Snow tore across the land in great, sweeping veils, swallowing road and sky alike. The world was reduced to white and shadow, the wind a howling thing that bit through wool and leather without mercy.
Alexis leaned low over his horse's neck, urging the beast faster, cloak snapping behind him like a banner in retreat.
His breath came hard and hot, burning in his chest, but his mind burned hotter still—searing through the cold with a single thought: he had to reach Eldara before the King's loyal hounds made a move that could not be undone.
Every heartbeat was a chance lost, every gust of snow another shroud over what little hope remained.
The koi pendant beneath his tunic thumped against his sternum with each stride, a cold reminder of the man whose name he didn't dare speak aloud in the company of his men.
Hiral.
He could not—would not—let their first meeting in months be across the point of a sword.
The thought of steel between them was worse than the thought of war itself, but the path ahead seemed to be driving them both toward that inevitability.
He would tear the road from beneath fate's feet if it meant avoiding it.
****
Miles away, through the same storm, Hiral pressed forward, hood drawn low against the bite of the wind, frost lacing his lashes until each blink felt weighted.
The high passes screamed with the keening gusts, and snow stung his eyes, but he didn't slow.
Somewhere beyond the curtain of white, the delicate thread he had spent years weaving between warring lands was unraveling—and once it snapped, there would be no mending it.
But another fear rode hard beside that one, quieter but sharper. Alexis. If the Eastern army answered the King's summons with steel, Hiral knew there was every chance he would find himself standing opposite him in the churn of mud and blood.
No words. No chance for truth. Just the brutal language of war, where every stroke could be the last.
They rode through the storm, two figures tracing separate paths toward the same blaze.
****
Snow fell in silence, heavy as ash.
The world was swallowed in white—sky and road, horizon and breath all blurred into the same endless expanse. Alexis leaned forward in the saddle, his horse's hooves muffled under the drifts, each breath burning in his lungs.
It wasn't the cold that hollowed him, but the thought of being too late—too late to stop words that could not be unsaid, steel that once drawn could never be sheathed again.
Somewhere in this same storm, Hiral was riding.
The thought pulsed through him, steady and unshakable, until the snow was no longer snow at all, but mist rising from a dark sea. The gallop beneath him slowed, becoming the gentle sway of a ship's deck beneath his boots.
Moonlight spilled in pale ribbons across the boards, painting the ropes, the rails, and Hiral himself in silver. The sea was unnervingly still, holding the stars in its black mirror too perfectly, as though a single breath could shatter them.
Hiral stood at the bow, wind threading through his hair like a lover's hand. His gaze was fixed on the horizon, a look Alexis knew too well—the one that saw beauty as a warning, stillness as the breath before a storm.
Alexis stepped closer, his footfalls soft against the wood. "Couldn't sleep?"
"The sea's too calm," Hiral murmured, voice low enough that it seemed meant for the water as much as for him. "When it's like this, it's not resting. It's waiting."
"For what?"
"For the break."
The words settled like ice against Alexis's ribs. He wanted to close the distance between them, to let the space fill with warmth, but the way Hiral's eyes caught the moonlight—half-shadow, half-fire—held him still.
"Did you ever ponder," Hiral began, then paused, and added, "about when the choice isn't between good and bad—only between which regret you can live with?"
The question lingered, but Alexis had no answer.
His silence felt as fragile as the sea's glass surface.
Then the silver fractured.
The hush of the ocean became the tearing howl of the wind.
The sway of the deck became the jarring rhythm of hooves pounding through snow.
He was back in the saddle, frost stinging his lashes.
And somewhere ahead, Hiral's horse was a shadow cutting through the same storm.
For Hiral, the memory clung not as comfort, but as warning. He remembered the stillness before the break, the way the sea had looked ready to swallow moon and man alike.
And beneath that warning, there was something quieter—an ache that wished the one he raced to reach would not be the one he'd have to stand against.
They rode toward the same fire, separated by miles and a thousand unspoken truths.
Neither could see the other, yet the same desperation lashed at their heels, the same unspoken vow in their hearts: stop this before it begins, before the first spark turns the snow to red—and before the man they could not bear to kill becomes the enemy they cannot avoid.
And the prayer in both their chests was the same—
Let it not be you I see when the snow clears.