Name: Andel
Class: Beast Slayer
The cold wind ripped at Andel's fur-lined cloak seconds after a crack boomed through the air. He cursed and threw himself to the ground before the tremors could hit. The ice plains were shifting again, and Andel knew he must be getting close.
He had started this journey months ago, The cold wind ripped at Andel's fur-lined cloak seconds after a crack boomed through the air. He dropped to his knees, cursing, just before the tremors rolled beneath him like buried thunder. The ice plains were shifting again.
He waited, breath held, until the rumbling passed. Then silence—empty, heavy, eternal. The kind of silence that buried things.
Andel rose slowly, brushing snow from his gloves, and adjusted the iron clasp at his shoulder. The fur lining was soaked with frost, its warmth fading fast. The gods-damned cloak was a poor replacement for the wargskin he'd lost two weeks ago. But that was gone—torn up with the rest of the caravan, somewhere back where the ice first started cracking beneath their boots.
He scanned the horizon. Flat, white. Broken only by jagged shards of black stone where the ice had fractured. Somewhere beyond those stones was his quarry.
The Dreadlord.
Andel spat into the snow.
He had started this march months ago, after a whisper in a back-alley shrine, an old trail of blood and rumors. The beast had gone north, the voice said. North, into the realm where day had forgotten how to return. North, where the snow swallowed whole cities and the dead walked beneath it.
Andel remembered the last time he'd seen firelight. A flickering torch in the hands of the Moon Hag.
Her hut had been strung up in the ribs of a long-dead dragon, its bones blackened with age, creaking in the wind like windchimes made of sin. Her voice had been smoke and teeth.
"North! He's in the north, where the plains move and the night reigns eternal. That is where you will slay the Dreadlord! But be warned—you will lose everything the moment that you do."
She had laughed then, hacking and spitting blood between broken teeth.
Andel hadn't said anything for a long time. Just looked at her, face like stone, eyes dark from sleep lost to nightmares and names he couldn't forget.
"I've already lost everything," he whispered.
Then, smooth and cold as the wind outside, he drew the dagger from his vest and plunged it into her throat. Her eyes went wide. Then... knowing.
She didn't scream.
She just gurgled and smiled with bloodied lips as her head lolled sideways, cheek resting against the femur of her house.
The witch's corpse hadn't cooled before Andel was gone, boots crunching over old snow, dagger wiped clean on her tattered robes. Her final smile haunted him. Not because she knew something—but because she'd been right. He had already lost everything.
A wife. A child. A village that once smelled of bread and firewood. Facundo's flames had taken it all.
The Dreadlord.
The last of the dragons.
He'd come from the skies like a storm swallowed in teeth. Black scales darker than night. No warning, no mercy. Just fire—hotter than any forge—and a roar that cracked the sky.
They said it was revenge.
They said his mate had been slain by kings, carved up in some war long before Andel had held a sword.
He hadn't cared about the old songs then. He did now.
The last dragon disappeared after that. Facundo vanished beyond the Northern Wastes, like a ghost with wings. No more cities burned. No more thunder from above. But the silence didn't feel like peace. It felt like waiting.
And now—after all this time—there were rumors again. A shadow over the snow. Cattle turned to charred bone. A roar that echoed from the glaciers and sent men weeping into the dark. Andel followed them all. Every sign. Every lie. Every half-mad tale from travelers with frostbitten lips and haunted eyes.
Until he came to the Moon Hag.
And now… here.
Alone, above the frozen veins of a dying world.
He pressed forward, boots crunching over wind-swept ice. The sun had not risen in days. It didn't matter. It wouldn't come here. The North was cursed—too cold for dawn, too old for mercy. He walked by the sound of his own breath, the scrape of steel at his side, and the occasional groan of the shifting ice beneath his feet.
Then he heard it.
Not a crack. Not a tremor.
A sound—soft, wrong, living.
Andel froze. Listened.
Wind.
Snow.
Then... again. The faintest scrape. Like claws over glass.
He drew his longsword, slow and silent. Frost clung to the leather of his grip. His heart beat steady, trained. He'd fought snow-beasts, bone-dwellers, and worse things in the dark. But this… this was new.
He crouched near a rise in the ice. Crawled up slow.
There
on the far edge of the white expanse
something moved.
It was big. Too big. A black shape loping through the snow. Wings...folded? Tattered? He couldn't tell. But it moved with unnatural grace, like it didn't touch the ground at all.
Andel's breath caught.
Could it be? After all this time?
But then the shape was gone. Swallowed by a sudden squall of snow, the wind's shriek rising like a scream in his ears.
He cursed. Slid down behind the ridge, eyes searching, mind racing. If it was a trick of the wind, it was the cruelest yet.
But he knew what he saw.
And it was real.
He made camp that night in the lee of a broken glacier, its face jagged like a shattered mirror. There was no fire—he couldn't risk smoke. Just a bedroll and a cold meal. Salt meat. Dried roots. Teeth chattering between bites.
He wrapped himself tight and stared up at the sky.
There were no stars. Just the dark. Endless and full of teeth.
She had eyes like yours,
A voice like yours,
But she burned like the sun…
He sat upright, knife in hand, eyes wild.
The voice had come from nowhere. Not aloud. Not in the wind.
It had spoken inside his head.