The sky had thinned to glass.
Torian could feel it in his lungs — each breath tighter than the last, like the world itself was holding him in a clenched fist. He lay flat against Skarn's back, cloaked in his fur for warmth, the glider strapped tight against his back. Wind roared past his ears in long, freezing howls.
They had flown north for hours.
Now, the mountains below stretched like jagged teeth — black stone dusted in snow, their slopes glinting with frost that never melted. The sun shone, but weakly. Not golden. Pale, distant. A ghost of light offering no heat.
Torian blinked against the wind, his fingers numbing despite his best efforts to flex them. He looked up, past Skarn's wings as they flared in the air. His beast was slowing. Not from weakness. From cold.
Even Skarn, that impossible creature of heat and shadow and iron muscle, was slowing.
Below them, a strange dip in the mountains began to form — a perfect crescent, as if something enormous had once curled itself into the rock and frozen in place. No trees grew there. No animals moved. Only endless layers of snow and white-blue ice, packed down so tight it glowed.
Skarn began to descend.
Torian didn't argue.
He felt it too — the pull. Not magical. Just survival.
⸻
They landed in silence.
Skarn touched down with a crunch that echoed like thunder in the stillness. The snow here wasn't soft. It had been pounded into glass by centuries of wind and nothingness. Torian slid off his companion's back and nearly lost his footing. His boots struck hard, unyielding ice. His breath fogged instantly.
Skarn stretched his wings briefly, then folded them in with a shudder. His fur puffed outward to trap what heat it could. His golden eyes scanned the crater rim above them — no movement, no threat.
Just endless white.
Torian's jaw ached from the cold. He pulled his cloak tighter around him and looked around.
The hollow stretched wide, perhaps a mile across, enclosed by towering stone walls crusted with layers of frost. The snow underfoot was uneven — not natural. Shaped, almost. Worn down in certain spots. And at the center of the depression was a cluster of jagged, frozen pillars, all curved inward around a mound of ice.
It looked like a nest.
Torian stepped toward it. Skarn followed.
Each step felt heavier.
The Spiral in Torian's chest remained silent. Not dead — just still. It didn't pulse or flicker. It didn't feel threatened. It simply slept.
Like the world around it.
⸻
They passed one of the frost-veined pillars.
It was tall, crooked, half-buried in snow — and marked.
Torian reached out and brushed the surface with his glove.
Symbols. Not language — shapes. Spiral glyphs twisted inward like curling flame and wind locked in ice. No names. No warnings. Just patterns meant to hold memory.
He looked at Skarn.
The beast was staring at the frozen mound at the center.
Torian followed his gaze.
It wasn't just a mound.
It was a structure. A low dome, sunken into the earth, rimmed in frozen metal. A doorway, barely visible beneath sheets of translucent frost, waited like a mouth sealed shut.
Skarn approached it.
Torian joined him.
They stared at it in silence.
Then Torian whispered, "We're not the first to come here."
Skarn exhaled — a long, slow breath that came out as a thick cloud.
And then, without waiting, the beast leaned forward—
And smashed the ice blocking the door with one strike of his clawed forelimb.
⸻
The sound rang across the hollow like a bell.
Shards of crystal ice scattered into the wind.
Behind them, the doorway yawned open.
Darkness waited inside. Cold, deeper than what lay outside — ancient cold, untouched by sun or season.
Torian stood at the threshold.
The Spiral inside him stirred again.
Just once.
A slow, tiny flicker.
Then sleep.
"…It's a tomb," he whispered. "Or a cradle."
Skarn waited beside him.
Torian looked at the ice around the doorway — still faintly glowing, runes etched deep along the seams. Not active. Just lingering.
He took a breath.
And stepped inside.
The cold deepened as they entered.
Not in the way wind deepens, or winter falls. This was older. Still. Not moving. A dead thing left untouched for too long. The frost on the walls wasn't frost — it was embedded, laced with silver veins that pulsed faintly with Spiral etchings, as though someone had carved heat into the stone, and then buried it beneath centuries of ice.
Torian stepped carefully, boots echoing across the frozen floor. His cloak scraped against the walls in places, snagging on jagged ridges of frozen crystal.
Skarn ducked low to fit through the narrowing passage behind him. His wings curled close, the tips twitching slightly as if instinctively recoiling from the unnatural cold. The beast's paws moved slowly now — not from weakness, but respect. As if even Skarn knew this place had been built by something not meant for the living anymore.
The tunnel turned once, sharply, and opened into a vault.
Torian stopped at the threshold.
It was a wide, circular chamber — perfectly round, the ceiling high and arched with ribs of transparent crystal. The floor sloped inward toward the center, where a massive block of ice rose like a sarcophagus from the floor. Around it, the walls were carved in soft spirals and coiling ridges of layered frost.
And within that block of ice—
A creature.
⸻
Torian's breath caught.
It was like nothing he'd ever seen.
Long and lithe, like a serpent, but with legs folded against its sides. Its face resembled a feline—soft yet sharp, with long curved horns arcing back from its skull, like branches of frozen antlers. Its tail curled in a coil around its own body. Its wings, though folded, gleamed beneath the ice like lace spun from stars.
It was Spiral-marked.
A symbol lay emblazoned across its brow — a glowing blue Spiral, buried beneath the layers of ice but still faintly visible.
It looked… asleep.
No — not asleep.
Dead.
But even in death, it radiated grace.
Torian approached slowly. Skarn held back, his head low, eyes locked onto the ice with a stare that was neither fear nor curiosity — but recognition.
"…Do you know it?" Torian whispered.
