Primal. Guttural. Fear.

I was staring at the Black Stag—the herald of unrelenting winter, in all its terrifying majesty.

Its antlers spanned wider than my entire body, a twisted forest of jagged bone and ice that shimmered with a malevolent light. The fur was like coarse ash, matte black save for patches of rotting white down that hung like torn silks, crusted with glacial thorns. Every step it took cracked the frozen marble of the library's ancient floor, and each breath steamed out in waves that turned the air brittle.

It wasn't just cold—it was the kind of cold that took memory, that froze sound, that made the heart forget how to beat.

I didn't speak.

I didn't blink.

Neither did Falias, who was crouched beside me in the branching hallway, barely a breath away. Her mana was drawn so tight I could feel the taut wire in the air. We were wound together in that moment, shoulder to shoulder, hiding in a brittle corridor of ice-slicked shelves.

I prayed—gods, I prayed—to any Dominus that would listen. To Demeterra, though she had no sway here. To the Archons. To whatever Sovereign might still remember a boy with a pen and a dream.

Let it pass. Just let it pass.

We didn't dare exhale. Not truly.

The Black Stag moved slowly down the corridor. Its hooves left no tracks, but the mana it exhaled curdled the air. Shelves behind it cracked and split, as if the books themselves could not withstand its presence. Even the soul of this place, of Danatallion's Halls, seemed to be shrinking back from the stag's path.

Then—

It stopped.

Its massive antlers tilted—an imperceptible motion, but enough to make the ancient shelves tremble under its gaze. It sniffed. Once. Twice.

I swore I could hear its thoughts: Something lives.

Its head turned, ever so slightly, toward our hallway.

Falias's grip on my hand tightened until the bones ached. My own heart stuttered, and the whisper of my Arte curled defensively against my skin, utterly useless. The books around us were still dead. Still too frozen to obey my call.

Don't find us. Don't find us. Don't—

A sound. Tiny. Deliberate.

A clatter in the opposite hall, from far behind the Stag.

Falias's eyes widened. She didn't make the sound. Neither did I.

Something else is here.

The Stag's ears flicked. It turned. Its hooves lifted from the floor in a slow, floating step, and it glided, as if gravity was beneath its notice, toward the noise.

We waited until the sound of its movement was gone.

We waited longer still.

Then—only then—did Falias move. She exhaled like she'd been drowning.

We waited longer still.

The silence was too vast, too heavy to trust. Not just quiet—blank. As if the world itself had stopped listening.

Then—only then—did Falias move.

She exhaled like she'd been drowning for hours, one hand braced against the frost-laced shelf, the other still gripped tight around her coat. I turned to her, voice low but steady.

"Breathe," I said.

I tried to make it sound like a suggestion, maybe even a command, but the way my own chest shuddered with the inhale made the word sound more like a plea. I exhaled hard, hoping it would lend weight to my words. It didn't.

"So… you have that key, right?"

"I…" She staggered slightly, then steadied herself against the wall. Her breath came in thin clouds, each one smaller than the last, more erratic. Like her lungs weren't sure if they were allowed to work again.

"I do," she finally whispered.

When she looked up, the hood of her cloak fell back. It had slipped down during our flight and the stillness revealed something I hadn't noticed in our shared panic—her eyes.

I froze, again—but not from fear this time.

They were brilliant. Shattered stained glass held together by intention alone. Each iris flickered like a mosaic of ancient temples seen through cathedral windows, each fragment glowing with stories untold. No single color dominated them; instead, they shimmered with hundreds of impossible hues, dancing like trapped sunsets behind stormglass.

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And her hair—soft blue, threaded with frost. Not dyed. Not styled. Just natural, like it had grown from glacier-light itself. Moon-kissed and wind-woven. It fell over her shoulders like a curtain of river ice.

Beautiful didn't even start to cover it.

Most High Soul Realm ascendants had some presence, some grace. The body, after all, refines itself to hold power. But Falias… she was beyond that. She wasn't shaped by her Soul Realm—she had shaped it to match her.

I was enchanted. Entranced, even. Her presence pulled at me like an unsung lullaby. The kind you remember from childhood but can't name.

Then I noticed the scales.

Dozens of them, patterned subtly into the collar of her cloak, woven like jeweled fragments. Not just ornamentation—heritage. My eyes widened.

Any child who read stories would know what those scales were. They are unmistakable.

A half-dragon.

It made sense now, the pull I felt. The faint heartbeat of recognition in my soul, the way the mana twisted around her like worship. She was born of something much older than time, and much more fickle.

I cleared my throat and looked away.

"Sorry," I muttered, shaking the stardust off my tongue. "You were saying?"

Falias didn't scold. Didn't tease. She only gave me a quiet, patient smile. Small but knowing. The kind people wear when they've seen someone else's mask falter—not in weakness, but in recognition. She'd seen something in me, and she wasn't going to press it. Not yet.

