Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
SOREIA
The ice-scarred plains stretch before us.
I’ve heard stories about this place—the Glacial Flight’s frozen enforcement, the Arbiter’s domain before her death shattered it.
Knowledge passed through border-witch networks in pieces: fragments from other Anchors who had mapped the freeze’s edge, warnings traded for shelter, the kind of information you collect when official records have stopped coming.
The ice was supposed to be eternal. Unbreakable.
Divine will made manifest in crystalline permanence.
Now it’s dying.
Massive sheets crack and groan beneath our feet, splitting apart in jagged lines that reveal gray earth beneath. Ground that hasn’t seen sunlight in years. Dead soil struggling to remember what growth means.
The sound is constant. A low, grinding symphony of fracture and collapse. Ice calving from larger formations. Meltwater rushing through channels that didn’t exist an hour ago. The world breaking apart piece by piece.
I pick my way across a sheet that seems stable, testing each step before committing my weight. The cold seeps through my boots, through every layer, burrowing into bone with the patience of a curse.
Kaster moves differently. His heat radiates outward, melting thin ice beneath his feet, creating shallow puddles that steam in the frigid air. He doesn’t test his footing. He knows instinctively where the ground will hold.
Dragon senses. Predator awareness. The advantage of being built for environments that would kill lesser creatures.
I’m not lesser. But I’m also not designed for this.
We’ve been walking for three hours when I see the first structure emerging from the retreating ice.
A watchtower. Stone foundation, wooden upper levels long since rotted away. The ice preserved the base like amber preserving insects—a perfect snapshot of the moment the freeze arrived. Whoever was stationed here didn’t have time to evacuate. The bones are still inside.
Beyond the tower, more structures emerge. A cluster of buildings that might have been barracks. A water well, frozen solid, the bucket still suspended above it. The remnants of a fence line marking property boundaries that no longer matter.
The Glacial Flight’s enforcement didn’t discriminate. Soldiers, civilians, livestock—everything caught in its path became ice sculpture. Preservation through destruction.
Kaster doesn’t pause to investigate. He tracks the perimeter with those eyes, mapping angles and defensive positions, then continues moving southeast.
I follow.
Not because he told me to. Because the space beside him has become the only territory in this broken landscape where survival feels possible.
The dreams have been different lately.
Not the usual visions of death—claws and blood and the silence that comes after. These new dreams carry a different quality. Pressure instead of warning. An insistence that builds behind my eyes like a headache that won’t break.
They push me toward a point I can’t see yet. A convergence that feels inevitable.
I don’t tell Kaster about the change. He has enough concerns without adding my nighttime torment to the list.
The magic here is wrong.
I notice it first as a sensation at the edge of my awareness—my power responding to the environment in ways it shouldn’t. Spells that would normally flow smoothly catch and stutter. My intuition, usually reliable, gives contradictory signals.
The shimmer is visible if I look for it. Distortion in the air. Ripples in reality where the magical field can’t quite maintain coherence. The ice held this territory in stasis for years—and when it shattered, it left behind a wound that hasn’t healed.
I test it by reaching for a small working. A simple ward. The kind of magic I could do in my sleep.
The power slips through my mental grasp like water through a sieve. Reforms incorrectly. The ward flickers into existence—too weak, too unstable, lasting only seconds before collapsing into nothing.
“Magic’s unreliable here.”
Kaster glances back at my words. His expression doesn’t change, but I see him absorbing the information, adjusting his calculations.
“How unreliable?”
“Enough to matter.” The ward failure is answer enough. “The divine enforcement that held this place together—when it collapsed, it left the magical field destabilized. Possibly for decades. Maybe longer.”
“Can you fight?”
The question is direct. No judgment. No concern about my limitations—only calculation of our combined capabilities.
“My body still works. My magic...” I let the sentence trail off. We both understand the implications. “If I have enough time to force a working through the interference, I can anchor. But it won’t be clean. Won’t be easy.”
He nods once. Brief. Decisive.
We keep moving.
Midday arrives with a temperature shift that makes my head spin.
One hour: freezing cold that makes my breath visible and my fingers numb. The next: mild enough that I’m sweating beneath my layers. The ice responds to the fluctuation, cracking more violently, releasing meltwater in sudden floods that reshape the terrain around us.
We navigate a newly formed river by crossing a natural ice bridge. The structure groans beneath our combined weight. I feel it flexing, threatening to give way.
Kaster crosses first. Fast. His weight barely registers before he’s on the other side.
I follow more carefully. Each step measured. Calculated.
The bridge holds.
On the other side, old structures emerge from the retreating ice in greater numbers.
A village, maybe. Or a trading post. The buildings are skeletal—frames without flesh, bones without bodies.
Whatever people lived here died when the freeze came.
Their ghosts remain in the architecture they left behind.
Kaster finds a sheltered alcove between two collapsed walls. Stone provides cover from the wind. A partial roof offers protection from precipitation that might come.
“We rest here.”
I don’t argue. My body appreciates the reprieve even if my mind remains restless.
He produces a whetstone from somewhere in his supplies and begins sharpening his blades.
The sound is rhythmic. Metal against stone. A meditation in violence.
I watch him work. The methodical precision of each stroke.
The way his hands move with certainty born from centuries of practice.
He doesn’t look at the blade—doesn’t need to.
His body knows the angle, the pressure, the exact motion required to maintain an edge capable of cutting through divine-made flesh.
The sight does unexpected things to my awareness.
Not attraction. Not exactly. More like recognition. An understanding that his violence serves a purpose—one that currently includes keeping me alive.
“We need to discuss the targeting.”
The words escape without my permission. Kaster’s hands don’t pause. The whetstone continues its steady rhythm.
“What about it?”
“The pattern.” I gather my thoughts, organizing the observations I’ve been collecting since this hunt began. “The Executors at the shrine—they ignored you completely. Bypassed the larger threat to focus on me specifically.”
“I noticed.”
“The Hunters before that. The Scouts even earlier. Every wave has prioritized me over you.” I lean forward, warming my hands near the heat that radiates from his body. “You’re the more dangerous target. Tactically, eliminating you first makes sense. But they don’t.”
Kaster’s rhythm finally breaks. His hands still on the blade.
“You have a theory.”
He knows I do.
“The informant confirmed it. The gods are building these creatures for us. But I’ve been watching the patterns since the border settlements. Every escalation. Every new monster type. Every shift in their tactics.” I pull my hands back from his heat, suddenly too aware of the proximity.
The grinding of ice fills the space where words might have been.
Finally: “Then we keep moving. Southeast. Toward terrain where their advantages diminish.”
“That’s it? That’s your response to learning the gods want us dead?”
He holds my stare. No fear shows there. No surprise. Only the cold calculation of something ancient weighing its odds.
“The gods have wanted things before. They don’t always get them.” He returns his attention to the blade. “We survive. We adapt. We become the problem they’re afraid of. That’s the only strategy that matters.”
I should argue. Point out that fighting gods is suicide, that running might preserve us longer, that the smart move is separation—removing the threat of combination by eliminating the possibility of combination.
I don’t say any of that.
Instead, I watch him sharpen blades meant for monsters, and I accept the truth I’ve been avoiding since the shrine.
I don’t want to separate. Don’t want to run in different directions.
Don’t want to survive this hunt alone even if survival alone would be easier.
The space beside him has become necessary in ways that have nothing to do with tactics.