The only option someone like her had was to run away.
This wasn't because she had planned to or because she had seen danger approaching from a distance and made a rational decision. It was because when the snow began to move in ways snow was never meant to move, her body had chosen survival long before her mind could argue.
She ran with no destination, no map and no illusion that escape was likely. Her cold bare feet struck the frozen ground unevenly, sinking too deep with every step. The cold had long since passed the point of pain.
Each breath she took tore at her lungs. The air was thin as well. It burned on the way in and froze on the way out. Behind her, the snow field stirred.
At first, it might have been mistaken for exhaustion playing tricks on the senses. But then came a shrill like countless blades dragged slowly across stone. It was not loud but it grew steadily closer.
She was chased by a swarm of Krepsunas.
She did not turn to confirm it. Ordinary people learned quickly in places like this that confirmation was a luxury afforded only to the strong. For someone like her, looking back only wasted time she did not have.
She was a First Phase Ascender, barely above the threshold that separated prey from absolute helplessness. Her Pinnacle Tether existed but it was narrow and weak. In controlled circumstances, with preparation and space, she could kill five Krepsunas. She can kill seven if she pushed herself and accepted injuries that would take weeks to recover from.
What followed her now numbered in the hundreds.
The snow swallowed her footsteps even as it resisted them, dragging her down, pulling at her ankles, unbalancing her with every desperate stride. Fatigue set in quickly, then panic layered itself on top of it, then understanding. She was not strong enough to survive this.
The ground betrayed her without warning.
Her foot struck something buried beneath the snow and momentum carried her forward. She fell hard as her body slammed into the frozen earth. Snow burst upward and collapsed over her face. Ice filled her mouth and nose. For a few frantic seconds, she could not breathe at all. Her limbs flailed uselessly. Her fingers found balance at the snow as her vision blurred.
The sound behind her grew louder.
She forced herself up. One knee refused to bear weight as she felt an immediate jolt through the joint. Something had been damaged. It did not matter what it was. Damage was damage, and damage was death when being hunted.
The first of the Krepsunas emerged fully from the snow. Their segmented bodies revealed their full, grotesque length. Too many limbs struck the ice at once.
She screamed.
The sound tore echoed across the barren expanse before being swallowed by the wind. It did nothing to slow them. It only confirmed that she was alive. She ran again.
There was no strategy left in her movement. She has no awareness of terrain or direction. Her body moved because stopping meant being caught, and being caught meant being torn apart piece by piece. Her breath came in broken gasps with blood seeping from her lip where she had bitten down too hard.
The slope appeared too late.
She tumbled down as her body rolled violently. Frozen stone tore at her clothes and flesh alike. She felt immense pain across her ribs and shoulder. Something cracked. Something tore. She came to rest at the bottom half-buried in snow. The world was spinning uncontrollably.
Blood stained the white beneath her. It leaked steadily from her side, steaming faintly in the cold. She laughed once because there was nothing else left to do with that realization.
Above her, the swarm stood above the slope. They poured like a living avalanche. Their bodies kept colliding and crushing one another without hesitation. Some broke free faster than the rest, skittering toward her with horrifying speed.
She raised her hand.
Her Pinnacle Tether manifested weakly. It was not enough and she knew it even as she used it. Still, she struck, releasing a wave of force towards them. One Krepsuna shattered under the force before they numbered in the dozens.
Each kill drained her further. Blood ran freely now from her nose and ears. Her head pounded violently as the Tether recoiled through her, tearing at her from the inside, demanding more than she could give.
Eventually, the swarm reached her. She did not see which one struck first.
She felt a crushing impact to her side. Her scream was cut off as she was thrown across the snow, landing hard and sliding helplessly. She tried to crawl. Her fingers scraped uselessly against the ice. Each breath was shallow and agonizing. Shadows fell over her. A claw punched through her back and pinned her to the ground. Another seized her leg and pulled.
