Morning in the Umbral Range did not bring light; it brought a bruising, iron-gray haze that tasted of frozen stone and old, forgotten secrets.
Aelindra woke not to the sound of birds, but to the steady, heavy thrum of a heart that wasn't her own. For a confused heartbeat, she thought she was back in the hollows, trapped in a dream of safety. Then the cold reality of the obsidian bit into her hip, the jagged edges of the earth reminding her where they were, and she realized the warmth was Severin.
They were still tangled together in the shallow cave, seeking refuge from the biting mountain air. His arm was a heavy weight across her waist, his cloak pulled tight around them both. In the dim, pre-dawn gloom, the faint, glowing traceries of that strange fire still simmered beneath the skin of his throat like dying embers beneath a layer of ash.
She didn't move. She couldn't. The proximity was a tether she didn't know how to break, a magnetic force that held her lungs still. She watched the way his chest rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic cadence, the movement brushing against her own with a terrifying intimacy. She thought of the memories she had sacrificed to save Caelan, the missing color of her mother's eyes, now just a faded gray blur in her mind's eye. In their place, a new, unwanted geography was being written: the rough texture of Severin's tunic against her palm, the heat of his breath against her brow, the terrifying safety of his shadow.
When his eyes opened, he didn't pull away. His amber gaze snapped to hers, sharp and instantly alert, reflecting the gray morning light. For a long second, he just looked at her, searching her face for a reason to stay, his hand tightening almost imperceptibly on her waist before he let go and sat up.
"The mountain is quiet," he murmured, his voice a low, morning rasp that seemed to vibrate in the small space.
"It's listening," Aelindra replied, her voice barely a whisper, afraid that a louder word might shatter the fragile stillness.
Severin crawled to the edge of the shallow cave, looking out over the abyss where the mists swirled like restless ghosts. Below them, the plateau they had left behind was a jagged ruin of shadows. "We have to reach the High Pass. Arveth said if we get high enough, the air goes dead. The mountain won't be able to feel us."
He turned back to her, reaching out to brush a smudge of soot from her cheek with a calloused thumb. His touch lingered a second too long, a silent acknowledgment of the night spent in each other's arms, a moment of shared vulnerability, before he pulled back. "Can you climb? After yesterday... how do you feel?"
Aelindra searched her internal landscape, navigating the empty spaces where her history used to live. She felt a strange, vibrating pressure in her chest, like a chord stretched too thin. "I feel... heavy. And I keep thinking about things that aren't there." She didn't tell him about the growing silence where her childhood used to be, the hollow ache of things forgotten. "But I can climb."
The ascent was a nightmare of vertical white stone and treacherous footholds. As they climbed higher, the black obsidian gave way to a pale, porous rock that looked like skeletal hands reaching out of the cliffside to pull them back. The wind here was a physical force, screaming as it whipped through the stone ribs of the peak, threatening to tear them from the mountain's face.
They were halfway up a sheer chimney of rock, their muscles burning with the effort, when the mountain changed.
It wasn't a roar this time. It was a skittering sound, the sound of a thousand dry bones dragging over glass. Aelindra froze, her fingers dug into a white crevice until her knuckles turned ivory.
"Severin," she gasped, looking up through the swirling haze.
From the cracks in the pale stone, things were emerging. They didn't look like animals; they lacked the warmth of living things. They looked like humans that had been twisted and petrified, their skin the color of wet ash and their eyes missing entirely, just hollow, dark pits. They moved with a sickening, staccato grace, crawling down the vertical face toward them like spiders.
"What are they?" Aelindra's voice was high and thin with terror, caught in the back of her throat.
"I don't know," Severin hissed. He slammed his back against the rock, his hand going to his sword, the steel singing as it left the scabbard. "But they aren't here to talk."
One of the creatures leapt. It was fast, a blur of gray limbs and jagged, stone-like claws that scraped against the rock. Severin didn't wait. He didn't understand the fire in his blood, but he knew how to use it as a weapon.
"BACK!" he roared.
The Command hit the air like a physical shockwave, a ripple of pure authority. The creature's mid-air lunge faltered, its body jerking as if invisible chains had snapped tight around its limbs. It slammed into the rock face beside Aelindra, screeching a sound like metal on stone.
