~ The Fogged North
Snow hammered the trees like a slow, endless drumbeat.
Hephion ran through it anyway.
His breath came in sharp, steaming bursts; faint pulses of mana flickered off his skin, scattering like fireflies in the cold. Each pulse was a mistake. Each pulse was a beacon. And high on a black-needled pine, watching him with growing irritation, Terion clicked his tongue.
"Your mana is leaking again," the old soldier called down. "Control it. Or stop pretending you can."
Hephion didn't answer. He couldn't. His lungs burned, his legs stung, and the cold bit hard into the places where his mana stuttered. He hit the snow on one knee, hissed, then forced himself up again. Keep the flow steady—keep the core warm—keep—
His mana spiked.
Just for an instant.
Terion's jaw set. "Boy," he warned, "don't—"
The forest answered for him.
Two black shapes drifted between the stumps at the clearing's edge, too large for wolves—dire wolves, drawn by the mana bleeding off Hephion like heat from cracked iron. Their eyes glowed a dull, winter blue.
Hephion swallowed. His robe snapped in the wind.
He stepped into the clearing.
The first wolf lunged.
He dove sideways, rolled, and flung a spear of condensed mana that hardened into steel just before it struck fur. The weapon sank under the beast's ribs, and the wolf staggered, snarling.
The second wolf was faster.
It slammed into him from the side. Claws raked his shoulder. He cried out, lost balance, and instinctively let mana surge into his arm. Too much. The force bucked his own body as he jammed a hooked blade into the creature's flank; they crashed through the snow together, a tangle of teeth, heat, and flailing limbs.
The wolf fell.
Hephion didn't get up immediately.
He pressed his forehead to the snow, shaking, breath ragged. His mana guttered like a dying lantern.
Terion dropped from the tree without sound.
He crossed the clearing with the deliberate stride of a soldier who once marched on battlefields the Dominion no longer acknowledged. He didn't ask if the boy was hurt. He crouched beside the dead wolf, slit its flank with a precise, economical cut, and reached inside.
A small, pearly organ pulsed beneath the membrane.
A mana core—sickly green, wrong.
Terion lifted it to the fading light. His expression tightened in a way Hephion had never seen.
"You wasted enough mana to alert half the forest," Terion said. His voice was low, controlled, stripped of humor. "If these had been real trackers, your corpse would already be cooling."
Hephion pushed himself upright, snow clinging to his lashes. "I know. I'm trying—"
"No," Terion said sharply. "You're brute-forcing it. Mana isn't muscle. Control it, or it will betray you every time."
Hephion bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Shame mixed with the dull ache in his shoulder.
Terion didn't soften. He never did.
He slipped the core into a leather satchel, but the hard line of his mouth remained. "This shouldn't be here," he muttered. "Not this far north."
He stood abruptly.
"On your feet. We're leaving."
Hephion staggered after him as the forest closed around them—dark trunks bowed by age, branches stitched together like black lace overhead. Terion led at a clipped pace, every step purposeful.
"Mana control," he ordered without looking back.
"Spread it. Don't let it spike."
Hephion steadied his breathing, but before he could focus, a voice whispered from the underbrush:
"It's still leaking."
Teiylor stepped out, boots barely disturbing the snow. The elf moved with a quiet confidence, frost in her braids and feathers woven through pale hair. Her mana flowed smooth as breath—effortless in the way that made Hephion grit his teeth.
Before he could retort, the ground vanished from beneath her.
A hidden ravine yawned—snow-lipped and silent.
Her foot found nothing. She pitched forward with a startled gasp.
Hephion froze.
Terion didn't.
He blurred in a single cut of motion, catching her wrist before gravity claimed her. He pulled her back with one arm, set her firmly on solid ground, and only then let out a single, cold breath.
"No awareness," he said. "Both of you would've died today for no reason."
Teiylor bowed her head. "Understood."
They continued in silence, a line of three cutting through the whitening dusk.
Far in the distance, the broken silhouette of an outpost emerged—half buried, smoke rising crookedly from its towers. Terion glanced at it once, expression unreadable.
"Terion…" Hephion ventured. "That wolf core. You recognized something."
The soldier didn't answer at first.
He opened his flask, took a long drink, and stared at the snow as if it were an old enemy he couldn't quite kill.
Finally:
"The The Southward Crawl.has already began," he said quietly. "Something is forcing them. And the Dominion will ignore the warning signs until cities start burning."
Teiylor shivered. "Then what do we do?"
Terion stopped walking.
The forest seemed to hush around them.
For a long moment, he didn't look like a mentor, or a hero, or even a soldier.
He looked like a man already carrying the weight of his own death.
"There's no point hiding it anymore," he said. His voice was flat. Final.
"I have orders."
Hephion's breath caught. "Orders for what?"
Terion turned to face them, the snow settling on his hair like ash.
"To kill Cerin Holt."
And the forest swallowed the silence that followed.