Skeldra doesn't break you. It files you down, slowly, patiently, until your edges are gone and you can't tell whether the cold is eating you alive or you simply have nothing left to keep warm.
The Port of Drakfjord clings to the shoreline like a black scab on a salted wound. The roofs sit low, as if the houses are trying to make themselves small enough to avoid drawing the sky's attention. The walls drink dampness. The nets, stiff with frost, hang like dead nerves. Hearth smoke is thin and stubborn, and the air carries that stink of kelp and rancid fish that the wind keeps stirring up… but it isn't the smell that stays. It's the taste—a metallic point at the back of the throat, as though winter keeps a blade under its tongue.
Kayron lived where the houses ended.
At the edge. In the blind spot. Where snow decays into mud before turning back into snow, where no one stops out of kindness, where people come close only when they need to take. Drakfjord didn't strike often. It preferred a violence that left no bruises on knuckles—a violence made of averted eyes, swallowed words, and careful forgetting. It lets you exist just enough for humiliation to keep doing its work.
At the market, men turned their heads away with icy politeness. Near the nets, women curled their fingers around the hemp as if his presence could stain the fiber. Children watched, copied, then forgot they had watched. And sometimes, in a muffled laugh, a word would drop.
"Raid bastard."
Kayron didn't need an explanation. His blood carried the trace of a raider who'd come from the sea, left too fast to be punished, stayed long enough to make a child. Drakfjord had found a target—and a target is all resentment needs.
Yet there was a second target, quieter, more dangerous, a name no one dared to say in front of a fire.
Eira.
A healer by day.
A mage by night, in whispers.
She had a beauty that asked for nothing—too calm for Skeldra, too whole for a port where everything is bartered. Hair a deep violet, as if night had clung to her. Eyes violet too, too light, too present, sometimes slightly off, as though her gaze slid behind the room toward somewhere that did not belong to Drakfjord. It wasn't a pose. It was a crack. And Kayron, more than anyone, felt what followed her: at times the air seemed to settle around her, a gentle, almost courteous pressure, like an invisible hand smoothing a piece of the world back into place.
Eira healed with plants. Roots, salves, infusions. But the people who knocked at her door didn't pay for the scent of herbs. They came for mana—that invisible heat she threaded from her fingers into bodies, pushing death back one step, with no theater, no lightning, no sign in the sky.
Kayron saw the cost of miracles.
After a treatment, Eira would lose a little color. Her breathing would hitch like a rope pulled too tight. Her fingers would tremble—barely, just enough for a son to notice. And sometimes there came that strange instant when the air felt crumpled, as though someone had laid a palm over the cabin from very far above.
Kayron hadn't been born to her. He had been chosen.
He kept his memories in splinters: snow too high, the smell of iron, a muffled scream, then impossible warmth, arms shaking, a cloak thrown over his skin, a phrase whispered near his ear—plain, unpoetic, a rope cast to a drowning child.
"Shh. I've got you."
Eira couldn't lie for long. One day, when he was old enough to be cut by the village's words, she set the truth in front of him like a blade laid on a table.
"I found you after a raid. You were alone. You were crying. No one came back."
He asked why. Not politely. With the dry anger of children who have already had too much taken from them.
"Why me."
Eira answered without detour.
"Because you were breathing. Because I couldn't leave you there."
Her hand rested on Kayron's cheek. That simple touch carried more weight than any story. A place—not in the village, but in someone.
"You're my son."
He had tried to convince himself he didn't need it. Drakfjord taught you early how to pretend.
One night, he was seven. A nasty cut split his hand open. He bit his lip so he wouldn't cry. Eira sat him by the fire and told him to look at her. The boiling infusion made him flinch—then came that vibration, that brief hush in the air, and the pain slid back, driven away with quiet authority.
"What did you do?" he breathed.
"A little mana."
"Magic."
Eira nodded.
Kayron swallowed, then let the question fall from his mouth like a stone he'd been holding in his throat.
"Why don't they like us."
Eira stopped. The silence that followed had nothing to do with the cold.
"Because they're afraid."
"Of you."
"Of what I am. Of what you became in their eyes before you ever spoke."
"I'm nobody."
Eira squeezed his hand.
"You're my son. Don't hate yourself. Don't hand yourself over to their gaze."
