The snow had a sound of its own out there, soft, rhythmic, almost like breathing. For three days, Kairo had walked with only that sound for company. The wind pressed against his cloak, folding the cloth flat against his shoulders; when he inhaled, the air burned cold enough to cut. Every step broke through a thin crust of ice and released a whisper of powder that swirled around his boots before settling again. There were no trees, no birds, only white stretching into white.
He had left the fortress behind without looking back. At first, the absence of voices was comforting; now it was a weight. The world felt too open. The heartbeat of the Specter Heart had become his only measure of time, a slow, uneven drum beneath the ribs. Sometimes it beat in rhythm with the wind; sometimes it paused altogether, as if listening.
On the third night, he found the remnants of a hunting post half-buried in snow. The roof had collapsed inward, but the fireplace still held the black circle of an old flame. He pushed the snow away with his gloved hands, built a small fire, and sat close enough to feel heat against his knees. The light carved a small island out of the dark. For the first time in days, he spoke aloud, his voice rasping: "Still alive."
The fire cracked, answering like a sigh.
He reached into his pack, pulled out a small metal insignia, and turned it between his fingers. The edge had rusted. He wondered how long it took for metal to forget what it was. The flame flickered blue when he stared too long; frost crept up the sides of the stones around it, as if the cold inside him had begun leaking into the air.
He closed his eyes.Wind carried a whisper through the gaps in the walls, faint but clear:
Why did you leave them?
He opened his eyes quickly. No one was there. Only snow was moving through the broken roof like smoke. But he could have sworn he knew the voice; it had the soft tone of Varin.
He pressed a hand over his chest. "You're dead," he said quietly.
So are you, the wind seemed to answer.
The next heartbeat sent a sharp pulse through him; frost spread from his palm, tracing veins of silver across the floor. He tried to pull back, but the ice didn't stop until it reached the ashes of the fire. The flame died with a hiss.
He sat in the dark for a long while, listening to the faint hum beneath his skin. It wasn't just cold; it was something else, something aware. The Specter Heart wasn't a tool. It was a memory pretending to be power.
Dawn came as a dull glow that never quite reached the ground. Kairo left the ruin before the sky turned grey, following the faint cut of a river frozen solid under snow. The air tasted of metal; his breath curled upward like smoke from a forge. Somewhere far off, something moved, deep enough that he felt it through his boots.
He slowed, listening. A second vibration rolled through the ice. Not thunder. Not wind. He drew his sword.
The sound came again, closer now, a scraping, dragging rhythm. Then a shape broke the horizon: huge shoulders hunched under matted fur, limbs too long, eyes burning red in the gloom. It walked on two legs at first, then dropped to all fours, claws carving lines in the crusted snow. A smell reached him, rotted meat and iron.
Kairo's fingers tightened on the hilt."Another wolf," he murmured, though what he saw was no wolf. The thing was a man once; he could still see the outline of armor fused into its hide. Chains clinked where flesh met metal. An old Norveil crest hung from its neck, half-buried in frost.
The creature roared. Snow leapt from the ground; the wind turned sharp enough to flay skin. Kairo braced himself and met the charge head-on.
The impact sent him sliding backward across the ice. His shoulder slammed a ridge of stone; pain flared, bright and hot. He ducked as a claw swung past his face, cutting the air with a whistle. He answered with a low slash that opened a pale line across the creature's arm, but no blood came out, only shards of ice.
The monster howled again, louder. The sound wasn't rage. It was pain.
Kairo's heart thudded once, hard enough to shake his vision. The frost underfoot rippled outward in rings. He moved without thinking, one step, another, and suddenly the world slowed. The storm around them seemed to pause between breaths; snowflakes hung suspended mid-fall.
Every motion felt clearer, quieter. When he exhaled, the breath itself glowed faintly blue.
He raised his sword. The metal caught the light of his pulse, turning white. When the creature lunged, he sidestepped, faster than thought, and drove the blade upward through the ribs. The steel went in smooth and came out trailing frost instead of blood.
The monster staggered. Kairo followed through, cutting again, until the world burst back into motion. Sound returned, the crack of ice, the rush of wind, the final, hollow thud of the body collapsing.
He stood over it, panting, sword dripping frozen shards. For a moment, the thought he heard a voice inside the hiss of the wind.
Help me.
He knelt. The creature's face, half-human under the frost, turned toward him. Its lips moved, words too soft to hear, then stilled. The red light in its eyes faded to white, and the body began to crumble, breaking apart like thawing ice.
Beneath the fragments lay a small metal disk, the same insignia he carried from Norveil.
Kairo picked it up. The edge was etched with numbers: an identification mark, a soldier's tag. He wiped the frost away and read the letters stamped into it.
EX-WOLF UNIT 13.
His stomach tightened. They hadn't been beasts by birth. They'd been soldiers, experiments abandoned when the kingdom learned it couldn't control the Heart's power. The realization hit like a blade.
He looked down at his own hands. Frost crawled over the skin in delicate veins. For an instant, he saw them overlapping with the creature's claws, the same pattern, the same glow.
The heart inside him pulsed once, twice, louder. He staggered backward, breath catching . The cold no longer burned; it filled him, spreading through every nerve until even the ache in his muscles turned numb. He could feel the air moving through the snowfields, feel the vibration of distant avalanches, the heartbeat of the land itself.
He whispered, "What are you?"
The answer came not in words but in motion: a spiral of snow rising around him, slow, deliberate, circling like a living thing. When he exhaled, the spiral widened and the world dimmed to a pale blue haze. In that moment, he understood, this was not magic or a blessing. The Specter Heart mirrored him. It drew shape from his emotion, strength from his memory. It froze the world because he could not forget it.
The storm eased. The snow fell back to the earth, blanketing the remains of the creature until there was no trace of battle left.
Kairo stood alone again, sword lowered, the insignia of Unit 13 cold in his palm. He closed his fist around it."I'll remember you," he said softly. The frost along his arm shimmered once, then faded.
He turned south, leaving the glacier behind. Each step sank deep into new snow, the wind rising to follow. Above him, clouds began to gather, slowly at first, then faster, as if the sky itself had decided to move with him.