Draven:

  Wind knifed through the frozen expanse, carrying the distant wail of something ancient. Snow churned around me, seeking purchase against my skin, but I barely felt the cold anymore. The frost had settled in my bones long before I stepped into this wasteland.

  I stood alone. A pale figure in the storm, dressed in white, blending into the blizzard like a ghost. My hair whipped against my face, the color lost in the swirling snow. Only my eyes betrayed me—dark against all that white, steady as they tracked the shifting presence ahead.

  The wyrm uncoiled, silver and slick with ice, its scales catching the fractured light of the storm. It moved like water, every ripple of its body sending fresh flurries into the air. Eyes the color of frozen lakes locked onto mine—calculating, patient.

  “You think mere blades can pierce what was forged by ice and darkness, pale child?”

  Its voice slithered through the air, a vibration in my bones rather than sound. The wyrm had been waiting. It had been watching.

  My fingers tightened around the hilts of my twin daggers, their familiar weight grounding me. The wyrm wasn’t wrong. Steel alone wouldn’t be enough. But I hadn’t come this far to fail.

  “Everything breaks,” I said, my breath curling into frost. “Even you.”

  The wyrm bared its teeth in something like amusement.

  Then it lunged.

  The wyrm struck like lightning, a silver blur in the storm.

  I moved with the wind, slipping just past its jaws as they snapped shut inches from my throat. The impact sent a shockwave through the snow, flinging ice into the air like shattered glass. I spun, daggers flashing, and slashed along the wyrm’s side—metal kissing scales, but not cutting deep enough.

  It recoiled, coiling its massive body, its luminous eyes narrowing.

  “Faster than I expected,” it mused, voice coiling around me like the cold itself. “But not fast enough.”

  The wyrm lashed out with its tail. I ducked, but not fast enough—something struck my ribs like a battering ram, sending me sprawling. The breath left my lungs in a sharp burst as I hit the snow. The world blurred.

  Move.

  The thought snapped through me, and I rolled just as the wyrm’s jaws slammed down where my head had been. Ice cracked beneath its weight, splintering into jagged shards. I forced myself upright, legs steady despite the pain blooming along my side.

  The wyrm shifted again, circling me in slow, deliberate movements. Snow clung to its scales, and for a moment, it looked like it was dissolving into the storm itself.

  A trick of the light.

  Or something worse.

  I tightened my grip on my daggers, adjusting my stance. The citadel was close—just beyond this fight. I could almost see its jagged silhouette in the distance, dark against the raging white. The library inside held what I needed. If I died here, I’d never learn the truth.

  The wyrm watched me with something close to amusement. “Still standing?”

  I exhaled slowly, letting the cold sharpen me.

  “Unfortunate for you,” I said.

  Then I moved.

  I shot forward, cutting through the snow in a blur. The wyrm reared back, but I was already beneath its head, my daggers flashing as I drove one toward the soft seam between its scales.

  The wyrm twisted. Too fast. Too aware.

  My blade scraped against its armored hide, finding no purchase, and in the same breath, its tail came whipping toward me again. This time, I was ready.

  I dropped low, letting the strike pass over me, feeling the wind shear through my hair. Before the wyrm could coil back, I struck—dagger flashing as I carved a line just below its eye.

  The beast roared, a sound that sent tremors through the ice beneath my feet. Blood—thin, silver-blue—spattered across the snow.

  A hit. But not enough.

  The wyrm recoiled, its great body shifting in agitation, and when it spoke again, its voice was different. No longer amused.

  “You think you understand the hunt, pale one?” it hissed. “Then tell me—what happens when the prey stops running?”

  The wind stilled. The storm seemed to pause, as if the very air was holding its breath.

  Then, the wyrm inhaled.

  I saw it too late.

  A burst of white erupted from its jaws—a howling stream of pure frost. The breath of the abyss.

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  I dove, but the ice chased me, freezing everything in its path. The snow itself crystallized midair, shattering into razor-thin shards. My cloak stiffened as frost licked the edges, my limbs screaming from the cold.

  If that blast had caught me full force, I would have shattered.

  I hit the ground in a roll, pushing off the ice with both hands, flipping back to my feet. The wyrm’s breath attack had carved a trench into the battlefield, a jagged path of frozen ruin.

  I forced down my ragged breathing. The pain in my ribs was sharper now, my skin stinging from the near-miss. But I couldn’t stop.

  The citadel loomed behind the wyrm—close, but unreachable as long as this creature stood in my way.

  The wyrm was testing me. Judging me.

  This wasn’t just a battle. It was something more.

  The final trial.

  I wiped the blood from my dagger, my breath steadying.

  “Again,” I said.

  The wyrm smiled.

  The wyrm lunged first this time, its massive form rippling through the storm like a silver tide. I read its movement a second before it struck—ducked low, shifting with the wind rather than against it.

  Its jaws snapped shut where I had been, a sound like stone shattering against steel. Ice cracked beneath its weight, splintering into jagged shards.

  I was already moving.

  I twisted around its flank, leaping onto the curve of its back. My daggers flashed, striking the gaps between its plated scales—once, twice—before the wyrm bucked violently, sending me flying.

  I hit the ground hard, skidding across the ice. My vision flickered with white-hot pain.

  Move.

  I forced my body to obey, rolling just as the wyrm’s tail came down. Ice shattered where I had been, splinters of frozen earth spraying into the air.

