The air was thin and cold as Lisa pressed onward, Rylan cradled in her arms like a sleeping child and yet heavier than any burden she had ever borne. Each step was a small war — not just against the mountain's slope, but against the shame and heat coiled in her chest. Holding him close, she felt his breath against her collarbone, saw the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath the blanket of his torn tunic. For reasons she refused to name, the rhythm of that breath felt like a promise: she would not let it stop.
Rylan did not look like the savage images that haunted the border tribes' tales. His jawline was clean, his hair black and a little unruly from the wind, and when he slept his face softened into a very human vulnerability — the kind of ordinary softness Lisa had once thought she could only find in soap dramas. The contrast between the ferocious warrior she had watched cleave mountains and this naked, human figure made something ache in her chest. He was not a monster from those ancient murals; he was real. He was warm. He was dangerously, unnervingly present.
The System, never content to allow any tender moment to breathe, chirped in her head like a wasp with a voice of velvet.
[SYSTEM — Host detected cuddling. Perverse statistics increasing. Would you like to monetize this intimacy?]
Lisa blinked and tightened her hold. "Shut up," she hissed, which in her mind sounded far more dramatic than it truly was.
[SYSTEM — You cannot 'shut up' me. I am omnipresent and omniscient and occasionally brutally honest.]
She jabbed an elbow into his side. Rylan twitched, murmured something inaudible, and turned his face into the crook of her arm as they crossed the final ridge. Snow Lake unfolded below them like a sheet of smashed glass — white drift clouded with ice-blue veins, and right at its center, a ring of flowers white as milk with a single blue petal blooming like an eye.
"The Snow Lake Orchid," Lisa whispered aloud. The name felt holy and absurd in equal measure. The flower's beauty was so severe it seemed to command the mountain silence.
Rylan blinked awake at the sight, opening slow, confused eyes like a cat at dawn. He inhaled, then met her gaze. For a minute neither said anything — there in the hush, their breaths matching in the cold, Lisa felt the world tighten to the two of them and the tiny piece of space they occupied together. She wanted to laugh, cry, and plan battle strategies all at once.
[SYSTEM — Host proximity analysis: 0.4 meters. Danger: hormones spike; produce embarrassing behavior.]
"Ugh, stop it," Lisa muttered, but her heart thumped absurdly loud. Rylan's fingers twitched against her arm. For a thief of glances, that simple contact sent a hot bloom through her chest.
She stepped down the slope toward the lake, careful with her footing. Too careful, perhaps — for before her boot had disturbed the last crust of frost, a broad snout surfaced between two rocks. A great wild pig, thick as a war horse, its hide dark and bristled, pushed itself to the shore. It snuffled with an animal's blunt curiosity and lumbered toward the ring of orchids, as if it had traveled a thousand miles just to taste that one blue petal.
Lisa froze. Her hands tightened on Rylan's cloak. In a simpler story, the pig would simply eat, and Lisa would go and gather the flower and return to the cave, triumphant. But this was not a simpler story. Snow Lake was old. Its guardians were older.
Before she could act, the lake itself reacted. The surface shuddered and a column of pure ice shot up like a spear, frozen and gleaming — but instead of striking the pig, it caught the beast mid-stride, encasing it in a glittering prison. The pig squealed, horns clattering against crystal. The ice clawed at its flanks and bound it like a sculpture.
[SYSTEM — Host missed phase one. The ice is high-spirit-grade; you would now be a very pretty statue if you had approached earlier.]
Lisa's jaw dropped. "What—what?! I would have been a garden ornament?"
[SYSTEM — Probability of being attractive though ephemeral increases by 73%.]
Lisa gave the System a look that could melt stone. It merely laughed in her head.
Rylan, groggy but alert, sat up fully. He breathed out and tested the air like a man who could shoulder the whole mountain if needed. "That pig's frozen," he observed. "The lake protects its blossoms."
Lisa's mind raced. She glanced at the crystalline carcass — the pig frozen upright, one left foot half-raised as though mid-step, and the flower a hair's breadth away. The ice gleamed with a sorcery that smelled of old cold and the mineral sting of glacier water. She fancied she could see the outlines of power etched into the crystal: runes, or perhaps just veins of magic.
[SYSTEM — Note: frozen beast carcass may still be used as material. Would you like a list of possible by-products?]
Lisa blinked. "By-products?"
[SYSTEM — Bones, hide, bristles; potential core residue dependent on beast rank. Pig strength: ground-type, physical might. Ice preservation prohibits immediate harvesting. Suggest melting technique or extraction via thermal corrosion.]
Lisa's grin began dark and wicked. "Can we… use its bones?"
[SYSTEM — Host: cruel idea detected. Label: 'demoness.' Probability of success: 41%. Moral ramifications: irrelevant.]
She straightened, feeling a somewhat alarming thrill at the practicality of the idea. Bones for tools, hide for warming, bristles for stuffing. The pig's mass would give them shelter and materials in a place where supplies were as rare as mercy.
"But it's frozen solid," Rylan warned, squinting at the lake. "Even if you free it, the core might still be active. We should not –"
Lisa's eyes were on fire. She imagined a thick, stout coat — a bulky, protective garment to shield them from frost and the corrosive black fire that seemed to befall them lately. And then, half as a joke and half as a plan, she heard herself ask in a bright voice, "Can we bind corrosive fire to fabric? Like… a lining?"
[SYSTEM — That is a bad idea and a brilliant one. Corrosive fire infusion is feasible with item assembly and a core catalyst. Risk: burning self. Reward: thermal and chemical resistance to ice magics. Probability: manageable.]
Lisa's lips curled. "Good. Then we'll make a coat. Fire-lined wool. Something that says 'I'm cozy but will melt your face.'"
