Chapter 3 Winter
~Winter~
Cold.
I was too cold.
A chill permeated my veins.
I didn’t get cold.
There was nothing but blackness as I scanned my surroundings—as much as I could while I felt myself bound to the spot, my boots entrenched in something I couldn’t make out, my body confined by some sort of restraints.
They were wrapped around either leg and buried in whatever my boots were.
Another set forced my arms down by my sides, all over my body.
That was where the coldness was coming from.
The binds. I could feel them against the bare skin of my chest, but pushing against my jeans.
So I was shirtless, but clothed beneath, and still wearing my boots. And I could move my head.
The nothingness all around me, I would have attributed to me being dead if it weren’t for two things.
One. I couldn’t die.
Two. I knew what the Valley of the Dead was like inside. Mom and Dad had taken me there through astral projection, claiming that as both Wraith and Necromancer, it was important I understood the foundational elements of death apparatus.
So this was just… a prison?
“Do you wish to be warmed, sweet youngling?”
I jolted at that booming voice with the rich smoothness, reverberating off the blackness.
A voice I recognized from earlier.
Ruxnoth.
He’d done something to me when he’d teleported us away as I’d heard Dad screaming out for me—and laying down some heavy-handed threats. Well, what were definitely promises actually from him.
“What… what’s happening?” I asked, swinging my head from side to side, my teeth chattering as I uttered the words.
“Merely a civil discussion. One I have waited a long while for. Longer than I intended due to you being confined in your family home beyond what should have been acceptable. Now as a result you are lagging behind where you should be. Where I need you to be. This is the first step of me remedying that.”
“You… you’re saying you brought me here to… train me?”
“To unlock your true power. Power you have denied yourself through fear that does not belong to you.”
A shudder rolled through me. Not courtesy of the cold this time.
“Show yourself. I can’t fight you off if I can’t see you.”
A sadistic chuckle reverberated around me. “As much as I wished that was you actually talking, that is most definitely Sylas.”
“Everyone thinks they know him, but they don’t.”
“As they all believe they know you? What a severe threat your very existence is to them all? Why they take such horrific precautions against you?”
“Precautions? What are you talking about?”
“Yes, you have indeed been sheltered.”
“Just show yourself.”
A bright, blinding blue light erupted, slicing through the blackness.
It formed a tear in the fabric of whatever this place was, and then he stepped through.
I could make out some trees behind him steeped in natural light.
The mortal plane. This was just some magically manufactured holding zone then, like a very tiny pocket dimension, maybe a Rifted Cradle.
It sealed behind him, but that deep blue light remained, muting a little, but casting him in enough illumination for me to make out that long, jet-black hair cascading about his face, his broad form, and the fact that he wasn’t wearing that coat and just had on his boots and a pair of black leather pants, his sculpted torso on full display.
It wasn’t just flesh and muscle this time, like I’d seen earlier when he’d come for me.
There were iridescent dark-blue fissures, cracks, and veins all over his skin—chest, arms, hands, even a little over his face.
He caught me looking and said, “I was glamored when we first met earlier. This is my true appearance. At least these days. There is a price for maintaining an entire metaphysical construct by oneself for two decades without reprieve.”
Fuck. Ambrose’s warning earlier rang in my head. “What it means to achieve threatens to break the fabric of our reality here on the mortal plane and even across realms.”
“You escaped the Severance by doing that. Now it’s too straining to continue with.
But how did you hide it from everyone all this time?
Even the likes of Ambrose Wisteryn—necromancers.
I hit you with my power and it didn’t harm you at all.
You said ‘they’ were protecting you. The ones who went missing all those years ago—those twenty necromancers? ”
He smiled. “Very good. Yes. They conceal it, I breathe lifeblood into it. The reason that troublesome friend of yours registered a destabilization to the balance was because I attempted to connect it to the mortal plane, to draw from its lifeforce. Just very slightly for now.”
“To take the edge off yourself?”
“Essentially.”
I looked down at myself, now able to see, finding white glowing bands confining me, and my boots submerged in some sort of thick slimy black substance, which seemed to be the root of the binds, where they were secured in order to keep my body immobile.
“To be clear, this little setup confining you is far from being any creation of mine, nor of those who serve me.”
“What is it?” I grimaced as I tried to call my power. Wraith first, then Necromancy. But nothing happened, not even a spark. “How—this shouldn’t be possible. What’s happening?”
“It’s a fusion of things. The anti-magic entity that is The Void, the prison that renders magic-wielders powerless.
And the nothingness of the Veil, the periphery area of the Valley of the Dead.
This is that fusion made manifest in substance form.
Shortly before your birth, when madness reigned and the Valley of the Dead was compromised, those who fashioned this extracted the essence of the many revenants who briefly escaped before Sylas and Ketheron repaired the Valley.
The essence of the Veil. Precisely for this concoction.
The idea at the time was to forge the means to incapacitate Morien Morgrave.
