The wind off the frozen river hit Elias the second his boots cleared the ladder, biting through his trousers and instantly stiffening his bad arm. Above him, from the deck of the migration ship, Nadia watched him go in dead silence. Let her glare. Let them all think he was some feral Kadesh pirate.
He had to get away from them. The pressure in his skull—that gnawing, hijacked instinct pulling him away from the ship—was a raw physical throb now. It grated on his pride to feel manipulated like a toy on a string, but staying meant suffocating under the Evolved's charity. Elias would rather freeze than owe them his life.
He gripped his mangled arm against his ribs, his boots crunching heavily into the crust of the snow. Despite the minor coma he'd woken from just hours ago, a strange vitality hummed beneath his skin. The mark beneath his eye thrummed in the cold—the signature of the God of Order, who had explicitly ordered him not to embarrass Him anymore. Elias didn't know the full limits of what he was yet, but he knew standing still was a death sentence. If his patron god expected revenge for Kallena, Elias needed the strength to enact it. He set his sights north and east, determined to force this raw power to answer to him.
"I know you're not going to leave again. You're not that dumb, are you?"
Elias flinched, halting his forward momentum. He looked back up the slow incline of the drift. Idris was trudging down from the ladder, limping heavily, a dark patch of fresh blood already soaking through his coat.
Elias dug his heel deep into the snow, his jaw tightening. "That's dumb? Should I stay for some reason?"
Idris took a few more agonizing steps before dropping hard into the drift. He didn't slide gracefully; his legs simply gave out. A sharp, ragged wail escaped his teeth as he pressed a gloved hand against his side, looking up at Elias with a mix of fierce resignation and utter exhaustion.
Elias stood frozen, watching the wind whip the snow across Idris's boots. He hadn't realized he was waiting for the older boy to catch up.
"You should sit down with me," Idris breathed, craning his neck against the gale. "I'm not going to be able to get up for a few minutes, and I'd rather not have this conversation craning my neck."
"What conversation?"
"The one we're about to have."
Elias didn't sit. He took a deliberate step closer, using his shadow to block the wind. Down here, the metallic smell of fresh blood was sharp over the ice. The dark stain on Idris's heavy bandaging was spreading fast.
"That's worse than you've been showing," Elias noted coldly.
"It's pretty bad," Idris grunted, his breath pluming in white clouds. "I've had worse, technically. But not by much, and not recently, and not while also being out here in the cold. Sit down. Please."
It was the *please* that disarmed him. Stripped of the usual Evolved arrogance, the request left Elias with nothing to push against. Snarling at his own compliance, Elias dropped into the snow two feet away, pulling his knees up tight against his chest. The freezing moisture soaked through his trousers instantly, sending a violent shiver down his spine.
"Okay," Elias spat through chattering teeth. "Talk."
"You asked if leaving was dumb?" Idris's eyes locked onto the distant silhouette of the camp, his voice flattening out. "I'm not gonna waste my time sugarcoating it. The only reason you're alive right now is because I decided to keep you alive. So when I find out you're walking back out onto the same ice that just nearly killed us both, not even a week after I dragged you out of it, I'm a little bit interested in how you even ask 'if that's dumb'."
The reality check carried a sharp, undeniable sting. Elias rolled his eyes to mask the sudden surge of defensiveness. He hated this exact script—the impending guilt trip, the inevitable demand for repayment.
"You didn't have to save me," Elias scoffed, lifting his chin. "I don't owe you for saving me either."
"I never said you owed me anything. I'm asking to not have my investment wasted." Idris shifted, grimacing as the ice crunched beneath his wound. "Where are you from? They aren't gonna kick you out of the camp, but at least give me a chance to clear your name. Being 'mysterious' isn't gonna do you any favors."
"How would they kick me out of a camp I don't want to be at?" Elias countered. Yet, even as the words left his mouth, a hollow realization hit him: he hadn't actually planned a route away from the river. He was walking purely on blind instinct and stubborn pride.
Idris just stared at him, heavy and solemn.
"From a ship that's at least two weeks east of here," Elias muttered, breaking the silence. "If that's what you want to know."
"That's not possible."
"Okay."
"No, I mean—there's no way you could've walked for two weeks with no food or anything."
"Then I guess I'm lying."
Idris let out a short, ragged breath that might have been a laugh if his ribs weren't bleeding. He looked up at the grey expanse of the sky, then back at Elias. His eyes carried a profound, hollow exhaustion that Elias hated recognizing.
"I'll trade," Idris offered quietly. "I'll tell you something true if you tell me something true."
"I don't want anything from you."
