Challenger’s Way was a place of death – any fool knew that. Every step Clair took, she could feel the weight of it pressing down on her. They said hundreds had vanished here in the past week, and now it fell to her to find out why. The cold was unrelenting. Dawn hadn't yet broken, the ground iced over beneath a sky heavy with snow that never seemed to abate. The night had been long, spent on Charizard's back, circling the valley for any sign of movement. But nothing stirred. No sound, no life, just the quiet chill that seemed to gnaw at her bones. She felt watched – her instincts screaming at her, but the valley remained still.
She couldn't shake her parents' warnings as she passed through the jagged rocks that marked the start of her path on foot.
“Dragons are your only shield out there,” her mother’s words had been sharp, but Clair had bristled at the suggestion.
“No,” she had shot back. “I am my own shield.”
Her father had tried to reason with her. “It’s not wise, Clair. Dragons keep the cold at bay. If you took one –”
“I’ll use my own strength,” she had insisted. “Pray for me tomorrow, if you must, but leave me.”
Now, she regretted that pride. Her parents had been right – dragons were warmth, and without Charizard’s heat close, the cold prodded at her through her clothes. Even the smaller hatchlings back at the gym would’ve kept her warmer than this bitter wind. Again, that prickling sense of being watched crept over her skin. She wanted to turn back, to steal one of the auxiliary guards from Blackthorn’s skies and burn everything in sight until nothing remained but ash.
The Valley of Death, they called it. It made sense now. Thirty-seven thousand lives, all lost to nothing but foolish ambition. They had chased a victory that never came, throwing their lives away. Stubborn idiots, every last one of them. They should have listened to her warnings. Not that she had any right to feel superior – she hadn’t listened to her parents either.
Dragons were never enough, she knew that now. One moment, they burned hot, but it only took a second for everything to fall apart. She had learned that the hard way during the Bloodfall Battle. Overconfidence had cost her everything. Two Dragonair, Druddigon, Altaria – gone in a heartbeat.
The snow crunched beneath her boots, the sound sharp in the still air. Her long blue boots cracked the ice beneath them easily enough, but the cold bit at her exposed skin where her bodysuit ended. She had chosen fashion over function, the dark blue scale of her suit sleek against her thighs, but it was a choice she now regretted. The wind cut at her like knives, and the thin gloves she wore barely kept her hands warm. She wasn’t dressed for this weather.
“Charizard,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “A little fire?”
Charizard tried, but the wind snuffed the flames almost as soon as they sparked, leaving only the steady torch of white flame on her tail. Charizard wasn’t at ease here; the air itself seemed to fight the fire. With her green wings, she batted away tree branches, scattering the few wild Smoochum that had dared to sleep in her path.
Clair’s thoughts wandered to Seadra as she traced the eastern slopes of Bitterchill Peaks. It had been so long – three years since they’d last spoken. She wondered what Seadra was doing now, if she’d even want to be friends again after all that had happened. Their parting had been bitter, full of screaming and blame that should never have been Seadra’s to bear. Clair had pushed her away, blamed her for things that had nothing to do with her, and by morning, Seadra had vanished, slipping away through an open spring before Clair could apologize. She had meant to give her a bouquet of azure lilies – Seadra’s favourite – but it was too late.
Charizard had been inconsolable for months after, spewing flames and smoke whenever Clair got too close. It wasn’t until her mother’s Dragonite passed that Charizard finally let her back in, deep in the bowels of the Dragon Holy Land.
“Do you remember our first flight over these peaks?” Clair asked, trying to shake off the cold. “It was when you evolved from a Charmeleon. You were so excited, and then we got shot down by that Aggron for trespassing.”
Charizard huffed, a grey mist warming her face in the cold.
“We broke every rule that day,” Clair said with a smile, recalling the chaos. “Challenged the auxiliary riders, torched that Skarmory after it ate Druddigon’s egg… Mother was furious. I’ve never seen her pull her hair like that.” She paused. “Apparently, I do that too when I lose a gym battle.”
Charizard gave her a look.
“Alright, fine!” Clair raised her hands, laughing. “I do it all the time. You should try it – let off some steam.” She stepped carefully over a frozen stream, the crunch of ice beneath her boots loud in the stillness. “Speaking of steam, have you picked out a mate yet?”
A burst of fire melted the snow ahead, accompanied by a roar that sent nearby Pokémon scattering in terror.
“I know the feeling,” Clair admitted with a sigh. She had lost count of the suitors who had tried to win her favour, all of them too kind, too thoughtful. It tore her apart to keep turning them away. Three hundred and sixteen proposals, each one harder to reject than the last, and yet here she was, alone.
As she climbed the uneven ground, a jagged scar in the earth where a Rhydon and some terrible force had fought, she thought of Lance. He had ended the battle, earned his scars, and left behind a pile of bones. She looked at them interestedly, wondering what had happened to the other assailant. She hated that he was always in the back of her mind, that no matter where she went or what she did, he lingered like a shadow.
In the distance, the Lake of Rage glimmered, its waters churning under the Three Year Whirlpool. Ships tossed and pulled by forces they couldn’t see. Clair had tried to stop it, but something always held her back. She hadn’t seen it, but she knew there was something lurking beneath the surface, something that called to her, waiting.
Lance wouldn’t care. He had his own priorities, his eyes always on Blackthorn’s Blood Games, flying above it all like a god. He never spoke to her, not anymore. Maybe that was why she hated him so much, blood ties be damned.
Her gaze turned east as she sidestepped the remains of an old abatis, a relic of some war she barely remembered. Her blood chilled. Ahead, rising into the sky like giants, were the Gates of Ice. Thrice the height of the Bitterchill Peaks, they stretched for miles, towering over everything with their cold, blue stone. Legends said the stone had once been grey, but some ancient god had turned it blue, bluer than any ice beyond that of Mt. Silver’s peak.
No one had ever crossed the Gates. Stories claimed Mt. Silver’s First Heart slumbered beyond, waiting for some hero – or villain – to wake it. But seeing the gates now, their size, their cold, they didn’t seem like just stories anymore.
She thought of Morty and his failed attempt to send his ghosts through. Most had returned beneath Viridian Bay, but his Gengar, George, had ended up frozen in the Seafoam Islands, reaching out through dreams until someone found him. Clair had laughed at his tale then, but now, standing in the shadow of the Gates, she wondered what kind of force could stop a ghost like Gengar.
“What are you thinking?” Clair asked Charizard, her voice barely above a whisper.