"I said I have the key," she repeated gently, folding her hands in front of her. "But I fear that it won't do anything. Not at this stage. We can't hide and hunker ourselves down. Not here. Not anymore."

Her voice was gentle, somber, but carried the clarity of someone who had already grieved whatever comfort she might have once clung to.

I glanced down the frozen corridor, back toward the narrow corner we had been hiding in. The black stag was gone. Not far, I suspected. But enough that we could breathe again.

"So what are our ways forward?" I asked, keeping my voice low. My throat still ached from the cold, and even words felt like they might freeze mid-air.

She looked at me.

Really looked.

Her stained-glass eyes bored into mine, refracting the meager light of the werelamps into constellations I didn't recognize. Gone was the calm serenity. Her expression turned fierce—stern enough that I felt the cold slacken under the heat of it.

"We either burn this library down to thaw winter…" she said, her words quiet but thunderous.

"Or we kill winter itself."

The statement lingered like a flare in the dark.

I blinked. Once. Twice.

"Right," I said after a breath. "Of course. Kill winter. Makes sense."

Falias raised an eyebrow.

"Do you always use humor when faced with impossible odds?" she asked.

"Yes," I said instantly. "It's either that or scream until my throat bleeds."

She didn't smile at that. Not this time. Instead, she turned back toward the corridor, her breath blooming in soft white clouds. One of her hands drifted to the book she kept at her hip—a heavy, frostbitten tome marked with runes that were more carved than inked.

"I'm sorry I pulled you into this," she said after a long pause. "This tale… it was meant to stay sealed. I never expected a contract bearer to be summoned directly into a broken narrative."

"I wasn't summoned," I replied. "At least, I don't think I was. There wasn't a Gate. Just… cold. A pulse of it. Like something whispered into the roots of the world and I followed the echo."

She turned back to me, her gaze narrowing. "That shouldn't be possible."

"Yeah, well, I'm full of surprises," I muttered. "Ask my contracted spirit."

I wasn't sure if I meant it as a joke or not. Lumvis wasn't here. Not in this frozen hell. I couldn't feel him at all. My soul's boundaries felt like they'd been frozen over—still present, but dulled. Muted.

I shivered, more from the thought than the cold.

Falias stepped closer.

"We need to reach the Hearth Hall," she said. "It's the only place left where the Tale might still be unwritten. A blank chapter. A chance to seize narrative momentum."

"Right," I said. "And I assume it's not just a few halls down?"

"Deep," she said. "Deep beyond the Archives of Unspoken Frost, past the Scriptorium of Lost Fires. At the heart of what once was Danatallion's warmth."

"And what stands in our way?"

Falias paused. "Everything that forgot how to be warm."

I grimaced. "You have a talent for these phrases, you know that?"

"They're not mine," she replied. "They're the Tale's. I've been inside it too long. The metaphors start living in your bones."

I believed her.

She held out her hand.

"Come," she said. "If we stay still too long, we'll become part of the page."

I took her hand. It was colder than it should have been—but steady. And warm enough that I could believe in it.

We began walking.

The library stretched around us, an endless cathedral of frost and silence. The shelves were monuments of knowledge entombed in ice. Every step sent little cracks spidering through the frost-covered floor, and every breath felt like drawing in pieces of shattered glass.

As we moved, I began to understand the kind of story we were inside.

This wasn't just about ice.

This was about forgetting.

Forgetting warmth. Forgetting movement. Forgetting the past and the future. All that remained was stillness. Cold, slow, certain stillness. That was the kind of death this tale wanted.

A death that looked like peace.

I glanced at Falias. She moved like someone who had walked these halls far too long. Her steps were precise. Her eyes were alert. But the frost clung to her all the same. If we didn't act fast, I could see her becoming another archivist entombed in ice, her beautiful stained-glass eyes dimmed forever.

I couldn't let that happen.

We passed a room where the snow had risen to the ceiling. Books were frozen mid-air, like they'd been caught in the middle of a gravity shift and flash-frozen before falling. Some of them whispered to us—actual voices murmuring half-spoken lines in languages I didn't know but instinctively feared.

"Don't listen to the open ones," Falias warned. "The frozen books might be inert, but the open ones… they're still active. They're feeding."

I didn't ask what they were feeding on.

Instead, I kept my focus forward.

On the ember-light that glowed faintly in the spine of The Memory of Flame still tucked under my arm.

"You said we needed to burn something. To rekindle the narrative. What does that mean?" I asked.

Falias hesitated.

"We may…we may have to kill more of Winter's Dolls, that way they fully become the White Stag's firewood."

I stared at her.

"Meaning?"

She once again bore her beautiful eyes into mine. A tear quickly froze on her cheek.

"More of my friends need to die."

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