Lord Nareth's name no longer felt like just a record of betrayal. It was a mark on the world, a wound that still bled, and Kaelin would see it closed in ice.
He closed the scroll with deliberate care, as though sealing a promise. When he looked up, his eyes were no longer only blue… they glimmered with a pale light, the shimmer of moonlit frost over deep water.
The room was silent, but inside Kaelin's mind a vow had already formed.
...
The scroll lay closed before Kaelin, its weight far greater than parchment and ink should ever carry. His hand rested on it for a long moment, as if keeping it still could keep the fury inside him from spilling out. But the fury had already taken root. It pulsed in his veins, cold and relentless.
He rose from the table slowly, every movement deliberate. The monks watched him but said nothing. Perhaps they could see it in his eyes, the silent gathering of something that could not be reasoned away.
Kaelin walked toward the temple's open doors. The winter air outside was sharp and clean, biting his lungs with each breath. Beyond the steps lay the great lake of the Glacier Monks, its waters dark and still, rimmed with white stone carved centuries ago. The lake had always been a place of calm, a mirror for meditation, but tonight it would bear witness to something else entirely.
He stepped to the edge, boots crunching over thin frost. The moon hung low above the mountains, its silver light spilling across the black water. Kaelin stared into that reflection, seeing not his own face but the image of Lord Nareth as he remembered him, smiling with false warmth, the fire in his eyes hiding a hunger for power.
His chest tightened. The memories came like the wind before a storm. He saw his mother's hands as she fastened the crest of the Aeryn Line to his collar. He heard his father's voice promising that the Guilds would one day answer for their greed. He remembered running through the palace courtyard as snow fell, only for that snow to turn to ash.
Kaelin's fists curled. The frost beneath his boots cracked.
"I swear it," he whispered, his voice carrying over the still water. "By the blood of the Aeryn Line, by the ice in my veins, I will see Lord Nareth fall. I will see his fire drowned in the cold he cannot escape."
The wind shifted, curling around him as though the lake itself had heard.
Something deep inside him answered the oath. His pulse slowed, but each beat was stronger, surer. The air grew colder still, and a faint mist began to swirl above the lake's surface. He closed his eyes and reached for that quiet center the monks had taught him to find, but it was not quiet now. It was alive, seething with power, drawn from every drop of water in the air, every flake of snow on the mountainside.
When he opened his eyes, the world seemed sharper. He lifted one hand, palm open toward the lake. The wind roared to life, spiraling outward, tugging at his cloak. The mist over the water thickened, twisting into the shape of a storm. The monks stepped back from the shore as the temperature plunged.
The surface of the lake began to freeze from the center outward, ice blooming like glass flowers under moonlight. Cracks and groans echoed through the night as frost spread faster and faster, locking the entire expanse in a sheet of shimmering silver. Snow burst from the air in sudden flurries, swirling in tight circles around Kaelin before scattering into the dark.
It was not the calm shaping of ice he had practiced before. This was raw, born from the force of his vow. The storm within him had taken form, and the lake had become its canvas.
Kaelin's breath came slow and steady as the last wave of frost settled over the farthest shore. The wind stilled, the snow fell gently, and the silence that followed was deeper than any he had ever known.
He lowered his hand, the oath still burning in his chest. The lake would thaw in time, but his vow would not.
Somewhere in the south, Lord Nareth still lived. And now, Kaelin had begun the long winter that would end him.