“The ice here is different.” My voice echoes strangely in the narrow passage, multiplied and distorted by the crystalline surfaces. “Intentional preservation, not the Arbiter’s punishment. Someone wanted this place to survive.”
“The gods?”
“No.” I extend my Auric Veil sight, letting it brush against the preservation spells embedded in the walls. The magic is old—older than the Arbiter, older than the current divine order. “This predates them. Built by mortals who knew what was coming and wanted to preserve the knowledge of how to fight it.”
The passage opens into a chamber that steals my breath.
Vast doesn’t capture it. The underground space stretches beyond the reach of my sight, ceiling lost in frozen mist that swirls in patterns too regular to be natural. Crystalline shelves rise from the floor in towering columns, each one holding books and scrolls frozen mid-page, their contents visible through the ice but utterly untouchable.
Spells hang suspended in the air between the shelving—half-cast incantations preserved for millennia, their power locked in the instant before completion. Light refracts through the ice layers in prismatic patterns that shift as I move, casting rainbow shadows across the frozen knowledge.
The beauty of it strikes me silent for a moment. All this knowledge. All this history. Preserved while the world above burned and froze and forgot.
“This is…” Tyr trails off, his usual terseness giving way to an expression I’ve never seen on him.
“A repository.” I move deeper into the chamber, my Auric Veil working overtime to process the sheer density of preserved magic. “Everything the gods wanted forgotten. Every truth they tried to bury.”
My sight picks apart the layers of preservation, reading the age of the spells, the intent behind them. Whoever built this place did so with painstaking care—each text, each scroll, each frozen incantation positioned for maximum protection and accessibility. They knew exactly what they were saving, and why.
Including, if I’m reading the patterns correctly, the truth about the Arbiter.
The narrow aisles between shelving create a maze-like environment. I navigate by magical signature, following the threads of power that pulse strongest toward the center of the chamber. Tyr falls in behind me—I feel his heat even through the cold air, the scent of blood from wounds not fully healed still clinging to him.
I’ve grown accustomed to that presence. More than accustomed. I’ve started expecting it, anticipating it, orienting myself around it without conscious thought.
The central reading chamber reveals itself gradually—a circular space where the most important texts are concentrated, surrounded by preservation ice so thick, it distorts everything beyond into abstract shapes and muted colors. Here, the frozen knowledge is arranged with meticulous care, organized by subject and priority.
And there, at the center, is what we came for.
A book lies open on a pedestal of ice, its pages preserved mid-turn. The text is ancient—a language I recognize from bloodline training, one of the pre-divine tongues that the gods worked to erase. My Auric Veil translates it automatically, pulling meaning from symbols that shouldn’t be readable.
On the Destruction of Divine Constructs.
I move closer, my heart beating faster despite my attempts at control. The knowledge here—if it’s accurate—could change everything.
“Found what you were looking for?” Tyr’s voice comes from somewhere behind me.
“Maybe.” I lean in, studying the preserved text. The ice resists interpretation, requiring effort and time to parse each word. “This discusses the Arbiter. How it was made. What it’s made of.”
“And how to kill it?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I keep reading, forcing my way through the resistance of the preservation magic.
The Arbiter of Crowns exists as a god-forged executioner, neither fully divine nor fully mortal. Its authority derives from borrowed power—a fraction of divine essence channeled through a physical form. This form can be destroyed, but only by a power capable of matching or exceeding the divine contribution.
“It can be killed.” The words leave my mouth before I fully process them. “The Arbiter has a physical body. It can bleed. It can die.”
Tyr moves closer, his shadow falling across the preserved text. “But?”
There’s always abut. I read farther, the ice yielding reluctantly to my Auric Veil’s pressure.
No mortal power, however great, can wound a divine creature without transformation. The essence must evolve—exceed its original parameters—to interact with divine authority as equal rather than subject.
I read the passage three times. Each reading confirms what I understood the first time, and each confirmation makes my pulse pound harder.
“But killing it requires evolved power.” I straighten, turning to face him. “Power that’s exceeded its original parameters. Transformed beyond what it was.”
His expression doesn’t change, but his stillness intensifies. “What kind of transformation?”
