Chapter 100 – The Flame Beneath Frost
The forest swallowed them.
Lysa ran. Her breath burned inside her chest, every gasp a fire drawn through a throat scraped raw. Behind her, Ashmere was no longer a city—it was a memory in flame, a warning carved in bark and ash. She didn't look back. She couldn't.
The Hollow King had risen.
And Caedren was gone.
Beside her, only three soldiers remained. Mirek, limping with a wound across his thigh, his axe hand swaddled in bandages; Ellon, a former scout who hadn't spoken since they fled the ridge; and Ser Wren, an old knight whose armor bore more rust than silver, but whose eyes stayed sharp. They did not ask questions. Their silence was the shape of faith.
None dared speak until the sun was buried behind the mountains and night cloaked them with its bitter quiet. They made camp beneath the broken ruin of a tower that time had surrendered to roots and stone. No banners flew here. No gods watched. The shadows that circled their fire leaned in, as though hungry for warmth, not driven back by it.
The fire flickered.
And the wind carried breath that did not belong to any living thing.
Lysa sat cross-legged, cloak wrapped tightly, the frost beginning to crust the corners of her boots. Her eyes were on the flames, but her mind wandered where the fire could not follow.
There was no time to mourn Caedren.
Not now. Not yet. Not when the air still whispered his name like a curse and a prayer at once.
"Ivan left journals," she said suddenly. Her voice cracked the hush like a branch underfoot. "Before the fall. Before Kael. Before he built the Dream."
Mirek grunted softly, shifting his wounded leg. "You think they still exist?"
"Some say he kept them hidden. In the Frosthold Monastery, west of the Ironspine."
Ellon spat blood into the frostbitten dirt. He hadn't removed the arrowhead from his side. "The Frosthold? That place hasn't seen light in centuries."
"Exactly." Lysa's gaze did not waver. "Forgotten places hide the loudest truths."
Ser Wren finally spoke, voice soft but heavy. "We saw what rose at Ashmere. That...thing. Old fire. Older than men. You think a book—words, ink—can stop it?"
Lysa shook her head slowly. "No. But maybe the words can teach us what we're fighting. Maybe they can teach us how it was buried the first time."
The wind howled.
The forest watched.
In the morning, they rode.
Westward. Toward memory. Toward ruin. Toward what Ivan had left behind.
They crossed barren fields where once crops had bloomed, but now only spirals of scorched soil remained. They passed through villages with doors hanging open like mouths in mid-scream. Stones painted with ash. Trees grown in warped helix-patterns. Signs of the Hollowborn.
The farther they rode, the colder the air became. Not from the season, but something older. A cold that moved with intention. A cold that searched.
Snow fell.
Too early for winter.
Too precise to be natural.
The old gods were reclaiming the seasons.
By the sixth day, they passed the Silent Bridge, where, in whispered legend, Kael had once fought the knight called Whisper—a duel with no blades drawn, only glances exchanged, and yet one had died. The bridge creaked under their weight.
By the ninth, they crossed beneath the Watcher's Rock—a statue of a faceless man, weeping sap instead of rainwater. Its head turned to follow their passing.
On the twelfth day, they saw the mountains.
The Ironspine stood like the bones of the world, sharp, white, unmoved. Snow crowned its jagged peaks. The wind screamed between its teeth. And there, between its ribs, lay Frosthold.
The monastery did not greet them.
Its gates stood open, cracked by time and ice. Its towers leaned, half-swallowed by snow and creeping root. Ivy grew where hymns had once been sung. No torches burned. No bells rang. Silence reigned.
Lysa led them through the arch.
Inside, the wind did not howl.
It hummed.
A low, droning tone, like a chant beneath the stone.
The great hall had collapsed in on itself. They stepped carefully over broken pews and shattered glass. The walls were etched with carvings. Not decorative. Not decorative at all.
Runes.
Symbols from before the Dream.
Lysa traced one with her glove. Her voice barely rose above breath.
"Here lies the fire we buried."
Another: "Here waits the flame the world forgot."
The chapel's altar was cracked. Beneath it, a stone slab lay askew. Mirek and Ser Wren shifted it. Beneath the altar—a stair.
Down.
They descended.
Ice coated the walls. The air froze in their lungs. But ahead—a light. A brazier.
Still burning.
Its flame was blue.
Not fire. Not magic. Something else.
Willed.
Lit by memory.
Lit by defiance.
At the bottom of the stair stood a small chamber. Snow had not touched it. Time had barely bruised it. At its center—a pedestal of black stone. And upon it—a single book.
Bound in leather darker than night.
Sealed with a crest: three arrows, broken, over an open eye.
Lysa reached for it.
The seal shuddered.
And opened.
Wind died.
The fire flared.
And a voice spoke.
Not aloud. But deep, from the stone. From the air.
From memory.
Ivan's voice.
Faint. Weathered by time.
But certain.
"If you've come this far, child..."
"Then the Hollow has woken."
"And you must do what even Kael could not."
"You must finish the ending we all feared to write."
One word etched into the final page of the room:
"Remember."
And so, the chapter does not close on battle.
It closes on revelation.
Not swords.
Memory.
Not death.
But the threat of forgetting.
The war to come would not be one of conquest alone.
It would be a war of roots.
Of myths reborn.
Of flames buried beneath frost.
And who dares to unearth them.