Pyrehold, Day Twenty-Eight
It began with a sound.
Not a roar. Not an explosion.
Just a faint, crystalline snap.
Toy Crimson had heard blades break, bones crack, even hearts shatter — but never something like this.
He knew the sound before he even turned his head.
The meteoritum collar had fractured.
A jagged vein of frost spread from beneath Lara's chin across the front of the alloy, glowing faintly. Runes along the collar flared, fought, flickered… then dimmed.
Lara gasped — not in pain, but in release.
And the Vault answered.
The temperature dropped instantly.
Frost bloomed across the stone floor like a living thing. The torches lining the walls snuffed out in an instant. The runes etched into the walls — meant to suppress, contain, erase — began to crumble under a pressure far more ancient than Chrollena's magic.
Lara stood.
Chains still draped her wrists, but her back straightened like a mountain lifting itself from slumber.
Kaelith, the great white serpent, uncoiled fully behind her. His horns gleamed like ivory thorns, eyes burning with ethereal ice. He no longer flickered like a spirit — now, he was present, his mass forcing the very air to bend around him.
Toy rose to his feet.
"Lara," he said, steady. "Stay with me."
She turned to him slowly. Her eyes were glowing now — pale blue, unfocused, as if seeing a world beyond this one.
"The bindings are gone," she whispered. "I can feel the storm again."
Her voice echoed strangely. Like wind passing through a cave.
Toy stepped forward.
"Then you need to stay here," he said. "With me."
The frost reached his boots. He ignored it.
"I can't…" Lara's voice cracked. "It's too much. It's waking me up, Toy."
The wind began to swirl inside the Vault. An unnatural cyclone of snow and vapor. Dust lifted from the floor and froze mid-air. Runes shattered, stone cracked. Somewhere above, alarms began to sound — shrill, ancient tones not used in over a century.
Pyrehold was in full lockdown.
The Witch was rising.
And Toy Crimson was still standing beside her.
Kaelith shifted — lowering his massive head between them, as if to separate them.
But Toy didn't flinch.
"I'm not afraid of you," he told the serpent.
Kaelith hissed — not in warning, but in acknowledgment.
Then the snake moved aside.
Lara's fingers trembled as she clutched her collar. It was hanging in halves now, the meteoritum crumbling in flakes to the floor.
"I don't want to destroy anything," she whispered.
"Then don't," Toy said. He took her hands in his — both of them. Cursed and clean.
The moment their skin touched, the cold paused.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
"Let it go into me," he said. "Share the weight."
"I could kill you."
"You won't."
Lara clenched her jaw. Her body shook — not from weakness, but from the storm trying to tear through her skin.
"I'm not what I was made for anymore," she said.
"Then become what you choose to be."
She looked at him.
Truly looked.
Not as her Watch Guard.
Not as her captor.
Not even as a knight.
But as the only person who had seen the whole of her — and not run.
Her power surged again, cracking the stone underfoot. Kaelith wrapped his body protectively around the chamber, shielding it from collapse. The temperature dropped another ten degrees.
And still, Toy didn't let go.
"Lara," he said, steady as ever, "breathe."
She did.
And the frost stopped growing.
The wind died.
The light in her eyes dimmed just enough for the color to return.
Lara slumped forward into his chest.
Toy caught her, gently lowering her to the ground. The shards of meteoritum lay around them like snowflakes, useless now.
The first storm had passed.
But the war it heralded had just begun.
Above them, Warden Vyle watched the collapse data on his binding array.
"Containment has failed," a subordinate whispered.
"No," Vyle muttered. "Control has failed. And now we see what remains when fear is no longer enough."