Four days passed in a blur of feverish, broken dreams.
When Justus finally opened his eyes, the room was bathed in the dim, slate-gray light of early morning.
The agonizing paralysis had dulled into a deep, bone-deep ache, but as he flexed his hands beneath the heavy furs, his fingers actually obeyed.
His spiritual enaergy was still desperately drained—running on bare embers—but his body could move.
He pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest, and swung his legs off the side of the cot.
Across the room, Daemon lay motionless, his chest rising and falling in slow, labored rhythms.
Beside him, Lyra looked no different than she had days ago—pale as polished marble, her breathing a faint, rattling thread.
“You shouldn’t be standing, lad.”
Dr.
Vance stepped into the room carrying a fresh bundle of firewood.
He set the timber down by the hearth, looking at Justus with a mixture of shock and grave concern.
“My friends…” Justus rasped, his throat dry as ash.
“Why aren’t they awake?”
Vance sighed, his shoulders slumping.
“Your companion—the big one—exhausted his spiritual energy reserves carrying the girl through a blizzard.
His body collapsed under the strain once the warmth hit him.
But the girl…
her condition has worsened.
The lung rot has taken root.”
Justus stumbled toward Lyra’s bed, using the wall for support.
He looked down at her small, pale face.
The dark herbal paste smeared over her skin was doing little to stop the slow, deadly crawl of the frost-fever.
“Is there no cure?” Justus demanded, his voice cracking.
“There has to be something, I have to fix this.”
Vance hesitated, wringing his bandaged hands.
“There is.
The Frost-Lotus.
It grows only on the northern face of the Jagged Crags.
Its nectar can purge the rot from her lungs and restore their drained spiritual energies within hours.
But…
it’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Queen’s vanguard has established their forward camp right at the base of the Crags,” Vance said bitterly.
“They guard the pass.
Even if you were at full strength, going up there is a death sentence.
In your condition?
You won’t make it past the foothills.”
Justus didn’t answer.
He turned away from the doctor, walked over to the corner of the room, and picked up Gryphon.
The heavy weight of the sword almost pulled him to his knees, but he forced his grip to tighten around the hilt.
This is my fault, he thought, looking back at Daemon’s hollow face and Lyra’s still frame.
I forced us inland.
I chose this path.
I dragged them into the ice.”
“Don’t do this, boy,” Vance pleaded, reaching out a hand.
“You can barely walk!”
“If I stay here and do nothing, they die,” Justus said coldly.
He pulled his heavy fur coat over his shoulders, strapped Gryphon to his waist, and stepped out into the freezing wind of Northwood without looking back.
The trek toward the Jagged Crags was a slow, agonizing nightmare.
Every step felt like dragging heavy iron chains through deep mud.
The howling wind cut through Justus’s clothes like dull knives, and without a functional spirit core to circulate warmth through his veins, the northern cold seeped straight into his bones.
Within two hours, his vision began to blur.
The white landscape spun around him.
“Just a little further,” he told himself, staggering through a knee-deep drift.
Just reach the pass…
get the Lotus…
His knees buckled.
Justus hit the snow hard.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms gave out completely.
His face pressed into the freezing drift, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
The cold settled over him like a heavy lead blanket, dulling the pain, pulling his consciousness down into the dark.
Is this where it ends?
Footsteps crunched softly in the snow beside him.
Not the heavy, violent boots of Queen’s soldiers, but a light, measured stride.
“You always did have a bad habit of taking on more weight than your shoulders could carry, Justus.”
The voice was warm, familiar, and completely out of place in the dead zone.
Justus forced his head up, his eyelashes heavy with frost.
Standing above him, wrapped in a simple, heavy travel cloak, was an elderly man resting his hands on a knotwood walking stick.
It was the same old man with a carriage Justus and Daemon had escorted weeks ago from the outskirts of Black Ridge to Raven’s Pass—the quiet traveler who had paid him in gold coins for their services.
“You…” Justus choked out, his voice barely a whisper against the wind.
“What…
are you doing here?”
The old man smiled gently, crouching down to Justus’s level.
The brutal wind seemed to bend around the old man, leaving a faint circle of natural warmth in the snow.
“I go where the threads pull me,” the old man said softly.
“I know who you are, Justus.
I knew the moment you drew your blade at the Ravine.
I know the power dormant inside your blood…
and I know the wall you have hit.”
Justus stared at him, his mind reeling through the haze of hypothermia.
“My friends…
they’re dying in the village.
I need the Frost-Lotus…”
“If you go to that camp, Queen’s men will butcher you,” the old man interrupted calmly.
“You have no spirit left.
You are fighting a war with a broken body.”
The old man stood up and pointed his walking stick toward the dark, jagged peaks further west—away from Northwood, away from the Jagged Crags.
“I can teach you to unlock what lies buried inside you,” the old man said, his eyes suddenly piercing through the storm with authority.
