The Iyakar-Tsaro—the Border Guard—were the first line of defense for the Empire. Their Akins wore masquerades inspired by Egyptian Stargate armors, and their non Akin soldiers wore ancient Egyptian plating designed to withstand the heat of battle.
But they were not designed for this.
Azure Oba stepped off the gunship. He didn't need to check his perimeter; the silence told him everything.
Usually, Outpost 9 was a hive of activity. It guarded one of the stable portals to the Arctic Mirror, a monitored rift used for scientific observation. It should have been bustling with drill commands and the hum of patrol skiffs.
Instead, it was a graveyard of sound.
"Stay with the ship," Azure ordered the pilot. His breath didn't just steam; it crystalized instantly, falling as tiny diamonds to the ground.
"Authority Oba," the pilot stammered, checking his console. "Thermal sensors are... confused. They're reading absolute zero. Inside the barracks."
Azure narrowed his eyes. "Keep the engines running."
He walked toward the outpost gates. The heavy bronze doors were open.
He stepped inside the courtyard.
The first thing he noticed was the fire.
In the center of the courtyard, there was a large brazier, usually kept lit to warm the night watch. The fire was there. But it wasn't moving.
The flames were frozen.
Orange and yellow tongues of fire had been solidified into jagged crystal, captured in the exact second the heat had been stolen.
"Iku," Azure whispered, his hand drifting to his sword. "Entropy that eats energy."
He walked past the frozen fire to the first guard.
It was a non-Akin soldier. He was standing with his spear raised, his mouth open in a shout of alarm. He was perfectly preserved. His skin wasn't blue from cold; it was white as marble. The frost didn't coat him; it was him. He had been transmuted into ice from the inside out.
Azure tapped the soldier's chest plate with his knuckle.
CLINK.
The sound was brittle, like tapping glass.
Azure moved deeper into the outpost. There were dozens of them. A squad running for the alarm bell, frozen mid-stride, gravity defied by the ice locking them in place. An Akin in full armor, his Aura Sword half-manifested—the blade of energy itself frozen into a jagged shard of blue ice.
This wasn't weather. This was a weapon.
Azure reached the Command Center. The heavy door had been torn off—not by explosives, but by brute strength. The metal was twisted like wet clay.
Inside, the Commander of the outpost was pinned to the wall.
He wasn't frozen like the others. He had been nailed to the stone by a massive, jagged spike of black ice.
And written on the wall above him, in letters gouged deep into the stone, was a message. It wasn't written in ink or blood. It was written in the absence of light.
THE SUN IS A LIE.
Azure Oba stared at the message. He felt a chill that his Red Aura couldn't burn away. This was the work of Rakshasha Asuras. Only they possessed the cruelty to turn an entire battalion into a sculpture garden.
He reached up to touch the black ice spike.
HISS.
His finger sizzled. The ice tried to eat his Aura. He jerked his hand back, seeing a patch of his red skin turning grey.
"They didn't just kill them," Azure realized, his voice echoing in the dead room. "They harvested their warmth. They drank the outpost dry."
He activated his comms bead.
"Akogwa Command. This is Authority Oba."
"We read you, Authority," the operator's voice crackled, sounding a world away.
"Code White," Azure said, turning to look at the frozen Commander. "The Arctic Mirror has breached. Outpost 9 is gone. There are no survivors."
He paused, looking at the frozen fire in the courtyard.
"And tell the Servitor Supreme," Azure added grimly, "that the prophecy was wrong about one thing. The Winter isn't walking. It is hunting."