Chapter 6: The Reach Beneath Ice
The cold hit like a memory.
Not just temperature — but silence, stillness, the kind that wraps around the bones and whispers old names. Faith and Kael stood at the edge of the Frozen Reach, a land where time moved slower, and even the wind seemed to hesitate.
Snow fell in spirals.
The trees were skeletal. The rivers were frozen mid-motion. The sky was a pale bruise.
Kael pulled her cloak tighter. "This place doesn't want us here."
Faith didn't respond.
He was listening.
The seal was close.
They traveled by foot.
No roads. No guides. Just instinct and the pull of the third seal. Faith's powers were muted here — his fire flickered, his flight faltered, even his strength felt sluggish. The Reach was resisting him.
Kael noticed. "You're dimming."
Faith nodded. "The seal is buried deep. And something's guarding it."
They reached a cliffside monastery carved into ice. Abandoned. Cracked. But not empty.
Inside, the walls were covered in carvings — symbols Faith recognized from the guidebook, but older, rougher. They told a story of a child born without a throne. A Fifth. A mistake.
Faith touched the wall.
It pulsed.
A voice echoed.
You were born here.
Faith staggered back.
Kael drew her blade. "What?"
Faith stared at the carvings. "This isn't just where the seal is. It's where I came from."
The monastery shifted.
A hidden chamber opened beneath the altar. Inside: a cradle. Frozen. Empty.
Kael stepped forward. "They kept you here?"
Faith nodded slowly. "Or someone like me."
He felt it now — memories not his own. A child raised in silence. Taught to absorb, not to feel. Fed fragments of fruit. Trained to awaken seals. Not for balance. For control.
Kael's voice was low. "You were a weapon."
Faith clenched his fists.
"Not anymore."
They descended into the ice.
The seal was buried beneath the monastery, encased in crystal, guarded by a creature of frost and memory — a sentinel born from the seal's own energy.
It rose as they entered.
Tall. Faceless. Wings of shattered ice. It didn't speak. It simply attacked.
Kael moved first — her blade slicing through air, deflecting shards. Faith followed, his fire sputtering but present. The battle was brutal. The sentinel adapted, mimicking Faith's powers, countering Kael's strikes.
Faith was losing.
Until he stopped fighting.
He stepped forward, arms open.
"I'm not here to conquer."
The sentinel paused.
Faith touched its chest.
"I'm here to remember."
The ice cracked.
The seal emerged.
It was blue.
Etched with the symbol of memory — a spiral within a spiral, endless, recursive.
Faith touched it.
This time, the vision was not of thrones.
It was of a lab.
Children in cages.
Fruit fragments injected. Powers tested. Failures discarded.
Faith saw himself — or someone like him — crying without sound, glowing without warmth. He saw a figure watching. Not a ruler. Not a scientist.
A mirror.
The same eyes.
The same glow.
But colder.
He escaped first.
He broke the seal before you.
He is not your opposite. He is your origin.
Faith collapsed.
Kael dragged him from the chamber.
They camped in the ruins, fire flickering weakly. Faith didn't speak for hours.
When he did, his voice was hollow.
"He's not just ahead of me. He's part of me."
Kael didn't respond.
Faith looked at the seed the Sovereign had given him.
"I think I know what it's for."
He planted it in the snow.
It didn't grow.
Not yet.
They left the Reach changed.
Faith's powers returned slowly, but his mind was sharper. The third seal had given him more than energy — it had given him history.
Kael watched him closely.
"You're not the same."
Faith nodded. "I'm not sure I ever was."
They traveled east.
The fourth seal waited in the Empire of Echoes, a land where sound was currency and silence was death.
But Faith was no longer chasing seals.
He was chasing himself.