Chapter Five
Eryon - Earlier
Iwalk the criss-crossing tunnels, my footsteps hollow in the silence, my breath a whisper against the stone. The air is thick with memory, the shadows stretching long with ghosts.
The light that one small human brought into my life—brighter than fire, wilder than any storm—has only made the darkness sharper. The loneliness deeper. The cold, more cutting.
I should not have let myself bask in her light, but I couldn’t stop following her, a moth to her flame.
For centuries, I have been stone and silence, ice and duty.
She is fire, burning through the cold, thawing things within me that should remain frozen.
I shouldn’t have allowed her to thaw my icy heart. But the warmth felt too good to stop.
So, I seek the one thing that endures, the only thing time cannot take—my past, carved into stone, preserved in the silence of the mountain.
The beginning greets me first. These are the oldest carvings, the stories passed from claw to claw, from parent to child.
The tale of our kind, immortalized in rock.
I know every line by heart, as familiar as my own hands. I have traced these stories a thousand times, let my fingers follow the rise and fall of each carefully drawn stroke. They used to bring me comfort, but tonight, they are a dirge, a deep wail of my soul.
I move forward, past the birth of my kind, the moon goddess and her daughter, and the teachings of my ancestors. Past the carvings of generations before me, of duties fulfilled, of lives that had purpose. The further I go, the fewer the images become. The lonelier they become.
Until at last, I reach the ones I carved myself.
My life, drawn in the stone. I stop, eyes shut tight, chest caving in. My breath catches as my throat closes around the weight of what I already know I will see—the simple lines that could never do justice to my greatest joy.
My touch finds them even without my sight, a trembling finger ghosting over the delicate curves of the figures before me. The strong, steady form of my mate. The smaller, fragile one nestled between us. They were not only my greatest joy, but they are also my deepest failure.
I drop my hand. I am unworthy to touch even the drawings of them.
The wind outside howls through the mountain, sending a faint, keening whistle through the tunnels. I let it carry through me, stripping me bare, breaking apart the walls I have spent centuries fortifying.
I have told myself, time and again, that my dharma is enough. That my duty will keep me whole, that I exist for the mountain and all within its shadow, for their protection.
But here, in the darkness, with the ghosts of my past carved before me—I know the truth.
The mountain cannot hold my grief. Even if it swallowed me whole, even if I let the earth and stone take me, even if I buried myself beneath ice and time—it would not be enough.
I turn from the walls, from my past, from my failure.
And I flee.
I run, fast and hard, feet slamming against the cold hard stone as the muscle of my legs burn with the exertion.
But no matter how fast I run, the wailing winds chase me like ghosts and I cannot outrun the pain.
Lungs bursting, I push myself faster through the tunnels, through the cold, but I still cannot escape the weight of history pressing down on me.
So I escape to the place where I keep one of the few things that can help me on the nights like this. I wipe away the thick dust on the old, fragile bottle with unsteady fingers. Rakshi, the moonshine of the mountains, is strong enough to warm even my kind. Strong enough to burn the past away.
I should not wash away their memory like this.
But I do. Because once again, I am weak.
My freshly thawed heart brings the long dead feelings bubbling back to the surface.
The reminder of all that I have lost then, and all that I have lost again with her departure, is too much for even a monster to bear.
The first sip burns, but it is nothing compared to the ache in my chest. Nothing compared to the quiet, gnawing hollowness of nothing. So, I drink again. And again. And again.
At last my feet carry me to the secret springs without thought, without direction. I sink into the heat of the water, but it does nothing to comfort me tonight. I tilt my head back, watching the stars wheel overhead, the slow, endless churn of time indifferent to the things it has stolen from me.
I pick the bottle up, surprised to find it half empty. The world blurs at the edges, and I welcome the haze, welcome the slow erosion of thought, of pain, of them, of her.
But then—I see the flowers, just starting to bloom with the coming of winter.
The tiny, star-shaped blossoms clustered at the edge of the spring.
Small. Unassuming. Born of cold and stone and impossibility.
I stare at them, my mind thick with drink, with memory.
They bloom here and nowhere else. A secret, a gift, a thing meant only for the mountain.
My chest tightens as I stare at the color—her color. Violet-blue, like the shimmer of her eyes in the firelight. My Winter Star.
I tip the bottle back again for another swallow, desperate to chase away the aching, desperate pull in my gut, the cruel flicker of feelings that press sharp against my ribs. But it does not work. She lingers in the darkness, in my mind, in my bones. A phantom that will not leave.
I cannot look at the damned flower and not think of what it has cost me. Everything. The past rises up to meet me, and I slam my eyes shut, as if that alone could prevent the memories that wash over me.
But they come anyway to drown me in their devastating embrace. A weight in my arms. Warm. Small. So impossibly small. The snowling’s fur was softer than the spring breeze, his tiny hands curling instinctively around my finger.
I had never known fear the way I did then.
Not in the fulfillment of my dharma. Not in the unknown. But in that moment—staring down at the fragile, precious life I had been entrusted with—I had been terrified. I was enormous, built for protecting, for destroying. How could I ever hope to hold something so delicate without breaking it?
But when his tiny silver eyes blinked up at me, a mirror of my own, when his chest rose and fell in perfect, steady breaths, I had known—I would die for him. I would kill for him. I would burn the world to ash before I let anything take him from me.
But I had.
I let him slip through my fingers like melting snow. The memory of that last breath slams into me with the force of an avalanche, and suddenly I am roaring, teeth bared to the sky, furious with the gods, with fate, with myself.
I slam my hands down against the banks, claws scraping stone, as I scrabble for purchase on the earth, trying to anchor myself in an ocean of rage. They took everything from me. I have nothing.
I grab the bottle, drinking it dry, but the burn in my throat is nothing compared to the ache in my chest. I am alone. I am always alone. And the mountain has always been with me.
The rakshi swirls in my blood, turning my thoughts sluggish.
My head tilts back against the stone, my eyes slipping closed as I exhale, long and slow.
My hands slowly release their death grip on the ground beside me.
The warm waters courses over my flesh like a lover’s hands, and I realize I am drunk.
Drunk on grief. Drunk on memories. Drunk on the ghosts I cannot lay to rest. I surrender to the pull of unconsciousness, my body finally going still. Maybe I will drown and be free. But until then, I dream. Not of loss. Not of pain.
I dream of a fire in the distance. A woman sitting beside it, her wild curls reflecting the light, her gaze sharp and knowing as she stares across the dark. Watching me. Waiting for me. As if she has always known I was there. As if she is not afraid.
As if, for the first time in over a hundred years—I am no longer alone.