I was supposed to be dead.
The cold told me otherwise.
It gnawed at me—this endless white silence, this world that was not my own. My fingers twitched, numb and raw, buried beneath the weight of snow that shouldn't exist. My lungs burned with each shallow breath, the air too thin, too wrong. Above me, three pale moons stared down, their light sickly and foreign.
Three moons.
I knew then. This wasn't home.
My body was a ruin. Ribs cracked, blood thick and sluggish in my veins. The last thing I remembered was fire—the covenant's price, searing through flesh and bone.
(A covenant—not just a vow, but a law. The universe demands balance, and if the scales tip, it will take until they're even. Even if what's left of you isn't enough.)
I had torn the threads of fate apart, reshaped destiny with my own hands, and for what? To die in the snow of a world that didn't know me?
A laugh rattled in my chest, bitter and broken.
Humans are cruel like that. We chase freedom even as we chain ourselves to our choices. I had gambled everything—my name, my past, my very existence—and now? Now I was nothing. A fading pulse. A ghost in the snow.
Was this punishment? Divine mockery? Or just the inevitable end of a man who thought he could outrun consequence?
Then—
—I saw her.
Fate.
Not a concept. Not a force.
A woman.
She stood in the snow, untouched by the wind, her silhouette sharp against the endless white. Her hair was the same color as the snow, long and unbound, blending with the storm. And her eyes—gods, her eyes—were pale grey, like frosted glass.
Is she blind? I wondered.
But then she turned her head, and those clouded eyes focused on me with terrifying precision.
She was looking right at me.
Not through me. At me.
As if I were still someone worth seeing.
My lips parted, but no sound came out. Only blood, warm and metallic, trickling down my chin.
She took a step forward.
The snow didn't crunch beneath her feet.
The world held its breath.
And then—
She wept.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, silver as the moonlight, merging with the falling snow. Each drop hissed where it struck the ground, melting through the ice like acid.
I didn't understand.
Was she mourning me?
Or was this something worse?
(The covenant always takes. But sometimes, it gives back. And what it gives is never what you wanted.)
Her lips moved. A whisper, lost to the wind.
I strained to hear—
—and the world shifted.
The cold had stolen everything from me except sight.
Through the veil of falling snow, she emerged—a wraith of frost and hollow bones, her white hair not a crown but a testament to starvation. Sixteen winters had carved her into angles, her wrists bird-bone thin beneath tattered wraps. A street urchin. A no one. The kind of girl lords stepped over in the capital streets, her existence as inconsequential as breath on the wind.
Yet those grey-blind eyes saw me.
Truly saw me.
Not the Paradox Sovereign. Not the Godslayer. Just a broken man bleeding into the snow.
Her cracked lips trembled. Tears welled in those frosted eyes—not from fear, but from something worse. Recognition. Until I could see the way her tears froze as they fell, crystalline shards of sorrow suspended in time.
When was the last time someone had wept for me? Not for the power, not for the legend—just for the man? Only Lyria and Therion had. But this girl? One whose name or face I didn't even know?
I tried to move. To speak. To something. But my body was no longer mine. The covenant had hollowed me, left me a shattered husk, a puppet with its strings cut.
She stumbled forward, bare feet sinking into the snow. Each step was a battle, her breath ragged puffs in the air, but she didn't stop.
Closer.
Closer.
Until her fingers, calloused and warm, brushed the snow from my face.
Her touch was warm.
Or maybe I was just that cold.
Her lips moved. Words lost to the howling wind—or was it the blood in my ears? I couldn't understand. A prayer? A curse? A plea for me to survive?
I wanted to answer. To tell her to run, to leave this place, to survive where I had failed. But the snow was swallowing me, the cold pulling me under.
The last thing I saw was her face, streaked with frozen tears, her blind eyes seeing more than any seer's ever had.
Then—
Darkness.
Peace.
And the terrible, beautiful realization that in the end, after all the blood and fire and broken oaths...
...someone had mourned me.
And for the first time since 'My Bestfriend's' ashes scattered on the wind, I wanted to live.