Chapter 1 The Frozen Star #2
“Never stopped me from following you before.” Zarrek siphons mana to the edge of his weapon. “You’ll get plenty of silence when we’re back with the Polis crystal.”
“Don’t remind me. If I could extend the contract for a few more decades, I would.”
“Your brother’s orders aren’t a contract—you’re not a mercenary.”
“The Sovereign Flame,” I correct him, amused at his irreverence. “Forget the title, and he’ll have you Repurposed at the gates.”
Zarrek’s grin is sharp. “They can’t get rid of me that easily. The Lifegivers will riot. Two decades isn’t enough time for them to quit asking for my seed.”
I choke on my food as I struggle not to laugh.
Zarrek smirks, offering me a hand up. “They don’t know what to do with me in that Voids-damned rat hole,” he says.
“Too famous for Repurposing, too long-lived to be anything but a nuisance. As for me, I think I’d be happy to perish on this Campaign of yours. ”
We press on. The cold grows deeper. Biting. Intentional. As though it knows all the gaps in our armor. The walls change from carved stone to blue-black marble, etchings in a long-lost language replacing cracks and fissures.
“The air is foul here,” Zarrek observes. “Mana scrapes against my bones, like it wants to push me out.”
Our Polis lanterns sputter and die, so I light the way with sapphire mageflame. We enter the next chamber—a cavern so massive it rivals the Daesa Major, which houses the bulk of our home city in the Endless Dark. From here, a long winding staircase stretches downwards. Narrow. Treacherous.
I whisper for Kenaz again, squinting through the shadows. Even my runesight cannot show me what lies ahead. We continue down the stairs, and suddenly my breath catches.
Though my heart still beats steadily, something stirs deep within my blood.
From the soulless darkness, a round door appears, more than two times Zarrek’s height.
Sealed with stronger magic this time.
Zarrek pushes me aside. “Let me handle this.”
Holding out a hand, the Reskala warrior whispers ancient words, each syllable a wedge against the seal—deliberate, devastating. Twisted symbols take shape as the breath leaves the Runetongue’s lips, pulsing as they unfold and shatter all nine locks.
The door groans—then opens.
Zarrek draws his colossal battleaxe while I reach for the sword at my hip. We enter back-to –back, like the old days, when it was just us against armies of varkhounds and riftspawn.
The chamber before us pulses with its own beating heart of mana, radiating a cerulean light outward from a central pillar. Our breaths turn to vapor; the metal of our armor groaning as it shrinks back against a sudden biting frost.
The pillar is ice, but not. Something foreign…something different.
We approach the structure with measured steps until I can make out something floating in the pillar’s depths.
My breath freezes when my eyes focus on the blur of color within.
As though a hammer slams into it, my heart lurches in my chest. I stumble forward.
Not from clumsiness, but shock. For nothing has ever stirred the core of me into motion before.
Not beating drums of war. Not screams of the dying.
Not the chant of my people as they worship my name in bloodlust and ruin.
But this…
A woman, encased within the crystal like a child within Ennea’s womb, glowing from within. Dressed in clothes of a style I’ve never seen on any of my travels.
Small. Still. Silver-haired. Not peaceful. Not afraid. Just…waiting.
I step forward, entranced—drawn not by logic, but something older. Deeper. Primal as the elements.
Elegant lines in her shape send a flicker of awareness crawling up my spine.
“Resh,” Zarrek says behind me, voice sharp, “stay back.”
I ignore him, still moving forward. “She’s breathing.”
“No, it’s—wait.” Zarrek’s tone shifts. “Void take me.”
A faint mist at her lips.
“She’s sealed.” I examine the crystal. “Containment web, but not the usual leys. Something twisted.”
I reach into my coat.
“Tell me you’re not about to pull out that cursed scrap of rock.”
“It isn’t cursed,” I tell him, taking a long crystalline stone from my inner pocket. The Void Seed shimmers in my palm, humming. “It’s a resonance artifact. Interferes with a ward’s ley and dissolves mana channels. Effective in this case.”
“Every time you mess with that thing, it corrupts my runes. Thrums like it’s alive.” Zarrek scowls. “Makes my teeth itch.”
“Let’s try it.”
Zarrek rushes to me, grabbing my arm in a bruising grip. “Stop. Don’t you think there’s a reason that thing is bottled up in there?”
I ignore him, unable to tear my eyes away from the woman—from the way her hand stretches towards me, pleading.
“She’s meant to wake,” I say. “She’s waiting.”
“We don’t know what it is. What if it kills us as soon as it’s out of that pillar?”
“I’m going to free her anyway.”
Zarrek opens his mouth, closes it, then curses under his breath. He lets go of my arm and wraps both hands around the grip of his axe.
I extend the Seed towards the pillar. For a moment, there’s no reaction at all. Then the ice cracks. Shivers. A ripple echoes through the air as symbols come to life beneath my hand, light bleeding from their edges in mournful arcs.
Do not…
A voice on the wind. Sorrowful. Weak.
The ground shakes, and I stumble to keep balance. Behind me, Zarrek throws a few more curses. Gritting my teeth, I steady my grip on the Seed. Stone moans. Sigils on the walls burn white.
Please…do not…
And then—the splintering. With a deafening crack, the pillar shatters outward like glass beneath a hammer, peeling away layer by layer like flesh from bone.
The woman falls, and time seems to slow as I catch her in my arms.
Cold. Fragile. Breathing.
Perfect.
Her eyes flutter open. Pale silver, as though her cadling the very fabric of creation. As though they see me. Know me. And I forget for a heartbeat that I am Resh’Agar. That I am a weapon. A construct.
That I am anything but a man.
One on his knees, undone by a gaze that does not even linger.
“Auryn’reh Solah,” she breathes.
My heart thunders in my ears—a sound I have never heard before.
“What?” I ask her.
Again, she speaks. ”Auryn’reh Solah…”
Zarrek blinks. “What’s it saying?”
“I don’t know.”
Admitting such a thing is strange, for I know all the languages and dialects of Daesmoria, yet this—these syllables on her tongue—are foreign. Older than time.
As though that small action costs her everything, the woman closes her eyes and lets out a shaky breath. She goes still, and the thunder in my ears grows louder. I rush to check her pulse.
One heartbeat.
Two.
But with an echo behind, as though something else beats in rhythm too.
I stare at her face. Hypnotized. Spun starlight.
Lush silver hair. Skin pale enough to show the faintest trace of silver veins, like rivers drawn just beneath the surface.
Scattered on her cheeks like flakes of glowing snow are freckles that pulse with a white shimmer in time with her heartbeat.
And her mouth—soft with just a hint of rose.
I shouldn’t notice it, but I do.
A fragile, holy thing. Not to be touched. Or coveted.
“What is it?” Zarrek breathed.
“I think…” I struggle to swallow past a lump in my throat. The words come unbidden, half prayer and half confession.
“She’s a beginning.”