The square had not yet cooled from the chaos when the soldiers came. Iron crested with the sunmark of Cael's decree, torches snapping like angry wasps, boots crunching frost.
Mira's lungs burned with smoke and shame as Brenn kept her shielded, one broad arm pressing her behind him. Lysa clutched Mira's other hand tight, whispering, don't let go, don't let go, though her own knees trembled.
"By order of Elder Cael," the captain bellowed, parchment unfurled, "the girl Mira of the forge is charged with witchcraft and treachery, for bringing death to the emissary and ruin upon Ashfen's hearth. She is to be seized and delivered at dawn for judgment."
The crowd pressed close. Some faces Mira knew since childhood, others pale and strangers in the torchlight. Whispers hissed sharp as knives: witch… frost-blood… cursed hands.
Brenn's hammer lifted, and Mira felt the weight of the village's fear pressing down, heavier than any blade.
And then—movement at the edges. A figure in travel-stained leathers slid between shadows and torchlight, dark hair damp with frost, eyes sharp as broken glass. He did not raise a weapon, but his voice cut through:
"She won't survive the night here. Not if you mean to keep her breathing long enough to judge."
The soldiers paused. Some recognized him—the emissary's aide, the scribe who had ridden in days earlier, always just behind his master. Kael.
"You," the captain spat. "Your master is dead because of her."
Kael's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Dead because frost split a roof beam. Unless you believe the girl is strong enough to call storms with her hands?" His gaze flicked to Mira then, unreadable—testing, measuring. "If she is, you'll need more than a dozen men to drag her."
The torchlight cracked against silence. No one moved.
Then Kael stepped closer, lowering his tone. "There's a patrol road north. If you want her alive—" his eyes found Brenn's, then Mira's "—come with me now."
It wasn't a plea. It wasn't even kindness. His words felt like rope: binding them into flight, but with knots Mira couldn't yet see.
Brenn hesitated, hammer still in hand. Lysa's grip trembled, tugging Mira toward the dark.
Mira's pulse pounded. Could they trust him? The villagers were ready to burn her; the soldiers to drag her. Kael might be a lifeline—or another snare tightening.
And yet… his path was the only one open.
Brenn growled low, made the choice for them: "Move."
They plunged into the frost-scattered streets, soldiers' shouts erupting behind. Kael led at a clipped pace, neither glancing back nor slowing for them, as though he were not saving them but testing how far they could run before they broke.
The streets of Ashfen blurred past—snow-dusted shutters, the tilt of old timber walls, the glint of eyes from door-cracks as villagers watched them flee. Mira's chest tightened: every house was familiar, every face one she'd grown up beside. Now all doors were closed to her, all windows turned cold.
Shouts rose behind—soldiers barking orders, boots hammering frost-hardened earth.
"Left," Kael snapped, his voice clipped and precise. He darted between two barns, cloak snagging on a splintered beam, then free again. He didn't wait for them, didn't even look back.
Brenn swore under his breath, pulling Mira through the narrow gap after him. Lysa stumbled, Mira yanking her arm to keep her upright.
"You'd have us run blind on his word?" Brenn growled, his voice low but furious.
Kael didn't answer. His strides were long, confident, the surety of someone who knew more of these paths than a stranger should.
The alley spat them out at the village's frozen edge, where frost crept thick across the fields. The air bit sharp; Mira's lungs burned, each breath frosting before her eyes. Her boots crunched brittle grass, every sound a signal to the men chasing them.
"Stop them!" a soldier's cry rang. Arrows hissed overhead, one shattering against a fencepost.
Brenn shoved Mira down into the snow, his bulk shielding her as another shaft clattered off his hammer's haft. "Go!" he barked at Kael. "If you know a way, take it! Otherwise I swear—"
Kael's voice cut in, calm and unflinching: "There's a stream bed north that cuts through the woods. Soldiers won't risk frost-thin ice in the dark. Move now or you won't see dawn."
His certainty was unnerving. Mira's heart hammered. Why did he know this land so well? He'd come as an emissary's aide—an outsider. Outsiders weren't supposed to know Ashfen's bones.
Yet the soldiers' shouts drew closer, torches scattering orange light across the snow.
Brenn cursed again and dragged Mira up. "We follow him," he said grimly.
Lysa clung to Mira's sleeve, breath ragged. "Mira, I can't—"
"You can," Mira said, though her own legs felt splintered with fear. She pulled Lysa forward, running harder. The cold clawed at her chest, her thoughts. I've never left Ashfen. Not like this. Not hunted.
The village fell behind, swallowed by night and frost. Ahead stretched only woods and the black spires of distant trees.
Kael slowed just enough to glance back, his expression unreadable in the dark. "Keep moving. If you falter, they'll catch us all."
Brenn's jaw clenched. "Say that again about her, and I'll leave you in the snow."
Kael's only response was a tilt of his head—mockery, or calculation, Mira couldn't tell. He turned back and pressed forward.
For the first time in her life, Mira looked back at Ashfen not as home but as something lost. Torches flickered like angry stars in the distance, closing in. She felt the exile settle into her bones like frost: heavy, sharp, irrevocable.
Her palms itched—heat prickling beneath her skin. She clenched her fists, forcing it down. Not now. Not here.
The night swallowed them whole.
The trees closed around them like a jaw. Black boughs arched overhead, skeletal fingers etched in frost, their breath clouding white in the narrow gaps of moonlight.
The forest paths were half-familiar—Ashfen's youth sometimes dared each other past the treeline to gather berries or timber—but tonight it was no game. The woods pressed heavy with silence, broken only by the crunch of boots and the far-off bark of a hunting horn.
