They made camp just beyond the Echoing Pass.
The stone mouth of the cave yawned behind them like a memory best left unspoken. Even now, Aryelle swore she could hear the faint echoes of her mother's voice drifting on the wind—warped, wrong, unfinished.
The fire crackled awkwardly. The air felt too still.
Halric snored under a heavy blanket, one arm wrapped around his blade like a child hugging a toy. He'd said nothing since they left the pass, which meant he was more disturbed than usual.
Aryelle didn't sleep either.
She watched Kael from across the flames.
He sat on a rock, cloak draped over one shoulder, head bowed slightly—as if listening to things no one else could hear. His sword was planted in the snow beside him, and the shadows near him did not sit still.
They shifted. Twitched. Flickered like they had a will of their own.
No normal magic did that.
No normal man did that.
"Tell me what that was," Aryelle said.
Kael looked up slowly, as if emerging from somewhere far away. "You'll have to be more specific. We've survived quite a lot of 'whats.'"
"The wight. The way it moved. The way it obeyed you."
Kael didn't flinch. He didn't lie, either. He just studied her, one eye silver, the other black as pitch.
"It recognized me," he said. "That's all."
"Wights don't recognize. They consume. They haunt. That thing bowed."
He didn't reply.
"Answer me, Kael."
He reached into the folds of his cloak and pulled out a stone. Smooth, dark, pulsing faintly.
Aryelle's breath caught.
"Is that—?"
"A fragment of the old world," he said. "A shard of the Deep. Tied to the same forces that fuel the wights, the whispers, the shadows that never sleep."
She stared at it.
"That's cursed."
"Correct," he said.
"And you're carrying it?"
He gave her a sharp look. "I didn't choose this path, Aryelle."
Something flickered in his voice there—something raw and edged.
"I didn't wake up one day and think, 'Ah yes, I'll bond my soul to the broken remnants of forgotten magic and become the monster mothers warn their children about.'"
Aryelle blinked. "Then why did you?"
Kael leaned forward slightly. The firelight danced across the silver side of his face. The other half remained veiled in shadow.
"To kill a king," he said.
The fire cracked. Silence fell again, heavy as snowfall.
Aryelle didn't ask which king. The truth was already written in the way Kael carried himself—like a man who'd done terrible things and survived them, but never quite escaped them.
She looked at the stone again.
"If that thing inside you wakes up fully," she said, "what happens?"
Kael looked at her. Really looked.
"Then you'll have to kill me."
Later that night...
Aryelle lay awake beside the fire, blade within arm's reach. She couldn't stop thinking about the wight… about Kael… about the way the shadows bowed.
She'd come on this journey for a crown—to restore her land, to end the frost, to reclaim power.
But now...
Now she wasn't sure whether her greatest ally was her salvation—or her doom.
And the worst part?
She wasn't sure which she wanted him to be.
Far away…
Beneath the surface of the world, the Crown of Thorns and Flames pulsed again.
Its thorns curled tighter. Its flames stirred softly.
It was beginning to wake.