He said it was easy to say. Eira told him it was harder than anything. He grew up on those words like on nails. They kept him standing. They hurt at the same time.
The village went on.
By day, it erased them.
By night, it knocked at their door.
A fever. A wound. A pain. They came with thin voices and slippery eyes. Eira healed. They left. The next day, doors went back to being doors.
Kayron learned to hate without choosing it. Loneliness sat inside him, made room for itself, and resentment lay down there. And winter began to take Eira.
Not with a howl. With a cough.
A dry cough in the middle of the night. Kayron jolted upright as if a blade had brushed the back of his neck. Eira was sitting up, one hand on her chest.
"I'm fine," she whispered.
"No."
"You worry too much."
"I know you."
The next day she tried to stand. Her legs trembled. Her breath broke. Kayron caught her and carried her to bed as if strength could push time back.
"You're resting."
"Kayron."
"You're resting."
The month that followed became a winter inside the cabin.
Infusions, roots, compresses. A fire kept alive with torn nails. A burning forehead under his palms. Breath listened to like a thread stretched over a drop. Sleep in slices. Hunger pushed aside. Life reduced to Eira's rhythm. And then hate—huge, pointed at everything that knocked on their door.
The village kept coming.
Not with salt. Not with a blanket. Not with a word.
With requests.
Eira, even bedridden, tried to sit up whenever a voice passed beyond the door. Kayron stopped her. He said no. He said no like turning a lock.
One morning, a man arrived with a cut on his arm—nothing urgent—only that calm arrogance of people who think the world owes them.
"She here?"
"She's in bed."
"Two minutes."
"No."
The man laughed.
"It's for the community."
The word hurt like a tooth in a wound.
Kayron grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the doorframe. The wood cracked.
"Go ask the community for a tear," Kayron murmured. "Go ask for a blanket. Go ask for a thank you."
The man spat.
"Bastard."
Kayron hit him. Once. Clean. Precise.
"Get out."
The blood on the snow looked too alive.
That evening, Eira called him over.
"Come."
Kayron sat beside her. Tried to be solid. Failed.
"You hit someone."
"He deserved it."
Eira sighed. That fragile breath split Kayron in two.
"I know."
Her hand rested on his cheek.
"You protected me."
"I don't want to protect you," he whispered. "I want to keep you."
Eira smiled faintly.
"You're already keeping me."
Kayron felt his eyes burn.
"I'm going to lose you."
Eira took his hand.
"Repeat the promise."
"You chose me."
"And."
"And you'll choose me until your last breath."
Eira inhaled slowly, as if those words kept her here a moment longer.
"I choose you again," she whispered. "Even if I'm leaving."
Kayron shook his head.
"No."
Eira squeezed his fingers.
"I'm not abandoning you. I'm giving you to the world."
Kayron spat, broken.
"The world doesn't want me."
Eira let out a weak laugh.
"Then you teach it."
Kayron cried, without dignity, like a son—because a son who loves can't do better.
"I don't know how to do it like you."
"You'll do it your way."
He pressed his forehead to her hand.
"I'm scared."
Eira stroked his hair.
"Me too."
At the next dawn, Kayron caught her. Hand on her chest, mana drawn from inside, the air trembling, heat unfolding. Eira's face hollowed at the same time, as if every second bought cost a year.
"No."
"Just a little."
"You'll kill yourself."
Eira closed her eyes. A tear slipped free.
"I'm tired."
Kayron seized her wrist and forced the magic to stop.
"You're resting. I'll handle the rest."
Eira looked at him for a long time.
"Promise me you'll try."
Kayron clenched his teeth.
"I'll try."
Skeldra took her anyway.
***
Kayron woke to a silence that wasn't morning.
The air still carried the smell of fire, but there was no crackle—only that hollow quiet, the sense that the cabin was holding its breath, not from fear, but from waiting.
"Mom."
He crossed the room barefoot, not feeling the frozen boards. Fear had already taken up all the space.
Eira was sitting against the wall, as if she'd stopped in the middle of a sentence. Violet eyes open. Too open. Dark-violet hair hanging in heavy strands. On her lashes, a veil of frost—almost tender, the world's last politeness.
Kayron knelt, pressed his palm to her cheek.
Cold.
A cold with no return.
