A month passed.
A month of blows, blood, and silence. A month during which Frost learned that the prison never truly slept.
There were fights in the yard. Small skirmishes, always orchestrated by the cruel games of the inmates. Frost was dragged into them several times. He faced brutes starved for violence, was slammed to the ground, beaten, slashed… but always, he got back up. And each time, he understood his mistakes a little better.
The guards never moved. From the height of their catwalks, they watched with the detachment of men gazing at cattle fighting. Nothing more than a spectacle.
⸻
During that month, Frost wasn't alone. The Trine began to draw closer to him. At first out of curiosity, then with a kind of quiet respect.
At the start, it was just fleeting glances, half-smiles when they saw him return from a fight, covered in bruises but still standing. Then, from time to time, a phrase, a word slipped in like a test:
— Not bad, kid. You're holding out better than expected.
— You're bleeding, but you're still breathing. That's what matters.
Little by little, the distance shrank. The Trine would sometimes sit near him in the yard, share a piece of bread, or a cynical remark about the prison. They remained cautious, like predators sniffing out a new presence, but their initial hostility shifted into genuine interest.
Kaelen, however, watched this evolution with suspicion. He knew too well the law of this place: nothing came for free. Still, he didn't push them away. He knew that in a world where everyone wanted you to fall, a few potential allies were better than none.
⸻
But Frost's greatest transformation came at night, when the yard went silent and the darkness thickened.
Kaelen forced him to train, wounds or not. Breathing, stance, posture, endurance. He gave him no rest.
— As long as you breathe, you survive, he repeated. As long as you breathe, you can strike.
The exercises were brutal: push-ups, sit-ups, dodges repeated until his legs shook like rotten wood. Kaelen humiliated him sometimes, corrected him always. But Frost pushed on.
His raw rage began to take shape. His strikes grew sharper. He learned to read an opponent before they attacked, to anticipate the blow instead of just taking it. His wounds multiplied, but beneath them, a new discipline was being forged.
One night, as Frost collapsed on the floor after endless drills, Kaelen simply declared:
— You're no longer just a beast that hits. You're starting to become a fighter.
Frost, his face pressed to the stone, muttered:
— And you? Why are you doing this?
Kaelen stayed silent for a long time before answering in a low voice:
— Because if you fall, Veyron wins. And I… I refuse to watch him win again.
⸻
By the end of that month, Frost was no longer the same. Still covered in scars, still exhausted, but his gaze had changed. Colder. Sharper.
The Trine now sometimes sat at his side as if the invisible barrier had finally broken. They weren't yet allies… but a common ground was forming, cemented by the brutal law of the prison: only those who remain standing deserve a hand.
Kaelen, though, saw it all. And he knew this month was only preparation. For sooner or later, Veyron would return.
And that day, Frost would have to prove his suffering hadn't been in vain.
⸻
The yard had emptied, swallowed by darkness. Frost, restless, hadn't found sleep. His steps carried him to one of the prison's most remote corridors, where echoes devoured every breath.
That was where he saw her.
A woman, slender, her posture rigid, almost aristocratic despite the rags. Dark hair fell in sharp strands around a closed face, where only two icy eyes still seemed alive. She didn't look at him. Not immediately.
Frost stopped, watching her. Then, a sudden motion.
Lyara raised her arm. Between her fingers, a crude knife, forged of tarnished metal. But what caught Frost's attention was the small parchment tied to the hilt, marked with illegible symbols.
She threw the blade.
A sharp hiss. The knife struck the wall several meters away. Frost began to speak, but the words died in his throat. In less than a heartbeat, Lyara vanished from where she had been… and reappeared at the spot where the knife was embedded.
Not an illusion. Not a double. She had truly moved.
— Wh… Frost began.
Lyara wrenched the blade free with a sharp gesture, and at last her eyes locked on him. Her gaze was cutting, indifferent, as if she had already weighed his worth… and found nothing.
— Words are useless, she said flatly. Only the living understand.
Without waiting for a reply, she hurled a second knife, this time into a cracked stone pillar. Again, she vanished—then reappeared at the point of impact, her hand around the hilt, her body perfectly still as if nothing had happened.
A shiver ran down Frost's spine. He had never seen such mastery. It wasn't just a weapon. It was a way to bend the rules of space itself, to strike before an enemy even realized they were already dead.
Lyara sheathed her knives, folded her arms, and exhaled in a voice colder than steel:
— Don't come closer. This isn't a show for you. It's a warning.
Frost, however, didn't step back. In his battered body, fear burned, but so did a fascination he couldn't suppress.
— Why… why the parchments? he rasped.
Lyara held his gaze without a word. Her silence was heavier than any answer. She walked past him without touching him, whispering as she did:
— Ghosts live long. You… you're not a ghost yet.
And she disappeared into the corridor, swallowed by shadow, as though the air itself had bent to her will.
Frost remained alone, his breath ragged, his mind haunted by the image of those knives and their impossible power. Only one word echoed in his skull: "warning."