Charizard shifted uneasily, the weight of her body sinking into the frost-covered ground. She hated the cold, like any dragon. Without fire, she looked vulnerable, almost fragile.
Clair’s eyes flicked back to the Gates. Were they wider than before? The ice bridges between the mountains seemed strained, like the weight of the sky pressed down on them. The valley echoed with the creak of ice and stone, and Clair’s heart quickened. The cold seemed to sink deeper, wrapping around her bones with deceptive kindness.
She caught sight of the Snowstalk Woodlands, the dark, twisted trees just beyond the Blue Deceit. She had always hated those woods. They looked like death, stretching their skeletal branches toward the sky, and now, more than ever, she wanted to burn them to the ground.
The Snowstalk Woodlands loomed in the distance, stretching over three miles to the east and at least ten north. Clair knew they stopped just short of the Gates of Ice, their trees frost-covered year-round, their bark never thawing, even when campfires burned nearby. She'd heard enough rumours back at her gym, whispers from the trainers about the red moon. When the sky bled, they said, the dead would crawl from under those trees, rage for a day, then fall back to sleep once the sky returned to normal.
The Blue Deceit was creeping down from the north. That lake was cutting further into Blackthorn territory every year, eating into the permafrost that shielded the valley. Clair knew it was far from the Snowstalk Woods, settling down about a mile from Skull Bridge, but still, it made her uneasy. No one could explain how Skull Bridge had formed, nor why the Blue Deceit’s water flowed even in the harshest winters. It never froze, not once. That bothered her.
Clair felt the familiar urge duck out of view, just like she did when she was sixteen, always looking over her shoulder like a damn Noctowl. Back then, it had been the hunters near the Gates of Ice that kept her paranoid. Vicious Pokémon, their eyes glowing purple, arms swinging green war hammers destroying everything in their wake. But that was years ago, and she wasn’t a scared girl anymore. She was a woman now, and a gym leader. She wasn’t about to let old fears get to her, not today. She stuck close to the lakefront, though. Just in case.
Her father’s voice echoed in her mind, like it always did when she felt like turning back. “Dragons don’t fear without reason,” he’d said after the Bloodfall Battle, behind the makeshift blockade they built to protect their home from Lance loyalists. “What can you say you lost for, if not a lack of wisdom?”
But Clair didn’t want this fight. Not today. She weighed the risk of taking the eastern frost paths but it would force her through the trees. Hundreds of other trainers would do the same for the Conference, and some were practicing already. Hundreds were going to die. Another headache for future Clair to manage.
She curled her lip, frustrated.
Old Sneasel territory was close, near one of Blackthorn’s fishing spots. Snags littered the ground where the Sneasel nest had been before they drove the little thieves out. The Sneasel had hoarded half the city’s fishery supply before Clair and the others burned them from the sky. Luring them into the Bitterchill Peaks had been easy; getting them higher up was the real trick. Sneasel were mean, smart little bastards, and Clair hated them more than Lance. Riling them into a chase had been the only way to trap them.
She sat down by a lawn chair, still covered in soot and debris, and eyed the old rod at her feet. Before the midday snowfall, she figured she might as well relax. The snowfalls had worsened lately, roaring from the Gates of Ice like waterfalls, burying parts of Mt. Silver’s lower fringe in thick bright snow. It reminded her of a wild, untamed Indigo Plateau, smaller but just as dangerous.
Lance hadn’t said a word about any threats outside Mt. Silver to the elders yet, but Clair could sense something was off. And whatever it was, it was lurking somewhere in this valley.
She reached down to the Feebas swimming by, running her hands over their rough brown scales, whispering kind words. It was a secret indulgence of hers, loving Pokémon outside of her gym's fierce dragons. In Blackthorn, everyone watched her. Even now, as its acting defender, she had eyes on her. But that hadn’t stopped her from admiring Misty’s so-called ‘shit shoal’, nearly two hundred Feebas floating in and out of the filters at Misty’s gym. Clair thought they were more beautiful than any Dragonite in the world. Pure-hearted, divine creatures humans had little right to see.
She'd trade a thousand eggs from Blackthorn’s Hatching Grounds for just a quarter of Misty’s Feebas.
With a sigh, Clair kicked off one boot and dipped her toe into the water. The cold hit like a slap, almost making her scream. She slipped off her other boot and slid forward until her knees were submerged, her bones groaning in protest against the icy chill. But the Feebas darted happily around her, nuzzling against her thighs. It had been too long since she’d laughed this hard.
Charizard took off, no doubt looking for a fight. There’d be a few trainers around to keep her busy.
“Aren’t you all gorgeous,” Clair chuckled. One Feebas, larger than the others, still hadn’t surfaced. “We’re all friends here,” she assured it, casting a glance toward the Snowstalk Woodlands. “Charizard’s off fighting something in there. She’s not bothering with you.”
Finally, the Feebas surfaced. Unlike the others, it was mauve, fading into blue along its fins and tail. It splashed at its companions before sinking low again, its head the only thing visible above the water.
Clair couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a Pokémon shimmer like that. It reminded her of her old Druddigon, born with ivory scales so vibrant they bathed caves in a bright forest-green. Her dragon had been admired by professors and trainers alike until… that day. Pokémon like that, the ones who strayed from their typical colours, had a fierceness to them. This Feebas had it too. It moved the others, commanding the flow of fish near the muddier parts of the riverbank. Some of those fish were nearly as tall as Clair.
“It’s easier for you to hide here, isn’t it?” She rolled her shoulders, wincing at the stiffness from the cold. “I had a friend like you once. Born a little different. And just like you, everyone wanted to catch her, to show her off. You have to be stronger to stay free, don’t you? I didn’t understand how she felt until she refused to battle in front of a crowd, or in front of cameras. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t leave my room for a week.”
The Feebas gathered around her, listening quietly.
“I was ashamed of myself,” Clair continued, the words flowing without hesitation. “I couldn’t even stand to look in the mirror. But then I started watching others – Pokémon who weren’t considered ‘pretty’ by human standards. They worked harder on being happy than trying to look perfect. Soon enough, they sparkled just like everyone else.”
Something brushed against her leg. Her heart skipped. The Feebas vanished beneath the water in a flash. Clair’s mind raced, waiting for the sight of blood, for the water to cloud and turn into a thick syrup of death. But when the fish reappeared, they were nudging a Pokémon she didn’t recognize to the surface.
She noticed the faint acidic stench and the purple blotches on the Pokémon’s skin. It looked like a deep-sea dweller, but what in the world was it doing in such cold, shallow water? She wished she had her League Scanner with her.