No answer.
He placed a palm on the ice.
It stung.
The cold shot through his fingers like needles, making him flinch — but he didn't pull away.
His Spiral stirred again.
Once.
Softly.
Like the way someone stirs in the last second of a dream.
And then the creature opened one eye.
Just for a moment.
Blue.
Bright.
Alive.
Torian gasped — stepped back—
And the eye went dark.
Gone.
As if it had never moved at all.
He turned to Skarn.
The beast remained still.
No sound. No twitch.
Had he seen it?
Was it real?
Torian pressed both hands to his chest, over the Spiral, and stepped forward again. He looked at the creature, face to face.
And whispered, "You were like him, weren't you?"
Stillness.
He knelt by the ice.
And curled his fingers beneath his cloak, desperate for heat.
His breath shook.
"I'm not going to survive the night if we stay here."
Skarn lay down at the edge of the chamber, muscles stiff. His breath steamed thick from his nostrils. His wings were tucked so tight they looked like carved obsidian pressed to his ribs.
Torian looked at his hands.
Then slowly raised one.
And focused.
Breathe in.
Think of the forge.
The warmth of Arel's grip.
The village fire.
The torchlight dancing on the river.
Skarn's fur beneath his fingers.
Breathe out.
The Spiral flickered.
Just for a second, a small, golden glow curled in the center of his palm — no flame, no heat, just a single pulse of light.
Then it vanished.
Torian exhaled sharply.
"No—no, come on."
He tried again.
And again.
The fourth time, it held.
A tiny ember.
Like a coal beneath the wind.
He cradled it, cupped both hands around it.
Heat — soft, low — spread outward through his fingers.
Not enough to burn.
Just enough to warm.
He shuffled across the chamber and pressed his hands to Skarn's shoulder, letting the heat seep into the beast's fur.
Skarn shifted slightly.
A low rumble passed through his chest.
Torian leaned against him, trembling from relief, the small ember still glowing between his palms.
"…I can do it," he whispered.
The Spiral pulsed once.
Stronger now.
He curled up beside Skarn as the chamber dimmed. The frost stopped spreading. The cold lost its teeth.
And above them, high in the crystal ceiling, a faint, flickering light appeared.
Not a star.
Not flame.
Just a soft glow — like something watching.
And remembering.
The light overhead pulsed like a heartbeat lost in stone.
Not bright. Not demanding. Just steady — the kind of light that waits instead of calls. It shimmered down through the fractured crystal ceiling, falling across Skarn's slumbering back and the boy curled beside him.
Torian lay against the beast's side, one hand still glowing faintly with that tiny ember of Spiral heat. His fingers twitched occasionally, instinctively trying to hold it, to keep it alive. The flame responded to his thoughts now — not wild, not violent.
Warm.
Steady.
Tamed.
He wasn't fully asleep. Not quite awake either. That soft borderland between the two — where memory and imagination trade places without asking.
He drifted.
And the chamber changed.
⸻
In his dream, the hollow grew vast — the walls expanding into mountains of ice, layered and smooth like the inside of a glacier carved by wind and time. He stood barefoot on the frozen floor, no pain in his feet, no fear in his chest. Just awareness.
He walked alone.
And as he moved, statues emerged from the frost.
Not carved.
Frozen.
Spiral-bearers. Whole. Lifesized. Standing in rows on either side of a great corridor of ice. Men and women and children, flames sealed in their palms, their bodies preserved in perfect stillness — expressions soft, eyes closed, arms wrapped around others.
Protecting them.
A wall of guardians frozen in their final act.
Torian walked between them.
He felt their warmth beneath the frost, not from their bodies, but from what they had done. They had not died screaming. Not all power burned like war.
Some burned like love.
He came to the end of the corridor.
There, on a raised platform, stood a single Spiral-bearer in armor made of woven crystal — back straight, hand raised, fire locked mid-motion in the act of shielding a small creature behind them.
It wasn't Skarn.
But it wasn't human either.
Some beast, spiral-marked.
Torian stared up at them.
And the flame in his hand flared softly.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
He reached out, touched the ice before him.
And the dream ended.
⸻
He awoke slowly.
The chamber hadn't changed.
But something inside him had.
He lifted his hand again, still curled in Skarn's fur.
The Spiral inside his chest responded immediately.
A flicker.
A small flame rose in his palm — steady, calm, controlled.
He smiled faintly.
It didn't hurt.
It didn't roar.
It simply… was.
Warmth spread through his body, not by force, but by will. He knelt beside Skarn and let the flame rest on the beast's shoulder. Skarn shifted in his sleep, breathing deeper.
Outside, snow was falling through a long crack in the ceiling.
Torian stood, watching the flakes drift down like glowing feathers.
They didn't sting.
They didn't freeze.
The heat from his Spiral made a small ring around him — barely visible, a ripple in the air.
He whispered, "I can protect him too."
⸻
They left the hollow at dawn.
The snow had stopped. The sky was clear again — a deep blue dome stretched between peaks. Skarn moved faster now, breath no longer steaming as heavily. Torian rode upright on his back, cloak fastened tight, his glider slung firm across his shoulders.
They didn't speak.
But they didn't need to.
As they climbed the ridge and looked back, the cradle below shimmered in soft light, the frost-veins pulsing quietly through the earth.
Torian raised one hand as if in thanks.
Then they turned north again.
Toward the next mystery.
His Spiral didn't flare.
It didn't scream.
It just burned — low, steady, quiet.
A child's flame.
Alive.
He didn't need fire to fight.
He needed it to live.