The cold had no bite.
It wrapped around me like an old skin—tight, familiar, almost forgotten.
Ten years, give or take. Long enough for the cold to stop feeling like punishment. Long enough to forget what warmth used to mean.
I moved through the halls with quiet steps, each one echoing off the frost-laced walls like a drumbeat beneath the stone.
Nothing hunted me now.
Nothing dared.
I'd spent nearly a decade carving silence into its halls. Long enough that the echoes felt like mine.
I adjusted the cloak draped over my shoulders—stitched from the pelts of cave-walkers and horned crawlers, rough and patchy, but warm. Bones clinked faintly at my hip. The jawbone I carried was heavy in my grasp, reinforced by runes I'd etched myself with steady hands and borrowed words. It wasn't pretty. But it hadn't broken. Not yet.
Frost bloomed beneath my bare feet with each step. It didn't spread far anymore—just enough to let the ruins know I was there.
I passed a shattered mirror of ice and caught a glimpse of my reflection.
I didn't stop. But I looked.
White hair, ragged and tangled. Eyes still too bright, too sharp. The face that stared back was thinner, older, but not old. Not grown. I didn't know how to describe it—how to explain the ache in my chest when I looked at that body. Still developing. Still wrong.
I pulled the cloak tighter across my chest and kept walking.
The halls here were quieter than before. The creatures had fled—or hidden deeper, sensing something in me that hadn't existed when I arrived. A pulse. A weight. I couldn't feel the second heartbeat anymore, but I could feel the absence of it. Like an echo buried beneath my skin.
Magic stirred differently now.
I used it without thinking. A ripple through my legs to leap farther. A flicker of strength in my arms to lift stone that once pinned me. Not spells—no grand gestures or flares of frost. Just motion. Control.
But it wasn't easy.
Ranged magic slipped through my fingers like water. Elemental control? Chaotic at best. And every time I tried to pull power from the air, it fought me—like it didn't trust me.
Maybe it was right.
Still, the runes helped. Lirian's teachings had stuck, carved into my memory like they had been carved into the walls. Etch. Shape. Bind. Repeat. Each symbol a tether. A tool.
I stopped before a door half-buried in ice.
It loomed tall—twice my height. Faint markings lined its edges, older than even the other runes I'd studied. I couldn't read them. Not yet. But they hummed when I got close. Not loudly. Enough for me to feel it in my teeth .
I didn't try to force it open.
Not yet.
Instead, I turned back into the hall, jawbone in hand, eyes scanning the darkness ahead.
I hadn't come here to conquer the ruins.
I'd come to understand them.
The path twisted downward, steeper now—the ground sloping in long, jagged steps carved into the stone. I moved carefully, letting my fingers brush the wall as I descended. Ice clung to every surface, but I'd stopped slipping weeks ago.
The frost knew me now.
Or maybe I'd just stopped noticing the cold.
My breath fogged briefly before vanishing. No wind reached this deep. Only stillness. My footfalls echoed longer than they should have, like the space ahead stretched wider than I could see.
The light faded.
But I didn't summon flame.
Instead, I tapped the side of the jawbone weapon. The rune carved along the curve pulsed once—a faint, ghostly blue—and the glow spread outward like veins down the bone. Cold light, soft and pale, casting long shadows across the frost-bitten floor. Just enough to see. No more.
Lirian warned me not to overuse it. "Reinforcement, not replacement," he said. The jaw wouldn't last if I tried to force too much power through it.
I didn't want to lose it. Not yet.
I passed beneath a low arch where the ceiling dipped too close for anything larger than me to pass without crawling. The stone here was different. Less worn. No statues. No signs of battle or habitation.
Just quiet.
And runes.
They lined the walls in strange patterns—ones I hadn't seen before. Not the clean script Lirian showed me. Not the ones that hummed with familiar magic.
These were older. Thicker. Uneven. Less like writing, more like… scars.
They pulsed faintly as I passed, but didn't react to my presence.
Good.
I didn't want to know what would happen if they did.
The passage opened into a chamber. Not a throne room, not a council space like the others—but something smaller. Narrow pillars surrounded a wide, circular floor etched with a pattern I didn't recognize. In the center sat a pedestal of black stone, covered in frost, with something resting atop it.
A tablet?
I stepped closer.
The runes on its surface had been carved with care. Not the scratchy, scarred kind I'd just passed. These were deliberate. Sharp. But not draconic.
I reached toward it—then hesitated.
A flicker of something moved across the surface. Like breath. Or thought.
I pulled my hand back.
Not yet.
I circled the pedestal, eyes scanning the room. The deeper I went, the heavier the silence became. Not dead silence—watching silence.
Like the ruin itself was holding its breath again.
Like it remembered what I was.
Or what I might become.
I glanced at my fingers again—still small. Still slim. The curve of my wrist too delicate. My arms stronger than they looked, but still wrong.
I pulled the cloak tighter again. Tucked a loose lock of white hair behind my ear. My skin prickled where it brushed my shoulder.
Still not used to it.
Still not used to her.
I turned back to the pedestal.
The rune closest to me glowed.
Just once.
Like it knew I'd made a decision.
I reached out.
The air around the tablet didn't shift. No pulse of resistance. No warning.
Just frost. Dust. Stillness.
My fingers brushed the edge.
Pain flared—not sharp, but deep. Like biting down on something too cold, too solid. My magic recoiled before I could even summon it. Not violently. Not angrily.
Just… gone.
Like the tablet refused to recognize me.
I drew back with a hiss and stared down at the runes.