Relicanth. It had to be a Relicanth. They were rare, even rarer than the strange dragons Lance had brought back from his travels. She’d heard his friends companions talk about Orre and the destruction there, seen the way he scowled at maps of the region. Lance could hate, and he hated well. He had been planning an ascent of Mt. Battle, but those plans were worth nothing now, not when the region was in chaos.
For a moment, Clair let herself feel that flicker of satisfaction, but it faded as she watched the mauve Feebas nudge the struggling Relicanth. The poor thing could barely stay afloat.
“You’ll have to follow me upstream,” she muttered, grimacing. “Or maybe just stay here. There’s a camp nearby. Beneath the All-eyed trunk. I call it the Great Mushroom... makes it a little less terrifying. Just look at the great ugly thing in the distance and keep me in your thoughts.”
Charizard met her near Skull Bridge, its breaths ragged, steam rising from its nostrils in short bursts. Clair kept her surprise in check, though her brow furrowed as she approached. The flashing lights of Craven’s Camp, beneath the twisted boughs of the Great Mushroom, set her teeth on edge. She had learned long ago to distrust any lights, any eyes. No reporters were allowed near Blackthorn anymore – that much she had ensured. One of the few things she’d done right.
Her stomach growled in time with Charizard’s as they moved. For a fleeting moment, she considered Craven’s Camp for food, but the thought vanished as quickly as it came. There was a reason no one with sense stayed there. The name alone was enough to sour her stomach. Worse still, if word got out that the Blackthorn heir had spent the night in such a place... no. She shook her head.
“I’m doing this for you, Relly,” she muttered under her breath, casting a glance toward the struggling Relicanth. “You’d better live a long life, free near Olivine Pier, where the sand’s as black as obsidian. If you belong to someone, and if they’re responsible for this...” She clenched her fists, imagining the sting of acid burning through flesh. “I’ll make sure they regret it.”
“This is the real boneyard,” Clair muttered as she passed an old mine, frowning at the weathered inscription carved into the stone. “Once the gold dried up, so did the people. Left like Rattata from a sinking ship.” She snorted. “I hear Morty’s city still has gold mines. They say the sky above Ecruteak glows like molten gold itself. I wonder which god he slept with to earn such fortune.”
Charizard gave a wheezy huff beside her.
“Maybe I should find one of those gods,” she said bitterly. “Only after I find the world’s largest hoard of dragon fangs... burn them all in front of Lance.” The words tasted like ash on her tongue. “No, I’m speaking in anger again. Or as Mum called it – speaking with fire. There’s not a soul in Blackthorn who’d dare break our promise to the dragons.”
She reached up, rubbing the back of her neck as Charizard’s heat rolled over her, warming the skin chilled by the wind.
The deeper sections of the mine sprawled out before her, jagged teeth of granite – stalactites and stalagmites – that filled the yawning dark. Talrick’s folly, they called it. Three centuries ago, the fool had challenged the Warden of Fire, and in return, Blackthorn’s leader sent a curse in the form of three hundred Dragonair. The dragons sealed the mine with their breath, and the stone grew sharp, closing in on the men inside. Talrick and his followers starved to death, entombed by the very earth they had sought to conquer.
Clair knew the title of Warden of Fire was a rare honour. Few in Blackthorn ever earned it, which is why it rankled her that Lance had inherited it so easily. Custom dictated a hundred years must pass between the deaths of Wardens before the title could be passed on. But it was his, not hers. Despite her position as gym leader, Lance ruled Blackthorn, his word law. And he wielded his power through letters and edicts, sent from wherever he now wandered.
Weariness seeped into her bones, her legs aching from the journey. It had been too long – three years, or more – since she’d ventured beyond the bounds of Blackthorn. Her life had been consumed by duty, by the city. She had barely seen the other side of Mt. Silver, the parts that stretched into Kanto.
She disliked how often Lance flew east. What business did he have in Kanto, anyway? And yet, she dared not ask her spies if Lance had a woman waiting for him there. Too many of them had fallen under the Warden’s thumb, and information, once plentiful, had grown scarce. What scraps she could gather were costly.
Movement stirred in the shadows ahead – a flash of black fur darting among the rocks. No, not fur. Sneasel. They had finally slunk down from their lair in the Bitterchill Peaks, their eyes gleaming in the twilight. They crept along the sharp rocks near the entrance to Talrick’s Cursed Mine, stick-thin, their ribs showing beneath matted fur. But what made her uneasy was the silence. Sneasel were rarely so quiet, especially not when driven by hunger. She had seen them gnaw through stone to get at Dratini.
The fish.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Clair snarled, her voice rising as she pointed toward the Blue Deceit. “Charizard, use Hurricane! Blow those unwashed fur balls away from the lake!”
The air cracked with the force of Charizard’s wings, a violent wind howling beneath the sky. The earth trembled as the storm roared, tearing through the landscape. Clair lost her footing, sliding down the icy slope, her body colliding with the skeletal remains of some ancient creature. Pain shot through her, her arm burning as blood trickled from the wound. She cursed, her hair whipped loose from its binding, her ponytail snapping in the fierce wind.
Ice blades flew through the air, sharp as daggers, though they melted into cyan water as Charizard’s fiery breath tore through them. The heat wrapped around her, a fleeting comfort against the cold. Again and again, the Sneasel struck, their claws gleaming in the storm. But one by one, they were swallowed by the hurricane’s wrath, tossed into the sky, their small bodies disappearing over the Bitterchill Peaks. For a moment, Clair wondered if they might land somewhere near Mahogany Town.
It would be a warning to the Soric family, Clair thought. They've grown too powerful for comfort. With their command of ice, the dragons of Blackthorn could soon find themselves vulnerable. Clair wouldn’t be shocked if they had been behind the fishery attack. Let their fate be a lesson to them. The Sorics had always hated the dragons of Blackthorn. Tradition demanded their leader kneel before the Warden of Flame, but the Sorics – too prideful for their own good – chafed under the custom. Sometimes Clair wondered if they had dragon blood in their veins, however faint, for all their arrogance. Pryce, their old leader, had refused to bow to Lance once, not even when the League named him Mahogany Town’s defender. That refusal had forged a bitter rift between them.
Clair had been young when it happened but still remembered the way Lance looked at Pryce, that insatiable hunger of his. Standing on that silver platform under the amber lights, she had known even then that Pryce’s defiance would cause ‘incidents’ to happen. Every harsh wind that tore through Blackthorn was Pryce’s doing; every summer blaze that scorched Mahogany was blamed on Lance. And so the dance of blame carried on, each side striking in subtle ways.
