The fire crackled, casting more shadows than light across the stone walls of our shelter. Two hours had passed since our mad dash from the sleigh, and the temperature had plummeted with the darkness. Outside, the wolves continued their patient siege, occasionally testing our makeshift barricade with calculated nudges.
I sat against the wall furthest from the door, knees pulled to my chest, watching my captors-turned-companions through narrowed eyes. They'd saved my life, sure—but only because I was property they didn't want damaged. The irony wasn't lost on me. In New Vein, I'd been worthless; here, I was worth just enough to keep alive.
Some fucking trial.
Torsten crouched by the fire, feeding it carefully measured pieces of wood from our dwindling supply. The flames illuminated the deep lines etched across his face—not just age, but experience carved into leather-tough skin. His pale blue eyes reflected the firelight as he stared into the flames, lost in thought.
Hask paced the perimeter of the hut, pausing occasionally to peer through cracks in the walls. His massive frame seemed too large for our shelter, hunched shoulders nearly scraping the low ceiling. Every few minutes, he'd mutter curses under his breath, his hand never straying far from the knife at his belt.
Joran sat cross-legged near the door, meticulously checking and rechecking the crossbows. His movements were precise, economical—a man who wasted nothing, not even motion. The flickering light accentuated his sharp cheekbones and the thin scar across his nose, giving him a predatory appearance that matched his watchful eyes.
A particularly loud howl cut through the night, closer than the others. Joran's head snapped up, his gaze fixing on the barricaded doorway.
"That was the alpha," he said quietly. "Testing us."
"Let him test," Hask spat, his breath clouding in the frigid air. "He'll get a bolt through his eye for the trouble."
Torsten didn't look up from the fire. "Save your bolts. They're not attacking yet."
"Yet being the operative word," I said, rubbing my hands together for warmth. "They're waiting for us to weaken."
Three pairs of eyes turned toward me, as if remembering I was there.
"The educated slave has opinions," Hask said, his yellow teeth visible beneath his matted beard as he smiled without humor.
I met his gaze steadily. "The educated slave would prefer not to die because you underestimate what's hunting us."
Torsten's weathered face creased slightly—not quite a smile, but close. "Boy's not wrong. Ice wolves hunt with patience. They've tracked caravans for days before attacking."
"We don't have days of supplies," Joran pointed out, returning to his methodical inspection of the crossbow bolts.
"No," Torsten agreed. "We don't."
Silence fell between us, broken only by the crack of burning wood and the occasional scrape of claws against stone outside. I studied each of them in turn, calculating. If I was going to survive this trial, I needed to understand these men—their strengths, their weaknesses, and most importantly, whether they were worth keeping alive.
"How long have you three been together?" I asked, keeping my tone conversational.
Hask snorted. "What is this, a social call?"
"Just trying to understand who I'm dying with," I replied, shrugging one shoulder. "Unless you've got a better way to pass the time."
Joran's eyes flicked toward me, then back to his task. "Five years. Give or take."
"Since the Reflector attack on Blackmire," Torsten elaborated, finally looking up from the fire. He studied me with those pale blue eyes, assessing. "Hask was the only survivor. I found him wandering half-mad in the snow."
"Lucky me," Hask muttered, but there was something in his voice—a grudging respect, perhaps even gratitude.
"And you?" I nodded toward Joran. "You don't seem the slaving type."
Joran's hands stilled on the crossbow. "Neither do you seem the slave type. Yet here we are."
"Times change people," I said, thinking of my own life in New Vein—how quickly I'd learned to adapt, to survive by whatever means necessary. "Circumstances change them even faster."
"True enough," Torsten said. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small flask, taking a quick sip before offering it to me. "Here. Helps with the cold."
I hesitated only a moment before accepting. The liquid burned like fire down my throat, spreading warmth through my chest. I handed it back with a nod of thanks.
"So you weren't always slavers," I pressed, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
"I was a scout," Joran said after a pause. "For merchant caravans, then the Hearthhome militia. Good at finding safe paths, reading weather signs."
"Not good enough to save my brother," Torsten added quietly.
Joran's face tightened. "No one could have saved him that day."
Another piece clicked into place. "Your uncle," I said to Joran. "Torsten is your uncle."
Surprise flickered across Joran's face before he masked it. "You're observant."
"I told you I was."
"Family," Hask said, the word sounding strange in his mouth. "That's what we are now. Not that you'd understand, boy."
But I did understand. All too well. "I have a sister," I said, the words escaping before I could stop them. "And a mother. They're why I need to survive this."
Torsten's gaze sharpened. "You remember them now? Thought you had memory problems."
Shit. I'd slipped up. "Fragments come back sometimes. Faces, feelings. Not much else."
Torsten nodded slowly, but I could tell he wasn't entirely convinced. Time to change the subject.
"What about the Temple of Echoes?" I asked. "You mentioned it earlier. Where exactly is it?"
The atmosphere in the hut shifted instantly. Hask stopped his pacing, Joran's hands tightened on the crossbow, and Torsten's expression closed like a gate slamming shut.
"Why do you keep asking about that place?" Torsten demanded, his voice dangerously quiet.
I kept my face neutral. "Just trying to understand this land I'm trapped in. If there's a curse, there might be a way to break it."
Hask barked a laugh. "You think you're going to break the curse? A half-starved slave with no memory?"
"Someone has to try," I countered. "Unless you enjoy living in eternal winter."
"Many have tried," Torsten said, echoing his words from earlier. "Knights, wizards, heroes with magic weapons and years of training. None returned." He leaned forward, the firelight casting deep shadows across his face. "What makes you think you'd be different?"
