The path to Noril was no gentle climb. The mountains rose like jagged teeth against the sky, snow swirling down their slopes even though the valleys below still bloomed with autumn's fire. By the second night, the cold gnawed through cloak and armor alike.
Cain led the group, silent as ever, but every so often his hand brushed the scroll in his satchel, as if he could feel its pulse even through the leather.
Ayden kicked loose rocks from the trail and muttered, "We could've stayed in Kiralyn a little longer. Maybe enjoyed a hot meal. A warm bed."
Lucien smirked. "You'd have enjoyed Corin's company too much. Didn't want to make it awkward."
"Shut up."
Rei's voice cut through the banter. "Quiet. Something walks with us."
The wind howled as if answering her. And then the snow shifted.
From beneath the drifts, figures clawed upward—skeletal warriors wrapped in tattered cloth, their empty sockets burning with ghostfire. They moved not like shambling corpses but like trained killers.
Lucien's grin sharpened. "Finally. I was getting bored."
The brothers fell into motion, shadows and flame colliding with frost and bone. Every clash sent echoes bouncing through the canyons, like the mountain itself was amplifying the fight.
Rei knelt in the snow, her hands glowing faintly as she traced ancient wards into the ice. "They're bound to the seal! Destroying them won't end this!"
"Then tell us how to end it faster!" Ayden yelled, spinning his daggers in a spray of frost.
"The shrine of Noril," Rei gasped, her voice trembling with strain. "We have to reach it—before the mountain itself wakes."
The words chilled Cain deeper than the snow. He remembered the mural in Kiralyn, the serpent with seven eyes, and the phrase that had haunted him since: Each seal is a test.
As the last of the skeletal guardians fell to ash, the mountain rumbled beneath their boots. A low, guttural sound, like stone grinding against stone.
Corin, who had stayed at the edge of the battle, finally drew his spirit blade. "That wasn't them," he said, nodding toward the rumbling peaks. "That was something older. And it knows we're here."
They pushed upward into the heart of Noril, toward a monastery carved into the cliffs—one long abandoned, half-swallowed by frost and shadow.
And inside its broken gates, the echoes waited.