The Winter Wanderer

Matthew

The firewood crackled with dry snaps, sending sparks dissolving into the dimness of the cave. The heat of the fire struck Matt’s face, but inside, he was still frozen.

He was sixteen years old, his hands covered in soot, Svetlana’s dried blood stuck to the sleeve of his tattered coat.

He gripped the chipped kitchen knife with both hands. He thrust it directly into the embers until the blade glowed red-hot, then pulled it out and plunged it violently into the frozen mud on the cave floor.

Sssshhhh.

Steam blasted his face.

Matt trembled.

It was a violent, uncontrollable tremor that shook his shoulders and made his teeth chatter. Thick tears washed trails through the grime on his cheeks, but no sob escaped his throat.

Instead, a muffled laugh emerged.

Broken.

Hysterical.

Deranged.

It bounced off the stone walls.

“Heh… hahaha… heh…”

“I’ll kill you…” he whispered against the steaming blade.

His voice no longer sounded like that of a child. It was a hollow rasp.

“I’ll kill you, Valentin… I’ll kill you… hahaha… I’ll cut your throat…”

A few dozen meters from the cave, the makeshift caravan rested beside the road.

They were the few survivors of Anadyr.

Seven vehicles with dented metal, shattered windows covered with cardboard, and engines coughing black smoke. Families huddled together beneath filthy blankets, holding silently crying children close and chewing stale rations while the northern wind threatened to overturn them.

When the caravan started its engines again at dawn and continued west, Matt didn’t climb into any of the vehicles.

An old man shouted at him from the window of a van, extending a hand and urging him to get inside.

Matt didn’t even look at him.

He tightened his belt, pressed the knife wrapped in rags against his side, and began walking in the opposite direction.

Away from the tires.

Into the endless white expanse of the tundra.

That was where the journey began.

On foot.

Years of walking followed, crossing ruined stretches of the continent, silent valleys, and dead roads. Whenever hunger burned through his stomach or fever threatened to bring him down in the snow, the memory of Valentin’s face struck his mind like a hammer.

In the third year of his journey, he felt the first internal crack.

His skin, hardened by the punishment of the road, began to grow denser. His flesh could repel thorns, the jagged blades of scavengers, and the freezing air of nights spent in the open.

He had become a Master.

But the steel in his mind demanded more.

The pain he had accumulated could no longer fit inside that shell.

Two years later, on the outskirts of the French forests, his physical limit finally gave way.

Matt walked beneath an icy storm. With every step, his thighs burned. Inside him, the Will struggled to break through his pores. He felt as though his bones were about to splinter from within.

The air around him began to distort.

The invisible pressure emanating from his body was starting to alter the physics of his surroundings.

He stopped in the middle of the muddy road and fell to his knees.

The inner shell of his energy cracked.

The Will burst inward, permeating his biology on a qualitative level.

He had reached Illumination.

When he stood again, he understood the true abyss separating this new rank from the one before it.

He was no longer simply faster or stronger.

He now possessed the qualitative change of the fourth rank.

His Will could suppress and prevent the healing or regeneration of anyone below his rank if he managed to cut them.

Furthermore, the density of his Will allowed him to briefly stand on the air itself, giving him access to bursts of movement and double jumps that had once been impossible.

He reached the outskirts of the Guild’s camp only a few hours later, finally collapsing from the exhaustion accumulated throughout his journey.

⸻

In the present, inside a medical tent belonging to the Federation, Matt stared at his hands.

A thin mist of Will hovered over his knuckles.

Boris stood beside the cot, feeling the pressure in the air.

He knew what that rank meant.

“You reached Illumination on your own…” Boris murmured. “By walking. Without instructors. Just through sheer stubbornness.”

Matt lowered his legs from the cot.

His boots struck the ground with a dull thud.

“Valentin has ascended. He’s an Expert now,” Matt said.

His voice wasn’t cold because of arrogance.

It was heavy with the exhaustion of his soul.

“He has mastered the Will perfectly. He can walk on air as if it were solid ground, and a direct attack from him would break through my defenses. But I’m not the same novice who left Anadyr.”

Matt clenched his fist.

“If he can fly, I’ll learn how to bring him down.”

Boris gritted his teeth and spread a tactical map across the table.

“Valentin isn’t alone. As an Expert, he has two Illuminated Barons at his disposal, along with an entire garrison of Awakened. If you enter his territory head-on, they’ll tear you apart.”

Matt approached the map and brushed his fingers over the mark representing enemy territory.

“I’m not going in head-on,” Matt replied.

His eyes remained fixed on the map.

“I’m going to start cutting their legs out from under them… from the outside.”