Snow fell like ash—lazy at first, then slantwise when the ridge winds remembered their temper. The mountains wore the storm like mail, each black tooth veined with ice runes hammered there by centuries of prayer. Beneath that sky, the world hummed—the Veinweave tugging at stone and skin the way a tide tugs at pilings, a pressure you don't hear so much as carry in the bones.
A boy lay in the drift. Not dead. Not yet. Heat leaked from him in a faint ring that turned frost to wet glass. Two blades lay across his chest like an oath: one pale, its edge singing in a key the ear can't hold; one dark, glass‑black and threaded with silver veins that throbbed like living ore. The steel didn't belong to this place. Neither did he. His breath came shallow, each exhale a ghost that vanished before he could claim it. He tried to remember a name—his own, or anyone's—but the snow pressed harder, smothering thought as easily as warmth. A flicker of something surfaced: a hand reaching, a voice calling from a place he could not place. It slipped away like water through fingers. Only the weight of the blades remained, heavy as memory, louder than silence.
The clouds tore. For an instant the thirty signs burned through the storm—constellations unstitched and pressed into new sigils—and the Veinweave tugged hard enough to steal a breath. He felt it. Not as wonder. As recognition—and it hurt worse than cold.
The signs flared once, as if answering, and were gone behind the storm.
He tried to move. His body refused. The snow pressed harder, whispering its patient lullaby. Sleep, it said. Sleep and be part of the white.
The lull of the storm pressed against him like a mother's hand, coaxing surrender. Yet beneath the weight of snow, something inside him refused. His chest rose in shallow defiance, each breath a spark against the cold. He tried to remember why he carried blades at all—why steel had chosen him—but the answers slipped away. A name hovered at the edge of thought, sharp as a blade's edge, then dulled into silence. He clenched his fingers, but the snow swallowed the gesture whole.
The Veinweave tugged harder, threads brushing his skin like unseen fingers. He felt them pulling, not cruelly, but insistently, as if the world itself wanted to know whether he would rise or vanish. The hum of the weave was louder than the storm, louder than his heartbeat. It whispered of places he had never seen: cities where bells rang without sound, forests that bent their roots to drink from clouds. He did not know how he knew these things. He only knew they were true.
A shadow fell across him.
Boots crunched in the drift. A figure knelt, wrapped in furs the color of dusk, face hidden behind a visor of beaten steel. The figure's breath smoked in the air, slow and steady, like someone who had walked a long way and expected to walk farther.
Gloved hands touched the boy's throat, his wrist, the hollow above his heart. A pause. Then a nod, small and certain.
The figure slid arms beneath him and lifted him as if he weighed no more than the snow itself. The blades clattered against the cuirass and were caught before they fell. One in each hand, the figure held them a moment longer than needed, as if listening to something only steel could say.
The figure's visor caught a shard of lightning, turning it into a cold star. For a moment, Caelum thought the stranger bowed—not to him, but to the blades. The pale sword sang faintly, its voice like frost cracking on glass. The dark one pulsed with a rhythm that matched the storm's heartbeat. Together they seemed less like weapons than witnesses, remembering things he could not.
The rescuer's gloved thumb traced the runes along the hilts, pausing at scars where steel had been reforged. The hum deepened, a resonance that pressed against Caelum's ribs. He wanted to speak, to ask what the swords were, but his mouth found only silence. The figure lingered a moment longer, visor tilted as if listening to voices carried in metal. Then, with deliberate care, the swords were crossed against their back, forming a mark that glowed faintly in the storm light.
The pale blade whispered in frost light, its edge humming like a string plucked in a forgotten song. The dark one pulsed faintly, veins alive, as though it carried a heartbeat not its own. The figure's visor tilted, catching the storm's glow, and for a moment Caelum thought the steel answered—not in words, but in recognition. Whoever this stranger was, they seemed less a rescuer than a witness, someone chosen to carry burdens they did not name.
Then the swords were sheathed across the rescuer's back, and the boy was carried into the storm.
Behind them, the wind scoured the hollow clean. By the time the next gust came, there was no sign anyone had ever lain there—except for a single mark burned into the frost where his body had been: a thread of light, thin as a hair, running in a perfect circle until it closed on itself and vanished.
The mountains kept their silence.
The storm closed its mouth, swallowing tracks and breath alike. Yet in the hush, the Veinweave trembled, threads tugging as if the world itself leaned closer. Above, the thirty signs flared once more behind the clouds, unseen but felt, like eyes pressing through cloth. The silence was not empty. It was expectant.
The storm swallowed their tracks, erasing the hollow where he had lain. Yet the silence that followed was not empty. It was expectant, like a crowd holding its breath before a verdict. Above the clouds, unseen but felt, the thirty signs burned. Their weight pressed down through snow and stone, a gaze that did not blink.
Caelum's body sagged against the rescuer's arms, but his mind caught fragments of vision: a city where bells tolled backward, a river that forgot its own turns, a child staring at thunder that came too late. He did not know why these images came, only that they belonged to him now. The weave had marked him, and the sky had noticed.
The mountains leaned closer, their black teeth veined with runes that glowed faintly in the storm. The wind carried whispers, not words but impressions—fear, awe, hunger. Somewhere deep inside, Caelum felt the world asking a question he could not yet answer.
But the sky watched.