Chapter 35: The Winter That Walks
The rain had stopped by the time Shad and Fray reached the eastern road.
Gravelyn was already behind them, hidden beyond the low hills and the grey curtain of morning mist. The road stretched ahead through a stretch of thin woodland, its surface dark with rain and its edges crowded by wet grass.
Neither of them spoke.
The events of the previous night had left too many questions behind.
The assassins had not been ordinary criminals. Their formation, their coordination, and the black token crushed beneath the first attacker's hand had all pointed toward something larger. House Vane had arrived too quickly to be a coincidence, and the woman in the navy cloak had known Shad's name before he had introduced himself.
Now they were leaving Gravelyn under observation, whether the guards followed them or not.
Fray stopped first.
Shad noticed the change in his posture and looked ahead.
Three bodies stood beside the road.
At first glance, they appeared to be men frozen in place. Their clothes were stiff with ice, their arms hanging at their sides, their faces turned toward the forest.
Then Shad saw their eyes.
Wide open.
Not frozen in fear. Frozen after fear had already taken them.
He approached the nearest body and placed two fingers against its neck.
No pulse.
The man's skin was cold, but the frost covering him was not natural. It had formed beneath his clothes and spread outward, leaving thin white veins across his face.
"House Vane?" Fray asked.
Shad examined the insignia on the man's shoulder.
"Footmen."
A faint crack sounded from the trees.
Fray's eyes shifted toward the woodland.
Ten figures stepped out from between the trunks.
They looked human enough from a distance, but their movements were wrong. Their joints turned too smoothly, and their heads remained perfectly still while their bodies adjusted around them. Ice coated their backs in thin ridges, and pale light flickered behind their eyes.
Puppet-scouts.
Shad had seen their kind before.
Not these exact bodies, but the same wrongness. The same cold that carried no life inside it.
A man stood behind them.
He wore a long black robe beneath a dark travelling coat. His hair was silver at the temples, though his face was not old and strangely looks like that of monkey. A narrow metal frame covered his left eye, and several thin tubes ran from the frame to a small device strapped beneath his collar.
In his right hand, he held a stone.
It resembled the rune stones from the forest, but its surface was uneven and cracked. Blue light pulsed inside it, struggling against black veins that spread across its surface.
The man smiled.
"Finally," he said. "The original."
Shad did not move.
The researcher looked him over with open fascination. His gaze lingered on Shad's forearms, then shifted to Fray.
"And the companion. Interesting. I expected something less….belihu"
Fray's expression did not change.
Shad glanced at the frozen footmen.
"You killed them."
"I tested them."
The researcher said it as if the difference mattered.
"They were already close to death when I found them. The cold simply completed the process."
Shad's eyes settled on the stone in his hand.
"That is not my technique."
"No," the man replied. "It is an imitation."
He lifted the stone slightly.
"I have spent months studying the traces left behind by the creatures in the forest. Their bodies contained a form of cold that should not exist. Then I found references to a similar phenomenon in an old record."
His smile widened.
"Your cold is cleaner. More disciplined. More beautiful."
"Who are you?"
"Researcher. Independent investigator. Former assistant to the Oakhaven Arcane Bureau."
He gave a small bow.
"Though titles become rather meaningless when the people who issue them are dead."
The puppets moved.
They did not charge all at once. Two spread toward the trees. Three advanced down the road. The remaining five circled wide, cutting off the path behind Shad and Fray.
A trained formation.
Shad noticed the spacing immediately.
They were not trying to kill him first.
They were trying to force him to reveal his abilities.
The researcher watched him closely.
That was his first mistake.
Shad stepped forward.
The nearest puppet swung a frozen arm toward his head. Shad lowered his shoulder, allowing the strike to pass above him, then drove his elbow into the creature's ribs.
The impact cracked the puppet's body.
It flew sideways and struck a tree hard enough to split the bark.
Shad controlled the force before the blow became too devastating. To anyone watching, it would appear to be a powerful strike from a Realm 2 fighter.
The researcher's visible eye narrowed.
"Good."
Another puppet attacked from the side.
Shad turned with it, caught its wrist, and redirected its momentum into the ground. Ice burst beneath the creature's body and pinned it there.
Behind him, Fray vanished into the darker space between the trees.
The puppets reacted instantly.
Three turned toward him.
That was their second mistake.
The shadows around Fray thickened.
The forest seemed to lean inward. Shapes moved between the trunks, too tall and too narrow to belong to anything living. The puppets struck at empty air, their movements becoming frantic as they tried to defend themselves from threats only they could see.
One froze in place.
Another stumbled into its companion.
Fray stepped out behind them.
