a sheath at her hip, Thalia drew her ice-glacenite blade.The weapon caught the moonlight with an unearthly gleam, the metal alloy she and Kaine had discovered during their desperate search for something that could withstand the black weapons of the Wardens.Now she used it for a different purpose, carefully scratching through several of the runes, disrupting their patterns just enough to weaken their effect without creating obvious damage that might be noticed during patrols.
With the runes partially compromised, she turned her attention to the fence's foundation.This was the delicate part—the part that required her unique ability, the current-sensing that had once earned her derision as a Southern herb-witch but had proven invaluable in her metallurgy work at Frostforge.
Thalia closed her eyes, pressing her palm flat against the metal where it disappeared into the frozen earth.She pushed her awareness outward, feeling for the subtle currents of energy that flowed through all natural materials.Most people perceived only solid matter, but Thalia had always sensed more—the living pulse within metals, the whispered secrets of stone, the latent power in plants and minerals waiting to be shaped by those who understood their language.
There—a weakness in the fence's foundation, where frost-heave had created a small gap between metal and earth.She opened her eyes, using her blade to carefully excavate around this spot, widening the gap until it might allow passage for someone of her slight build.
The work was painstaking, each scrape of her blade against frozen earth sounding impossibly loud to her strained nerves.Twice she froze, certain she'd heard approaching footsteps, only to realize it was just the cracking of ice in the perpetual cold or the distant call of a mountain predator hunting in the night.
Finally, the gap was large enough.Thalia set aside her lantern and lowered herself to the ground, squeezing through the narrow opening with her breath held and her heart hammering against her ribs.The rough edges of metal scratched at her cloak, threatened to catch in her hair, but she pressed forward with grim determination.
Once through, she immediately turned her attention to concealing her entrance.Using the rudimentary cryomancy skills she had managed to master during her time at Frostforge—always her weakest subject, though she'd never admit it to the Northern instructors—she carefully fused the disturbed snow back into position.It wouldn't withstand close inspection, but in the darkness, with the guards making only perfunctory rounds, it might go unnoticed.
Thalia retrieved her lantern and rose, finally allowing herself to look at what lay beyond the fence.The prison camp spread before her, a grid of low, timber structures surrounded by walkways of packed snow.Ice-iron bars now separated different sections, creating distinct compounds within the larger prison—a new development since her last observation from outside the fence.In the nearest section, dark figures moved listlessly between sparse fires that offered more light than heat.
The air inside the fence held a different quality than the clean, bitter cold of the plateau.Here, despite the suppression runes, the scent of salt and ozone lingered faintly, reminiscent of the coast after a storm.Even suppressed, the Wardens' storm magic hummed like static against Thalia's skin—the moment before lightning strikes, extended infinitely without release.A tension with no resolution, a power denied its natural expression.
