The journey south-west began under a vast, uncaring sky. The ravine fell away behind them, swallowing the small cairn that marked Tora's grave, leaving only the immense, snow-choked wilderness ahead. Each step was an effort, their boots sinking into drifts, the biting wind relentlessly scouring exposed skin. Flareon kept the spear ready, constantly scanning the surrounding peaks and ridges, while Seren navigated, her Farseer senses straining to discern the most passable route through the treacherous terrain.
Days blurred into a monotonous cycle of walking, exhaustion, and gnawing cold. They spoke little, the silence heavy with unspoken grief and the sheer physical effort of survival. The slopes were steep, the footing often precarious on loose scree hidden beneath the snow. Flareon's muscles screamed in protest, and Seren moved with a weary determination, her usual shyness replaced by a grim focus.
What struck them both was the silence. No sign of Dravokh patrols. No distant wingbeats of Pyremaws. The mountains seemed unnervingly empty, devoid even of the usual wildlife they might have expected. It was as if the terrifying events back at the prison cavern, the colossal violet-eyed creature and the subsequent destructive energy beams, had wiped the area clean or sent its inhabitants fleeing in terror.
"They're gone."
Flareon muttered one freezing afternoon, huddled with Seren behind a wind-whipped outcrop of rock, trying to catch their breath.
"Or hiding. That... thing... it scared them senseless."
Seren nodded, pulling her thin travelling cloak tighter around herself.
"Whatever it was, its presence fundamentally altered the local ecosystem, perhaps even the behaviour patterns of the Dravokh. The energy signatures were unlike anything recorded. It's... unsettling."
She shivered, and Flareon knew it wasn't just from the cold. The memory of those silent, erasing beams haunted them both.
Survival became their sole focus. Hunger gnawed constantly. The initial shock and adrenaline had worn off, leaving behind aching bodies and depleted reserves. Flareon found, to his immense relief, that the faint ember of his magic had slowly, painstakingly, begun to recover. It was nowhere near his full strength, summoning even a small fireball still left him winded and shaky, but it was there.
One evening, as dusk painted the icy peaks in shades of bruised purple, Flareon spotted movement against the white expanse, a pair of snow hares, their fur thick camouflage against the drifts. Gritting his teeth against the familiar draining sensation, he focused, channeling the small spark within him. A tiny, precise lance of heat shot forward, striking one of the hares cleanly. It dropped silently onto the snow. The other bolted instantly.
It wasn't a display of power, but a carefully controlled application of his limited resources. He retrieved the small creature, its warmth a stark contrast to the surrounding cold. That night, they found shelter in a shallow cave, barely more than an overhang, but enough to shield them from the worst of the relentless wind.
Gathering dry moss and twigs scraped from beneath the snow took time and numb fingers. Flareon used another precious spark to ignite the tinder. They carefully skinned the hare, the process grim but necessary. Seren, surprisingly practical, showed Flareon how to render the small amount of fat over the struggling flames. Dripped onto the moss, it helped sustain the fire, providing a small pocket of warmth and light in the vast darkness. They roasted the meagre meat on sharpened sticks, the smell sharp and welcome in the frigid air. It wasn't much, but it was hot food, fuel for their exhausted bodies.
On subsequent days, Seren's knowledge proved invaluable. Her Farseer eyes, trained for observation, spotted patches of tough, grey-green lichen clinging stubbornly to rocks swept bare by the wind.
"Edible, but only just. And requires preparation."
She pronounced, her voice flat with weariness.
They learned the laborious process: gathering the brittle lichen, soaking it for hours in melted snow collected in a hollowed-out rock, changing the water frequently to leach out the bitterness. Even then, the resulting fibrous mush tasted like damp rock and despair. But it filled their bellies, providing some minimal sustenance when hunting failed.
