Gray's breath caught in his throat.
The darkness ahead wasn't just emptiness. A single eye, luminous yellow, like a frozen sun, blinked open from within the glaciewall.l. It wasn't light shining outward but a gaze, an intelligence boring into him. For the span of a heartbeat, Gray was back at the tower, reliving the day he first saw one of the Ysalther. Ancient ice giants, nightmares given flesh.
His entire body locked. Muscles refused him. A clammy sweat prickled beneath his layers despite the freezing air. The sight paralyzed him in a way even battle never had. That alien eye regarded him without movement, without mercy, then...just as suddenly, it sank back into the black, vanishing as if it had never been there.
Gray let out a ragged exhale. His breath clouded the air in shaky bursts.' Did I imagine that?' His heart thudded painfully against his ribs, but deep inside he knew the answer. No. Imagination didn't leave you hollow and shivering to your bones.
Still, he stayed silent. Better to carry that terror alone than risk infecting the others with it. Renn and Adel didn't need his fear added to their own.
The truck rumbled steadily on through the narrow valley, its heavy treads grinding frost into dust. Beams of yellow light carved only thin blades through the pitch-dark, jagged ice walls. The claustrophobic silence of Cryostead pressed in, no wind, no falling snow, only the echo of their machine gnawing against the frozen earth.
Beside him, Korr jerked awake with a violent gasp. His eyes darted as if he had been tumbling through endless void. He rubbed his forehead hard, trying to shake the dream away, and Gray noticed his hand trembling.
Adel, lounging across the bench, smirked faintly. "What? Had a bad dream?"
Korr glared, but his voice betrayed the tremor. "Yeah. Nightmare."
That one word silenced them all. Even Adel leaned back without another quip, staring at the frost-cloaked roof of the truck as if he'd rather not ask questions.
Gray's voice broke the quiet instead. He shifted forward, eyes on Renn's rigid hands. "How long until we're out of Cryostead?"
Renn didn't take his eyes from the icy path. "No telling. Glacierfang at least had routes, trails carved by generations. Cryostead…" He gestured faintly with his chin to the mirror walls towering on either side. "Cryostead is nothing but reflection after reflection. It feels unending."
Gray studied him, noticing how steady Renn's eyes remained. Clear. Focused. Not blurred by exhaustion like the rest of them. "Aren't you...tired? I mean, you've been awake for a whole day without any breaks."
"No." Renn's reply was flat, already anticipating disbelief. "One of the few useful things my affinity's good for."
Gray blinked at him, caught off guard, but Renn gave no more. He stared ahead, silent, the wheel locked firm in his grip. Gray filed the thought away, a new fire of curiosity burning, but not enough to spark a question.
Then—
A soft crinkle.
Gray turned. Korr, shifting slyly, had drawn a ration from his coat. A small wrapped bar, one of the scarce pieces of food the Kaan had given them.
Gray frowned. "You shouldn't be wasting that."
Korr smirked, tearing the wrapper with his teeth. "Lira's asleep. She won't know." He bit into the stale bread and chewed deliberately, each crunch like a taunt in the silence.
Gray tried to look away, but his body betrayed him. His stomach twisted, his mouth watering at the faint smell. He stared longer than he meant to. Korr, noticing, tilted the crust with mock pity.
"Want some, Ash-hair?"
Gray snatched it before his pride could argue and devoured the piece, his hunger shattering restraint. The bread was rough, flavorless and stale but had nuts embedded within it, giving it some flavour. His chest warmed with each greedy bite.
'Ash-hair, huh? I'll turn you into ash one day for that.' But for now, he was too busy ravishing crumbs to care.
Korr even broke a piece for Renn, who accepted it with a quiet "Thanks."
For a while, the simple act of eating softened the sharp edges between them.
Korr leaned back, wiping crumbs from his jaw. "So. Where did you guys grow up?"
Renn answered first, eyes still fixed ahead. "West. Town called Fairharbor. Nothing special. Winters cold, summers hotter than hell."
Korr gave a half-snort. "Better than Frostmere. My home. Port town up north. Ships, fish, and too many empty stomachs. Most jobs barely kept you alive. Only real way out was the mission to Nyxterra." He shrugged. "So I signed."
Gray hesitated. The question lingered in the air, pressing him. He swallowed, then muttered, "I'm from... Ironhold."
Korr raised his brows. "Heard stories about that place. None of them good."
"They're probably true." Gray's jaw clenched. "It was… a nightmare." He forced a weak, fleeting smile. "Speaking of nightmares… what was yours about, Korr?"
The smirk slid from Korr's face. His voice lowered, roughened.
"…I saw an eye. Huge. Brighter than the sun. Everything around me was freezing solid."
Gray's blood ran cold. The warmth from the bread, from the moment, evaporated in an instant. His heart slammed against his ribs, hammering so loud he thought the others must hear.