“I can give you the strength to stand against Queen, and the forces that hunt you.
But the training requires absolute isolation.
You must turn your back on Northwood.
You must abandon those two in the village.”
Justus’s heart slammed against his ribs.
“Abandon them?
I brought them here!
Lyra is in a coma because of my decision!”
“And if you try to save her now, you will die, and she will die anyway as a leader you need to be strong enough to protect your team,” the old man replied without a trace of cruelty—only brutal, absolute logic.
“You are trying to act like a savior when you are barely a survivor.
Choice requires power, Justus.
Right now, you have none.
Walk west with me, unlock your true strength, and accept that they were the price of your ascension.”
Justus lay in the snow, the biting cold gnawing at his limbs, his chest heaving with suffocating guilt.
To the east lay the village—where Daemon and Lyra lay defenseless, dying because of his pride.
To the west lay the old man—offering the power Justus had sought his entire life, but demanding he abandon the only people who had trusted him.
Rifle against sword was simple.
Fighting monsters was easy.
This was a different kind of execution.
Justus’s blood ran cold—colder than the blizzard tearing across his skin.
“Abandon them?” Justus snarled, forcing his elbows into the ice as he fought to lift his upper body.
A violent, ragged cough tore through his chest, spilling a fleck of dark blood onto the white snow.
“Are you out of your mind?!”
He glared up at the old man, his red eyes burning with a raw, unadulterated fury that defied his dying body.
Daemon carried Lyra through three days of an open blizzard until his spiritual energy was completely shredded!
Lyra’s lungs are rotting out from the inside because I pushed us inland!
If I don’t get the Frost-Lotus, they die in that cottage!
I am not turning my back on them!
Not for power, not for you, and not for anything in this damned world!”
Justus slammed a fist into the snow, gritting his teeth so hard his gums bled, trying to drag his legs forward toward the mountain pass.
“I don’t care about your training,” Justus spat through gritted teeth.
“I am getting that herb.”
The old man didn’t move.
He didn’t yell, and he didn’t look angry.
He simply reached inside his heavy traveling cloak and pulled out a small, glowing glass vial.
Inside the vial nestled a crystalline, deep-blue flower floating in a luminous, shimmering liquid.
The moment it caught the light, a faint, soothing warmth radiated through the frigid air.
The Frost-Lotus
Justus froze.
His breath caught in his dry throat, his eyes wide as he stared at the flower he was ready to die for.
“How…” Justus rasped, his voice trembling.
“Where did you…”
“Queen’s forward camp is formidably guarded, yes,” the old man said calmly, holding the vial loosely between his weathered fingers.
“For a boy running on empty embers, it is a graveyard.
And besides it’s not the only one growing in the North.”
Justus made a desperate, crawling lunge toward the vial, his gloved hand reaching out—but the old man casually took a single step back, keeping the herb just out of reach.
“Listen to me very carefully, Justus,” the old man’s voice lowered, carrying a heavy, ancient authority that cut straight through the howling wind.
“If you refuse me right now, I will pocket this vial and walk away.
You will crawl another hundred paces up this mountain, your heart will freeze, and your friends will rot in that doctor’s hut without ever waking up.
Your stubborn pride will be their executioner.”
Justus’s hand hovered in the air, shaking violently.
The weight of his own helplessness crushed down on his chest harder than the mountain storm.
“If you come with me,” the old man continued, looking down at him with dark, calculating eyes, “I will ensure this exact vial of Frost-Lotus Nectar is delivered directly into Dr.
Vance’s hands within the hour.
Your friends will live.
Their spirit cores will heal, and the lung rot will be purged.”
“Why?” Justus choked out, tears of frustration hot against his freezing cheeks.
“Why do you care so much about taking me away from them?!
Who are you?!”
“I am simply a messenger,” the old man said softly.
“I was sent by someone who knows you very well.
Someone who knows that if you stay chained to these weak, mortal attachments, you will all be crushed by the storms coming for this world.”
Justus stared at the old man, his mind reeling.
Sent by someone who knows me?
Who could possibly send a man like this?
“You have a choice, Justus,” the old man said, holding the glowing blue vial high between them.
“Die here in the snow trying to be a hero, and drag your friends to the grave with you…
or trust that I will save their lives, abandon your past, and come learn what you are truly capable of.”
Justus lay face down in the snow, looking at the glowing light of the Frost-Bloom Nectar.
He had always fought to control his own path.
He had always refused to rely on anyone else.
But now, the only way to save Daemon and Lyra was to completely surrender his freedom, trust a mysterious stranger, and walk into the dark alone.
His fingers slowly closed into a tight, bleeding fist against the ice.
“Deliver it…” Justus whispered, his voice broken, yielding to the bitter reality.
“Deliver the nectar to Vance…
and I’ll go with you.”Before passing out from the cold.
The question is… who sent the old man, and what do they really want from him?
Lemme know your thoughts on the comments