Rylan exhaled a breath that was half-laugh, half-worry. He sat up straighter and tried — gently, inevitably — to dissuade her. He looked at her like a man seeing his favorite sword turned into a cooking utensil. "Lisa, this place is sacred. We take only what is necessary."
She pouted like the spoiled child he both feared and adored. The old trick worked every time: one narrow-lipped look, lower lip pushed out, eyes huge. Rylan sagged like a tent at dawn. "Fine," he said. "But I'll do the heavy lifting."
[SYSTEM — Host manipulation of alpha confirmed. Points awarded: emotional leverage. Would you like to log this for later blackmail?]
Lisa swatted imaginary hands at the System. "Shut up. Or I'll make you my coat."
They moved carefully now — she with a plan and he with a protectiveness like granite. Lisa inspected the ice carefully and decided against melting it outright; the chances of damaging the orchid were too great. Instead she would harvest the pig where it lay, glide along the lake's edge, and use the frost as a freezer until they could process materials without losing the flower.
Rylan knelt at the rim and probed the frozen hide with a blade, testing heat conduction. "If I pry the ice just enough, we can cut in without cracking it. The core should reveal the tissues beneath."
Lisa nodded. "I'll take samples. You keep watch." She handed back the blade and for a quiet moment — ridiculous, tender, small — she brushed snow from Rylan's hair and tucked it behind his ear. His face softened like dawn.
[SYSTEM — Alert: tenderness. Recommend logging phrases that will be marketable as emotional beats.]
"Shut up!" she hissed, but she kept her hands gentle.
They worked in a silence that hummed with something like prayer. Rylan's strength was a counterpoint to her ingenuity; where he pried and heaved, she wrapped and extracted. When the bone came free with a muffled pop and the pig's cry died like a bell, Lisa felt something akin to triumph — savage, necessary triumph. Using heated stones and a quick alchemy learned from the manual and system hints, they cauterized and separated. The bristles and hide came off like stubborn fur, and the bone — white, dense, heavy — gleamed like a new resource.
Rylan held the biggest section of hide between both hands, eyes wary. "You sure about this?" he murmured.
Lisa tightened her grip on the bone needle she had carved. "Yes. We make armor from the bristles and hide, wool-insulated with the pig's bristly underlayer. Then we line with corrosive-fire treated cloth. If a lake shoots ice at us, the corrosive will neutralize and melt the ice upon contact. It's ugly, but practical."
[SYSTEM — Crafting begins. Host skill: Improvised Armorry: Beginner. Estimated time: 2 hours.]
"Two hours?" Rylan complained. "We don't have two hours."
Lisa's mouth twitched. "Then we have twenty minutes and a deadline."
They worked with a frantic, glorious intensity. Cloth and hide, bone and string, embers and sparks — forms merged and became function. Lisa stitched with the speed of someone who had once made do with nothing; Rylan sewed with the force of someone who had once sewn the armor of his ancestors. The System, humiliatingly useful, supplied tiny blueprints, suggestions, and occasionally a melodramatic commentary.
[SYSTEM — Host synergy level rising. Excellent. Might reach emotional bond threshold.]
They finished a crude, bulky coat before the sun fell low enough to make the first stars tremble. It smelled faintly of burned hair and hot stone, but it thudded with the authority of something that would not be bested by cold and ice. Lisa wound a strip of bone into a dagger-hanger and fixed a simple whip-braid of tendon around the belt — a beast-whip metaphor made real from the pig's own tendons — just for the drama.
She slipped the bulky coat on with a grin. It sat awkward and proud on her shoulders like a crown of survival. Rylan adjusted a strap and nodded.
"Ready?" he asked.
She smiled, and for a flash the world narrowed to his tone, the line of his jaw, the smudged dirt that made him somehow more honest.
"Ready," she said.
They advanced across the lake. At first each step was cautious, the coat humming slightly as its corrosive weave interacted with the cold. The icicles overhead tinkled like fragile bells. When they reached the hundred-meter mark, Lisa felt a prickle at the back of her neck — the old, premonitory tightening that meant something dangerous prepared to move.
Rylan's grip tightened on his spear.
A moment later, the frozen surface of the lake shuddered ferociously. The snow cracked like old wood.
A thunderous crack echoed through the air.
A roar, low and bone-deep, reverberated in their sternums.
And from the heart of the lake — not the pig's crystal prison but deeper, darker water — something huge and blue-white erupted. Ice shards spun like knives. The silhouette that formed was feline and vast: a tiger of living ice, each sinew a glacier, eyes like chips of star-frost. It reared its head and bared teeth of frozen diamond.
The world held its breath.
[SYSTEM — WARNING: High Earth-Grade Beast emerging. Host, your rank: non-spirit. Fatality risk: extreme.]
Lisa snorted, the sound part fury, part defiance. "Shut up! Not today."
Her heart pounded not only with fear but with something softer — the heat that crawled warm and electric whenever Rylan drew near. He looked at her, a sliver of pride softening his war-hardened expression. For the first time since the mountain had swallowed her life and spat out a new one in claws and fire, Lisa felt the unshakeable certainty that she would not step backward. Not now. Not ever.
The tiger's paws smashed onto the ice in a shower of glitter and frost. It focused on them with predatory calm, calculating and ancient.
Rylan squared his shoulders, spear raised. "Stay behind me," he ordered softly.
Lisa stepped forward instead.
"For once," she said quietly, "let me be the one who steps first."
[SYSTEM — Host courage rated: reckless but romantic. Would you like to record the scene?]
Lisa made a face at it, but inside, her pulse sang an odd lullaby of fury and devotion. She tightened the collar of the crude corrosive-lined coat and planted her feet. The ice tiger took one more silent breath.