They didn't flash. They didn't burn. They didn't care.
I wasn't ready. Or I wasn't worthy. Or maybe it simply wasn't mine to take.
My grip tightened on the jawbone.
Weeks of wandering. Hunting. Etching runes. Surviving. Becoming. And still—it wasn't enough?
I grit my teeth.
My hand dropped to the side of the pedestal, claws flexing against stone. My chest rose and fell with each breath, tighter now, hotter. Magic stirred beneath my skin, a static crackle building behind my ribs.
Why won't you work?
I slammed the jawbone down against the pedestal.
The rune-pulse flared, overcharged, and then backlashed in a shriek of frost and pressure.
Stone cracked. Ice shattered outward, webbing across the chamber floor. A deep rumble echoed from the ceiling—then fractured.
I looked up.
A sheet of frozen stone dropped near the entrance, missing me by inches.
"Shit—!"
I turned and ran.
The chamber began to collapse behind me—slow at first, then faster, chunks of ceiling breaking loose as runes along the walls sparked and died. One of the columns buckled. Frost exploded outward.
I slipped between the narrow arch just as the hallway behind me was buried in rubble.
Everything went still.
My breathing thundered in my ears. The jawbone pulsed faintly in my grip, overdrawn but intact. A long crack ran along the inner edge. I'd have to reinforce it again. If it didn't break first.
I looked back once.
Nothing but ice and ruin.
Then I turned and began the climb.
By the time I reached the upper halls, the cold felt heavier again. Like the fortress was disappointed. Like it knew I had failed to understand.
Again.
I kept moving. Upward. Familiar corridors now. Half-collapsed doorways and widened paths where I'd carved away the frost. Until finally, I stepped into a room that had long since become mine.
The air smelled of old smoke and frozen marrow.
Tattered hides were strung between ancient ribs—bones lashed together to form crude support beams. The skin of creatures I had torn apart in my earliest days here hung across the far wall, stitched together into something vaguely resembling a tent flap. A circle of smoothed stone marked the firepit, unlit.
The Broodmother's skull was gone. Cleared away. But her kin? Their bones remained. Shaped. Used.
I dropped the jawbone beside the firepit and sat down heavily.
My muscles ached—not from the sprint, but from restraint. The magic still buzzed beneath my skin, half-awake, half-feral.
I didn't trust it.
I didn't trust myself.
I stared at the wall for a long moment. My cloak slipped from one shoulder.
I didn't fix it.
Just let the cold settle in again.
Not biting.
Not kind.
Just there.
Watching.
I let the silence stretch.
Let the cold seep back into my skin.
Not out of comfort—but clarity.
That tablet hadn't rejected me violently. It hadn't flared or struck or tried to drain me. It had ignored me.
That was worse.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, fingers steepled. My breath slipped out—no fog. Just cold, quiet air.
Why?
Why didn't it respond?
Was it the way I reached for it? The lack of control? Of command?
Or was it something else entirely?
Draconic blood, I thought. Too much of it. Too little control.
Maybe these ruins didn't recognize me as anything but an invader. A thief. Even now, after nearly a decade, I hadn't learned their language. Not really. Lirian had carved runes with confidence and precision, even without knowing where they came from. He made magic speak through discipline.
Centuries of it.
I had years.
Barely ten.
I scoffed and sank deeper into my seat, spine resting against bone-laced walls. The jawbone hummed beside me. Dim. Cracked. But still whole.
A few more hits and it wouldn't be.
Just like me.
I closed my eyes.
Let the frustration drain out between clenched teeth. Forced my magic to still—not sleep, just… sit. Settle.
I'd failed today. But that didn't mean I'd stop.
I couldn't.
A faint tug whispered across my awareness.
My eyes snapped open.
It wasn't the ruin.
It was me.
One of the warning runes I'd etched at the edge of the hall—tripped.
I stood before I could think. One blink—and I blurred into motion, body low, cloak sweeping back. The jawbone was already in my hand. Runes along its length flared with soft blue light.
A shadow moved beyond the arch.
I waited. Balanced on the balls of my feet.
And then—
Lirian stepped around the corner.
Unhurried.
Unbothered.
His cloak dusted with frost. His gaze cool as ever. The grown creature—once a pup—trotted in behind him, eyes catching the dim light.
I didn't lower the weapon.
Not yet.
"I was hoping you wouldn't bring the ceiling down on yourself," he said dryly, "but I've known you long enough not to get my hopes up."
I exhaled slowly, no mist curling from my lips. My fingers relaxed just enough for the jawbone to dip.
"I was restrained," I said. "You should've seen what I wanted to do."
His smile didn't reach his eyes. "I've imagined worse."
The tension drained—not entirely, but enough for the cold to creep in again.
I stepped back toward the firepit, jawbone still in hand.
"You felt the backlash?"
"I felt it," he said, stepping inside. "Figured only one thing down here could aggrivate you off that much."
I didn't answer.
Because he was right.
He moved further into the chamber and lowered himself to sit across from me.
The creature beside him circled once before curling up near the firepit. Frostbite he had named her. Its tail twitched.
I leaned back, jawbone resting across my knees.
"I think I'm missing something," I said at last.
Lirian didn't look surprised. "You usually are. That's how learning works."
I gave him a dry look. "Helpful."
He smirked faintly. "I try."
I pulled the cracked jawbone into my lap and began carving a fresh symbol near the hilt.
"Because clearly," I muttered, "I'm not overcompensating enough."
The rune hissed faintly. That was new.