But Pryce had vanished. Where he went, Clair couldn’t say, and his granddaughter had taken charge of the gym in his absence before she, too, disappeared. That silence upset Clair’s bowels. Pride like theirs didn’t simply disappear. No, the League must have offered them something, some treasure to soothe their egos. The real question was what, and what new power they were wielding in the shadows.
“Bring them here,” she ordered, glancing toward the fallen Sneasel. Four of them lay dead after the brief battle. “We’ll roast them or I’ll start looking at you like dinner,” she added, only half-jesting.
The Sneasel were skewered on a long branch and roasted over a small fire, kept alive by Charizard’s careful tending. After slitting the tendons in their legs, Clair peeled back the fur at their legs, working it off in rough, impatient pulls. The fur was greasy, slick with the filth of survival, and the guts were no better – gamey, rank, enough to turn her stomach. The liver, though, was a prize, provided she avoided puncturing the gland that would spoil the whole thing with its foul fluid. She’d learned that lesson the hard way more than once.
“I suppose I should thank you,” she said, gesturing toward the roasting meat. “I didn’t bring hunting gear, foolish as that was. But at least you’re here.” She gave a glance at Charizard. “Who would’ve thought we’d find anything to eat out here? I wonder if it was really the water-types that lured those Sneasel down, or something more. You saw them – they were starving. There’s plenty of prey in the mountains to the west, but they’ve come down here. Why?”
Charizard snorted through her nostrils, sending a gust of heat that made Clair’s hair whip across her face. She spent more time trying to tame her hair’s wild tangles in the reflection of a nearby pond than she did watching the fire. The whole scene reminded her of the time she saw Pincurchin devastate Vermillion’s coral reef. That had been her last diving lesson. It broke her heart to watch such beauty destroyed, and when she tried to fight back, they told her the little creatures were protected.
A sudden howl split the air, a noise so raw and wild it made Clair’s ears ache. The sound came from the east, beyond the Gates of Ice. It was unlike anything she had ever heard, piercing and terrible, like the land itself was screaming. In Blackthorn, it would have been nothing more than a distant rumble, but here, it felt like the earth and sky were conspiring to crush her.
“Midday snows,” she muttered, looking up at the grey sky, unwilling to think of Mt. Silver’s First Heart. “I didn’t realize we’ve been out here so long. No wonder people don’t finish this cursed challenge in a day. And I doubt Relicanth can survive another night out here.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “We might have to stop at Craven’s Camp for the night, damn the consequences.”
She bit into the roasted meat with little ceremony. There was something primal about it, the blood running down her chin, the warmth of a fresh kill in her belly. Hunting wasn’t something she often did – Rea and her Hunter’s Guild handled that down the Mudbreak, between the Bottleneck road and the Slums where crime was as common as breathing. Autumn always brought shortages, and by winter, the Guild was lucky to return with anything at all. Sometimes she didn’t see Rea for a month when the midday snows came down like a white wall, so thick it swallowed Mt. Silver’s lower slopes.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Few dared climb Mt. Silver, and fewer still did so from the outside. The cold was too fierce, the air too thin, and even flying Pokémon couldn’t make the ascent without their wings freezing solid. Not even Lance had reached the mountain’s peak. The one time he tried, a frost-heave the size of Saffron’s Tower of Steel came crashing down, causing a mudslide so vast it buried half the Indigo Plateau. Clair had watched it, a brown wave swallowing everything in its path. Nine thousand dead in a day. Forty-nine thousand in total by the time it was done.
Another mark against Lance’s name.
Her gaze drifted eastward, toward the Snowstalk Woodlands. Heavy snow had gathered on the treetops, so thick that she couldn’t see what might be hiding beneath. The weight of the snow made her think of the tale of the red moon again, and she snorted into her meal, nearly choking on a bite of Sneasel. If the dead rose under the next red moon, she’d be more irritated than surprised.
“We should’ve burned these trees long ago,” she muttered to herself. “I can’t even remember why I didn’t give the order. Once Relicanth is safe, I’ll call for it. Let this place become a relic. If people want a challenge, they can take the Mountain Road like sensible folk, instead of dancing across cracked ice.”
The worst of the challenges was the Ice Path, where the mountains themselves seemed to rise against the unworthy. Half the trainers that entered never came out. The ones that did spoke of howls that became high-pitched screams, like glaciers splitting apart. The Pokémon inside were stronger than anywhere else, save for the heights of Mt. Silver. Clair had seen Conference finalists break in both places, but few dared to challenge her. Not that she was ready for them – she hadn’t replaced any of her lost partners in years.
That rule, the one that said no one could challenge her without a complete set of badges, grated on her. Blackthorn’s people grew strong by fighting on the fringes of Mt. Silver. They were hardened by the wilds, feared for it. But the League had rejected her proposal to let people challenge themselves on their own terms. Someone had blocked her above her level, though who had that kind of power, she didn’t know. The unease it left leered at her, like an itch she couldn’t scratch.
“Charizard?” she asked, her voice quiet, thoughtful. She tore the last bite of meat from the bone.
Charizard’s head lifted, nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air. Something had caught her attention to the north.
Clair stared down at the charred remains of the meal, her mind wandering to thoughts of Lance, of the challenge she had issued him to claim the title of Warden when she turned sixteen. By then, she had earned all the badges, her team strong enough to reach the quarter-finals of the Indigo Conference. She had been fearless then, determined. But standing before Lance in the Dragon’s Den, that fearlessness had evaporated.
The den had trembled with the growls of hundreds of dragons, their voices so loud that the very walls seemed to shake. Lance had watched her with eyes like burning coals, his gaze cutting her to the bone. He was nineteen then, already a Conference champion at seventeen, something unheard of. She hadn’t understood the danger then.
Scarlet light had flared from the mouths of Gyarados that circled Lance’s throne, their fury barely contained as they let her pass. But it wasn’t them she feared. It was Lance. Always him. His red, slit-pupil eyes, the way his lean muscles tensed beneath his strange garb. He had looked more beast than man, his nails now long, curved claws. His clothes were strange, too – a pitch-black shirt rippled with embroidered golden thread depicting Dragonite and smaller Pokémon, cinched at the waist by a golden belt. Over his shoulders, a battle-worn cloak of Umbreon velvet, with a fur collar from some slaughtered Piloswine.
His legs were covered in mulberry silk, torn and tattered. They suited him oddly well.
The gods had seemed to favour her then, light from the sky above bathing her in a pale glow as she entered that den of riches – archways of ruby, treasure hoards piled like mountains. But in that moment, Clair had felt very alone.
