“And what do you believe, old friend?”
Namjoon’s mouth tightened, unreadable.
“I believe he is the only thing in this world you will not burn for duty’s sake. And that is why the council fears him more than any enemy.”
He left then, the faintest bow—one general to another, one man carrying the weight of a hundred battlefields.
Seungho stood alone, feeling the press of old wounds. Of longing. Of the silent, icy siege he could not fight with sword or flame.
??????
Night in the northern barracks was a living wound—snow snarled through the gaps in the stonework, wind bit through iron. Lanterns guttered in the dark, casting long shadows of armored bodies and wolf banners that rippled above the drill ground. Everything reeked of discipline, suffering, routine. And loss.
Inside the war-room:
A stone table, scored by knives and years.
Six figures in furs and lacquered steel, faces blurred by cold and contempt.
At the head: Commander Baek—the one who had ordered Haneul bound to a post in the snow for his defiance, and nearly left him there to die.
His voice was pure permafrost.
“Thirteen moons. No word from the brat. No sign. No body.”
A younger captain, Nari—sharp-eyed, never fond of Haneul—snorted.
“He’s not a brat. He’s a traitor. Fire King’s concubine, now.”
A snicker. Someone spat into the brazier.
Baek’s knuckles cracked. “He was ours. Ours to wield. Ours to break. Ours to end.”
Nari bared her teeth. “Let the Fire King keep him. He was always wild. Half-feral, half-defected.”
Baek slammed his fist onto the stone.
“NO. That power belongs to the North. He was made here. Fed here. Every kill, every scar—ours. And now the southern bastards wield him like a prize hawk? I will not have it. Not while I draw breath.”
Silence.
Then, a grizzled veteran spoke, voice rough.
“Then fetch him, Commander. Or end him. But this festers. We’re a laughingstock. The other clans whisper—Ice lost their demon. Ice lost their bite.”
The room rippled with shame, rage, pride.
Baek stood, snow crusted on his pauldrons, and drew a blade across the stone.
“He’s not a traitor. He’s a tool. And tools are retrieved—or destroyed. Nari, ready the spies. We need to prepare to march into the Fire King’s palace and demand him back, he is ours. We bring him back in chains. Or in pieces.”
??????
The night in the Fire Palace was restless. Sleep became a shallow, broken surface—a ripple of frost along the shoji screens, a curl of steam rising from the brazier where Haneul’s feet tangled and untangled from the furs. He dreamed only in fragments: snow, iron, a cold command in a voice half-myth, half-nightmare.
Seungho didn’t sleep. Not when Haneul was like this—when the frost climbed the windows in the wrong season, when the wind shifted in the courtyards and servants woke shivering with whispers of bad omens and demon storms.
Sometime before sunrise, there was a tap at the door—a soldier’s code.
