Blood dripped from her chin, pattered from her elbows, and ran in rivers down over her wrists to spatter from splayed fingertips into the undisturbed snow around her. It shattered the pristine surface, turning an endless expanse of purest white, so much like the textureless clouds above, into nothing more than a crimson-stained snowbank.

  It would not be the first time that blood had revealed the truth to Jacyntha.

  She stared, on her knees and panting, surrounded by nothing but empty ridges and deep valleys, energy spent and hope diminished. She remembered the words, the moment the rage had taken her, igniting her pain and self-recrimination into a roaring furnace of power.

  “Did you do it!? Did they speak true?” She’d asked.

  “It’s all lies! It will always be lies! The Council cannot be trusted. They abandoned us, Jacyntha. As they always have, they take and take-”

  “DID YOU KILL HER!?” she’d screamed, and that had apparently been too much for Hastor. Her father had always had an ego on him, and appearing before the Council for censure after interrogation by investigators had wounded his pride. To be confined to his own quarters under guard until the investigation was concluded had further strained it, and his own daughter shouting in his face was the moment that the wound had been ripped open once more to bare the bloody flesh below.

  She remembered the hands, vicelike and impossibly strong, gripping her by the face as he’d leaned in close.

  “You don't talk to me that way, daughter. Your mother lacked the conviction needed to save our clan. The Grey-Rocks are a laughing stock and she did NOTHING! She was far stronger than you, girl, but she’s dead, and I'm alive. You should remember that.”

  She remembered freezing. How many nights had she dreamt of going back in time to shield her mother? To stand before her and save her from his cruelty? To take the beatings in her place, strong enough to survive where her mother was not?

  “Fucking disappointment. Even with her power flowing through you, you couldn't even beat a 1st tier.”

  And the moment he’d put his hands on her, she’d frozen. She was no better than her mother after all. All those nights hating her memory for doing nothing, for not fighting back, for making Jacyntha have to witness her bruises and hear the thudding of fist on flesh. But now Jacyntha knew better; she was a hypocrite, and weak besides.

  “I’d thought I could mold a child of mine to be proud of. To take your mother’s strength and, shorn of her weakness, graft it on to you. But even with her power, you’re still just as useless. Just as weak. Leave me, daughter, I can hardly bear to look at you.”

  She remembered him turning his back on her. Remembered the feeling of the axe in her fist. Her mother’s axe. An artifact of power, of status, and all she’d ever done with it was support her mother’s killer. Cold Fang was a potent weapon, and with it in hand, the tier gap wasn't quite as unassailable.

  She remembered realising that she’d always known what had happened. Deep down, in the depths of her memories where she still feared to tread. Everyone knew, and yet nobody had done anything. Why had nobody done anything?

  Because they were afraid. Afraid of the man before her, his back turned and his head bent over a desk as he ranted and raved to himself, supremely confident in the lack of any retaliation, even as he disparaged her.

  She remembered the feeling of her axe splitting his skull. That first impact had jarred her hands, reverberating up the shaft to her shoulders, but it hadn't caved in his head. It had been the seventh strike that had done so, making a mockery of his face as it crumpled onwards from the blow. The first had simply knocked him down, but once she had started, she found she couldn't stop.

  She’d lost count by the time he’d stopped screaming, and his broken face was unrecognisable when she was done.

  She remembered running then. Running for what felt like years. But it couldn't have been because she had stopped for the first time only moments ago, after she had noticed her breath sawing in and out of her chest, to ache and scold and sear her lungs with a heat that burned her from the inside out.

  And so she had stopped. Blood splattered the snow, and she stood, frozen by memories.

  That had been three days ago, and now she wondered without purpose. Rage had given her direction; Swing. Kill. Rend. Fear came next with clear instructions; Leave. Run. Flee. The aftermath of those two emotions had left her frozen, cold as the springs whose bounty blessed the lands that Clan Grey-Rock travelled.

  She’d tried to hunt, but she had failed. She’d led a sheltered life - she could see that now; the shroud of ignorance had been ripped from her face in one brutal evening. Her father had kept her from joining hunting parties, any time away from fighting was a waste to him, after all, though she now suspected it was more a fear of her leaving his control than anything else.

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  Her mother had taught her to hunt, but that had been many years ago, and if she tried to remember the lessons, she would have to relive more painful memories first. That was something she wasn’t willing to do.

  So she failed to hunt. Water was easy to find in the Dragon-Spine Mountains, but food was harder to come by. She was weak with hunger by the time she faced her first predator, and the ritual empowerment provided by her scars was the only thing that allowed her to survive the brutal fight.

  Her own mother’s power. Her own mother’s life. And she had used it for what? To freeze to death in the mountains, surrounded by blood splattered snow? And before that, before all of this, what had she used her mother’s death for? To bully. To cajole. To scare and intimidate.