Kael led without faltering, cloak snapping against brambles, his pace relentless. Brenn trudged close behind, every so often glancing back as though he could hold off pursuit with sheer will. Lysa stumbled between Mira and Brenn, clutching Mira's sleeve as though it were a lifeline.
The ground sloped, frost-slick, until Kael crouched and gestured. Below lay a dry stream-bed, its banks furred with brittle reeds. Thin ice glossed the stones at its bottom, cracks spidering where the water beneath still whispered.
"Here," Kael murmured. "The current cuts north. Soldiers will try the road, not this."
Brenn bristled. "And if the ice gives?"
"Then you drown. Better that than the gallows." Kael dropped lightly down the bank, boots crunching through the frost. He didn't offer a hand.
Mira swallowed. The stream-bed looked like a wound carved into the forest floor. She helped Lysa down first, then followed, the cold biting through her boots. Brenn thudded after, muttering curses.
They pressed on. The moonlight fractured in the ice, shimmering with faint blue glow. Mira caught herself staring—the frost is beautiful, even as it hunts us.
Then a sound cracked through the silence: a bowstring's snap.
An arrow hissed into the bank near Mira's head, splintering bark.
Lysa shrieked. Brenn shoved both girls ahead. "Run!"
Shouts echoed behind them, boots breaking through brush. Soldiers had split their pursuit—smarter than Mira expected. Kael cursed under his breath and lengthened his stride.
They pounded along the frozen bed, ice shattering underfoot. Mira's breath came in ragged bursts. The cold gnawed at her lungs, at her very bones. Her legs trembled. Not fast enough. Not strong enough.
Behind, soldiers closed—torches glinting off helms, their voices a rising tide.
And something inside Mira snapped.
Heat flooded her palms, a burn beneath her skin. She stumbled, clutching her hands, but the fire spilled anyway—light licking from her fingers like molten sap, green-gold against the night.
The frost nearest her hissed and split. A branch overhead ignited in sudden flame, shedding sparks like falling stars. Ice shattered underfoot, steam coiling up in ghostly plumes.
The soldiers reeled back, cries of alarm breaking the pursuit.
Lysa froze, wide-eyed, staring at Mira's hands as though she'd never seen her before. Brenn turned, shock etched across his soot-marked face. Kael's gaze was sharpest of all—not fear, not awe, but calculation, cold and fast.
Mira staggered, clenching her fists. "I—I didn't mean to—"
Her voice cracked, but the flames only guttered, refusing to vanish. The frost seemed to recoil, blackened veins crawling back from where her heat had touched.
Kael stepped close, eyes narrowing. "So it's true," he murmured. "The village whispers weren't madness."
Brenn shoved him back, fury flashing. "Stay away from her."
But Kael didn't flinch. His voice stayed even, deadly calm. "You want her alive? Then you'd better learn what she carries. Because the soldiers saw it too. And now the hunt has changed."
Mira's knees buckled. Brenn caught her under the arm, steadying her. Lysa pressed close, trembling.
And all around, the forest seemed to shiver—frost creeping, branches groaning, as though the very land had felt Mira's flare.
The world would not forget what had just been unleashed.
They did not stop until their lungs burned and their legs trembled. Kael finally raised a hand at a thicket of pines where the branches bent low, shielding a hollow of needle-strewn ground.
"Here," he said, his voice clipped. "We risk torches, they'll find us. Better cold than caught."
Brenn lowered Mira gently against the roots of a tree. She curled her hands into her lap, but faint warmth still bled from them, a shimmer that refused to vanish. Lysa hovered at her side, half in comfort, half in fear.
The woods were quiet but not calm. Every crack of settling frost made them flinch. The soldiers' pursuit had faded, but the forest itself seemed to listen.
Brenn's jaw worked as he glared at Kael. "Speak one word to damn her, and I'll split your tongue."
Kael ignored him. His gaze was fixed on Mira's hands, sharp as a blade. "You can't hide it now. What they whispered in Ashfen—they'll carry it beyond the village walls by dawn."
Mira's throat felt raw. "I didn't choose this."
"No one ever does," Kael said softly. It almost sounded like sympathy—until he added, "But choice or not, you carry it. And that means the hunt won't stop."
Lysa finally broke, voice trembling. "She saved me. Twice now. Why does no one see that?"
"Because people see fear faster than gratitude," Kael said flatly. "They'll call it witchcraft, curse, heresy. Whatever name fits their terror."
Brenn stepped forward, planting himself between Mira and Kael. "Then let them come. She's not alone."
Kael's eyes flicked to him, measuring. "You'd throw your life away for her?"
Brenn's reply came like iron striking an anvil. "Aye."
The silence that followed was brittle. Mira closed her eyes, shame burning hotter than her palms. She had never asked him to shoulder her burden. Never asked Lysa to tremble in her shadow.
"Why are you helping us at all?" Mira's voice was a whisper. "You've no reason. Your master is dead, and—"
Kael's expression shuttered. "My master died because Ashfen feared frost more than truth. And because he believed the North was waking." He leaned closer, lowering his tone. "If you are what I think you are, Mira, then his death wasn't meaningless. You are proof."
The word landed like a stone in her chest. Proof of what? Proof for whom?
Brenn growled. "She's no token for your politics."
Kael's mouth twisted—not quite a smile, not quite disdain. "Politics? This is survival. For all of us."
The fire in Mira's palms finally guttered, leaving only the sting of cold. She pulled her cloak tighter, wishing she could crawl into the roots and vanish.
The four of them sat in uneasy silence, the forest breathing around them. A shard of frost cracked from a nearby branch, falling like a blade into the dark.
Mira did not know if she had gained allies tonight, or if she had simply bound herself to three more ways the world might break her.