They huddled together in freezing caves at night, the small fires fueled by rendered fat or scavenged wood offering scant protection against the deep chill. Flareon would often wake to find Seren watching the entrance, her Farseer eyes scanning the darkness, or huddled over her notes, sketching maps from memory or analyzing imaginary energy patterns on her data-slate, now long dead from lack of power, but the habit ingrained.
The monotony of the trek was broken only by the constant, gnawing cold and the sheer effort of placing one foot in front of the other. They navigated treacherous scree slopes, traversed windswept ridges where the air felt thin as glass, and pushed through deep drifts that stole their breath and energy. Starbreach remained an unseen, almost mythical destination somewhere beyond the seemingly endless expanse of white and grey.
One afternoon, while crossing a relatively flat, rocky plateau swept clean of snow by the relentless wind, Seren stopped abruptly. She knelt, her attention captured by a peculiar rock formation, a cluster of dark, glassy stones embedded within the lighter granite, arranged in an unusually geometric pattern. She tilted her head, her Farseer eyes narrowing, tracing the lines with a gloved finger, completely absorbed.
Flareon, trudging a few paces ahead, stopped when he realized she wasn't following. He turned, irritation tightening his features.
"Seren! What is it now?"
His voice was sharp, amplified by the wind and his own frayed nerves.
"We don't have time for geological surveys! Every moment we waste out here is another chance for something to find us, or for us to freeze solid!"
Seren looked up, startled out of her concentration. Her cheeks flushed slightly beneath the grime and windburn. She gestured towards the rocks.
"It's just... the crystallization pattern. It's anomalous for this type of metamorphic rock. And the energy signature... faint, but unusual. Almost like..."
"Like rocks!"
Flareon snapped, gesturing impatiently towards the south-west.
"They're rocks! They're not going to magically show us the way to Starbreach or keep us warm! Can we please just keep moving?"
His frustration wasn't entirely directed at her; it was born of fear, exhaustion, and the crushing weight of their predicament, but it lashed out at the easiest target.
Seren flinched slightly at his tone. She quickly stood up, brushing loose grit from her knees. She looked down at the intriguing stones for a moment longer, then back at Flareon's impatient face.
"You're right."
She said softly, her voice barely audible over the wind.
"I'm sorry."
...
The flickering light of their meager fire cast dancing shadows across the rough stone walls of the cave. Outside, the wind howled, a constant reminder of the vast, frozen wilderness surrounding their temporary refuge. Flareon sat sharpening the point of his spear with a smooth stone, the repetitive scraping sound a small point of focus in the oppressive silence. Seren, huddled closer to the weak warmth, was meticulously sorting through the few remaining scraps of leathery lichen, trying to determine if any were salvageable for their next meager meal.
Her hand brushed against something smooth and cool, tucked deep within a narrow crevice near the base of the cave wall, almost hidden by shadow. Curious, she reached deeper, her fingers closing around a flat, rectangular object. Pulling it free, she held it closer to the firelight.
It was a tablet, perhaps the size of her hand, crafted from a metal she didn't recognize. It was ancient, the edges worn smooth by time, yet the surface possessed an unnatural, almost liquid sheen, reflecting the firelight with a strange, deep luster, unlike Aetherium or any common alloy. Intricate symbols were etched across its surface, not letters or runes she knew, but complex geometric patterns interwoven with flowing, almost organic lines. They seemed to shift subtly in the flickering light, playing tricks on the eye. It felt cool and heavy in her palm.
"Flareon..."
She murmured, fascinated, turning the tablet over.
"Look at this."
Flareon glanced up from his spear, his brow furrowed in concentration. He saw the tablet in her hands, saw the way the firelight caught its strange surface. He sighed, a gust of pure exasperation.
"What now, Seren? Another fascinating rock? A piece of ancient Dravokh scrap metal?"
He didn't even try to hide the biting edge in his voice.
"Honestly, can we focus? We need to plan our route for tomorrow, conserve the firewood, not get distracted by every shiny pebble we stumble across. Starbreach isn't getting any closer while you're deciphering cave graffiti."