  If she was to be honest with herself, she had become much like her father. She’d begun to revel in the power she had, and looked for those over whom she could exercise it. To look for an excuse to use it and show the world she was strong.

  She’d thought she was being true. Straight and hard and the only person willing to act in accordance with the universal truth that strength was better than weakness. She’d punished her enemies, and even when it had been mock battles and simulated tournaments, she’d tried to show them that weakness had consequences.

  And why? In the end, she was so terrified of the world realising she was weak that she felt the need to prove she wasn't even before the accusation was levelled. She’d seen how the world treated those who were weak - her mother’s life and death were testament to that - and she would do anything to avoid such a fate.

  But now that the blinding shroud was ripped from her eyes, she could see the hollowness of that excuse. She’d never turned it upon herself. Never tried to find her mother’s killer and punish them. Never questioned why her father, so strong and powerful, had been unable to save her. Why was it, that if the leaders of clan Grey-Rock were really at fault, her father had never punished them for it himself?

  She had trekked through snow-capped mountain valleys and the empty white world around her became full of questions. Introspection was strangely encouraged by the landscape, as if its very emptiness forced her to grapple with her own existence, devoid of purpose as it was.

  She pushed forwards through snow drifts and embankments as high as her chest, even when her body was wrung out with exhaustion. There was nothing for her out here. No food to be had, no reason to keep going. Her mind screamed at her to push just over the ridge, to try just a bit longer, but the protests were growing weaker each moment.

  She shivered, but didn't feel cold. Her body burned from within, feverish from the continued use of her mother’s power. Her own class and general skills were far out of reach, hidden by the scar tissue built up in her soul by the constant use of the profane empowerment ritual that gave her such strength.

  There was another feeling, this one emotional rather than physical or spiritual. She burned with shame. When she thought of her life and the choices she had made, she felt like retching. What wasted potential. To have been nothing but a kicked puppy, following around her Drek of a father and trying in vain to earn his approval, as if that would shield her from her mother’s fate. Just like the ruby-red blood she had spattered the snow with days prior - a useless way to spend a life.

  And that was all it would be if she were to die here. Wasted potential, a bitter end to a sad tale. At least she had avenged her mother, at the end of it all. Was that all she would have wanted for her only daughter? Hollow vengeance and a slow death on the hills?

  If Jacyntha wanted anything in that moment, it was absolution. She wanted her life to have had meaning beyond all the pain, forgiveness for her sins. She’d made shitty choices, no doubt about that, but if she could only find a way to atone...if not for herself, then for her mother’s memory at least.

  Her scars flared to life again at the thoughts. Curling green tongues of ethereal mist wafted from the looping marks that branded her body from head to toe. Strength once more filled her, and she floundered, pushing on once more up the steep snowbank.

  A part of her hated the empowerment her scars provided, but she knew she couldn't live without them now. Her mother’s power, some small shard of her attributes passed down to Jacyntha through a ritual of pain, was what had allowed her to strike down her father. She’d felt more power from them in that action than ever before, and while she knew that intense emotion heightened her ability to draw on that well of power, she also wondered if her mother's ghost had guided her hands to help her slay her own killer.

  Why had she agreed to that damned ritual in the first place? She may not have known that her mother’s life would be used as a catalyst, but she surely knew she would be receiving some advantage that her peers would not. If she was too weak to succeed without that, then shouldn't she have been left to suffer without help? Simply further proof of her hypocrisy, of the paucity of her beliefs.

  She wasn't stronger, wasn’t better or more deserving of her power than others. There was no greater purpose driving her cruel actions beyond her own fear.

  You're pathetic. The world would be a better place without your weakness.

  The whispers were cruel, but they didn't say anything she wasn't already thinking. Perhaps things truly would be better if she just lay down and die. She looked back at the disturbed snow that marked her passage as it dropped inexorably into the clouds below her, and considered once again if her battle up this slope was worth it.

  But once more, she fought back against the lethargy and self-recrimination. Her death would do nothing for the world, after all. She was an exile, and the clans would pay no heed of her. She would be just another carcass out here among the great peaks, and what was the point of that? Whatever mistakes she had made - and there were many - did she not owe a debt to repay them? Why should she get to simply give up and slip away after the harm she had caused?

  And why, fucking why, did she always hear her father’s voice in her head even now - somebody she had always hated and feared - instead of her mother’s, whom she had always loved?

  It was a hard thing to do, hacking up a snow-bound slope, but harder still was to listen to that snivelling, smug voice in her own mind. Never again would she act for that man’s benefit. She’d split the Drek’s skull in twain, and there was no way she would let him live on through her own actions.

  To the ridgeline then, and whatever waited beyond.