She was Kaia Frostfang, last daughter of the Frostfang Clan — a bloodline born beneath the silver boughs of Thornevale's snow-laced canopy, where the roots of the World Tree kissed the ice, and the wind still sang in the tongues of wolves and gods.
Once, she had been a huntress. A sentinel of the groves. Next in line to bear the boneblade of her mother — Nhal'Tara, the Stormcaller — before the fires came, before the Order came, before the grove had bled itself dry.
Now, she was here. Shackled in the bowels of Blackstone Keep.
The smell hit her first. Blood. Sweat. Iron corroded by age and neglect. And beneath it all, the lingering scent of despair, thick and heavy like smoke that had settled into stone. It clung to the lungs, made every breath feel like surrender. Yet Kaia did not bend. Her spine remained straight despite the manacles, her golden eyes half-lidded but ever-watchful.
She sat in silence.
In her lap rested a knife. Small, unassuming, but dangerous — lethal in the same way winter winds cut through skin and marrow. A twin bone-handled blade, polished to a soft, sickly sheen with the oil of old prayers. She had smuggled it past strip-searches, inspections, whiphands, and worse, hidden in a place only a true Frostfang would dare.
Kaia turned it slowly between her fingers, letting the flickering firelight catch on the carvings along the hilt. Words in the tongue of her people, so old that few outside the grove could even pronounce them.
"Blood in silence. Frost in flame."
Not a motto. Not even a warning. A legacy. A promise.
Her mother's voice echoed faintly in memory — a whisper carried on winds from a time before smoke and ash had claimed the sky.
"This world will chain you, Kaia. But chains are nothing to a blizzard. You are not prey. You are the storm that devours."
She blinked, and the memory faded like breath on glass.
Across the corridor, in the cell opposite hers, Eighty-Eight stirred.
That was the number burned into his flesh. A tally. A reduction. Something to file away and forget. But Kaia had watched him. Always. Since the desert. Since the cages. Since the night his shirt tore and she glimpsed the glimmer beneath — a sigil, jagged and violet, hidden under layers of blood, sweat, and soot. It pulsed faintly, rhythmically, like a wound remembering its own pain.
She had never looked away.
He moved like a man who had forgotten how to breathe, yet refused to collapse. Something brittle in him, but not weak — weighted, as if he carried too much that was not his. Too much older than him.
She had watched shadows cling to him even when the torches did not move. She had felt dust tremble around his boots when he gritted his teeth. She had seen guards hesitate near him, not with pity, but with instinct. Beasts recognizing the presence of something other. Something ancient. Something that whispered in bone.
The mark on his chest was not ink. Not a brand made by human hands. It called to something beyond the world. From beneath it, perhaps.
Kaia had heard the old tales. Prophecies, forest myths, whispered around dying campfires, low and careful.
Of the Riftborn — questions wrapped in flesh. Chosen by the wound in the sky. Marked by the end of things.
She did not know his name. He did not know it either.
But she had already named him in her mind. The Riftborn.
Because that was what it felt like, when the mark pulsed. When ash clung stubbornly to his boots. When shadows leaned slightly too far. When the world tilted at the edge of memory. Like a wound reopening.
She did not speak to him. Not yet. Words carried weight here, cost too much. Instead, she watched.
Watched when the guards dragged him back from the slag pits, half-conscious, eyes flickering with something not human.
Watched when his breath shivered in sleep, and the sigil beneath his collarbone glowed faintly, hungry.
Watched when the stone beneath him cracked, hairline fractures spreading like frostbite on ancient granite, and the Overseer had gone pale.
He was not normal.
He was not from here.
He was not safe.
But neither was she.
Born of frost, trained to listen to the world's breath, Kaia felt it now — the rhythm of the Keep, the murmuring walls, the groan of chains, the whispers of stone. The world was holding its breath, waiting.
For him.
And for her.
Not for hope. Not for faith.
For necessity.
Because when he moved — truly moved — she would be there. Knives in both hands. The last of the Frostfangs.
A daughter of blizzard and blood.
The corridors of Blackstone Keep were alive with whispers. Not human voices, but echoes of suffering. Footsteps pounded above her head, dragging chains and shouting orders. Smoke curled from the lower vents, thick and acrid, clinging to her nostrils. Kaia inhaled slowly, letting the acrid heat sharpen her senses. Every shift in the air, every vibration on the stone floors, every clink of iron became a syllable in the language of survival.
She could hear him breathing across the hall. Not words. Not sound. But presence. That pull, subtle but insistent, like the tug of a river against a stone. She had felt it before the sigil revealed itself — the first night in the cages, when he shivered and yet did not break.
A shadow of someone who had once been whole.
Eighty-Eight had been reduced to this number, this husk, yet something vital clung beneath the skin. Something unbroken. Something that stirred the air around him.
Kaia's fingers tightened around the twin bone knife. The carvings caught the firelight and danced in the shadows — letters too old for any man alive, yet alive still.
"Frost in flame," she whispered to herself. A mantra, a prayer, a blade against despair.
And she remembered her mother's words again, louder now: "Chains are nothing to a blizzard. You are the storm that devours."
Yes. She was that storm. And soon, she would unleash it.
The hours stretched like ice. Shadows moved with intent. Guards shuffled past, muttering. The air smelled of sweat and metal and burning oil. Kaia did not flinch. She had learned to be still when the world demanded noise. Still when the Keep demanded pain. Still when every bone in her body ached from confinement.
Her eyes never left him.
When Eighty-Eight rose from the floor to retrieve water, Kaia felt the air shift. Not a gust. Not wind. Something… anticipation.
He did not know he was being watched. He had not yet learned to recognize the weight of her presence, nor the pull of the sigil beneath his skin.
But Kaia knew.
She had always known.
The Riftborn pulsed like a heartbeat through the hallways, vibrating beneath stone and iron. And if the prophecy was true, if the old tales held even a fraction of truth, then when he moved, all else would follow.
Blackstone Keep was vast. But she would follow. Through smoke, fire, blood, or ash.
Because the world was dying.
And she would not let it die without a fight.
The sigil beneath his chest pulsed again, faint, hungry. And Kaia's resolve hardened.
When the Riftborn awakened fully, the storm would come.
And she would be the frost.
Every night, Kaia returned to this vigil. Watching. Listening. Learning. She could not speak to him yet. Could not risk revealing her intentions. But she memorized every twitch of muscle, every glint of violet under his skin, every imperceptible change in shadow.
A guard faltered nearby. Kaia did not flinch. The Riftborn's pulse quivered in the air, subtle, insistent, and she caught it immediately.
Soon, he would awaken.
Soon, the Keep would burn.
And she would be ready.
Because she was Kaia Frostfang. Last daughter. Huntress. Sentinel. Storm.
And if the Rift was calling him… she would make sure the world did not shatter without a fight.