Seren recoiled as if struck. His sharp words, piled onto the days of aching muscles, gnawing hunger, constant fear, and the raw grief for Tora, finally broke through her carefully maintained composure. The tablet felt suddenly heavy, meaningless. She slammed it down onto the cave floor with a sharp metallic clack.
"Cave graffiti?"
She echoed, her voice trembling, not with fear this time, but with tightly controlled fury. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the sharp protest from her legs.
"Is that all you see? Is that all you think I do? Stop to look at rocks?"
She glared at him, her Farseer eyes, usually wide with observation or nervousness, now narrowed, blazing with unshed tears and simmering resentment.
"Do you think I want to stop? Do you think I enjoy pausing every few hours to 'examine lichen' or 'study crystallization patterns'?"
Flareon looked up, taken aback by her sudden vehemence. He opened his mouth to retort, but she cut him off.
"My legs hurt, Flareon!"
The words burst out, raw and ragged.
"Every step feels like walking on broken glass! That fall down the ravine... I twisted something. Badly. But I kept going, didn't I? Because we have to keep going! Because you get impatient!"
She gestured wildly, tears finally spilling over, tracing clean paths through the grime on her cheeks.
"So yes, sometimes I stop! Sometimes I pretend to look at a rock or a bug because it gives me a reason, just for a moment, to not put weight on my leg! Because I didn't want you to know! I didn't want to be a burden! I didn't want you shouting at me because I was slowing us down again!"
Her voice cracked, the anger dissolving into heartbroken exhaustion. She turned abruptly, stumbling towards the cave entrance, away from the firelight, away from his stunned silence. She sank down onto the cold stone just inside the opening, wrapping her arms around her knees, her back to him.
The wind howled outside, whipping stray strands of hair across her face. She stared out into the blackness, biting her lip hard to stifle the sobs shaking her small frame. She wouldn't let him hear. She just needed a moment, a moment where the pain wasn't just physical, but something she could finally, silently, acknowledge. The cold stone bit into her legs, a familiar ache now overlaid with the sharper throb of her injury, and the deeper, colder ache of loneliness and despair.
Flareon remained frozen for a long moment, Seren's raw words echoing in the small cave, mingling with the mournful howl of the wind outside. The spear felt heavy and useless in his hand. He stared at her retreating back, the small, trembling figure silhouetted against the cave entrance, and a wave of shame washed over him, cold and sharp as the Frostfang air. Her pain, her exhaustion, her fear... he'd seen it, hadn't he? But he'd dismissed it, blinded by his own frustration and impatience.
He looked down at the metallic tablet lying where she'd thrown it on the dusty floor. Slowly, he knelt and picked it up. The strange, cool metal felt heavy in his palm. He turned it over, letting the weak firelight play across the intricate, shifting symbols. It was strange. Deeply strange. Not Dravokh work, certainly. Too precise, too alien. The metal itself seemed to absorb the light in an unsettling way. He traced one of the swirling geometric lines with a finger.
"It is... unusual."
He admitted quietly, his voice lacking its usual sharp edge. He didn't look directly at Seren's back, still studying the tablet.
"The alloy... I've never encountered anything like it. Not even in Starbreach's foundries."
He paused, waiting for a response, but only the wind answered. He glanced towards the entrance. Seren hadn't moved, still huddled with her back to him, staring out into the darkness.
He cleared his throat, the sound awkward in the tense silence.
"We can stay here tomorrow. Rest. Let your leg... recover."
He offered, keeping his tone level.
Silence stretched again, thick and heavy. The fire crackled softly, consuming another precious piece of moss.
He tried again, feeling increasingly clumsy.
"Two days, then. We can afford two days. The extra rest will do us both good before we push on."
Still, she didn't respond, didn't even turn her head. Finally, after another long pause, her voice came, low and rough, stripped of the earlier anger, leaving only a profound weariness laced with something brittle.
