The journey north began beneath a blood-colored dawn. Kael and Lira trudged through the white expanse, their breaths fogging in the glacial air. The world of snow and ice seemed endless — a desert of frost stretching beyond sight. Each gust of wind felt like a blade, slicing against skin and spirit alike. “Remind me again,” Lira muttered, tightening her patched cloak, “why the hell are all the powerful things buried in places that want us dead?” Kael’s lips curved into a faint smile, though it never reached his eyes. “Because the weak never reach them.” “Comforting,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. The Aetherheart inside him pulsed faintly, reacting to the cold. Frost magic danced in the air here — ancient and unyielding. Kael could feel it: a song of stillness, whispering beneath the winds. This was no ordinary land. The Frostlands of Varyn were once the cradle of the Cryomancers — mages who could command the winter itself. But now, only their ruins and restless spirit

The next morning, the Frostlands were merciless. The horizon was a silver wound where the sun barely bled through, and the air was so cold it bit through fur and flame alike.Kael and Lira trudged side by side through the blizzard, their figures half-swallowed by the snowstorm. Behind them, Maelir’s sanctuary was already lost to the white expanse.“How far are these Veins supposed to be?” Lira shouted over the wind.“Maelir said the path would find me,” Kael replied, his breath steaming in the air. “That it’s drawn to my bloodline.”“Great. Because when an ancient, cursed maze wants you, that’s always a good sign.”Kael gave a faint smirk. “You could turn back.”She scoffed. “And miss watching you try to talk your way out of another death trap? Not a chance.”They walked until the light changed — the world dimming, the blizzard thinning into strange stillness. The snow beneath their boots shimmered faintly, veins of pale blue light spreading across the ground like frozen lightning.Ka

The storm had long faded into memory.Now there was only silence—vast, crystalline, and heavy with breathless awe. Kael and Lira trudged through the pale tunnels beneath the Frostlands, their steps echoing softly against walls that shimmered with buried light. The Aetherheart in Kael’s chest pulsed faintly, attuned to something ancient just beyond the ice.“Are you sure this is the right way?” Lira asked, brushing frost from her eyelashes. “Because I’m starting to think the wyrm sent us on a scenic tour of hypothermia.”Kael smiled weakly. “The wyrm’s essence pointed us here. There’s something beneath this glacier… something alive.”“Alive?” Lira muttered. “Because the last thing that was ‘alive’ down here nearly ate us.”Before Kael could respond, the tunnel opened into a vast cavern so breathtaking it stole both their words.It wasn’t a cave—it was a city.Great spires of carved ice reached toward the ceiling like frozen cathedrals, their tips catching the faint blue glow of embedde

The wind howled across the Frostlands, carrying with it the taste of iron and the faint scent of burnt ozone. Kael and Lira stood at the edge of the frozen expanse, the city of the Frostmancers now a pale silhouette behind them — a memory sealed in snow. Kael’s breath misted in the cold, his cloak snapping like a torn banner in the gale. “We head south,” he said, voice low. “The Tower’s second key won’t do us much good if the Guild reaches the third before us.” Lira adjusted her satchel, glancing toward the distant mountains. “South means through the Blood Vale,” she reminded him. “People say the dead don’t stay dead there.” Kael gave her a faint, humorless smile. “Then we’ll keep them company.” They began their descent from the glacier, boots crunching over frost and fractured ice. Behind them, the frost wyrm’s slumbering roar echoed faintly, a reminder of the price of victory. Kael’s mind replayed Maelith’s warning: “The world will notice you now.” He didn’t yet realize how tru

The storm had finally passed.The wreck of the floating fortress lay sprawled across the cliffs of the southern vale, its ancient hull split open like the carcass of a skybeast. Smoke coiled into the dawn, mingling with the scent of scorched metal and ozone. All around, shards of crystalline machinery hummed faintly, bleeding out the last of their ancient energy.Kael sat among the ruins, his back against a cracked rune pillar, one arm pressed to his ribs. His hand came away red. Not all the blood was his, but enough of it was to remind him he was still mortal. The Emberbrand Staff lay beside him, its flames extinguished, its runes dim as dying embers.The world was quiet — too quiet.Only the wind spoke, whistling through hollow metal bones.Lira knelt a few paces away, tightening the last of a bandage around her arm. Her cheek was bruised, and her left boot was torn, but she moved with the kind of resilience born from growing up in alleys, not academies. She’d already scavenged what