"Breathe," he whispered. "Please. Breathe."
Nothing.
He shook her shoulder, gently, then harder.
"No. No. No."
He pulled her into his arms.
He held her and, for an instant, believed love would be enough—that he could steal a breath from death the way he stole wood for the fire. Tears came hot and thick. His face pressed against her. The world lost its edges.
The tears fell onto her skin.
They vanished.
Not by running down—by erasing, as if the air around them had become too hot.
He didn't notice the cloth beginning to char. Didn't notice the first crackle. Smoke was already reaching the ceiling.
Because he was still holding on.
Because he was holding nothing.
The fire took.
Cloth, blanket, bed. Flames climbed the walls as if they knew the way. The cabin became an open mouth—ardent, hungry—and the light no longer revealed, it swallowed. In that orange-white glare, Kayron saw something absurd: the bone needle Eira used for stitching, stuck in the wood beside the bed, standing straight—untouched, unblackened—like the fire refused to acknowledge it.
Eira changed.
Not flesh blackening. Not a body burning away.
A dissolution.
A violet glow slipped out of her, thin, almost modest, like a breath held too long. Filaments of energy slid from her chest, circled Kayron's arms once—cold and hot at the same time. An absurd sensation ran through him: the pressure of an extra hand on his shoulders, not human, something old, a gesture of possession or farewell.
Then the filaments rose, seized by an unseen elsewhere. The exact moment the violet light left the room, a sound snapped—sharp and clean, not a crackle, more like a lock turning inside the world.
Kayron didn't understand. He screamed.
Outside, the village came running.
"Fire!"
"Water!"
The door flew open. Shapes. Faces eaten by light. Fear, yes—then that other look, the look of people who count even when they should be trembling.
Jorren stepped halfway in. His eyes didn't catch on Kayron. They caught on the table, the herb sachets, the notes. He saw the small violet vial. Want tightened his face.
"Save this," he shouted. "It's valuable!"
Outside, a nervous laugh.
"And the witch?"
Jorren shrugged.
"She's dead. Mana sells."
The sentence slid into Kayron like a clean blade.
Even dead, they came to take.
Even burning, they came to take.
Kayron stumbled out. Arms empty. Face wet with tears that wouldn't fall anymore. His eyes lit red—nothing to do with the blaze's reflection, something closer, something private.
Villagers stepped back.
"What did you do?"
"Curse—"
"It was her—"
Kayron looked at them. In that second, the whole month returned. Requests. Closed doors. Silence. A cabin siphoned like a barrel. Then this last scene: a man thinking of profit over a warm body.
Something inside him broke.
The fire found an exit.
Kayron raised his hand. Not like a mage. Like a drowning boy reaching for air.
Flames erupted.
A wave.
The burning breath swallowed screams, clung to coats, climbed hair. Shapes became trembling shadows, then stopped. People ran. The fire ran faster. And Kayron moved through it without direction, without thought, as if his grief had taken a body and was walking for him.
The port caught in a chain. Roofs. Nets. Palisades. Smoke rose thick. The world shrank to orange light, falling shapes, sounds that died out.
Kayron stumbled, mouth open on a name that couldn't find its way out, and the smoke entered in its place.
His vision narrowed.
Nothing.
When he woke, the day was gray.
Wind carried the smell of burned wood mixed with salt. Snow, dirtied with ash, grated under his fingers. Kayron pushed himself upright, swaying.
The Port of Drakfjord no longer existed.
Collapsed frames. Black walls. Nets burned stiff, hanging like dead webs. Bodies burned until they weren't bodies anymore, only shapes made indistinguishable from debris.
Silence.
Not peace. An ending.
Kayron stood motionless, throat dry, hands shaking. Under his ribs, an ember still slept.
A gust lifted ash. In the gray dust, a violet flicker passed—brief. And the impression returned, sharper, as if the air, at the exact spot where that violet had slipped through, held a mark. The air stayed heavier there, like an imprint pressed into a skin you couldn't see.
Kayron opened his mouth.
No sound came.
Then he cried. This time, some tears fell—heavy—onto the snow, leaving two dark stains in a world turned to ash.
He didn't know if he had avenged Eira.
He only knew he had crossed something.
And that return wasn't a direction—only a story you tell people who haven't burned yet.