The first thing Kael felt wasn't the impact or the loss. It was the heat.
It was a wrong kind of heat—not the comforting glow of a hearth or the calloused, steady warmth of his father's hand. This was a jagged, internal pressure that felt as if he had swallowed a bag of hot coals that were now trying to melt their way out through his ribs. His left side, once the reservoir of Umi's cool, quiet presence, was screaming in a language of raw nerves. The fire had rushed into the vacuum the spirit had vacated to save him, and now his chi was lopsided, heavy, and violent.
Kael opened his eyes. The world was sideways, a blurry mosaic of grey stone and white powder. A wall of packed ice sat inches from his face, the surface pitted and ancient. He tried to draw a breath, but his ribs felt like a bundle of dry sticks held together by nothing but frayed spiderwebs.
"Pa..."
The word didn't even make it past his lips. It died in a spray of red that blossomed across the white snow like a grotesque flower. He tried to turn his head, his neck muscles screaming. He looked for a dark shape in the ravine, a sign of a cloak or a boot, but there was only the shifting, indifferent white of the blizzard and the jagged shadows of the granite spires towering above. The mountain had swallowed Vane Thorne whole.
Kael tried to move his left arm. It twitched, a spark of orange light flickering at his fingertips in a pathetic display of unstable energy, but the limb felt like it belonged to a corpse. It was heavy—impossibly heavy. To move it, he had to drag his shoulder across his chest, his fingernails clawing at the frozen crust of the snow just to shift his weight an inch.
Everything has weight. Vane's voice echoed in the hollow of his skull. Now, Kael's own body was his greatest burden. Every muscle fiber was a chore to ignite. He managed to roll onto his stomach, his face dipping into the freezing powder. The shock of the cold should have made him gasp, but the fire inside him surged in response, hissing as the snow melted instantly beneath his cheek.
He was a furnace with a broken door, leaking heat he couldn't afford to lose.
He stayed there for an hour, or perhaps three. Time didn't exist in the belly of the ravine; there was only the rhythm of his own pulse, a frantic, uneven thudding that seemed to vibrate against the blue serpent mark hidden beneath his tunic. Deep in the marrow of his spine, the spirit was silent—a dormant knot of energy that had retreated into a cocoon to survive the "Steam-Lock" explosion.
Hunger didn't hit him until the sun began to dip, casting long, bruised shadows of violet and blue across the ice. It wasn't a rumble; it was a sharp, biting clawing in his gut, like an animal trying to eat its way out.
Kael looked toward the base of a nearby stunted pine tree, its branches twisted by years of gale-force winds. There were small, shriveled berries clinging to a frozen vine—pale, translucent things that looked like drops of curdled milk. In the Fire Nation, they called them Ghost-Eyes. They were bitter, and every soldier knew that if eaten raw, they turned the stomach into a knot of agonizing cramps.
He crawled toward them. Each movement was a calculated, grueling risk. He would thrust his right hand forward, ignite a tiny, controlled burst of heat to soften the ice, and then drag his shattered left side behind him like a broken sled. It took him thirty minutes to cover ten feet.
He reached the vine. His fingers trembled so hard he almost dropped the fruit as he plucked three berries. He didn't have the strength to start a fire to cook out the toxins, so he popped them into his mouth cold.
They tasted like copper and old dirt.
Within minutes, the consequences arrived. His stomach didn't just ache; it revolted. He curled into a ball, his forehead pressed against the biting ice as he retched until his throat burned. The Ghost-Eyes were purging whatever little moisture he had left in his system, a cruel irony for a boy whose internal fire was already dehydrating him.
But as he gasped for air, he felt a faint, thready pulse from his spine. A microscopic drop of Umi's essence leaked out—not enough to bend, not enough to heal, but just enough to coat the lining of his throat and numb the acidic burn of the bile.
He wasn't dead yet. But the mountain was patient, and it had all the time in the world.
Kael looked up at the heights. The Syndicate would be coming. Zane Arlo wasn't the type to leave a job half-finished, and they wouldn't leave a prize like him to the mountain wolves. He had to find a hole. He had to be a rat again, just like in the Undercity.
He found a small overhang, a narrow gap between two boulders where the snow hadn't drifted too deep. He crawled inside, the space so tight his shoulders scraped the stone, shedding bits of wool from his tunic. He lay there, his breath coming in ragged plumes of steam that coated the roof of his tiny stone sanctuary in frost.
He didn't cry. He didn't have the moisture for it. He just stared into the dark, watching the way the fire in his palms flickered with every heartbeat—a tiny, angry light in a world of endless, indifferent gray.
Day one was over. He was alive, he was broken, and he was the only Thorne left.