Zaliyah clutched the velvet armrest so hard his knuckles turned the color of the snow outside. His heart hammered against his ribs-not with the fear of the storm, but with the terror that he was already too late.
At the foot of the Great Ridge, the carriage came to a final halt. The lead guard pulled open the door, his face nearly hidden behind the frost.
"Your Highness, the beast cannot go further," the guard shouted over the howling gale. "The path narrows into the 'Devil's Spine.' It's a crooked pathway. If we go on, it must be on foot."
Zaliyah didn't hesitate. He stepped out, and the wind nearly knocked him flat. The path ahead was a nightmare of rocks and slippery translucent ice. It was a small narrow path jutting out from the mountainside, barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast.
"Keep close!" the guards shouted, forming a protective ring around him.
Zaliyah struggled. Every step was a battle against his own center of gravity. The heavy furs weight him down and and the life inside him seemed to grow bigger, sensing the atmospheric pressure of the high peaks, it felt like the child would jump out of him from any moments now.
They climbed for what felt like hours, their lungs werec burning with the thin, frozen air.
As they rounded an outcrop, the wind suddenly died down, the silence was worse than the storm.
Zaliyah stopped, his breath hitching. Through the falling flakes, he saw a figure. It stood fifty paces ahead, tall and broad-shouldered, draped in a cloak that fluttered like crow wings.
"K-ka-Karas?" Zaliyah stammered.
His mind subconsciously projected the one person who had always been his safety. The figure reached out a hand. Zaliyah took a step forward, extending his hand to the shadows.
"Your Highness, stop!" the guard yelled.
The illusion shattered. The "figure" shifted, its proportions elongating and twisting. It wasn't Karas. It was a Snow Monster, a Tusked Wolf the size of a carriage, its fur so white it was invisible until it moved. It had been mimicking a human silhouette to lure them in.
Suddenly, the path became alive. Six, ten, fifteen pairs of glowing, glacial-blue eyes ignited in the darkness. The wolves didn't howl loudly as they began to circle, their massive tusks against the path.
The guards drew their swords, but their hands were shaking. They were outnumbered and exhausted.
The alpha wolf lunged, but as it got within ten feet of Zaliyah, it skidded to a halt. Its ears flattened against its skull, and a sound erupted from its throat that wasn't a snarl, it was a whimper.
Zaliyah stood his ground. He felt a strange, heat beginning to radiate from his navel, spreading upward to his chest. It was the Celestial Core, reacting to the malice of the monsters.
The wolves growled, their saliva freezing into circles before it hit the ground, but they stayed back. They paced in a circle, trapped between their hunger and the primordial "wrongness" they sensed in Zaliyah.
To a creature of demonic frost, Zaliyah's aura was like looking directly into a sun.
High above, perched on a ledge overlooking the path, Xulthas watched with narrowed eyes. He was draped in a fur cloak, protected from the cold by an emerald violet barrier. Beside him, a wounded Harun and a Iruna were huddled near a small, magical fire at the mouth of a cave.
"Fascinating," Xulthas murmured, his green eyes reflecting the orange fire.
Harun tried to stand, his leg bandaged and bloody. "Your highness..... what is he doing here?"
"He came for you two " Xulthas said smirk dancing on his lips. "But let's just see just how much longer he can hold back"
With a subtle flick of his wrist, Xulthas cast a minor "Void Veil" over the wolf closest to Zaliyah. The spell masked Zaliyah's celestial scent for just a second-long enough to break the monster's hesitation.
The wolf lunged.
"C-C-commander what are you doing!" Iruna screamed from the cave.
Zaliyah saw the monster's jaws open.
In that moment of bone-chilling terror and fear for his child, fear for the twins, and rage at the world, Zaliyah didn't shrink away.
He threw his arms out, his palms open.
"LEAVE US!" he roared.
The Celestial Core exploded.
A pillar of blinding, white light erupted from Zaliyah's chest, shooting upward into the black clouds and outward across the ridge. It wasn't fire, but it burned. The Snow Monsters let out ear-piercing Howl's as the light seared their eyes and scorched their fur. They scattered, leaping off the cliffs and retreating into the deep shadows of the mountain, unable to bear the presence of a purity that shouldn't exist in the Underworld.
The storm itself seemed to recoil. For miles in every direction, the clouds parted, revealing a cold, star-drenched sky and a moon that looked like a silver coin.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Zaliyah stood in the center of the path, his body still faintly shimmering with gold-white light. But the cost was immediate. His legs turned to water. The light died, and he began to tilt forward, his vision was blurry.
Before he could hit the frozen stone, a pair of arms caught him.
Harun had scrambled down the ledge, ignoring the agony in his leg, to reach him. He pulled Zaliyah against his armored chest, breathing heavily.
"Your highness.....You shouldn't be here... why did you come here ?"
Zaliyah looked up at him, his eyes heavy, his face pale as death. He reached out a trembling hand and gripped Harun's cloak.
"I was..." Zaliyah's voice was barely audible. "I was angry at the world, Harun. Not at you not at Iruna Never at you two."
He turned his head toward Iruna, who had reached them and was sobbing as she wrapped her arms around both of them.
"You're my family," Zaliyah whispered, his eyes finally fluttering shut. "I couldn't... let my family die."
He went limp in Harun's arms, his chin resting on the Chamberlains shoulder.
Xulthas descended the path slowly, his boots crunching on the ice. He stopped a few feet away, looking down at the huddled trio. The light Zaliyah had produced had even scorched the edges of Xulthas's magical barrier.
He looked at Zaliyah's peaceful, unconscious face, then at the "beer belly" that housed a child of both worlds.
"A beacon in the dark," Xulthas mused, his voice sounding almost respectful for the first time. "Malachi truly does have the most dangerous taste in the realms, first Kizari now this."
"Don't touch him," Iruna snapped, "you caused this.....it's all because of you"
Xulthas laughed, but there was no malice in it-only a calculating interest. "I have no intention of harming him today, Iruna. He just did my job for me. He cleared the mountain."
Xulthas looked up at the clear sky, the stars reflecting in his green eyes. "But Malachi needs to be told. The pet has grown teeth. And his light... his light is going to be seen from the Capital if he ever does that again."
Harun gathered Zaliyah closer, shielding him from the wind as they began the slow, careful descent back to the carriage.