"Do you think I'm sulking, Flareon?"
She asked, without turning around.
"Angry because you shouted? Because my leg hurts?"
She finally shifted, turning her head slightly to look back at him over her shoulder. Her eyes, reflecting the distant starlight, looked haunted.
"That isn't why I can't think straight. Why I stop to look at stupid rocks. It's... the creature. The one that passed over the Landliner wreckage. The one that made the Dravokh panic."
Her voice trembled slightly.
She took a shaky breath.
"It appeared there, on the route towards the Citadel. And then... something like it, or the energy it commands, appeared here. Deep in the Frostfang. Thousands of kilometers north."
She turned fully then, hugging her knees tighter, her gaze distant and filled with a dawning horror.
"Don't you see? It's not just here. If it can appear in places so far apart... what's happening elsewhere? What about Spectrahold? My family... my parents... are they safe? What if that thing... what if it didn't just attack our caravan or this mountain?"
Her voice cracked on the last words. The fear wasn't just for herself anymore, it was a vast, terrifying extrapolation. The violet nightmare wasn't a localized phenomenon; it was potentially world-spanning. And her home, her loved ones, were caught somewhere in its terrifying, unknown reach. She wasn't sulking. She was consumed by a fear far deeper and colder than the Frostfang itself.
Seren turned away again, pulling her knees tighter to her chest, her gaze fixed on the vast, star-dusted emptiness beyond the cave mouth. The wind whipped strands of hair across her face, unnoticed. The weight of her fear was a palpable presence between them, heavier than the silence, colder than the Frostfang night.
Flareon remained silent for a long moment, the strange tablet forgotten in his hand. Her words, her raw terror for her family, resonated deep within him, eclipsing his own frustrations. The image of the violet-eyed creature, its silent passage, the subsequent destruction... If that power wasn't localized, if it was truly sweeping across Terravos... The implications were staggering. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
Slowly, he rose and walked the few steps to the cave entrance. He lowered himself carefully onto the cold stone beside Seren, leaving a respectful distance between them. He didn't speak, just sat there, sharing the vigil, staring out at the same immense, indifferent darkness. The spear lay across his lap, feeling inadequate against the cosmic dread her words had conjured.
They sat like that for a long time, lost in their own grim thoughts, the only sounds the mournful howl of the wind and the distant crackle of their dying fire.
Then, Seren gasped softly, a sharp intake of breath. Flareon followed her gaze upwards, towards the velvet black expanse dotted with unfamiliar stars.
At first, he saw nothing unusual. Then, he caught it. A single point of light, no brighter than a middling star, but distinct. It wasn't stationary. It moved, not with the smooth, predictable arc of a meteor, but erratically. It pulsed faintly, darted short distances, paused, then shifted direction abruptly, tracing bizarre, angular patterns against the celestial backdrop. It seemed impossibly high, yet its movements felt deliberate, controlled.
"The Watcher..."
Seren whispered, her voice filled with a hushed awe that momentarily overshadowed her fear. Her Farseer eyes were fixed on the anomalous light, her scientific training warring with the ancient legends of her people. The Watcher, the mythical being said to observe all creation, to perceive the universe as pure light. A comforting legend whispered in Spectrahold's deepest archives, a symbol of ultimate knowledge and perspective.
But Flareon felt no awe. As he watched the pinprick of light dance its unnatural jig across the heavens, a different sensation crept over him. A profound unease. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. It felt less like distant observation and more like... scrutiny. Cold, detached, analytical scrutiny. He had the distinct, uncomfortable feeling of being examined, cataloged, like an insect pinned beneath a lens. The light was unnerving, alien, intensifying the feeling of vulnerability that had settled over them since entering these cursed mountains. Goosebumps traced paths down his arms despite the layers of worn clothing. Something was out there, alright. But he doubted very much it was benign.