The challenge had begun the moment the words left her lips, and within minutes, she was on her knees, weeping, begging Lance for mercy, for her family’s lives. It had been for nothing. Lance had dismissed her with a gesture, but she had clung to his feet, sobbing for answers, asking why he would kill them all and spare only Seadra and Charizard. His grip on her throat had been like iron, so strong that when he threw her over the bridge of tanzanite, she had felt her bones rattle from the impact.
She hadn’t known then... hadn’t understood.
Lance had drank their blood. Bent low so she couldn’t see his face, he had consumed her family, one by one, until only bones remained. Charizard and Seadra had barely survived the ordeal.
The leaves rustled like a dying whisper, and the sharp hiss of pain brought Clair to her feet, fists clenched and ready for whatever lurked. The sound was low, carried on the wind and bouncing off the trees and the icy water, as if autumn itself wept for something lost. Yet, autumn was not alive, but this voice was.
“Who goes there?” she called, her voice steady with a leader's bravery. “Show yourself before the master of Blackthorn City!”
Then she saw him, hobbling over the cracked, frost-rimed stones. He was distant at first, a figure she strained to recognize. But as she neared, Charizard at her side, she could make out one familiar purple eye. “Vinny, is that you?” Her voice trembled, though she fought to keep it steady. “Answer me… please.”
He was as old as she, though shorter by a few inches – not surprising, given her own towering six-foot-two frame. His skin, its usual ashen grey, looked gaunt, though his body remained strong, likely from racing his Pokémon through the valley. His glasses, shattered and crooked on his face, hung askew against his nose. One eye was a horror to behold – stitched shut with silver thread, glinting faintly in the snow like cold steel. A pale blue light flickered from it, and Clair felt it watching her.
“Oh my…” she muttered, feeling the bile rise in her throat. The roasted Sneasel she'd eaten earlier threatened to resurface. “Who did this to you?”
His voice came quickly, pained. “My fault… lost a battle… a bad one.” He coughed, his breath ragged. “Clair, what are you doing down here?”
She started to answer, then stopped herself, realising she had been gaping at him. “You’re – seriously? You’re asking me what I’m doing in this cursed valley while you’re walking around with one eye? How the hell –?”
“Lost a battle,” he repeated, curt and tired.
She crossed her arms, unimpressed. “Yes, you've mentioned that.”
“I don’t lose battles often, Clair.” His voice turned bitter. “It was to them.” He spat on the snow, the spit freezing before it hit the ground. “Should’ve stayed west of the damned river, but I didn’t check the skies. Too arrogant. Now they’ve got Maddison.”
“Maddison?” She raised an eyebrow. “When did you get yourself a girlfriend, Vinny?” Her gaze shot to the horizon. “When did they take her? By ship, by land? How long ago?”
He winced, a pained grin crossing his face. “Not a girl. Maddy… my Magikarp.”
“A Magikarp?” Clair blinked, momentarily stunned. She looked him over, shaking her head. “Since when have you collected anything besides rare Pokémon?”
“She is rare, you dense fool,” he snapped, the fire returning to his voice.
Clair rolled her eyes. “I was about to offer you a hand, one-eye, but if you’re going to insult me, you can find your own way home.” She turned back to Charizard, motioning for her to take to the sky. “Keep an eye on the valley. If there are any captors around, we’ll drive them toward Craven’s Camp. They won’t escape from there.”
“Wait!”
His hand gripped her wrist, and together they trudged through the snow, the miles passing slowly. Vinny’s pace was agonisingly slow, like the crawl of a Wurmple on a cold day. Every few steps, he groaned, clutching his head, muttering half-mad things that made her worry for his sanity. She understood his grief, though – he’d lost something precious, just as she had once.
“Where did they take Maddy?” she asked after a while, her breath steaming in the cold air.
“Threw her in there,” he spat, pointing a trembling finger at the Lake of Rage. “They didn’t know… her fury is like nothing you've ever seen. Forty-seven million poké she cost me, more than that feisty bitch of five.” He nodded toward Charizard, circling high above.
Clair nearly laughed at his foolishness. Of course he’d wasted a fortune on a Magikarp. This man could be scammed by a child, she thought, shaking her head.
“Golden Heart, they called her…” He groaned again, falling to his knees, clutching his skull as if it would split. His eyes darted toward the Gates of Ice before he collapsed into a fit, his body convulsing violently, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth. “Silver… it beats… it’s alive…”
She tried to lift him, but he was heavier than he looked, and his spasms didn’t help. With a sharp whistle, she called Charizard down to carry him back to the Craven Camp before he died.
As she watched her old friend disappear into the sky, Clair felt the weight of her choices settle over her. She stood alone now, vulnerable in this unforgiving valley. The threat of more Sneasel coming from the west played on her mind. If they came, she would die – there would be no negotiations, not even with the sapphire necklace that hung around her throat, its light pulsing faintly like a beating heart. Should a Weavile appear, the battle would end before it began.
And yet, she smiled. Her duty was done, and she had nothing to be ashamed of.
The midday snows roared from the Gates of Ice, cascading down the cliffs like avalanches sent by a god. The force of it was unnatural, controlled by something far stronger than the winds.
“Vinny will be fine,” she told herself, trying to steady her thoughts. “He owns the biggest Trading Store in Johto and trains his Pokémon well enough. He’ll be cared for.”
But her mind wandered back to what he had said. They. Few in this valley had the will – or the cruelty – to do such harm.
“Cold Cores,” she whispered, tasting the name like poison. It had to be them.
No one had seen the cult in years, but Clair knew they still lurked beyond the valley. The Cold Cores, worshippers of an Eyeless God, a beast that devoured all in its path, with no care for the living. Their god, born of blood and ice, was whispered to be a towering eyeless horror, a god whose birth would leave the world bathed in blood. The cult had always dealt in blood, a currency they used to bargain with powers no sane person would recognise.
What force would answer their prayers, she wondered. How many lives would they take before their god was born?
Blackthorn and Mahogany had both marked the Cold Cores as enemies long ago, the only thing the two cities could ever agree on. The cult’s followers, wretched as they were, existed in the Slum of Blackthorn, leaving threats outside her gym, a constant reminder of their presence. The rot had grown unchecked while Lance and his precious elders hoarded wealth, letting the poor starve.
She knew what must come. There would be no avoiding it. She’d have to challenge Lance himself, Warden or not, and make him see the harm he was doing. If she didn’t, who would?