However, they couldn’t develop it in time—due to my interference. ”
“Your interference?”
“I didn’t want something to exist that could compromise necromancers, given how useful they are to me.
But shortly thereafter, I could no longer safely reach into this plane often enough to stop them all.
They scattered. My power was waning and had to be concentrated on stabilizing my home.
And then their goal turned to subduing you.
Sylas was no longer considered their chief concern, as he can be killed, so they saw an achievable end to him if he became a threat like his father one day.
You are obviously another story. Hence this fusion that has even taken your Wraith side into account.
It nullifies your power and also weakens you, keeping you in unending stasis. ”
I sucked in a shuddering breath.
I tried to focus on what Ambrose had told me earlier. “He will exploit your vulnerabilities, your deepest dreads about what you are until they ring as truth, until his designs for you read as inevitable.”
“Your distress is most definitely warranted,” Ruxnoth spoke again, before I could internalize the protection of Ambrose’s words properly. “This is what they mean to do to you. It is what they will do to you given the opportunity.”
“Who? Who are these people?”
“They call themselves Temperance. They’re a group of magical researchers like Arcanum Order, but researching only one thing—how to end you, the abomination and ultimate threat they believe you to be.
They’re a mix of species across Realms, brought together by this one goal.
And all of them were personally impacted by your grandfather’s actions—losing loved ones, some almost dying themselves, traumatized by Necromancy left unchecked.
You are an absolute nightmare to them—horror and trauma manifest.”
“No. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“That won’t matter to them. Think of it like this: Morien was fanaticized by the pursuit of absolute power, while they are fanaticized by deep-rooted trauma and grief. There is no reasoning with that. I should also mention that your family is well aware of this group’s existence.”
“Stop,” I said, shaking my head vehemently.
He burst toward me with his Celestial speed and grasped my jaw, forcing my gaze to his with a firm but nonpainful grip.
“You’ve been lied to. So many fear you. Many wish to hurt you, just because of what you are.
Manipulation is all you have ever known, and you had no idea, did you?
Because they treat you as something to mold to their liking, irrespective of what you want, of what you deserve. ”
He stroked my jaw with his thumb, sending a shudder through me. I tried to pull away, but he held fast.
“You must see it, Winter. The world will never accept you. You will always be feared. There is no peace for you.” His lips lifted into a strange smile. “Not out there, at least. With me, now that’s a very different story.”
“Let go. Get your hands off me.”
“Are you certain that is what you wish for?” he crooned, just as a soothing warmth radiated through my skin where he was touching me, chasing away the awful chill.
But just in that localized area. His midnight-blue power glowed at the site.
“That’s right, miraculous boy, I am the antidote to this awful creation, this insulting creation. They call it Nihilumbra.”
“Latin for shadowed nothingness?”
“Essentially.”
He fondled the cobalt gem of my necklace. “Hmm. Even this ornate gift from your mother is rooted in deception, a means to monitor your whereabouts.”
“No. It’s not like that.”
“Well, it certainly isn’t now. You’ve seen to it, haven’t you? Complex spellwork was required to neuter it.” He frowned. “Yet you still wear it, still hold your mother so dear to your heart.”
“Stop… stop… talking about my family.”
“If only that were possible. Alas, given the circumstances it is not.”
An involuntary moan escaped me when he slid his hand down the column of my throat and across my collarbone, heat radiating everywhere, then returning the areas he touched to my normal temperature—death-cold, as I called it.
The relief was… another level.
“I ensured I could do this for you when I discovered what they had created to harm you, Winter.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed through my memories, frantically trying to find one to hold on to through all of this—the madness, the violence of the world against me, this being’s manipulations… all of it.
It slammed into me—just like I needed it to.
“Why don’t we just head down to the Cafeteria?” Zayn’s eyes lit up. “Like a relationship unit.”
“Relationship unit?” Evira chuckled.
Zayn frowned, then looked to me. “What does your family call it again?”
“A foursome.”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s it, yeah.” He took us all in. “So, why don’t we head down there, kind of make this now established foursome thing between us known, and have it mark it for ourselves as well?”
“I believe last night marked it extremely well,” Vaxan pointed out.
Yes.
Evira. Vaxan. Zayn.
My loves.
I needed to be back with them. They were waiting for me. We were supposed to go riding and then—
Ruxnoth’s voice jarred me from it too soon, asking me in that deep, soothing tone, “Do you still wish me to get my hands off you, as you so eloquently put it?”
I swallowed thickly.
A tap to my cheek from him had my eyes snapping open.
His own were looking back at me, gentleness and understanding shining at me. “I can certainly take away the effects of Nihilumbra. In fact, I am the only being alive who can. I can also do more than that.”
“More?”
“I can make you feel alive, deathborn darling.”
A shuddering breath escaped me. “Wh—what do you want from me?”
He smirked. “Mmm. Now we are truly getting somewhere.”