The frost thickened.
Snow no longer fell like a gentle hush but descended in sharp, broken shards, whirling violently as if the wind itself recoiled from something approaching. The forest had gone silent, no birdsong, no beasts, not even the whisper of distant branches. Only the crunch of Leon's boots marked the living.
Leon stood at the edge of a crumbled watchtower, its stones half-swallowed by roots and time. Kaelis remained a few paces behind, eyes sharp and sword drawn, watching the snow swirl in unnatural patterns.
"They've started tracking," Leon said, voice low.
Kaelis nodded once. "You're sure?"
Leon raised his hand. Shadow curled along his arm like smoke, condensing into a freezing aura that pulsed with will. A breath later, the snow beneath them spiraled upward in a storm of frost and gloom.
Two figures emerged from the shade of his palm.
First came Kel, once the 10th Commander of the Eternal Empire, now a revenant bound to Leon's will. His form was encased in dark-ice armor, sculpted like the teeth of some long-dead god. His expression, once proud, was now cold, blank, but his movements still carried the elegance of a master warrior.
In one motion, Kel summoned a blade into his palm, a jagged longsword of crystallized ice, pulsing with a blue so deep it bordered on black.
Behind him, the frost wyrm slithered forward, impossibly silent for a creature its size. It coiled near Leon, scales shimmering like polished glaciers, twin eyes glowing with primeval hunger. A faint mist curled from its nostrils, freezing the ground wherever it breathed.
Kaelis glanced between the two. "You're only calling them?"
"They're enough," Leon replied. "The Empire won't send their elite yet. Not until they're sure."
He looked toward the treeline. The air rippled. Something was coming.
Far away, inside Sanctum Virelith
The ancient walls of the fortress trembled, as though reacting to the disturbance unraveling in the north.
In the war chamber, two figures stood.
Commander Malchior, the Eighth of the Empire, loomed over a marble table embedded with glowing veins of arcane silver. Around them hovered several rune-bound markers, faint sigils dancing above the surface like flames locked in stasis.
Opposite him stood Commander Veyla, her crimson armor scorched from old battles, though her stance betrayed no weakness. She held her helmet beneath one arm and stared at the shifting sigils.
"Confirmed," she said flatly. "Ashbourne has taken the city. The frost wyrm that once guarded the Vale of Teeth now answers to him. And so does Kel."
Malchior's masked face tilted slightly. "Kel was the weakest of us. A loyal hound, easily turned."
Veyla narrowed her eyes. "He was a commander."
"And now he's a tool," Malchior murmured. "It's not his death that concerns me. It's how easily Ashbourne reshaped him."
Silence pulsed between them.
"You've seen it yourself," she added. "The shadows that walk behind him. They're not echoes. They think. They learn."
Malchior turned toward the chamber's open balcony, where the cold wind howled through jagged arches.
"When we cast him into the Abyss, we thought he'd rot. That the void would take him. We underestimated what that place would make of him."
He placed a hand upon the railing. "The Black Sigil stirs. Their spies report his movements. But they will not act unless we compel them."
Veyla crossed her arms. "You want to push them?"
"No. I want to corner him," Malchior said. "Let them move first. Let them bleed."
Back at the edge of the ruined watchtower
The first ripple came through the snow, a soundless distortion, like a mirage flickering across the treeline. Then came the scent of ash.
Leon's eyes snapped forward.
"Movement," Kaelis warned, his blade raised. "Five... no, six presences."
A beat later, shapes appeared from the fog. Not soldiers.
Hunters.
Their armor was ragged, unmarked, stitched with bones and leather from long-forgotten beasts. Each one bore a different weapon, crooked scythes, spiked staves, chainhooks dripping with venom.
But all of them wore the same sigil, etched onto scraps of cloth or burned into skin:
The Black Sigil.
Kaelis tensed. "Empire-affiliated?"
Leon's voice was calm. "They're hounds. Independent. Used for purges and vanishings. They work near the Empire, not for it."
"And they're testing you."
"No," Leon said. "They're here to deliver a message."
The leader stepped forward. A tall man with a stitched hood and a grin carved into a bone-white mask. He carried a curved glaive made of darkwood and obsidian.
"Leon Ashbourne," the man said, voice high and lilting. "The Empire stirs. You rattle chains best left buried. My name is Oroth. My brothers and I… we are the quiet that follows rebellion."
Leon didn't blink. "You'll be the silence that follows failure."
Oroth tilted his head. "We're not here to kill you. Just to see."
He raised his hand. "Let's see."
The moment shattered.
Two of the Black Sigil hunters lunged, one hurling a chain-hook, the other leaping with twin knives. Kel moved without a word, intercepting them mid-air. His blade struck once, a clean diagonal slash, and both hunters turned to ice before hitting the ground, frozen in death.
The wyrm bellowed, a roar that cracked nearby trees, and swept its tail through the fog. One hunter dodged, barely, only to be caught by Kaelis's blade as he rolled clear.
Only Oroth remained.
He laughed softly. "Good. Very good."
Leon stepped forward.
"This is your warning," he said. "Leave now. Or become another lesson the Empire ignores."
Oroth's smile didn't fade. "The Black Sigil delivers messages. But we don't repeat them."
He snapped his fingers and vanished into mist, his surviving hunter trailing behind him.
Only silence remained, broken by the slow return of the snow.
Kaelis exhaled. "That was… unpleasant."
Leon turned to the frost wyrm, which still crackled with lingering rage.
"This was the first," he said. "The Empire watches through many eyes. But now they know."
Kaelis sheathed his blade. "Know what?"
Leon stared into the snow, his eyes colder than the storm.
"That I am no longer what they buried."