They reached the cave as the light began to fade. It was Narisva who stopped first.
Erythiel noticed it only because the invisible gravity holding her eased slightly, alerting her senses. Ahead of them, half-buried beneath a outcrop of ice-black stone was the mouth of a cave. Its entrance was narrow, deliberately obscured by natural overhangs and wind-carved ridges. In her eyes, it was the kind of place one found only by knowing how to survive here or by being desperate enough to crawl into anything that promised shelter.
She felt it before she fully saw it.
"It's occupied."
"That's the point."
They crossed the final distance in silence. The cave mouth opened wider as they approached, revealing scorched stone near the entrance and footprints pressed deep into the snow. Someone had been here for a while. Someone had survived long enough to make a camp.
Inside, crouched near a low, struggling fire, was a man.
He was slumped against the rock wall with his armor cracked and patched with frost. His cloak was torn and stiff with dried blood. One arm was wrapped tightly in cloth. It had dark stains spreading through it despite the cold.
"Eelren!"
The gravity vanished entirely.
Erythiel fell as her legs gave out beneath her but she barely felt it. She scrambled forward, slipping on ice and ash, collapsing at his side as her hands grabbed at his shoulders, his arms and his face.
"You're alive. You're alive... are you hurt? Are you—"
Eelren blinked, clearly stunned, then let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh or a sob.
"I'm fine, I think. Mostly."
His voice broke anyway.
"They didn't make it. None of them did. I tried to hold them back and draw the swarm away but there were too many. Erythiel. I couldn't... I ran."
Erythiel was silent.
"I ran and I didn't stop. I don't even know how long I kept moving. I just… kept going."
Erythiel shook her head violently.
"You're here. That's what matters, you hear me?"
Narisva stepped into the cave. Eelren finally looked up fully—and froze. For a Third Phase Ascender, hardened by years of combat and responsibility, the reaction was immediate and unguarded.
" Lady Starisnova..."
"Eelren Vaes, Third Phase. Tactical leader of your group."
"Yes."
"You did the right thing."
Eelren stiffened.
"My lady—"
"There is no point in becoming a hero in a frozen wasteland specifically designed to kill you."
The words were not cruel. They were factual.
"Survival is not cowardice. The dead gain nothing from your regret."
Eelren's shoulders sagged. The tension was drained out of him in a long, shuddering breath. He bowed his head deeply.
"Thank you. I… didn't know if I could live with it."
"You will. You don't have a choice."
She turned her gaze to both of them now.
"Do not waste effort wondering if anyone else survived. Within a ten-kilometer radius, there is not a single living Xypelian besides the two of you."
Narisva reached into nothing. Her hand vanished briefly, then emerged holding a heavy bundle of raw meat. She tossed it toward them without ceremony.
"Roast it and eat. You're depleted."
The meat landed heavily near the fire. Erythiel stared at it, then up at Narisva.
"A-aren't you… eating, Lady Starisnova?"
Narisva did not look back.
"Divines do not require sustenance like you do."
She moved to the cave entrance and sat down cross-legged, her back to the wind. From within her cloak, she produced a cloth and began polishing her staff, brushing away snow and frost. Erythiel watched her. Up close, the crystal at the staff's head was no crystal at all.
It was a miniature blue star. Light bent subtly around it. Erythiel felt a pressure behind her eyes when she sensed an impossible amount of Spatial Energy inside it.
Eelren noticed too. He kept glancing toward Narisva but his gaze lingering a moment too long each time before he caught himself and looked away. Beauty like that demanded attention, whether one wished to give it or not. Erythiel leaned closer to him, lowering her voice.
"What happened before we got separated?"
Eelren stared into the fire.
"We were ambushed from below and from the sides. We didn't even have time to regroup. I made the call to break formation. I thought if I drew them off, some of them might escape. It didn't work."
Erythiel reached out and took his hand.
Behind them, Narisva continued polishing her staff. It was a quiet sound—one that would have gone unnoticed by anyone not paying attention—but it made her relaxed.
Only a month had passed since the Second Epoch Cycle began. For a Divine Being like her, that span was nothing. Still, it had been relentless.
From the moment she realized what had happened, she had moved without resting and searching, all to locate the displaced members of her people, the Xypelians. She had made a vow long ago to protect her people after destroying her family. Xypelia had been forged under brutal skies. Its people were shaped by endless winter and blizzards that erased cities and nights that swallowed entire generations. They endured because they had to and because the Celestials, in their distant cruelty or generosity, had blessed them with spatial affinity.
That blessing came with responsibility and Narisva had accepted it.
So for the past month, she has been moving through the Hidden Citadel's realms like a silent disaster in reverse, appearing where death was certain, removing it and vanishing before hope had time to fully form. She saved those she could. She retrieved those who survived long enough to be found. Too many had not.
This realm in particular...
She glanced beyond the cave and into the endless white. Frostdeath felt wrong, even to her. She had seen snow all her life. Xypelia itself was a land of ice and glacial plateaus, of frozen seas and cities carved into permafrost. Cold was familiar. Cold was home. However, this place was not simply cold. It was a cold desert, stretching infinitely in all directions, devoid of life that was not predatory or parasitic. It was locked in a perpetual state of pale indifference. Ever since she had arrived here, she had seen nothing else.
Even as a Divine, she could feel as if the cold was attempting to erase heat as a concept. That alone unsettled her.
Xypelians were resilient. Blessed by the Celestials with spatial Tethers woven into their very biology, they had adapted over millennia to survive winters that would annihilate other races. Their bodies conserved heat unnaturally well. Their internal space resisted thermal loss. Cold slowed them down but it did not immediately kill them. If any other race had been transferred here instead, they would have frozen to death in two minutes. Still, Frostdeath was not kind even to Xypelians.
They could suffer hypothermia. They could be worn down. Fatigue, exposure, injury, with those stacked together, they would kill them just as surely as claws or teeth. That was why the cave mattered.
The stone walls were faintly shimmering, invisible to mortal sight but saturated with Narisva's Spatial Energy. The space inside the cave had been insulated from the outside world. Cold tried to seep in and failed. Inside, the temperature was survivable, comfortable, even. Erythiel and Eelren would not freeze tonight.
Narisva allowed herself a moment of stillness. Her thoughts drifted to another frozen place.
The Fallen Bridge.
She remembered Vastarael mentioning it, almost casually, the way beings of overwhelming power sometimes described nightmares as inconveniences. She remembered him telling her how cold it had been when he crossed it with Insignia and his daughters. At the time, she had dismissed it as exaggeration. Now, sitting at the edge of Frostdeath, she understood.
Some cold was not about temperature.
"Figures. Of all the realms…"
Her fingers paused on the staff. It had been a while since she felt this oddly aware. She turned her attention to her system. With a thought, she reached for it. For some reason, Phaenora's system was no longer a hologram. Instead, it was different for her. Instead a hologram, it had the background of a night sky on it. On it was an entire collection of information about herself.