The northern winter rarely offers sunrises. That morning, the sky was a gray blanket without clear light, and the air was so still that even the smoke from the chimneys rose in straight, uncurved columns.
Kevin and Kelvin were in the courtyard before the rest of the apprentices. Not by choice, but because Garron Martrek had woken them with a boot to the ribs.
"Today you will stop beating straw," he growled. "You will go out with us on patrol. You will learn what it means for snow to turn red."
The patrol consisted of six armed men, in addition to the two brothers. Sir Alrik Torren led the group, his blue cloak billowing as he mounted his black horse. They were given short training swords and wooden shields, heavy as anvils for their still-tender arms.
The route took them northeast, skirting the Largfen Forest, where snow covered the roots and the silence was so profound that the crunching of hooves sounded like drumrolls. "A group of bandits has been attacking the caravans," Alrik explained as they moved forward. "They're not simple robbers. They've left corpses... and the corpses had claw marks."
Kevin and Kelvin exchanged a look. They already knew that not all the horrors of the North walked on two legs.
Hours passed. They crossed an icy stream, passed through clearings where the snow glittered like diamond dust, and at midday they entered a narrow pass between hills. It was there that the wind changed.
It wasn't just any wind: it carried with it an acrid stench, like rotting flesh and dried blood.
The horses grew restless. One of the men cursed under his breath.
"Stand guard," Alrik ordered.
Three figures emerged from the pines. At first, Kevin thought they were men hunched by the cold, but as they emerged into the light, they were revealed to be something else: gray skin mottled with black veins, long claws, and yellow eyes like embers. Their mouths were filled with sharp fangs.
"Winter harpies..." one of the soldiers muttered, tensing his spear.
The creatures advanced slowly, their shoulders undulating like a twisted echo of the human stance. Then, in an instant, they surged forward with impossible speed.
The first fell upon a soldier, digging its claws into his neck before he could raise his shield. Blood splattered the snow, turning it a deep red.
Kevin felt a hollowness in his stomach, a vertigo as if the ground had disappeared. Fear gnawed at his bones... but also something else: a pressure in his chest, hot, throbbing, as if a fire had been lit inside.
The second creature lunged at Kelvin. He raised his shield, but the impact knocked him to the ground. The claw came down toward his face, and that's when Kevin screamed.
It wasn't a normal scream: it was a roar that seemed to shake the air. The pressure in his chest exploded, and a blue flash erupted from his hands, like the flash of suppressed lightning.
Energy flowed through the edge of his short sword. Kevin swung it with an instinctive blow, slicing through the creature's arm with an ease impossible with dull steel. The smell of ozone filled the air.
The harpy shrieked, retreating, and something like fear appeared in its yellow eyes.
"Mana!" Alrik shouted. "Its mana has awakened!"
The third creature tried to circle them, but Kelvin, seizing the moment, reared up and drove his sword into the monster's side, deflecting it enough for another soldier to run it through.
When he finished, three inhuman corpses lay in the snow. Silence returned, broken only by the slow trickle of blood spilling onto the ice. Kevin breathed as if he'd been running for days, feeling the warmth of the mana still vibrating in his muscles. "What you did..." Kelvin whispered, with a mixture of admiration and envy. "I need it."
"I don't know how I did it," Kevin replied, looking at his hands. "It just... happened."
Alrik dismounted and approached.
"That doesn't happen by chance. Mana awakens when life or death tightens around your neck. Next time, learn to summon it before your brother is about to lose his mind."
The return to the fortress was silent. Kevin carried with him more than the memory of the battle: he felt that a part of him, hidden until then, had opened, like a door that could never be closed.
And in the distance, as he crossed the last clearing, he thought he saw the spirit of the ice spear among the trees, watching him with a gesture that could have been approval... or warning.