Sir Darius Valek POV
By noon, the last glimmer of ward-light from the retreating column had vanished behind them.
Darius didn't look back. That ring of safety—Elayne's dome, the mages, the soldiers—belonged to the North now. His problem lived ahead, in the dull-white ground and the invisible line they had already crossed.
Inside the Land of Eternal Winter, there were no wards.
No anchored spells stitched into the bones of the world.
Just four transcendent souls and a curse that hated all of them equally.
Tloew pulsed.
He felt it through his greaves first—an almost-sound, a shove in the bones every so often. The world would go tight and bright for a moment, then loosen again, like a fist opening.
"Surge," Liora said behind him.
He didn't need the warning, but it was good to have a name. He planted his boots, let the pressure roll through his body, and met it with habit: straighten spine, lock shield, draw on oath and training until the cold slid over him instead of through.
The surge passed.
"Go," Elayne said.
They moved.
Brynjar took point, heavy shield forward. Darius walked a little to his right, sword hand free. Elayne and Liora followed behind, close enough that he could hear the faint scratch of the archmage's staff tip on the frost.
The snow wasn't really snow anymore. Whatever lay under their boots cracked in thin plates, like walking on layered glass.
"How regular?" Darius asked, as they pushed deeper.
"Fifty… fifty-two of my heartbeats between surges," Liora said. "It's running through Tloew's structure, not just under our feet. Think of it as… a very clumsy drum keeping time."
Darius grunted. "I've heard worse musicians."
"You've also survived them," she said. "Apply the same principle."
Another surge gathered underfoot. This one came on a little faster, a little heavier. He braced, counted with her.
Forty-six. Forty-seven. Forty-eight—
The world clenched. Cold tried to strip the warmth from his blood. His oath burned back in a quiet tug-of-war.
He rode it out.
"Amplitude up a fraction," Elayne murmured. "Period still roughly stable."
"In other words," Brynjar said, not turning his head, "it hurts more, but on schedule."
"Congratulations," Liora said. "You've grasped the essence."
Darius let the corner of his mouth twitch. Humor meant they were still winning.
For now.
---
Time blurred into a sequence of simple orders.
Surge. Brace. Walk. Breathe.
Surge. Brace. Walk. Breathe. Watch the world get sharper and stranger.
They passed more of the ice-forms the others had described—the crude blade-and-shield motifs etched into glazed cairns of frost and stone. Deeper in, the lines were cleaner, the shapes more deliberate. At one point they walked over what had once been a stream; it now reared up in jagged spires like water that had tried to stand and been frozen mid-rise.
"Someone has been busy," Darius said.
"Condensing all their war into one place," Liora replied. "And then shaking it until it spills."
Tloew pulsed again, harder. He rode it out on muscle memory.
The air grew thinner. The cold stopped feeling like weather and more like an instruction—stop, lie down, grow still, join.
He ignored it.
"Direction?" he asked, after the next surge.
Elayne lifted her staff, sampling. Darius could not see the lattice the way the mages and priestess did, but he knew the signs: the way her eyes unfocused, the way her fingers twitched as if she were turning pages only she could see.
"The main line we chose is still strongest," she said at last. "Field density climbing evenly along it. Think of it as walking downhill in the dark—you can't see the slope, but you can feel which way your weight wants to go."
"We're following a main line?" he said, to have it in plain speech.
"A strong one," Elayne said. "The Land of Eternal Winter is thickest along it."
"Shortest path to whoever's responsible," Brynjar added.
"Fastest," Liora said. "Not safest. But we are long past safe."
Darius didn't argue. Staying out here longer just meant more surges to endure. Better a hard road than a long one.
He let the unseen current tug at his boots and matched his stride to it.
Another surge came, heavier than the last. The cold slammed into him, tried to seize his breath, his thoughts, his pulse. He pushed back with every scrap of training and divine stubbornness he had.
When it eased, he checked his fingers, flexed them once, and kept going.
"How bad?" Brynjar asked, without looking back.
"Manageable," Darius said. "That one, at least."
"Amplitude up a little," Liora said. "Frequency stable."
"Good," Brynjar said. "Means we're headed the right way."
---
They found the wights after the next rise.
At first they were just darker smudges in the haze, pieces of the landscape that refused to blur. Then the light caught on the ice in their sockets—thin blue flames staring out of skulls rimed with frost.
"Wights," Brynjar said.
The frost-wights stood in two ranks across a shallow depression, a thin line drawn in brittle white. Their armor was little more than frozen scraps of what they'd died in. Their weapons were ice, grown from their hands—spears, swords, hooked pikes. Each blade was the same stark blue as the shields they held in their other hands.
The wights adjusted their line, turning to face them. They weren't shambling. They shifted weight, tested footing, checked distances.
Old habits survived death.
"Range?" Darius asked.
"Close enough," Elayne said. "The lattice thickens under their feet. They're sitting right on one of the repeating spikes."