Korr squinted at him. "What's wrong with you?"
'Ahh...Shit.'
Gray opened his mouth, scrambling for words—
BOOM.
The world convulsed. A deafening crack ripped through the air, echoing like the sky itself breaking. The truck jolted violently, treads skidding, nearly flipping sideways. Renn slammed the brakes, metal shrieking, the cabin rattling as gear spilled across the floor.
Before them loomed a massive shape. At first it looked like a crooked ice pillar stabbing out of the valley floor. But as Gray's eyes adjusted, the truth sank in. The ridges were wrong. The shadows curved, bent in unnatural joints.
The pillar had toes.
It was a leg.
"What…the hell." Renn's face drained to ash.
Lira's voice cut the frozen air, raw from sleep but sharp as a blade. "MOVE!"
Gray lunged forward, hand slamming down on the reverse controls. The truck screamed backward, treads screeching across slick frost, throwing snow and shards behind them.
They backed thirty meters away, only then did the shadows unfurl.
The glacier wall split open, and something impossible stepped free.
The Ysalther emerged. Ice giant of legend. A mountain given breath. Its bulk dwarfed towers, its skin was ridged like frozen cliffs, its limbs jagged with glacier-spikes. A mouth split open like a broken ravine, exhaling a blast that crystallized the very air.
Every heart froze.
"Drive the hell away!" Lira roared.
Renn's paralysis cracked. He spun the wheel, gears screaming, the truck careened sideways, tires biting the frost as they tore down a side gorge.
The valley shook as the giant moved, tearing free from its ancient prison.
"What was that!?" Adel shrieked, his voice breaking.
Gray's throat burned. He shouted back: "A Ysalther! It's awake!"
Panic strangled the cabin.
"Stay calm!" Lira snapped, but her own voice faltered.
"CALM?!" Korr's eyes were wild, teeth bared. "Calm won't save us when it crushes us like ants!"
CRASH.
An avalanche of ice exploded ahead. A chunk larger than the truck itself slammed into the valley floor, shattering in a storm of shards. Renn cursed, yanked the wheel, the truck fishtailed so violently they nearly flipped, then righted by inches.
"It's tearing the valley apart!" Orrin screamed, voice shrill with terror.
Another volley rained down, each piece a building-sized shard of death. The truck skidded, swerved, Renn's teeth bared in desperate focus as they scraped past doom by a breath each time.
Then they cut into a narrower gorge. The walls shot up higher, trapping them between frozen cliffs like insects in glass. For a few heartbeats, the only sound was their ragged breathing.
Then—
BOOM. The earth convulsed again.
Adel turned back, eyes wide with horror. "There's… another one."
The others followed his gaze.
Another Ysalther was rising from the ice. This one taller, broader, its form jagged like a fortress pulled from the deep.
Renn swore. His knuckles whitened. "For God's sake… TWO?!"
"Just drive!" Gray struggled to stay seated as he digested the situation they were in.
Just then...
The second giant moved, slow at first, then faster, faster, until it thundered in a dead sprint. Each footfall shattered glaciers, the valley shaking as if the world itself was breaking apart.
The truck bounced off the ground with every step.
"Faster!" Adel screamed.
"I CAN'T!" Renn's voice cracked. "It'll catch us no matter what!"
Even Lira's composure fractured. Her hands gripped her head, mind racing, searching for escape, but every path ended in death.
The second Ysalther lunged. A rush of wind slammed the truck as its hand swept forward, massive fingers closing like a cage. Renn swerved, barely. The hand missed by less than a meter, smashing into the ice wall instead. The valley quaked as chunks collapsed.
The giant toppled, its bulk slamming into the gorge. Relief sparked for only a moment—
Then the shadow fell.
Another Ysalther leapt down from an ice formation above.
The impact was apocalyptic. Ice shattered like glass. The valley floor caved in.
"No—!" Renn spun the wheel but the ground was gone.
The world collapsed. Truck, cliffs, snow, all plunging into the abyss.
"Seal the hatches!" Gray screamed, scrambling. "NOW!"
But the back burst open first.
An eruption of black glacial water swallowed them.
The cold was unholy, knives in the veins, fire in reverse. Gray's lungs seized. His scream died in a throat frozen solid. The world spun in bubbles and ice as the truck capsized, tumbling end over end.
Above, the shadows of the giants loomed, blurred and monstrous, as the surface sealed with a skin of ice.
Gray fought, thrashing, every motion heavy as stone. His chest burned, vision darkening. The abyss pulled him deeper, dragging him where light could not reach.
Shapes spiraled down with him, shards of glacier, crushed towers, torn steel.
Something brushed his arm.
He twisted, desperate, half-mad with fear.
Hands. Cold, light as mist, yet impossibly strong, closed over his shoulders.
And then—
The dark swallowed him whole.