  I was losing.

  Not in wounds—mine were surface-level, while the wyrm’s silver blood now streaked the snow—but in time. My body was slowing. The cold was working its way into my bones, dulling my reflexes.

  The wyrm knew.

  It circled me like a predator sensing the final moments of a hunt, its luminous eyes filled with something I couldn’t name.

  "Your kind was never meant to survive here," it said, voice curling through the wind. "You should have frozen with the rest of them."

  It was stalling. It wanted to see me break.

  Instead, I breathed in the cold, let it settle in my lungs like smoke, and forced my limbs steady.

  "I don’t break," I said.

  Then I sprinted straight for its throat.

  The wyrm reared back, surprised by my charge. Its hesitation was all I needed.

  I leapt, snow kicking up beneath me, daggers slicing through the cold. My target—the soft, unarmored flesh beneath its jaw.

  The wyrm twisted. Fast. Faster than anything that size should have been.

  But I was faster.

  I slammed my blade into the seam where scales met throat.

  The wyrm roared, its body convulsing as silver blood sprayed across the ice. I held on, gripping the dagger still buried in its flesh as it thrashed, its coils lashing wildly through the storm.

  One breath.

  I pulled my second dagger free and drove it into the wyrm’s eye.

  The beast screamed. A sound that shook the ground beneath me, rattled through my ribs, and sent a fresh gust of wind tearing through the blizzard.

  Then it collapsed.

  Its massive form crumpled against the ice, sending a tremor through the frozen earth. The glow in its eyes flickered, dimming like a dying ember.

  I staggered back, panting. Blood dripped from my blades, steaming in the cold.

  It was over.

  The storm howled in the silence that followed, a wind mourning the fall of something ancient.

  I should have felt triumphant.

  Instead, I felt the wyrm’s gaze still on me, even as its body stilled. Its mouth barely moved, but I heard its voice clear as a whisper in my mind.

  "You seek the citadel," it rasped, words fractured, yet sharp as breaking ice. "You think knowledge will save you."

  A sharp exhale, almost a laugh.

  "But knowledge is no shield against what waits beyond those doors."

  The light in its eyes finally went out.

  Its body faded, turning to ice and snow, as if it had never been there at all.

  I watched, silent.

  Then I turned to face the citadel.

  The wind had begun to die, but the weight in my chest did not.

  I had won.

  But the wyrm’s final words clung to me like frostbite.

  What waits beyond those doors?

  I exhaled, wiped the blood from my blades, and stepped forward.

  Whatever awaited me inside, I would face it.

  I had no choice.

  The citadel loomed ahead, jagged against the dying storm, its towers reaching like frozen fingers toward the sky.

  Up close, it was worse.

  The stone was old—older than it should have been, worn smooth by time yet untouched by the frost that swallowed everything else. Ice clung to the edges of the battlements but never crossed onto the walls themselves, as if even winter dared not trespass.

  I hesitated at the threshold, just long enough to let the silence press in.

  The wyrm’s words still curled at the edges of my mind.

  But I stepped forward.

  The doors, heavy and bound in iron, groaned as I pushed them open. A stale breath of air rolled out to meet me, thick with dust and something deeper, something undisturbed for too long.

  Darkness waited inside.

  I reached beneath my cloak, fingers brushing the small wooden box my mentor had given me. I flipped it open, revealing a pulsing ember of light, no larger than a dying coal.

  The glow flickered against the stone walls, casting trembling shadows.

  The darkness recoiled—but only for a moment.

  Then, a voice.

  Low. Resonant. Older than the bones of the earth.

  "You have passed the first test, Draven Thorn. But the trials ahead will break you—unless you remember."

  The words weren’t spoken aloud. They settled into my mind like a whisper that had always been there, waiting for me to hear it.

  I tensed, my grip tightening around the ember of light.

  "The truth lies not in what you know," the voice continued, "but in what you have forgotten. Look within, and you shall see the path ahead."

  The air shifted. The world lurched.

  The stone beneath my feet dissolved into nothingness.

  And suddenly, I was falling.

  Falling.

  Not through air, not through space, but through something else entirely.

  Memories.

  They came in flashes. Fragments.

  I was a child again, running through golden fields beneath a sky untouched by storms. Laughter bubbled from my chest, light and unburdened. My mother’s voice called my name, warm as the summer breeze. My father’s hand rested firm on my shoulder. Safe. Certain.

  The memory unraveled.

  I was older now. The sky was different. Heavy with the weight of an approaching storm. My feet dragged through blood-streaked mud, the scent of rain thick in the air. A friend’s dying breath echoed in my ears. A sword—my sword—buried in an enemy’s throat.

  Another unraveling.

  A temple, long forgotten. I knelt before an altar, my hands trembling as they traced inscriptions carved in a language I shouldn’t know. My lips moved, speaking words I had never learned. The ground shuddered beneath me. A vow spoken. A power waking inside me.

  Then—

  Darkness.

  I gasped, clutching my skull as pain lanced through my mind. Some of these memories were mine. Some were not.

  Something had been taken from me.

  Something I needed.

  The void around me sighed.

  "You do not yet see."

  Then—light.

  It came in a sharp, blinding rush. The sensation of soaring and falling at once. Being pulled forward and backward through time, through self.