Chapter 13 Tyr
THIRTEEN
TYR
The fire died two hours ago. I let it. Smoke draws attention, and whatever hunts us through this frozen wasteland doesn’t need additional guidance.
The faces haunt the space behind my eyes.
Not the killing itself—I’ve done enough that individual deaths blur into abstraction—but their relief.
The gratitude of those the gods had punished beyond any crime they committed, when my blade finally gave them what centuries of suffering hadn’t: an ending.
I’ve been doing this for longer than most civilizations have existed.
Zephyra’s hand is still in mine. She hasn’t let go all night.
Dawn arrives as a gray suggestion rather than actual light—the perpetual overcast that hangs over territories under divine observation. I track the slow brightening through the waystation’s cracked shutters, calculating travel times, threat assessments, and potential routes.
We can’t stay here.
The Arbiter will have tracked us through the storm. Its creatures will be closing the distance, narrowing the net, herding us toward whatever execution zone it’s prepared. Staying still is dying slowly.
Unless we go where it doesn’t expect.
The Frozen Observatory sits three miles northwest. Abandoned divine watch post. The kind of place the Arbiter might use to observe, but wouldn’t expect prey to approach voluntarily.
Concentrated divine energy. Dangerous. But the observation platforms would give us visibility across the entire frozen plateau—and the tower structure is defensible in ways this crumbling waystation isn’t.
Risk against risk. The calculation favors movement.
Zephyra wakes gradually. I feel the shift—the subtle change in her breathing, the way her body stiffens before she remembers where she is. Who she’s pressed against.
“You should have woken me.”
“You needed rest.”
“So do you.”
“Dragons don’t dream the same way witches do.” Not entirely true. But the dreams I have aren’t ones I’d inflict on anyone.
She studies me with the same attention she gives divine magic. I wait for her to push. To argue. To insist on the equality she’s been demanding since Caelreth.
Instead, she squeezes my hand once and releases it.
The absence registers with disproportionate intensity.
“What’s the plan?” She’s already standing, already moving to check the waystation’s perimeter, already shifting into the practical mode that’s kept her alive through years of witnessing truths that destroy lesser witches.
“The Frozen Observatory. Three miles northwest. Abandoned watch post—better visibility than this ruin, and walls that might stop an attack.”
“The observatory.” She pauses at the window, scanning the frozen waste beyond. “That’s divine territory. The energy there—”
“I’m aware.”
“Your power will react. The Arbiter might sense—”
“That too.” I move to stand beside her. Not touching—but the space between us is thin enough that each breath carries her scent. “It’s a risk. But staying here is worse. The wards are failing. We’re exposed.”
She considers. I see her running calculations—probabilities, outcomes, the endless tactical assessments that her bloodline makes automatic.
“The observatory has observation platforms.” Her voice shifts, going distant as her bloodline activates. “If we reach the upper levels, we’d see any approach from miles away.”
“That’s the idea.”
“But the divine energy…” She trails off, her eyes losing focus as she reads the magic beyond the walls. “I see residue from here. Concentrated. Dense. Whatever gods used that place, they left pieces of themselves behind.”
“Then we’ll be careful.”
Her gaze sharpens, focus returning. “That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
A flicker crosses her expression—not quite amusement, not quite exasperation. That rare crack in her analytical facade that I’ve become obsessed with provoking.
We leave the waystation as the morning strengthens.
The frozen plateau stretches before us, broken only by ice formations and the distant tower rising against the leaden sky.
The observatory appears smaller than expected from this distance—a single spire of pale stone and divine metal, maybe sixty feet tall.
Crystalline lenses glint in the upper levels, catching light that shouldn’t exist under this perpetual overcast.
The walk takes an hour. Zephyra doesn’t use her sight unless necessary—conserving what remains of her shortened lifespan—but I can tell she’s fighting the instinct.
Every flicker of magic in the distance, every shift in the ice, every shadow that might hide a threat.
Her eyes track them with the hunger of a bloodline that feeds on truth.
We don’t hold hands.
Halfway to the tower, the terrain shifts.
The flat plateau gives way to broken ground—ice ridges jutting from the frozen earth like the spines of buried leviathans.
We navigate carefully, testing each foothold before committing weight.
The cracks between ridges drop into darkness that might be feet deep or fathomless.
“The ice here is older.” Zephyra’s voice is quiet, pitched to carry only to me. “Pre-Arbiter. Whatever froze this ground did it long before the current divine rule.”
“The gods have been watching this territory for millennia.”
“Watching. Not controlling.” She pauses at the crest of a ridge, her gaze fixed on the observatory ahead. “The watch post was built to observe, not to enforce. Whatever the Arbiter does here, it’s parasitic. Using infrastructure designed for a different purpose.”
“Does that change anything?”
“It might.” Her fingers twitch toward her belt, toward the small blade she carries more as a habit than a weapon. “Parasites are easier to remove than native growths. If the Arbiter’s presence here is an overlay rather than foundation…”
“You think you can disrupt its observation?”
“I think I can see how it connects. Which means I can see where it’s vulnerable.”
The information is filed away for later consideration. Every weakness she identifies is a weapon we might need.
The observatory’s entrance is a circular doorway sealed with divine ice—thinner than the divine ice I’ve seen elsewhere, deliberately transparent. Observation requires clarity, after all. Through the frozen seal, I see a spiraling staircase rising toward the upper chambers.
“Can you break it?”
“I don’t need to break it.” I reach out, letting my power extend toward the barrier. The magic falters. The divine ice that holds the barrier in place wavers against my presence—the flaw in divine order that the gods have been trying to correct for three hundred years.
The seal cracks. Shatters. Divine ice rains down in crystalline shards that dissolve before they hit the ground.
“Useful.” Zephyra’s voice is carefully neutral, but I catch the flicker of her eyes as she reassesses. Recalculates. Adjusts her understanding of what I can do.
Good. Keep watching. Keep seeing. Maybe you’ll understand what I am before it’s too late for both of us.
We climb.
The staircase spirals through the tower’s core, each step carved from the same pale stone as the exterior. My boots leave no prints—the material is too dense, too ancient, too steeped in divine preservation to accept the marks of mortal passage.
The first chamber we reach is a storage level. Empty alcoves line the walls, their contents long since removed or destroyed. Dust coats every surface—ordinary dust, not the magical residue that hangs in the air outside.
We continue upward.
The second level holds a single massive lens mounted in the center of the floor.
Cracked—a fracture running edge to edge that disrupts whatever magic once powered it—but even broken, it pulses with faint luminescence.
Through the crack, I see ghostly images: distant landscapes, frozen cities, the shapes of things that might be watching back.
“Don’t look too long.” Zephyra pulls me away from the lens with a hand on my arm. “Observation devices like this work both ways. The more you see, the more you’re seen.”
I file that warning away and climb higher.
The third level is the one that matters.
The observatory’s main chamber is circular, designed for viewing in all directions.
Divine script covers the walls—prayers, commands, decrees written in languages that predate mortal speech.
The crystalline lenses I saw from outside are larger up close, mounted in bronze fixtures that swivel on ancient mechanisms. They’re still faintly glowing. Still active. Still watching.
More observation platforms extend from the chamber’s edges, jutting out over the frozen plateau below. The views would be spectacular if the sky weren’t perpetually overcast—miles of visibility in every direction, every approach detectable long before arrival.