The voice in her mind – the one she both loathed and cherished – whispered that Lance already knew. He simply didn’t care. Or worse, he was pushing events, driving someone’s hand so he could kill again, and taste the blood of stronger foes. But only she could see how dire things had become… Only she would have the wits to put the two pieces together.
He wants to finish what I began. I should’ve died with the rest of my family – at least then I wouldn’t have been dragged into this twisted game with my cousin. It’s still hard to accept I share blood with that monster.
Clair rubbed her gloved hands together, blowing warm breath into them. As soon as she pulled her face away, her fingers went numb again. The wind didn’t let up for a second. Strands of hair stuck to her cheek, the rest hiding her right eye. Her legs only stayed warm as long as she kept moving, dodging jagged bits of ice thrown up by the relentless storm.
Seven boundary stones loomed ahead, towering seven feet high and almost as wide. They marked the camp’s edge and shielded it from the worst of the blizzards. Once those storms hit, the world disappeared into white. You couldn’t see anything – not a foot ahead, not even your own hand.
She knew better than to believe every wild tale she’d heard, but something about this place scared her. The cold had a bite to it, as if the air itself had grown ancient and cruel, its patience long since melting into bitter hate.
This is what it’s like in autumn… she couldn’t imagine how winter would be. How do they survive? There’s nowhere to go but north, and even that meant freezing every step of the way. Only the truly mad would try Challenger’s Way at that time. She hadn’t seen the rest of the valley yet, but already regretted visiting in the first place.
The camp sprawled ahead of her, tarps and tents snapping in the fierce wind. Steel rods and stakes held them in place, but most of the fires were dead, just piles of coal and wood ash. The people clustered near the Great Mushroom, gathered around a roaring fire where Piloswine and Grumpig roasted. She couldn’t make out their faces through their thick cloaks and Absol furs, whipping this way and that, ragged at the edges.
She trudged on for what felt like miles, stumbling over black, rotting plants and landing hard on her hip. She hissed through the pain, surprised by the warmth of the soil beneath her. Hungry now, more than she’d ever been, she crawled back to her feet and headed toward the fire. Even when she’d been punished for overeating as a child, her stomach had never felt this empty.
The doctor’s tent flapped more wildly than the others – Vinny was in there. She whispered a quiet prayer for him, despite the ban on religion in Blackthorn. She didn’t care anymore. Let them mock her. She’d smile, nod, let them have their fun. She had little pride left. Lance had seen to that. It was all his fault.
“…and then I grabbed the beast by its neck!” A loud voice cut through the wind, drawing her attention to a man swaying drunkenly atop a table. His belly stretched his thick cloak, making him look like a Snorlax. “Never knew a Rapidash could fight so hard! A beauty, that one.”
“Liar!” a boy shouted, no older than sixteen.
The man staggered, waving a bottle of Celadon wine. He urged the boy to join him on the table, but as soon as the lad climbed up, the man kicked him off, spilling wine into the snow where it began to steam.
“Liar, am I?” The man laughed, his voice rising above the wind. “I’ll tell you then, you little shit. That Rapidash had a coat white as snow, soft as silk. Eyes, bright as sapphires. Richest I ever saw. I would’ve been the wealthiest man alive if I’d caught it. But, well… I lost my dagger back at camp.”
Clair sat down on a log, close enough to the fire to steal a bit of warmth. She grabbed a few grapes and a quick sip of Pewter Spirits to fight off the cold. The flames danced higher, casting flickering light across the clearing as the man rambled on.
“…massive hooves, I swear it! A mane long and curly, a tail that could make anyone stop dead in their tracks – pastel streaks of cyan and pink. That thing’s horn could pierce any Pokémon in the wild.”
“Your mind’s as wild as that Rapidash,” someone muttered, and the camp burst into laughter. Clair couldn’t help but snicker, hiding her smile behind the wooden mug she held.
The man wobbled dangerously near the table’s edge. “Not of this world, am I? Well, how would I be standing here telling you this if I weren’t?” He laughed even louder, making her ears ring. “And don’t interrupt me! Its fetlocks, warm as a fire, soft as jelly. I swear they lifted the thing right off the ground!”
This time, Clair laughed out loud with the rest. The Craven Camp had its moments, she thought. Maybe this challenge wasn’t entirely worthless.
“You’re laughing now,” Stivvy, the man’s apparent name, slurred, almost toppling off the table, “but you just wait! That thing’s fur changes colour when it’s angry – goes from pink to blood-red. It’s no joke, why are you all –?” He tripped over the table’s edge and fell into a heap of men, cursing under his breath. “Larry, help me up, you lazy…”
Larry, as it turned out, was a Vigoroth. He sniffed his master once before letting out a bellow, then raced up the tree bark and leapt from the Great Mushroom, landing squarely on top of Stivvy. Clair was amazed the man didn’t vomit. His belly was round and pale, bloated like a Wailmer beached on the shore for the world to see.
Around the fire, the hunters brought out the spoils of their kill – six roasted Grumpig filled half the table, while the Piloswine took up the rest. Plates clattered and silverware rang out in a strange sort of ritual. Clair worked her way through the crowd, ending up with seven knives but no forks. She had to barter with the boy who’d insulted Stivvy. He was nearly as drunk as the man he’d challenged.
“Midday snows,” a girl beside her muttered, sitting down. “All right, Clair?”
“I hate them worse than Metapod strips,” Clair grumbled.
The girl laughed, a light, pleasant sound in the storm. “Name’s Eve. Sorry ‘bout Stivvy. He’s been going on about that rainbow-coloured Rapidash for days. What brings someone like you here?”
“My friend’s hurt,” Clair said quietly, keeping it simple. No need to mention Relicanth just yet.
“Thread Boy?” Eve tore into a piece of Piloswine meat, her cloak already stained with grease. “Haven’t seen anything like that since the cult mess in Blackthorn five years ago. Nasty business.”
Clair glanced at Eve’s eyes, green and bright. They reminded her of Hoenn, the atolls she’d seen once on television, far from all this cold and chaos.
“Nasty business is putting it lightly,” Clair muttered, chewing on a piece of Grumpig. “They stole Maddy, Vinny’s Magikarp. Never thought I’d see him with a Pokémon like that.”
Eve nodded, slow and thoughtful. “Yeah, I’ve heard of her. Mean little thing, that Magikarp. You ever see one knock a man flat on his arse because he didn’t call it strong? I didn’t, not until now. Strange thing, really. But beautiful too, with those golden scales. Expensive piece of meat.” She sucked the marrow from a bone, her eyes distant. “Not that I care much for things like that. You?”
“I care for all,” Clair replied, biting into another soft, roasted chunk.