Severin didn't stop. He thrust his hand forward, and the Crownfire erupted, not as a controlled spell, but as a violent, desperate burst of white-hot heat that seared the air. The fire licked across the rock, melting the white stone into slag. The creature caught in the blast didn't burn; it shattered, its petrified body exploding into a cloud of gray dust that choked the air.
"There's more!" Aelindra screamed, pointing upward toward the jagged rim.
Five more of the things were dropping from the ledges above. They were smart enough to avoid the direct fire, circling around the edges of the chimney to trap them in a pincer movement.
Severin swung his blade, his movements frantic and powerful. He was a soldier, but he was fighting things that didn't bleed, things that knew no pain. Every time he struck one, his blade just chipped their stone-like skin, sending sparks flying into the gray air. He threw another burst of fire, but the effort made him stumble. The Crownfire was a glutton; it took his breath, his strength, and his focus, draining him with every heartbeat.
One of the creatures caught Severin's shoulder, its claws tearing through his leather armor as easily as parchment. He let out a snarl, kicking the thing back with a desperate boot, but he was losing his footing on the slick, melting rock.
"Severin!"
Aelindra reached for him, her hand catching his arm in a frantic grip. The moment they touched, that strange, surging heat from the night before returned, but this time it was a flood, a torrential river of power. She didn't know what she was doing. She just knew she couldn't let him fall into the abyss.
She felt the golden light within her flare up, acting as a bridge for the fire he was trying to pour out. It was as if she were the vessel and he was the flame, a perfect, terrifying conduit.
Severin felt the shift. He didn't understand why her touch made the fire easier to handle, why it suddenly felt like a tool rather than a curse, but he didn't question it. He grabbed her hand, bracing himself against the mountain, and let out a roar of pure, unadulterated power. A wave of white heat rolled up the chimney, a wall of sun-fire that consumed everything in its path.
The gray creatures were turned to ash before they could even scream.
The silence that followed was deafening, ringing in their ears. The chimney was charred black, the white stone smoking and cracked. Severin slumped against Aelindra, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his hand still clamped tight over hers as if he were afraid to let go.
"We... we have to keep going," he wheezed, the words trembling.
They scrambled the last hundred feet, fueled by nothing but adrenaline and the primal terror of what might be lurking behind them. When they finally rolled onto the flat, snow-covered ground of the High Pass, the world simply stopped.
The wind died to a soft hiss. The vibration in the stone vanished. It was the Silent Ground Arveth had promised, a place where the mountain's malice could not reach.
Aelindra lay in the snow, her chest heaving, the cold air burning her lungs. She felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her mind, a jagged sensation of loss. She tried to reach for the memory of her father, the way he used to whistle a specific, cheerful tune when he worked in the garden during the summer.
It was gone.
She sat up abruptly, her eyes wide and panicked, her breath hitching. She hadn't even healed anyone. Why was it gone? Then she looked at her hands, still glowing with a faint, dying gold that pulsed like a fading star.
By acting as a bridge for Severin, by "anchoring" that massive surge of his fire so he wouldn't burn himself aliv, she had paid the price anyway. The magic was an impartial creditor; it didn't care if she was mending a wound or mending a Prince's soul. It took its toll regardless of intent.
Severin crawled over to her, his face pale and drawn, the blood from his shoulder staining the pristine white snow a stark crimson. He saw the look in her eyes, that hollow, vacant stare that followed her sacrifices.
"Aelindra?" he whispered, reaching for her, his voice thick with concern.
"I can't hear it," she whispered, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. "The whistle. He's gone, Severin. My father is just a shape now. A silhouette with no sound."
Severin didn't know what to say. He was a prince of a dying kingdom, a man who had only ever known how to destroy, how to break things. He did the only thing he could. He pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair as the sun finally broke over the High Pass, casting long, golden shadows across the ice.
"I'm here," he said, his voice a rough, broken vow against the cold. "I'm here."
They had reached the silence. But as the snow began to fall, dusting their shoulders in white, Aelindra realized that the silence was inside her now too, a growing, frozen kingdom where her memories used to dwell.