Elayne Rosgaard POV
The world dropped out from under her feet.
For a heartbeat Elayne thought the anchor had finally decided to eat them—then realised the ice slab they were standing on had sheared loose and was sliding.
"Down!" Darius barked.
Too late to argue. The four of them slammed flat as the slab lurched, tilted, then settled into a sickening glide.
Light pulsed under the cracks, blue-white and furious.
Elayne pressed a palm to the ice. The magic roaring beneath them wasn't just cold. It was direction. A flow line.
"We're on a vein," she gasped. "It's pulling us inward."
"Then keep away from the edges," Brynjar grunted, dragging his bulk lower, shield angled to cover both himself and Darius. "Unless you want to find out what happens if you fall straight into the curse."
None of them wanted that.
They spread their weight, using shield-rims and boot-heels to stay balanced as the slab picked up speed. It slid along a glowing crack in the basin floor like a log in floodwater.
On either side of the chasm, the Land of Eternal Winter rose in jagged walls, lined with wights.
Columns of them marched along the edges, keeping pace. Soul-fire glowed in their eye sockets like a second row of watching stars.
Above, on a higher ledge, Aevyrion paced like a man watching a hunt from a balcony, armour gleaming faintly.
"Run, little roses," his voice drifted down, delighted. "We'll catch up."
He wasn't wrong.
The slab hit a rough patch. Elayne's stomach lurched as it bucked, sending shards of ice skittering into the glowing crack. For a moment she felt the pull of the vein trying to take the splinters apart.
Liora made a low, hoarse sound, clutching the crescent at her throat.
"Elayne," Darius shouted over the grinding roar, "tell me this isn't Whitefall."
Whitefall.
Her mouth went dry.
"What I did back there?" she said. "That was the opposite of Whitefall. I hooked us into the vein, not out of it."
Darius stared at her like she'd personally offended every saint on the northern calendar.
"Why in all frozen hells would you do that?"
"Because if the anchor bites hardest at the centre," Elayne said tightly, "you do not want me trying to flip us from here. We'd smear ourselves and half the front across the lattice."
Another surge rolled up through the vein. The slab shuddered and sped up.
Darius swore under his breath, but he didn't argue.
"Fine," he said. "Then the plan is: don't die before we get there."
"Elegant as always," Brynjar muttered.
---
The chasm narrowed.
Walls of ice heaved closer, the glow below them brightening from dull blue to knife-white. Every surge hit harder; every slack between felt shorter, like the curse itself was getting impatient.
"Wights tightening," Liora rasped.
On both sides of the chasm, the marching columns closed ranks. A group broke off on the left, angling ahead of the sliding slab. Another mirrored it on the right.
Elayne watched, teeth clenched, as a smooth tongue of frost blossomed from the left-hand wall—ice growing flat and slick out over the chasm.
"They're building a bridge," she said. "They're boarding us."
"Of course they are," Brynjar said. "Why make it easy?"
The slab jolted as it hit a bend. The half-formed bridge kissed its edge with a grinding crunch.
Darius braced and met the first wight as it stepped onto their moving island.
The creature came on with shield raised, spear low—no wild flailing. In life it had understood formations. In death it still did. Darius knocked the spear aside, slammed his shield into its chest, and let the combined momentum of slab and shove take it backwards over the edge.
It vanished into the glow with no sound at all.
Another wight stepped up immediately to take its place.
"Can we stop this?" Darius threw the question back at her, ducking under a thrust.
Elayne flattened her hand to the ice.
The vein's flow roared under them like a river pressed into a pipe. She could tease at the edges, throw drag at the rim of the slab, maybe steal a breath of time—but stopping?
"No," she said. "We ride it or we try to climb and get skewered from both sides."
"So we ride," Darius said. "And cut whatever jumps on."
"Plan sounds familiar," Brynjar muttered, smashing another boarder back into the glow.
On the right-hand wall, the second bridge finished growing. More wights poured onto it, moving with the grim steadiness of soldiers crossing a siege ladder.
Elayne hissed between her teeth and stabbed a hand toward the join.
Ice at the contact point squealed. A crack raced along it, bright as lightning. The far half of the bridge sheared away in a spray of shards, taking half a dozen wights with it.
The slab rocked as its load shifted. Elayne sprawled flat again, breath ragged.
The curse hummed louder under her palm, annoyed at being poked.
"Every time you cut something," Liora said through her teeth, "it gets angrier."
"Yes," Elayne said. "It does that."
