We had enough supplies—barely. Food, water, the basics. Enough to last us a week, maybe a few days more if rationed with military precision. That was about how long this crossing was supposed to take. The plan was simple. Cross the North Sea. Reach the northern shores. Easy, on paper.

  But on the first day, the cold reminded us it had teeth.

  The North Sea was deceptively quiet. A traitor sea. No wild currents, no towering waves, no storms beating against the hull. Just snow. Endless snow. A permanent curtain of slow-falling white, constant, stable, oppressive. The air itself bit. Not the sting of wind, but the kind of bitter cold that lived in your bones. The kind of cold that judged you.

  Manach and I barely noticed it. Coldian blood ran deep and true—we didn't just endure the cold, we thrived in it. It sharpened us. Cleared the fog in our minds. Made us feel alive.

  Leliana, though... Leliana was human.

  She started shivering before the sun had fully set on that first day. At first, she tried to hide it—biting her lip, folding her arms, curling under whatever blanket or scrap we could give her. It didn’t matter. Nothing helped. Her skin grew pale, her breathing shallowed. The blood in her veins turned slow. Hypothermia gripped her with invisible hands and started to squeeze.

  There was no turning back. No land on the horizon. No warm harbor waiting for us. Just snow, sea, and frostbite.

  She was dying. Quietly. Slowly. And it was our fault.

  It hit me harder than it should have. Emotions aren’t supposed to cloud us—we’re trained against that, built for detachment. But I felt it. That twisting, gut-pulling dread. Guilt, of course. But something more. Fear. Fear of losing her. I didn’t know what she was to me, not really. A companion, a liability, an asset? Or... something more? I didn’t have the answer, only the ache.

  “She’s going to die,” Manach said, low, flat.

  We spoke away from the cabin, voices quiet against the sloshing rhythm of the oars. Leliana lay within, under two threadbare blankets we’d scrounged from a crate—barely more useful than prayer.

  “We have to save her,” I said.

  “Sure,” Manach replied with a shrug. “But how?”

  Of course he was cold about it. He was Coldian, like me. Emotions were for softer creatures. He hadn’t known her long. He wouldn’t let himself care.

  “We can’t light a fire on the ship. It’s all wood,” I said.

  “Didn’t even cross my mind,” he said, casual as the wind.

  “I have no idea what to do. And I’m eating myself alive over it.”

  That made him pause. He looked at me with something almost like curiosity. “Why’s it hitting you so hard? You care more than usual. This wouldn’t be the first companion we’ve lost.”

  “I don’t know why,” I admitted. “But I do.”

  He nodded, didn’t press. Just went back to rowing. The oars dipped into the black, glassy water with a whisper. He looked around, as if maybe there’d be an answer waiting in the cold white sky.

  “She’s a caretaker,” he said. “Might know something.”

  I didn’t need telling twice. I left him to the rhythm of the oars and ducked into the cabin.

  It was barely more than a coffin. A bed jammed against one wall, a battered chest against the other, and the heavy stench of damp wood and sickness in the air. No light, save a sliver through a fogged glass window the size of a coin.

  She lay under the blankets, curled like a dying ember. Her lips were colorless. She shivered in her sleep, and yet... she was sweating. Some deep confusion in the body’s mechanisms. A final misfire.

  “Leliana,” I whispered, crouching beside the bed.

  She didn’t respond. Her body trembled.

  “Leliana,” I said again, closer this time.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She didn’t speak at first. Her breath was shallow, her face slack.

  Then, barely a whisper, “Koch.”

  “I need to know how to help you. How do I warm you up? What can I do?” My voice felt foreign in my mouth—urgent, raw.

  Ten minutes passed. Silence.

  Then, a word.

  “Tea.”

  Her eyes drifted shut again.

  Tea. Of course.

  I had black raspberry tea tucked away in my gear. I kept it for mornings, for ritual. But that didn’t matter now. She needed it. Hell, even the idea of it—the warmth, the memory—might help.

  But tea meant fire.

  I left the cabin and gathered what I could: a few unused paddles, some snow. I stacked them in the center of the deck like a pyre and looked to Manach.

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  “Anything to light a fire with?”

  “Nope,” he said, never missing a stroke of the oars.

  Of course not.

  Of course.

  I didn’t have time to think. And even if I did, I wouldn’t have known what to think.

  Leliana was still asleep. Curled under the threadbare weight of those two useless blankets, her body trembling in slow, helpless spasms. The cold had claimed her hours ago. It was just a question now of whether she’d claw her way back.

  I crouched beside the old chest she’d brought with her. Something in there, maybe. She was a caretaker. She had to have packed more than spare clothes.

  I cracked the lid open and started rummaging. It felt wrong, clawing through her things—her shirts, smallclothes, a folded pair of trousers, a weathered book titled Last Visor of Quench. Her life, neatly packed in linen and paper.

  Then I found it.

  Tucked at the bottom, wrapped in cloth, was a small wooden box. Locked, but not well. I eased it open. Inside—vials, a portable mortar and pestle, old tools for grinding herbs. And at the center of it all: salvation.

  A dwarven heater.

  Old Deeporb make. Northern tech. First-generation dwarven arc-craft, long before the trade wars. I’d seen the schematics once—rune-inscribed stone embedded with heat enchantments. A controlled burn with no flame, no smoke. Just heat. Simple, beautiful, and utterly dwarven.

  I blinked. This could work. Could boil water. Could maybe, just maybe, keep her alive.

  But I had nothing to boil water in.

  I climbed out of the cabin and walked over to Manach, who was still at the oars, his breath curling like vapor from a forge.

  “You got anything I can boil water in?” I asked.

  He didn’t stop rowing. “You find something to make fire?”