“A duty,” Eve murmured, pulling her cloak aside to reveal a thin crescent of rusted steel hanging from her belt. “This year’s hunt for Blackthorn is going to be a pain. The Mudbreak has been overhunted, so we’ll have to try the western slopes of Mt. Silver for decent game like this.” She nodded toward the Piloswine, its carcass still smoking. “Enough to feed this lot for a week, maybe more. But food’s hard to come by now. The Warden’s been taking most of it for some new catch of his. Snared it down the valley.”
Despite the fire’s warmth, Eve shuddered.
“Cold?” Clair asked, eyeing her.
“No… it’s just…” Eve trailed off, her face pale beneath the flickering light. “Never seen anything like that before. Fought a Rhydon to the death for control of the Valley of Death, and it won. That Rhydon ruled the valley for three hundred years. And it lost. At least, if you don’t count the Warden of Flame stepping in before the thing could wipe us all out. I’ve never been more terrified.”
Clair leaned against the rough wooden table, watching Eve closely. She didn’t want to admit it, but her curiosity had been piqued. Eve didn’t know what kind of Pokémon it had been, only that Lance’s Salamence – Akol, in its true name – had struggled mightily to drag the creature through the Ice Path. Eve kept talking about the sound it made, about how the sky burned for hours during the battle.
“I’d be worried if Lance couldn’t handle a Pokémon,” Clair said, a little more unease creeping into her voice than she wanted. “It must be a gullet to eat half as much as it does.”
Eve’s eyes darted to her. “The Warden of Flame is a protector,” she said carefully. “Most generous. We didn’t even have time to thank him, not properly.” Eve seemed to pause then, really looking at Clair for the first time, and there was a shift in her expression. A realisation.
“But what were you doing here? At Craven Camp of all places—”
“Everyone stops here,” Eve cut in, bristling. “They’ve always shown the Hunter’s Guild a place to stay when the snows block our way home.”
“I meant no offence,” Clair said gently, offering Eve a few peppers from her plate. The tension softened. Eve took the peppers with a grateful smile.
“I should be showing more respect,” Eve said, hurriedly moving to kneel, but Clair grabbed her wrist, stopping her. She shook her head with a smile, watchful of those around.
“No need,” Clair said, sinking her teeth into the meat once more, her eyes drifting past the flames. A roar sounded from above, and her Charizard dropped down heavy onto the boundary stones. Her chest was slick with blood, a Staraptor hanging limp in her claws. She shot Clair a proud look before heading to the stables with the rest of the Pokémon.
“I’m not the Warden of Flame,” Clair said, breaking the thick silence that followed. “I’m just me. I like who I am. I was just thinking of an injured Pokémon in the Blue Deceit. A Relicanth, badly hurt. But I need to finish this quest, and I was thinking –”
“I can take him to Mahogany,” Eve offered quickly, ripping through her food faster now.
“No.”
Eve blinked at her, a bone sticking out between her teeth. Then she grinned. “You don’t trust Pryce’s little town?”
“Do you?”
Eve shook her head, plucking the bone from her gum. “Not at all. Something’s off about that place. Same feeling goes for the rest of the Guild, too. If Rea doesn’t like a place, none of us do. She’s got the best instincts out of any of us. She always says the ice there moves wrong, like it’s waiting for something. She told us to watch this white waterfall, feel its chill. Said the way that it makes us feel – that’s what Mahogany’s like for her. There’s something happening there, but no one’s talking about it.”
“No surprise there,” Clair muttered, narrowing her eyes. “Did Rea see something that scared her?”
Eve glanced around, making sure no one was listening before leaning in. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell with her. She won’t go anywhere near the Ice Path now. I don’t know if she saw something, or if it’s just her gut. But if she saw someone do to another what happened to Thread Boy…”
Clair’s glare stopped her cold.
“Too soon?” Eve winced. “I make jokes when I’m nervous. It helps me deal with… well, people getting their eyes sewn shut. Not easy to forget. Maybe Rea saw those cult freaks attacking someone. Maybe they tried to get to her, and she’s not keen to meet them again.”
Clair chewed her lip, considering Vinny’s loss. It still bothered her. He wasn’t the sort to be rattled easily, yet there he was, dumbfounded, utterly shaken. It stared at her like a puzzle that didn’t quite fit. She couldn’t shake the image of the children in Blackthorn – running wild through the streets, all bright-eyed and innocent. What would they look like, their eyes sewn shut? Would they blame her for it?
“I need to find whoever’s behind this,” Clair said, her voice low. “Wager or not. Once Vinny’s free, I’ll pay him a visit. But promise me, Eve, get that Relicanth to safety as soon as you can.”
“Of course.”
Just then, Eve’s comrades from the Hunters Guild approached – rusted crescents pinned to their belts. Some bowed, others knelt.
“Defender,” one murmured.
“Protector,” said another.
Clair waved them off, a bit sharper than she meant to. The wind was biting, stealing her patience with every gust. She huddled closer to the fire, and the others joined her.
“People keep spinning crazier stories by the minute,” Jenson, the tallest of the group, muttered with a scowl on his face.
“Shut up, Jenson. I know it’s true, I saw it myself,” Eren, the shortest of the group, snapped back.
“Saw what?” Clair asked, irritation creeping into her voice.
Eve warmed her fingers, casting uneasy glances around the camp before giving Eren the nod to speak.
“I saw one of the Ice Gates open,” Eren said, his voice tight. “Far north, east of Tamer’s Point, just behind the last of the Giant’s Eleven.”
Clair felt a knot of fear twist in her gut. She quickly looked down at her plate, letting the warmth of the food distract her. She kept eating, listening to their chatter, all the while wondering why they thought confiding such dark news to her would help. Without her Charizard at her side, she didn’t feel like the leader of Blackthorn. She felt like a young girl again, out of place among the real heroes of her city.
She made a silent vow to check the area as soon as she could. But time was running thin – too much to do, not enough hours in the day. Most nights, she found herself alone in her study, staring at the sands falling through her hourglass, a mug of hot chocolate growing cold beside her endless piles of paperwork. Her fingers ached from the strain, and without Tentacruel gel, the pain nearly brought her to tears some mornings.
But that look people gave her, when she promised she’d help – it stirred something warm in her chest. It almost made her believe she wasn’t as weak as she felt.
Suddenly, a flicker of confusion crossed her mind. “Giant’s Eleven?” she muttered, frowning. “I’ve never heard of them.”
Eren’s eyes darted to her, quick as a bird, like he’d been watching her all along. He looked uneasy, like he was waiting for someone to haul her up and drag her away. When Jenson clapped him hard on the back, Eren motioned for her to follow.
