The snow had turned to slush beneath their boots—a mix of blood, melted ice, and the acrid stench of demonic corruption.
Kaito wiped his blade clean on the Frost gaint Patriarch's fur, the motion mechanical. His ribs ached. His fingers trembled—not from fear, but from exhaustion. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to not hear the distant screams echoing through the Drakthar woods.
But the world didn't care what he wanted.
"Kaito."
Yuriko's voice was hoarse. She stood over Jiro, her hands pressed to his chest, frost spreading in delicate patterns across his battered armor. Cryostasis. A last-ditch technique to slow internal bleeding.
"He won't last without a healer," she said.
Kael groaned from where he was propped against a tree, his veins still pulsing black. "Dain's out. His Holy energy's poisoned."
Mira cradled her shattered totem, her fingers tracing the broken carvings. The last elemental was gone. "The wind… it's screaming. There are other groups and—they're dying."
Kaito exhaled. The air smelled like iron and burning pine.
"Let's move."
---
They found the first group half a mile northeast.
Or what was left of them.
The snow was churned into crimson mud. A boy—no older than thirteen—lay sprawled in the wreckage, his spear still clutched in rigid fingers. His chest was caved in, ribs jutting like broken spokes. His eyes were open. Frozen.
Not just dead. Flash-frozen from the inside.
Kael's hand twitched. "That's not an elite-ranks work."
A whisper of movement.
Kaito's sword was out before he registered the sound.
A figure stumbled from the treeline—a girl in tattered academy robes, her arm a mangled ruin. She collapsed at their feet, her breath coming in wet, ragged gasps.
"R-run," she choked. "the dragon—"
Then they heard it.
A sound like a glacier cracking in half.
ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAR—
The trees bent under the force of it. Snow slid from branches in cascading sheets. Somewhere deep in the forest, something big was moving.
Yuriko's fingers twitched, getting ready to summon her dagger. "We're leaving. Now."
---
They found two more groups on the retreat.
The first group was a fire mage from the Sunspark Clan and two archers, backs against a frozen boulder as a pack of frost-wolves circled. The mage's flames sputtered weakly—his mana was nearly gone.
While the second group was a lone swordsman dragging an unconscious comrade through the snow, his leg twisted at a sickening angle. Behind him, the trees shook with approaching footsteps.
Kaito didn't hesitate.
"Mira—distract the wolves. Yuriko—freeze the big one's path. Kael, cover Dain."
No arguments. No hesitation.
They moved like a single organism.
Mira's whispered plea to the dying wind sent a gust of snow into the wolves' eyes.
Yuriko's ice erupted in a wall behind the swordsman, cutting off pursuit.
Kael, despite his poisoning, flared his demonic energy—a bluff, but the monsters flinched.
Dain, pale and shaking, managed a single pulse of holy light—just enough to slow the wolves' advance.
Kaito didn't fight.
He herded.
A slash here to redirect a lunge. A kick there to send a monster stumbling into Yuriko's ice spikes. Every motion precise. Every breath calculated.
By the time they reached the camp's outer perimeter, their ragged band had swelled to fourteen survivors.
None of them spoke.
The ones who could still walk carried those who couldn't.
---
Lady Hana met them at the gates.
Her usual calm was gone. Her sleeves were singed. Her left eye was swollen shut.
"General Ryunosuke is in the mountains looking for other groups," she said before Kaito could speak. "We've lost contact with six groups right now."
Kaito didn't waste words. "We fought a commander rank, a Frost Giant Patriarch. It seems he wasn't acting alone. There's a dragon."
Silence.
Then—
"I know."
Lady Hana turned, gesturing to the war table behind her. A map of the Drakthar region lay unfurled, marked with crimson X's where groups had vanished. At the center of it all, near the highest peak, someone had drawn a single symbol:
A dragon's skull, wreathed in frost.
"Emperor-rank," Lady Hana said softly. "The Frostbone Dragon. It's awake. And it's herding the monsters."
Mira made a small, broken sound.
Kael's demonic veins pulsed black.
Yuriko's fingers curled into fists.
Kaito just stared at the map.
Something is starting
Something he never hoped to experience in his lifetime.
War.
Not a training exercise. Not a hunt.
War.
And they were already losing.
---
That night, the current survivors who were able to retreat gathered in the mess hall.
No one ate.
The fire in the hearth spat and crackled, but the cold seeped in anyway—a deep, unshakeable chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
Jiro lay on a cot in the corner, his breathing shallow but steady. Dain sat beside him, his burned hands wrapped in bandages, his holy energy too depleted to heal even himself.
Kael leaned against the wall, his demonic corruption stabilized but not purged. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark.
Mira clutched the remains of her totem, her tears freezing before they could hit the ground.
Yuriko stood by the window, watching the distant mountains.
Kaito sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his sword across his knees.
No one spoke.
No one needed to.
Outside, the wind howled like a dying thing.
Somewhere in the darkness, the dragon waited.
And the snow kept falling.
---
End Chapter 13