The cold in Ignisyr didn’t bite—it chewed.
Kael Emberlyn felt it gnawing at his ribs as he pressed against the alley wall, his thumb absently tracing the fading heat rune on his wrist. Above him, a tattered poster clung to the frost-glazed bricks—a lithograph of the Pyre-King, his molten crown dripping onto the slogan “Strength Through Fire.” The king’s face had been scratched out, replaced by slum graffiti: “Warmth for the worthy. Freeze for the rest.”
Across the street, the black-market dealer Jorran paced beneath a flickering heat lamp, his shadow warped by the cobblestones. Kael’s sister, Mira, had warned him about Jorran last week. “He’s a rat,” she’d said, stitching a frostburn scar on his shoulder from a botched deal. “But rats survive. Remember that.”
“Late again, Emberlyn,” Jorran hissed, his breath frosting the air. A moth-eaten scarf hid the rot creeping up his jaw—a side effect of chewing frostweed to numb the cold.
Kael tossed a pouch of Ember Crystals at his feet. The blood-red gems glowed faintly, their light reflecting in Jorran’s hollow eyes. “Blame your glorious king. He’s hoarding the veins. These are the last ones.”
A tremor shook the ground. Both men froze as a guttural roar echoed through the slums—a sound like glaciers splitting.
“Frostscar’s closer,” Jorran whispered, clutching the crystals to his chest. “Heard its whispers last night. Promised me warmth if I… fed it.”
Kael’s hand drifted to the knife at his belt. “What’d you tell it?”
Jorran smiled, teeth blackened by root rot. “I’ll let you guess.”
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The ground exploded.
A spire of jagged ice erupted between them, spraying shrapnel. Kael dove behind a rubble pile as the Frostscar’s golems clawed from the fissure—skeletal things of ice and shadow, their hollow eyes fixed on Jorran.
“Run, you idiot!” Kael shouted.
Too late.
A golem seized Jorran’s arm, frost crawling up his wrist. He screamed, the sound cut short as his jaw froze shut. The golem pressed its forehead to his, and Jorran’s pupils turned glacial blue.
“She waits,” the golem hissed through Jorran’s mouth. “The goddess waits for her shard.”
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Kael ran.
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The slums blurred around him—a maze of crumbling huts and frozen corpses. He skidded into a dead-end alley, his boots slipping on black ice. Behind him, the golems’ footsteps crunched closer.
A child’s whimper echoed from a nearby doorway. Kael lunged inside, slamming the door just as a golem’s claw shattered the wood. He braced against the door, his heat rune flaring weakly—a temporary burst of warmth gifted by Ignisyr’s priests, now reduced to a flicker.
“Please,” a woman whispered. She huddled in the corner, clutching a boy no older than five. Both bore the ashen marks of fading heat runes. “They took my husband last week. Said he stole Ember—”
The door splintered.
Kael grabbed the boy’s hand. “Go! To the eastern fissure!”
The woman hesitated, tears freezing on her cheeks.
“Now!”
She fled.
The golem burst through, its ice claw slashing. Kael ducked, rolling beneath a frozen cart. His knife glanced off the creature’s leg—useless.
“Little thief,” the golem rasped. “The goddess hungers for your fire.”
Kael’s back hit the wall. The golem loomed, its breath frosting his face.
Then—
A tremor.
Deeper than before. The ground split, swallowing the golem whole. Ghostly blue light burst forth from the chasm, casting eerie hues across the alley.
Rimefont.
Kael’s throat tightened. He’d heard Mira’s stories—how the Pyre-King’s priests forbade ice magic, calling it a “feast for the Frostscar.” How Frost-Singers who dared channel it vanished into the glacier’s maw. But Mira’s face flashed in his mind: her scarred neck from defying the grain tax, her chapped hands stitching cloaks for soldiers who’d let their family starve.
No choice.
He jumped.
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The fall stole his breath.
He landed in a cavern of shimmering ice, its walls aglow with intricate veins of golden light. At its center stood an altar—and atop it, a dagger-shaped shard of ice. Frostfire. The union of flame and frost, legend and heresy.
“Take it,” a voice whispered—not the Frostscar’s, but softer. Feminine. “Free me from this prison, and I will free your world.”
Kael reached out.
Pain.
Fire and ice tore through his veins. His left hand blackened with frostbite; his right blistered as if dipped in magma. The relic seared his palm, fusing to his flesh. Visions assaulted him:
—A woman with eyes like glaciers, chained in a prison of fire.Thrymia.
—A war of gods, their blood flooding the world.
—A boy with Kael’s face, burning alive.
When he opened his eyes, the relic glowed softly in his grip. The pain had vanished, replaced by a terrible, humming power.
“You are mine now,” the relic murmured. “But I am also yours.”
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Kael climbed out of the fissure, the relic hidden beneath his coat. His head throbbed—whether from the fall or the relic’s whispers, he couldn’t tell. The slums were eerily quiet, the air thick with the Pyre-King’s smoke.
Then he heard it: a scream. Mira.
He sprinted toward the plaza, but guards ambushed him from a side alley. A pommel cracked his temple.
Darkness.
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He woke in a cell, the relic gone. Through the barred window, he saw Mira’s silhouette against the Pyre-King’s crimson banners.
Captain Rask, a hulking brute with a molten whip, grinned. “Kael Emberlyn! Come to watch your sister melt?”
The relic’s voice slithered into his mind: “The Frostscar is my cage. You hold the key. Use it.”
Kael pressed his burned hand to the cell wall. Frostfire bloomed beneath his palm