The lie tasted like ash. There was a desperate, growing list of things Elias wanted from the boy sitting across from him. He needed to understand the violent force humming in his hands. He needed to know if the god's power could actually be tamed, or if it was just a fleeting curse designed to tear him apart. But admitting that vulnerability—begging an Evolved for scraps of knowledge—burned his pride to cinders.
"You want to know what a Trueborn is," Idris said, cutting straight through the facade. "I can see it in your face every time I've used the word. You've been pretending you knew, and I let you because I didn't want to argue with a child in the middle of a fight. But we're not fighting now, and I'd appreciate it if you stopped pretending you understand the things you don't."
Elias bristled, his blood running hot despite the freezing wind. "Then explain it."
"Not now."
"Then don't lecture me about what I do or don't know."
"I'm not lecturing you," Idris fired back, his voice finally carrying an edge. "I'm telling you that you're about to walk yourself into something you won't survive, and I'd rather not have spent the morning being cut open for nothing."
Elias clamped his mouth shut. The heat radiating off his face felt dangerously close to shame.
"I'll go first," Idris said, holding his gaze. "I'm fifteen. Close to your age, I hope, meaning I'm entirely different from Nadia and the others. But it would be wrong to say I'm not an Evolved. So that's my offer. Now tell me one true thing."
A sudden gust swept between them, driving a thin sheet of crystalline ice over their legs. Elias narrowed his eyes against the stinging spray, rapidly calculating the smallest, most insignificant truth he could surrender.
*Their word becomes the law.* The mantra of his patron god echoed unbidden in his mind—the singular phrase that had kept his legs moving across two weeks of frozen wasteland. He looked at Idris. Only two years older. The realization settled heavily onto Elias's chest. Thirteen against fifteen. Yet Idris had faced down the river's beasts alone, bleeding and isolated, while Elias was barely keeping his hijacked instincts from dragging him into the jaws of a dog.
Elias's jaw locked. "I have somewhere to be," he said coldly. "It's north and east. That's why I'm leaving."
"Who's there?"
"That's two questions."
"It's the same question. Who or what is north and east?"
Elias stared past him, refusing to yield. Idris waited out the silence without twitching, finally giving a single, curt nod as if the silence itself were an answer.
"I have somewhere to be," Elias repeated, his voice dropping lower. "There's a person I need to find. I can't stay here for long."
"How long is long?"
"I don't know. Less than two weeks."
Idris leaned his head back against the snow, processing the timeline. "Two weeks is enough to teach you a bit," he said slowly. "Not enough to make you good at it. But enough that you'd survive long enough to get wherever you're going. And in exchange—"
"In exchange what?" Elias blurted.
He hadn't meant to sound so eager, but the raw necessity overrode his pride. Idris was offering the exact key Elias needed to unlock the god's mark. If he walked away now, the freezing river would claim him before midnight.
"In exchange you tell me, eventually, what you are and where you came from," Idris said, his gaze piercing. "Because I don't actually believe the story you've told me so far, and I'd like to know what kind of person I just spent my morning bleeding for. Whenever you're ready. But I want it eventually."
Elias's fingers dug hard into the wet fabric of his trousers. He didn't trust Idris. He didn't trust Nadia, the ship, or the Evolved. He trusted only his own capacity to survive. Reflexively, his mind screamed that the trade was a trap—an unfair bargain designed to strip away his leverage.
But the word *unfair* was just a shield. The trade gave Elias absolutely everything: a path forward, a weaponized mastery over his powers, and a guarantee of survival. His pride simply hated the fact that he owed his ascension to an Evolved. He refused to feel grateful.
"Okay, I can't take the hero act seriously," Elias sneered, leaning forward. "Honestly, whether you claim to be different or not, you are Evolved. Meaning you are obviously more capable than I can ever be." He paused, watching Idris slowly shake his head in sharp disagreement. When the older boy didn't interrupt, Elias pressed the attack. "So what's the real reason you care this much? Why do you care?"
Idris held his stare, the wind howling unhindered across the ice between them.
"I don't know," Idris admitted softly. "It's possible I don't, and I'm just doing what I would do anyway because I don't know how to do anything else. But you should come back to the ship for at least right now. Heal first. You can leave in the morning if you still want to. I won't stop you."
"You can't stop me now."
"No. I really can't." Idris slowly pulled his bloodstained glove away from his hip, letting his arm rest limply in the drift. "But I'd like to point out that I'm probably not gonna make it back to that camp alone. If you walk away right now, the version of this story that gets told back at the ship is that the kid who showed up out of nowhere abandoned the wounded crewmember to die in the snow. Nadia already wants to kill you. I'm guessing that doesn't help your case much."
A single, sharp bark of a laugh tore out of Elias's throat before he could stop it.
Across from him, the corner of Idris's mouth twitched upward just a fraction of an inch.