The breach of the Frostspine stronghold was not a victory of military precision; it was a slow, agonizing grinding of bone against stone.
There was no surgical strike, no elegant maneuver that bypassed the butcher's bill. It was the kind of raw, uncontrolled violence that stripped the soul bare, leaving nothing but the cold.
The outer walls were the first nightmare. I had frozen the moisture in the air until the stone was coated in a treacherous, glass-like sheen of permafrost, intending to make it brittle.
But the ice worked against my own men just as much as the defenders. I watched from the base of the ridge as my vanguard attempted the ascent, their iron-shod boots slipping on the very magic I had conjured.
They didn't climb so much as clawed their way up, their fingers bleeding where the frost bit through leather.
And then the bodies began to fall.