  “Found a dwarven heater in Leliana’s bag.”

  Manach whistled. “Sneaky. I don’t have anything, but there’s a metal lid around here somewhere. Dropped off one of the storage crates. I was hitting it with snowballs last night. You can dent it—make it a bowl.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “That’s actually a decent idea.”

  I scoured the deck. The cold bit through the soles of my boots, sharp as knives. My fingers ached with it. My mind drifted while I searched—back to Manach dragging Leliana to safety at the docks, now so distant. Back then, he’d moved without hesitation. Now? He was aloof. Distant.

  Not surprising.

  He probably thought his debt was paid. Saved her once. That was enough.

  I found the lid wedged between two crates near the stern. Bent it inward, rough and sharp, just enough to hold a little water. Then I cut open my waterbag. The ice inside cracked like bone.

  I set the dwarven heater on the deck, shook it hard, placed the makeshift bowl over it. Waited.

  Half an hour passed.

  The frost began to melt. Then steam rose, slow and silver in the dim light. The water boiled.

  I dropped in a pinch of black raspberry leaf from my pack—my morning stash—and stirred it with the edge of my knife.

  Tea.

  I carried it into the cabin.

  The room was dark, no light except the faint, milky haze bleeding through the narrow air-slit window. Leliana hadn’t moved. Her skin was pale, her lips cracked. Her breathing shallow.

  I knelt down beside her.

  “Leliana,” I whispered.

  No response.

  I leaned in. “Leliana.”

  Her eyes opened. Just a crack. Enough to see me. Enough to know I was there.

  “Koch…” Her voice was thin, barely more than the breath it rode on.

  “I’ve got something for you,” I said. “Tea. Black raspberry.”

  I helped her sit up, cradled her head in the crook of my arm, and brought the dented lid to her lips. She sipped—weak, birdlike motions. Just a taste. Just enough.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  I nodded. “There’ll be more later. Now eat this.”

  I offered her a crust of bread, but her fingers shook too hard to hold it. So I fed her—small bites, slowly. Her eyes never left mine, and in them, something had thawed. Not just from the tea. From the effort.

  When she finished, she slumped back onto the bed, asleep in moments.

  But I wasn’t done.

  I left the heater running on the cabin floor. Positioned her waterbags near it so they’d thaw. Then I tore down one of the unused sails, used rope to lash it across the window slits, sealing out the worst of the wind.

  The cabin warmed. Not much. But enough.

  Enough to keep death waiting outside the door, just a little longer.

  I was running on fumes. Muscles aching, eyelids heavy. I needed sleep—desperately—but fear kept me upright. If I gave in, if I drifted even for a moment, she might slip. And I wasn’t going to wake to a corpse.

  Not today.

  I left the cabin and settled beside Manach. The cold was constant, familiar. We didn’t flinch from it. We never had. I grabbed an oar, sank it into the slow churn of the grey water, and started rowing.

  “She alive?” he asked without looking at me.

  “For now,” I said. “She might make it through the night. After that... I don’t know.”

  He nodded, gaze fixed ahead. The sea stretched endless in every direction.

  “I saw you seal off her window,” he said. “What was that about?”

  “I left the heater running. Room's warmer.”

  “Nice thinking,” he muttered. “But that heater’s not gonna last forever.”

  “I know. And I’ve only got enough tea for maybe two more batches. After that, we’ve got nothing.”

  He was quiet for a while. Then he sighed.

  “Well, hate to say it—but unless we get a miracle, she’s screwed. I mean... bringing a human, fragile as she is, onto the North Sea with two coldians? Bad odds from the start. Even without the weather.”

  “You could’ve said no to bringing her,” I replied, keeping my voice steady.

  “I didn’t want to. I owed her. And let’s be honest—you’d have talked me into it anyway.”

  “True.”

  He was silent again, but his body language changed. Tensed. Less casual.

  Then he turned to me.

  “Look, Koch,” he said, suddenly serious. “I’ve got something to confess.”

  That made me pause. Manach didn’t do confessions. He joked. He smirked. He stabbed people. He didn’t confess.

  “Oh?” I asked, glancing at him.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said. Still deadpan. Still shadowed.

  Something in his tone triggered my instincts. I felt myself straighten.

  “What? Just say it.”

  “I will. Just... promise me you’re not gonna leap up and slit my throat.”

  “What the fuck did you do?” My voice went cold.

  He hesitated. Then leaned in, eyes serious.

  “I ate the last dried lamb.”

  Silence.

  Then I stood up.

  He tensed, ready for the retaliation.

  I grabbed a handful of snow from the floorboards, packed it tight, and hurled it at his face.

  He ducked.

  “You missed,” he grinned.

  “Fuck off,” I said, half-smiling now. “I thought it was serious.”

  “You needed that.”

  He was right. The bastard. He always was when it came to pulling me out of the spiral.

  We rowed on in silence after that, just the sound of the oars and the soft breath of winter winds over open water. That night passed. And the next.

  The heater gave out on the second day. My tea stock was gone also.

  But Leliana… she held on.

  Somehow, she endured. She didn’t speak, didn’t even have the strength to lift her head most days. But she was alive. Pale, shaking, hovering on the edge—but alive. I fed her everything we had, what little scraps remained, forcing bread into her mouth like medicine. I didn’t know if it helped. But I had to believe it did.

  She was running on nothing but will.

  And it worked.

  On the seventh day, we saw it. Stonepeak.

  A jagged line on the horizon, rising like a promise. Black sails in the distance. Ships moving. Lanterns glowing.

  Hope.

  She needed warmth. She needed medicine. She needed care.

  And I was going to see she got it.

  Even if I had to tear that city down with my bare hands to make it happen.