The midday snows had softened, no longer the harsh, blinding storm from earlier. Now, the snowflakes drifted lazily, shifting from pure white to a dingy grey, like the pollution clouds that hovered over Blackthorn. Another headache for another time, she thought wearily.
Eren led her out of the camp, past a well filled with water so black she doubted any light had ever touched its depths. As they passed the stables, Clair’s Charizard and Vinny’s Typhlosion wrestled over a pink cushion, which exploded into a shower of feathers. The two Pokémon glared at each other, each blaming the other for the mess.
Eren kept walking, heading north, farther from the warm campfire and the food she’d barely finished. Her stomach growled in protest, souring her mood.
“Where are we going?” she asked, voice tight.
“Just a little farther,” Eren said, climbing a rickety wooden rampart. His arms spread wide for balance.
Clair gave him a sceptical look.
“It’s safe,” he insisted, though doubt flickered in his eyes. “How’s your balance?”
“Good enough,” she said, forcing herself to sound brave. “I can manage.”
She followed him, fighting the urge to scream as the wind tested her resolve. It reminded her of her younger days – running through strange places without a care. But she wasn’t sixteen anymore. She was the leader of Blackthorn, and its weight pressed on her more heavily than any storm.
They finally stopped near a boundary stone, where Clair collapsed against the remains of an old watchtower, her legs trembling. Eren helped steady her, his arm firm against her shoulder.
The tower was a wreck – splintered wood leaning against the boundary stones, its once-white shingles now weathered and broken, remnants of trees from the Snowstalk Woodland. Snowmen had been built nearby, their buttons and scarves sinking evermore into snowy graves.
Clair chuckled at the sight of carrots lying in the snow. “People really thought that was a good idea?” she asked, pointing from the carrots to the discarded buttons.
Eren looked unnerved. “Some thought it was fun… until some ghost Pokémon started pulling them out. They hate being mocked. It has something to do with the story of the dead and the moon. I don’t know the whole of it, but this place always gives me the chills.”
Clair shivered too. The snowmen didn’t look like Pokémon to her. They looked like spirits – the damned and forsaken. A cold dread crawled up her spine.
“So where are the Giant’s Eleven?” she asked, her voice steady despite her unease. “I see no giants here.”
“There,” Eren said, pointing into the distance.
Despite the whiteout, the mist and snow swirling thick in the air, Clair could just make out ten massive boulders – so large they seemed like mountains in their own right.
Clair frowned, confusion clouding her thoughts. “I thought they were called the Giant's Eleven?”
“Look north,” Eren urged, pointing toward the Bitterchill Peaks, where the mountains sank lower into the earth. Their blue stone caps, once above the clouds, had long since tumbled down, scattered amidst the feet of their throne.
And then she saw it. The eleventh boulder – smaller than the others but unmistakable. Forgotten, neglected, while the other ten remained immovable behemoths. The eleventh, though, shifted, creeping slowly across the ice-ridden earth, seeking something. Warmth, perhaps. A warmth it had never known, and yet, it moved as if it was alive.
Clair's gaze drifted southeast to where the ground fell away into Death’s Maw – a treacherous river mouth, the worst she knew. Rapids churned in one direction while sinkholes yawned open and shut without warning, large enough to swallow a man whole. Landslides from the northern peaks fed into the waters, frothing the surface white like curdled milk.
Beneath the tenth boulder, just beyond Death’s Maw, she saw skeletons half-buried in the snow. Some were massive, curled up in the shelter of the boulder for refuge from the storm. Others, who must have been monstrous when alive, had their bones fused into the ground, grotesque things, fifteen feet wide. They clung to the stone, their bony fingers scraping at the grey surface until flecks of ruby glimmered even through the relentless snow.
Clair couldn’t help but wonder why Lance hadn’t sent his men to strip the stone bare for the rubies hidden within.
“So, the Gate,” she began, piecing it all together. “East of Tamer’s Point, behind the last of the Giant’s Eleven… that’s the one you saw?”
Eren nodded, but his face twisted in disbelief. “But… what the hell? It’s closed now. I swear it was open before! Look at the side of that boulder. Those marks – striation marks. That thing was open, I’m sure of it. How does it close on its own? It was open right before my eyes. I swear to you, I’m not lying.”
Clair squinted, eyeing the black scratches carved into the scree at the mountain’s base. Ugly, deep gashes against the white crystal. It gave her pause – was it truly the Gate, opening for the first time in millennia? Or was this some trick, some cruel ploy to bring attention to the Valley of Death?
Then she heard Vinny’s voice in her mind, weak and gasping: “Silver… it beats… it’s alive.” All her doubts vanished like smoke on the wind.
“I believe you,” she said quietly. “But others might not. This land… I’m not even sure who has a rightful claim over it anymore. I wonder why anyone would want it at all.”
Of course, she knew exactly who held the rights to this land. But between seeing him again or dealing with the cold dead wandering these plains, Clair knew which she preferred.
Eren’s sharp gaze flicked back to her, his eyes darting between her face and the distant horizon. Then, as if finally finding some humour in the madness, a soft smile touched his lips. They lingered there a little longer, watching the land, the snow swirling like ghosts between them, before the loud calls from the campfire drew them back to reality.
Clair dismissed Eve and her Hunters Guild, her words polite but firm, the weight of responsibility heavy on her shoulders. As she sat alone, her eyes wandered to the healer's tent, her thoughts with Vinny. She feared for him. His eyes would never be the same. He wouldn’t feel safe on his own land again – not after what had happened.
The thought of him leaving the region after the attack twisted something deep inside her. Sadness, like a dull ache, settled in her chest. She remembered the countless battles they’d fought together, her own Charizard against his Typhlosion. Her mind, then as now, felt detached from the danger, numb to the chaos.
Quietly, she slipped through the camp, the rows of tents still mostly empty. Some had the soft glow of lanterns within, people reading or lost in their own thoughts. Others were more lively, filled with the muffled sounds of activities that brought a faint smirk to her lips.
But as she passed through the last set of white tent flaps, her mind fell into a dark silence.
There, beside Vinny’s cot, stood a tall shadow – slender, menacing. Eyes she recognised far too well gleamed in the low light, though why he was here, why he loomed so threateningly over her friend, she didn’t know.
A wave of anger hit her like a storm, more potent than anything she’d felt before. Her fists clenched, tighter and tighter, her knuckles turning whiter than the snow outside. Without a word, she strode toward him, fury burning in her veins…