He moved with the controlled speed of a Realm 3 fighter, not the terrifying suddenness his body was truly capable of. His claws tore through the first puppet's throat. He caught the second by the back of its head and drove it into the earth.
The third turned.
Fray smiled.
The creature stopped moving before he touched it.
Its body trembled, then collapsed.
Across the road, Shad walked toward the researcher.
The remaining puppets tried to intercept him, but he broke through them without wasting movement. A frost spear formed in his hand, its edge pale and silent.
The researcher's smile finally disappeared.
"You're not what the records described."
"Neither are you."
Shad thrust the spear.
The researcher twisted aside. The weapon passed through his coat and struck the ground, freezing the wet earth in a widening circle.
He moved faster than expected.
A thin blade emerged from his sleeve, surrounded by unstable blue light. He slashed toward Shad's throat.
Shad caught his wrist.
For a moment, the researcher stared at him.
Then Shad twisted.
Bone cracked.
The blade fell into the mud.
The researcher screamed and released the rune stone.
It struck the road between them.
The stone shattered.
Cold exploded outward.
Not clean cold. Not the sharp, controlled force Shad knew. This was something hungry and malformed. It tore through the air in twisting streams, freezing grass, trees, and the bodies of the dead footmen.
Shad felt it touch his skin.
The energy carried the same rotten quality he had sensed in the forest.
He did not retreat.
Instead, he drew a breath and pulled the escaping force inward.
The backlash fought him.
It pushed against his four Layers, searching for weakness, but Shad had spent eight years learning what to do with power that refused to obey. He guided the energy downward, letting it sink into the vast cold seas beneath his soul.
The pressure faded.
The researcher stared at him.
"You absorbed it."
Shad said nothing.
The energy did not increase his Realm. He had already reached the limit of Tier B. But it settled into his Layers, adding weight and density to the foundation beneath his power.
The researcher's breathing became uneven.
"That should have torn you apart."
"Your imitation was incomplete."
Shad lifted his hand.
The frost spear dissolved.
Ice spread across the ground beneath the researcher's feet, locking his legs in place. A second layer climbed around his waist. A third reached his chest.
The man struggled, but his body lacked the strength to break free.
Shad stopped the ice beneath his throat.
"Who taught you about the forest?"
"No one."
"Then where did you learn?"
The researcher laughed through his pain.
"A book."
"What book?"
His expression changed.
For the first time, there was something behind his eyes besides curiosity.
Fear.
"An old record hidden in the restricted archives of Veyris. It spoke of a Commander who lived beyond the border settlements. A man who wielded ice unlike any known belihu and high blood within the region and province."
Forcing a smile from his monkey like face he added sounding a bit sarcastic or something similar.
"well after all it is extremely rare for a Belihu or high blood to have elemental based Flow abilities"
Shad's gaze hardened.
The researcher continued.
"They called him the Winter That Walks."
The name settled between them.
Shad felt no memory rise to meet it.
Only a faint pressure behind his eyes.
A sensation like standing before a locked door and hearing something move on the other side.
"What else did it say?"
"That he protected a settlement that no longer exists. That he absorbed the cold of the world into his body. That he vanished without leaving a corpse."
The researcher swallowed.
"The record ended there."
"Where is the book?"
The man smiled weakly.
"You think I brought it with me?"
Shad pressed two fingers against the ice around his chest.
The pressure increased.
The researcher's smile disappeared.
"Veyris," he gasped. "The restricted library beneath the Chieftain's Hall. The book is called Chronicles of the First Commander."
Fray emerged from the trees.
The last puppet lay broken behind him.
"Are we taking him?"
Shad looked at the researcher.
The man was dangerous, but not because of his strength. His knowledge was the danger. Someone had given him access to records that should have remained buried, and he had used those records to imitate something he did not understand.
"No," Shad said.
He released the ice around the man's legs, then struck him once behind the neck.
The researcher collapsed unconscious.
Fray looked toward the distant road.
"House Vane will find him."
"They should."
Shad glanced back at the frozen footmen.
The cold covering their bodies had begun to melt.
Beneath it, their skin was blackened in branching patterns.
The same corruption.
The same imitation.
The same force that had watched them from beneath the black pool.
Shad turned away.
"Let's go."
They continued east until the road disappeared beneath the rising mist.
Behind them, the researcher lay among the broken puppets and the dead footmen, surrounded by frost that refused to melt.
Far away, beneath the earth, something stirred.
And in a restricted library beneath Veyris Hall, an old book waited in the dark.
Its final page had been blank for two hundred years.
That morning, a line of writing appeared across it.
"The Winter That Walks will return."