Liora's eyes narrowed. "Someone put them here on purpose. Trained them here. They're part of the pattern, not just decoration."
"Then we don't leave the pattern intact," Brynjar said. He lifted his shield, the motion casual, like he was limbering a shoulder rather than preparing to meet an undead phalanx.
Another surge started to build, a low growl in Darius's bones.
"Fifty-one heartbeats," Liora said quietly. "We have until the next one hits. Then all of this gets worse."
"Terms?" Darius asked.
"Don't drag it out," she said.
"That I can manage."
He walked forward with Brynjar, matching the captain's pace. Elayne and Liora stayed back, close enough to intervene, far enough not to be trampled.
The wights did not charge.
They waited.
"Disciplined," Darius muttered.
"Then don't offer any more time than we must," Brynjar replied.
They moved first.
Brynjar went straight up the centre, shield high, every step a statement. Darius angled right, taking the flank. No battle-cries. Breath was better spent on staying alive.
A crackle of cold split the air.
On the far side of the line, a wight stepped forward and hurled its spear. Darius twisted his shield, caught the shaft near the rim, and let the impact slide away. Ice shattered against frost, shards tinkling across the ground.
"Eight heartbeats," Liora snapped from behind them. "Make it quick."
Darius crossed the last few strides in three long steps.
The first wight on his side raised its sword in a clean guard, not some wild swing. He respected that enough to kill it properly—feint high, step inside, drive his blade up under the arm where bad armor left a gap. Frost cracked. Soul-fire flickered out.
The second tried to catch him with a hook of ice at his ankle. He felt the tug, twisted, and drove his shield-boss into its chest. Bone and ice both gave way with a crunch. It fell backward, limbs splayed.
He didn't have time to admire the technique. The surge underfoot swelled.
He shoved off, putting distance between himself and the falling bodies, trusting Brynjar to finish the centre.
The surge hit as he drew back alongside Elayne and Liora.
The air clenched. Tloew shoved. Warmth tried to flee his fingers and face and all the small, unimportant corners of him first. His teeth ached. Vision sharpened to a narrow tunnel.
He locked his knees, rode it out, and refused to drop.
Then it passed.
They were still standing.
Behind them, a dozen frost-wight bodies lay in various states of disassembly. Frost was already crawling over limbs, knitting them back into the ground, erasing detail, reclaiming the shapes as part of the Land.
"Souls?" Darius asked, breathing a little harder than he liked to admit.
"Gone," Liora said quietly. "Whoever holds their leashes will have noticed the cut."
"Good," Brynjar said. "If she didn't know we were here before, she does now."
Elayne tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something inside her own skull.
"She knew," the archmage said. "We've been loud since we crossed. This just gives her a point to measure from."
"Distance?" Darius asked.
"A lot less than it was," Elayne said. "Come on. If she's sending more, better to meet them on our terms than wait for them to choose."
They moved.
---
Time blurred again.
Surge. Brace. Advance.
Check for more wights. Step around ice-forms that looked like failed statues. Watch the field grow thicker, the pulses harder.
They passed cairns where the blade-and-shield motif was carved deep and exact, not crude scratches. Someone had taken time here, in a place that hated time.
"Someone has been busy," Darius said again, quieter.
"Someone has been obsessive," Liora corrected. "And very unwilling to let go."
Tloew pulsed, hardest yet. He rode it out.
The air grew thinner still. The cold stopped pretending to be a suggestion and became an order. His joints stiffened. His breath steamed in short, controlled puffs.
He forced his hands to move, flexing fingers on sword and shield until the sensation came back as more than knives.
"Tell me when we're close to anything resembling an answer," he said.
"You'll know," Elayne said.
He did.
They crested a low ridge and saw it.
Below, the Land of Eternal Winter wasn't flat any more. Lines of brighter cold ran through the ground like rivers of pale fire, crossing and knotting. At each knot, something glowed—clusters of wights, constructs of ice, pillars that might have once been watchtowers before the Winter swallowed their stone and left only geometry.
A fortress, Darius thought. Or an army. Or both at once.
"The convergence," Elayne said. "That's where the Land of Eternal Winter is thickest."
"And where she is," Liora added.
Darius watched the distant glows for a long moment. Units were moving down there—square blocks of light shifting, re-forming, sliding along the pale lines the way soldiers marched along roads.
A surge hit, stronger than any before.
He staggered, caught himself on his shield.
"That one wasn't in rhythm," he said.
"No," Liora agreed. Her eyes were distant again. "That was someone tugging on Tloew, not just Tloew breathing."
"Calling," Elayne said. "Repositioning. She's pulling her pieces in."
"Toward us?" Brynjar asked.
"Yes," Elayne said simply.
Darius exhaled once, slow.
"Then we've saved her the trouble of wondering where to send them," he said. "We're right here."
He started down the far side of the rise.
The others followed.
Far ahead, beyond the haze and the moving lights, something in the heart of the Land of Eternal Winter turned its full attention their way.