Another surge rolled up the vein. The slab shot forward, faster now, a spray of powdered frost rising in its wake.
Aevyrion's laughter echoed from above.
"Good!" he called. "Deeper! We'll see which of you breaks first—your archmage, my duchess, or the spell."
He signalled with his sword.
More wights broke off from the marching columns, angling ahead again. Two groups this time—one on each side—preparing twin bridges.
Elayne's heart hammered.
She could feel the shape of the flow more clearly now: not just a line, but a descent. The slab was sliding into a hollow, toward the place where Tloew's weight pooled deepest.
"Still no way off?" Darius asked.
"Not unless you'd like to leap onto the walls and fight uphill against ten ranks of spears," Elayne said.
"Pass," Brynjar said. "I'm getting too old to be a thrown weapon."
The twin bridges reached for them.
This time Elayne didn't try to break both. She flung a wedge of force sideways into the left-hand bridge, shattering only part of it and turning the rest into a jagged ramp.
"Brynjar!" she snapped.
The captain understood without needing more. He met the next wight at the top of the ramp, slammed it back into its comrades, and used the tangle of falling bodies as a moving barricade. The rest behind them had to slow or risk tumbling after.
On the right, Darius and Liora worked together—shield and light nudging, twisting, denying clean purchase. Wights still came, but not in a solid wave.
It wasn't victory. It was less loss.
The slab plunged on.
---
They slid to a grinding stop somewhere between the basin's outer rim and the bright, broken centre.
The jolt rattled Elayne's teeth. For a heartbeat she was sure they'd overshot and drop into the knot itself—but the slab jammed against a ring of raised ice, wedging there with a shriek.
Silence slammed down in the wake of motion.
Elayne pushed herself up on shaky arms. Every part of her hurt. Her magic thrummed just under her skin, sour and overstrained from wrestling the vein.
Liora dragged herself upright as well, one hand pressed to a cut at her side that hadn't had time to close properly. Frost burned along the edge of it where Tloew had nipped.
Darius planted his shield, panting. Brynjar spat pink onto the ice and rolled his shoulder until something inside it popped back into place.
"All right," Brynjar said. "We've stopped. Now what?"
Elayne swallowed and forced her thoughts into order.
The vein beneath them was still flowing, but the slab had caught in a pocket where that flow split. From here, the field's shape was clearer. She reached, carefully, and let a projection bloom in front of them: lines of light mapping how the curse ran.
The core ahead of them was not a single point. It was a knot—a three-dimensional snarl of flows, each surge sending fresh cracks racing out like fractures in a skull. New lines had grown since the last time she'd looked from the safety of a dome.
"We're inside its reach," she said softly. "We're past the edge of the dome's model. If we're going to use Whitefall, it has to be from here."
"And if we don't?" Darius asked.
"Then we die here," Elayne said. "Or we die later when this thing finishes what I started in the basin and drags the rest of the North into itself."
Above them, the wights finished taking position.
The marching columns had stopped. Ranks of frost-wights now lined the basin walls on both sides, shields locked, spears grounded. More waited on ledges. The boarders who had managed to cling to the slab re-formed into a tight ring a short distance away.
On the upper ledge, Aevyrion raised his sword.
"Duchess!" he called, voice carrying easily. "Appetizer was good. Main course is ready."
Selithrae's answer arrived as a tightening in the air.
Elayne felt her before she saw her: a pressure pushing down from the far side of the basin, a weight layered over Tloew's own. Then the frost wight duchess stepped into view on a ridge opposite Aevyrion—cloak trailing, soul-fire burning bright in her eyes.
The next surge didn't break. It coiled. Waited.
She was holding it.
Liora sucked in a thin breath. "Elayne," she whispered, "tell me you have a plan that isn't 'get flattened.'"
"I do," Elayne said. "I just don't like any of the details."
She lowered her hand, letting the knot-projection linger in the air.
"Darius," she said, not looking away from it. "When I say, I'm going to grab the field. I'll need you three on the circle. All of you. Every oath, relic and stubborn bit of brute force you have."
"And the dead between us and that knot?" Brynjar asked. "Ignore them?"
"Don't die to them," Elayne said. "Dying to them breaks the circle."
"That is not how we were taught to prioritise," Brynjar muttered. But he lifted his shield.
Above them, Aevyrion's sword tipped down. Selithrae's staff rose.
The Land of Eternal Winter held its breath.
Elayne Rosgaard set her hands on the ice and began to draw.