I met his gaze without flinching. "I didn't say I would be. I'm just asking questions."
Torsten studied me for a long moment, then sighed. "The Temple lies in the highest peaks of the Sorrow Range. Past the Whispering Forest, through the Grief Marshes, across the Fading Highlands. A journey of weeks under normal conditions."
"And in this weather?" I asked.
"Months," Joran said flatly. "If you survived at all."
"Which you wouldn't," Hask added helpfully.
I absorbed this information, mapping it against my internal countdown. Thirty days. Less than that now. The Temple was my only goal, yet reaching it seemed impossible.
No, not impossible, I corrected myself. Just nearly impossible.
"And what's at this Temple?" I pressed. "This Winter King you mentioned—what exactly is he? A man? A monster?"
Something scraped against the door—claws or teeth testing our barricade. We all tensed, hands moving to weapons, but the pressure subsided after a moment.
"Some say he was once the high wizard of the last king's court," Torsten said when the silence returned. "Others say he was always something else, just wearing human skin for a time."
"He sits on a throne of ice," Joran continued, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. "Surrounded by a court of the frozen dead. Those who died in the first great freeze, preserved perfectly, serving him still."
"And at his right hand," Hask added, his earlier mockery gone, "rests the Heart of Winter. A jewel the size of a man's fist, blue as a dying star. They say it pulses like a real heart, sending waves of cold across the land with each beat."
My own heart skipped at those words. The Heart of Winter. My objective.
"You seem to know a lot about it," I observed carefully.
Torsten's eyes narrowed. "I was there once. Part of an expedition ten years ago."
"You actually reached the Temple?"
"We got close enough to see it," he said, his voice flat. "Close enough for the Winter King to notice us. Three days later, I was the only one left alive."
The hut fell silent except for the crackle of flames and the occasional howl from outside. I studied Torsten with new interest. He'd been to the Temple—or near it. He'd seen the Winter King's power firsthand and somehow survived. That made him infinitely more valuable to me than I'd first realized.
"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it. "About your companions."
Torsten nodded once, accepting the condolence without comment.
"One of them was my father," Joran said quietly. "Torsten's brother. He died covering our retreat."
Another piece of their relationship clarified. Uncle and nephew, bound by shared loss. And Hask, the lone survivor Torsten had rescued, integrated into their makeshift family.
I thought of my own father, lost in that suspicious B-rank gate incident. Of my mother working double shifts at the core processing plant, slowly dying from core dust poisoning. Of Miri, whose future I'd sacrificed everything to secure.
Family. The one thing worth fighting for in any world.
"So what's your story, boy?" Hask asked suddenly. "Before the Reflectors got you."
I considered my answer carefully. "I don't remember much," I maintained, sticking to my earlier lie. "Just fragments. A city. Tall buildings. My sister's laugh. My mother's hands, always cracked and dry from work."
"Poor, then," Joran observed.
I nodded. That much was true enough. "I think so. And alone, mostly."
"Yet educated," Torsten noted. "You speak well. Carry yourself differently than most slaves."
"Maybe I wasn't always poor," I suggested, building on the amnesia story. "Maybe I fell from somewhere higher."
Hask grunted. "Happens to the best of us."
A particularly vicious gust of wind found its way through the cracks in the walls, making the fire sputter. Outside, the wolves began a new chorus of howls—not the hunting calls from before, but something more complex, almost like communication.
"They're planning something," Joran said, rising to check the barricade.
I listened to the eerie melody, trying to discern patterns. "They sound almost... human."
"Some say they can speak," Torsten told me. "That they remember being men once, before the curse changed them."
"That's horseshit," Hask declared, but his hand tightened on his knife.
The howls shifted in pitch, becoming something that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Not quite words, but not quite animal either. Something in between.
"What are they saying?" I asked, not really expecting an answer.
Torsten's face was grim in the firelight. "They're calling for the cold. Inviting it in."
As if in response, the temperature in the hut dropped noticeably. Frost patterns began forming on the inside of the walls, delicate crystalline structures growing before our eyes.
"That's not possible," I whispered, watching my breath cloud more densely than before.
"Welcome to Frostfall," Hask said without humor. "Where the impossible happens every fucking day."
I pulled my thin clothes tighter around me, knowing it was useless. If the fire died, we would follow soon after.
This is some bullshit, I thought bitterly. An S-rank timer trial as a slave with no powers, no abilities, nothing but my wits against wolves that can control the fucking weather.
And I couldn't even be stuck with someone pleasant to look at. Just three weathered, hard-eyed men who smelled of sweat and fear and who planned to sell me to the mines if we somehow survived the night.
The only thing keeping me going was the thought of seeing Miri and my mother again. Of returning to them as an Awakened, with the power to change our circumstances forever.
Plus, after this trial, whoever or whatever had thrown me into this frozen hell owed me. Big time.
I looked at my three companions—Torsten with his weathered face and haunted eyes, Joran with his watchful gaze and precise movements, Hask with his barely contained violence and surprising loyalty.
I couldn't blame them for being what circumstances had made them. In their position, I might have done the same.
But I refused to become a slave. If we survived the night, I would find a way to escape. And if that meant leaving these men behind—or worse—so be it.
For now, I needed them. Torsten especially, with his knowledge of the Temple of Echoes. But the moment they became obstacles rather than assets, all bets were off.
Twenty-nine days, I reminded myself. Twenty-nine days to cross an impossible land, reach an impossible temple, and claim an impossible prize.
Just another game where the deck was stacked against me.