The cold was no longer a warning. It was war.
After Silver Vale, the Frost Reign retreated into the Icefang Range, abandoning razed villages and smoking outposts behind them. Their numbers were wounded, but not broken. Bjorrek the Pale still lived—and from the depths of the frost-crowned north, he prepared for something worse than invasion.
Something ancient.
Uthred stood in the command tent with Vale, Jorlan, and Maera. A torn map of the Icefang frontier was spread across the table. Red markers marked battles. Black stones marked deaths. One jagged white crystal marked the unknown.
"The ravens bring rumors," Maera said. "Villagers speak of lights in the snow. Of voices that do not belong to men."
"Superstition," Jorlan scoffed.
"Or warning," Vale said quietly. "Bjorrek doesn't just want to conquer. He wants to awaken something."
Uthred narrowed his eyes at the crystal. "Then we ride north. Into the storm."
Uthred assembled an elite vanguard: Vale, Jorlan, two hundred Ironcloaks, a dozen mountain scouts, and three mages from the Archanum Order—Eldhame's oldest circle of elemental scholars.
The path north was suicide to some. White terrain. Endless winds. And now—enemy warbands set to harass and vanish.
But Uthred had fought ghosts before. This time, he carried fire.
They moved in silence, traveling by moonlight and covering their trails by day. Wolves watched them from the ridges. Frostbitten corpses littered passes like forgotten warnings.
One night, Vale approached Uthred's tent.
"Your men whisper that Bjorrek communes with gods."
Uthred looked up from his maps. "I've killed false gods before."
She stepped closer. "And if this one is real?"
"Then we kill it twice."
By the seventh day, they reached the edge of the Black Glacier.
It rose from the earth like a wall of death—miles of frozen cliffs and jagged peaks. Below, the remains of a border village jutted from the snow like broken teeth. No survivors. Just silence.
Uthred ordered his men to make camp beneath the cliff ridge. Fires were forbidden. They ate cold. Spoke little.
The mages, cloaked in cobalt robes, circled the perimeter with salt and runes. At midnight, the snow howled with no wind.
Jorlan stood watch with Vale.
"Something's wrong," he said. "This isn't just a battlefield. It's a tomb."
She nodded. "And tombs aren't meant to be opened."
The next attack came with no warning.
From the crevices of the glacier, shapes emerged. Pale, limber, clad in armor carved from ice and bone. Not human. Not fully.
The Iceborn.
Uthred shouted orders as the camp erupted in chaos. Steel clashed. Spells cracked. Arrows screamed through the frozen dark.
One mage was torn in half by a frost beast. Another incinerated a trio of Iceborn with a burst of white fire before falling to a blade through the chest.
Uthred met the largest of them head-on. Its blade was jagged crystal. Its breath fogged black.
Their swords struck once. Twice. Then Uthred found the opening—and buried his steel deep.
It did not scream. It simply fell.
But others did not.
They kept coming.
Vale rallied the right flank as the enemy surged. Her sword gleamed with frost-killed blood, her cloak torn at the edges. She shouted orders above the roar, cutting down an Iceborn knight who nearly reached the wounded.
An Ironcloak fell beside her. She caught his blade mid-air and hurled it into an attacker.
Uthred reached her side, breath ragged.
"Still standing?" he asked.
"Always."
They fought back-to-back, surrounded by death and snow. Uthred heard her breathing—steady, sure. In the chaos, she was his anchor.
When the Iceborn finally withdrew, only fifty of their company remained.
At dawn, the Archanum mage called Delvar was missing. His tent was empty. His notes gone.
Maera found a blood-marked rune etched into the snow. "He opened a gate," she said.
Jorlan cursed. "A traitor?"
"No. Worse. A disciple."
Delvar hadn't fled—he'd crossed over.
To awaken the god.
The remaining mages traced Delvar to an ancient ruin embedded in the glacier's side—an altar of forgotten stone. Uthred led the assault personally.
They stormed the gate. Frost giants guarded the path. One Ironcloak lit himself aflame to clear a breach.
Inside, Delvar stood at the altar, hands raised, chanting in a tongue older than kings.
Behind him: a massive figure encased in ice. Horned. Slumbering.
Bjorrek.
No—what Bjorrek had become.
Uthred charged.
Delvar screamed as Uthred's sword pierced his chest. Blood hit the altar.
Too late.
The ice cracked.
The god awoke.
The glacier shattered.
Out of the ice rose the Hollow Spire, ancient seat of the Winter God.
Bjorrek, now clad in living ice, his eyes blue flame, stepped into war.
Uthred rallied the last of his force.
Vale kissed him once, hard.
"If we die," she said, "we die as one."
"Not today."
The final battle began.
Steel clashed with magic. Ice with fire. The mages gave their lives to burn runes into the spire. Jorlan was wounded holding the northern flank. Maera was seen cutting down a warlord twice her size.
And Uthred?
Uthred fought Bjorrek alone.
Their duel was myth.
Bjorrek wielded a blade of ancient frost. Uthred—his father's reforged sword, wrapped in flame runes.
They clashed across the spire. Ice shattered. Magic roared.
Bjorrek laughed. "You are mortal."
Uthred bled. "I am flame."
With a final roar, he drove his sword into Bjorrek's chest.
The Winter God screamed.
And the Hollow Spire collapsed.
Three days later, survivors were pulled from snow.
Vale found Uthred beneath a collapsed archway. Alive. Barely.
She wept.
He opened his eyes. "Still here."
She kissed him. "Never leave again."
They returned to Eldhaven as victors.
But also… as something more.