The shepherd's shelter was three walls and a roof of rough slate tucked into a fold of hill, a place for men and flocks to wait out squalls. Whoever had used it last had left a stack of dung cakes and a clay pot cracked along one side. Mira coaxed a flame from damp twigs with the patience of someone who'd learned by necessity.
Arya watched the fire catch. Its normalcy soothed the part of him that had spent days inside lightning. The tremble in his hands eased, then returned the moment he let his guard down. He laced his fingers together to hide it.
Rudra sat with his back against the open wall, eyes on the darkness where the slope fell away. "We're close," he said, more to the night than to them. "Tomorrow we reach the Gate."
Mira blew on the fire. "What gate?"
"Where the world thins," Rudra said. "Where the river we're following slides under a skin and comes out colder on the other side." He glanced at Arya. "Kharsa's door."
"The ice monastery," Arya said softly. The words felt like something a person might make up to comfort themselves. They didn't sound less made up when Rudra nodded.
"Sleep," Rudra added. "I'll watch."
Arya tried. When he finally drifted, the dreams returned. He stood at the edge of a lake black as obsidian and saw stars below him double bright—sky and water both full. Each star was an eye. Each eye watched him with a patience that felt like a question: Who are you when the storm stops?
He woke to soft light and the hiss of early snowmelt in the ravine. The sky had gone gray; clouds had built their wall overnight and were ready to march. Rudra already had them moving.
They followed the river until it dove into a cleft. The air cooled, then dropped, their breath turning to ghosts even as their shoulders still sweated from the climb. Moss gave way to slick rock traced with veins of ice. The sound of the water changed pitch—lower, then almost not water at all.
"The Gate," Rudra said, and there it was: a curtain of ice grown from the throat of the mountain, not solid, not melt—something between. Behind it, the world blurred.
Mira didn't pretend she wasn't impressed. "You weren't lying."
"I lie," Rudra said. "Just not about doors."
He stepped up and placed his palm against the ice. For a moment, nothing. Then the red eye brightened, and a ripple moved through the curtain, widening to the size of a person. Beyond, light struck surfaces at wrong angles, as if geometry was a suggestion and not a rule here.
"Go," Rudra said.
Arya's mark warmed as he reached for the gate. The beads throbbed once, like a warning or a blessing. He stepped through.
Cold scraped him clean—of sweat, of city smoke, of the last hour's fear. He gasped and came out the other side into air that smelled of snow even though flakes hadn't fallen yet. The valley beyond the Gate was a bowl lined with white stone and blue ice, a place sunlight took seriously enough to be gentle. Bells hung from lines between carved poles and rang in the faintest wind—notes like glass touched by a fingertip.
"Kharsa," Rudra said. "Home. And exile."
Figures moved toward them over the snow—robes wrapped against the cold, faces uncovered. The first among them was a woman with cloth wound over her eyes, not hiding them but transforming them: she had drawn the blindfold like a crown. Her steps never faltered.
She stopped a few paces away and smiled as if she were seeing everything worth seeing. "Welcome, Rudra," she said. "You bring the storm the old songs promised."
Rudra bowed his head in a motion that contained reverence and apology. "Mother Yeshe," he said. "I bring him late."
Her smile didn't dim. "The storm is rarely early." Then she faced Arya. "Child," she said, and the word didn't make him feel small. It made him feel included. "Show me your hand."
He unwrapped the beads. The mark shone, its light judging the day and choosing to be its own. Yeshe's breath struck like a blessing on his skin.
"Trishula's burden," she said, almost to herself. She traced a circle in the air over the mark, never touching it. "And you haven't burned yet. Good."
Mira folded her arms, protective without meaning to be. "He'll stay that way."
Yeshe's head tilted toward the sound of Mira's voice. "Your friend is steel," she said, approving. "You will need steel." She glanced toward Rudra—no, Arya realized, not glanced. Oriented. "And debt."
Rudra's jaw tightened. "I know."
Yeshe lifted her chin. Bells along the valley's edge answered a wind Arya couldn't feel. "Bring them to the Hall," she said to the monks behind her. "Warmth first. Then truth."
As they walked, Arya's nerves unclenched one thread at a time. The Hall was carved partly into ice, partly into stone, a place where candles burned without dripping and the air itself hummed with a low note that set his molars buzzing. Monks moved like water poured from one vessel to another, efficient, quiet. One pressed a bowl of broth into his hands; heat bit his fingers. He drank and found he was starving.
Yeshe took a seat before a window that looked out on nothing but light. "We kept the shard hidden," she said without preface. "We hid it because the King's court no longer belongs entirely to men. There are agreements in that palace older than its foundations. You were always going to be found anyway, but we prefer 'found with help' to 'found by hunger.'"
Arya felt the mark pulse. "The shard… chose me?"
"The storm knows certain shapes," Yeshe said. "Hunger. Defiance. A child who refuses to fit their given box. The storm loves those."
Mira's shoulder brushed his. "Told you."
Yeshe's smile sharpened. "It will also eat those, if untrained." She lifted a hand and bells above the window chimed in soft harmonies. "The Rakshasa King has sent more than hounds now. He's sent a herald. The next will be a hand. We will teach you to make that hand regret reaching."
Arya set the empty bowl aside. The coil inside him had gone quiet here, as if the place's geometry lulled it. For the first time since the courtyard, he could look at his hand and see possibility that wasn't only burden.
"What do I have to do?" he asked.
Yeshe's blindfolded face turned toward him, intent. "Eat," she said. "Sleep. Listen." Then, after a heartbeat: "And choose."
"Choose what?" Mira asked.
"If you carry this as a weapon," Yeshe said gently, "or as a vow."
Before Arya could answer, the Hall's bells cracked from harmony into alarm. The note punched the air. Frost on the window webbed.
Rudra was already on his feet. "Gate?"
A monk—breathless, cheeks burned red—skidded into the doorway. "Captain at the rim," he blurted. "Trident Guard. And something behind him we can't name."
"Yes," Yeshe said softly, not surprised. "The hand."
She rose like a storm arriving without wind. "Rudra, to the Gate. Mira, with me. Arya—" She held out her hand.