The woman did not want to die. That truth remained even as her blood soaked into the snow and her breath came apart in her lungs. She begged the empty sky. She begged the frozen land. She begged anyone, anything, that might be listening.
She only asked not to die here.
Every head in the swarm came off at once.
There was no warning. In a single moment, the creatures were around her and the next, their heads were severed so cleanly that for a fraction of a second, their bodies did not seem to realize it. Black blood erupted upward in a sudden, violent bloom.
They fell on top of her. The weight crushed the air from her lungs again but this time she did not scream. Shock had stolen her voice completely. For a long moment—seconds, or minutes, or something in between—there was only silence.
It took her a while to realize she was alive.
Her mind refused the conclusion at first. Pain still existed but it was distant now. Slowly, she pushed herself up. The corpses slid away from her with wet, nauseating sounds. She rolled onto her side, then her back, then sat upright in the snow, shaking violently as the cold and shock caught up all at once.
Black blood coated her hands, arms and chest. It steamed faintly in the frozen air, staining the snow around her into a grotesque spiral of darkened slush.
A woman stood a short distance away, unfazed by the chaos around her.
She wore a white cloak that swayed with the cold wind. A hood covered her face, concealing her features entirely. In one hand, she held a staff taller than herself, crowned with a crystalline sphere that glowed with a deep blue light.
The injured woman could do nothing but stare.
Her body trembled uncontrollably as her instincts drained away, leaving behind exhaustion so profound it bordered on paralysis. She tried to speak but only a faint, strangled sound emerged. The woman in white did not look at her. Her attention had shifted elsewhere.
Another swarm of Krepsunas burst free from the snow farther up the slope. Their numbers were vast enough to darken the land. They charged without hesitation as they surged forward in a living wave of hunger and instinct. The woman in white raised her staff and pointed at them.
A beam of energy erupted from the staff, moving forward with such force that the air itself seemed to tear apart around it. The snow vaporized instantly. Stone liquefied then ceased to exist. The beam carved through the slope in a straight, merciless line, swallowing Krepsunas whole and erasing them completely that not even ash remained.
When the light vanished, silence followed.
The slope was gone. In its place stretched a massive trench scorched smooth. Its edges were coated by by heat so intense that the injured women didn't feel the cold anymore. Nothing moved within it. Nothing lived.
The injured woman could not comprehend what she was seeing.
Her mind struggled to assign scale to understand the power that had just been unleashed so casually. This was not a Principal Tether. This was not even within the upper limits of known Ascenders. This was the work of a Divine Being.
The woman in white turned. She walked toward the injured Ascender.
Panic surged.
The injured woman's breath hitched violently as terror flooded back in full force. She dragged herself backward. Her voice returned in a rush of desperate sound.
"Please—please don't... I didn't see anything—I won't—please—"
The woman stopped a few steps away. For a moment, she simply looked down at her before she sighed. It was a tired sound. She reached out and moved with sudden speed. The injured woman flinched, squeezing her eyes shut, bracing for death and felt a sharp prick at her neck. Instead, warmth spread through her body like heat returning to frozen limbs. The crushing pain in her ribs dulled before they receded.
She was still alive. More than that, she was healing.
The woman withdrew her hand. She held an injector before it vanished back into her cloak.
"For a First Phase Ascender to survive being chased by a Sunderer-ranked swarm in Frostdeath is statistically absurd. You're incredibly lucky."
The injured woman could only stare. The woman reached up and lowered her hood. Recognition hit like a physical blow.
Her breath caught painfully in her throat as her mind raced, scrambling through memory and legends passed between Ascenders like sacred texts. She knew that face. Anyone who followed the Dynasties knew that face.
"My name is Narisva Starisnova. I've come to retrieve the last batch of Xypelians stranded in Frostdeath. And it seems you were almost added to the terrain. Huh. You're really lucky, considering the hundreds of dead bodies I found here."