The mountain pass at Dead Man’s Ridge was shrouded in a bitter, freezing fog.
I stood on an icy overhang, wrapped in a heavy wolf-fur cloak over dark, practical travel leathers. My rune-carved frost-hide blindfold sat snugly across my eyes, the blue northern runes pulsing with a quiet, acoustic map of the canyon below.
Beside me, Kaelen leaned casually against a jutting rock, resting her ironwood-reinforced bone bludgeons against her thigh.
"They’re late," Kaelen grunted, spitting into the snow. "If these southern twins think they can keep a mountain hunter waiting in a blizzard—"
"They’re not late," I interrupted softly. "They’ve been standing fifty paces behind us for the last ten minutes."
Kaelen froze, her golden eyes widening as her hand instantly dropped to her bludgeons.
She whirled around, scanning the empty, white fog behind us.
"Where? I don’t smell or hear a thing!"
’They’re using a dual-frequency spatial refraction array,’ Wren noted inside my head, her phantom wings fluttering with dark curiosity. ’Not bad for teenagers. They’re bending light and sound around their own mana signatures.’
"You can drop the spatial array," I called out into the fog, my voice carrying a flat, unbothered calm. "The left array node is leaking a micro-frequency of terrestrial mana because the copper core is slightly misaligned."
A sudden, sharp gasp echoed from the empty mist.
The air rippled like disturbed water.
Two figures materialized out of thin air, stepping onto the snowdrifts.
They were twins, no older than thirteen—a boy and a girl with pale skin, jet-black hair, and the distinct, deep violet eyes of the Terza Sanguis bloodline.
They wore identical, high-collared dark scholar robes embroidered with silver constellation runes.
The boy, Castor, held a floating, copper-bound astrological compass.
The girl, Pollux, carried a massive, leather-bound grimoire strapped to her waist that was nearly half her size.
For three seconds, neither of them moved.
They stared at my blindfolded, taller thirteen-year-old frame, taking in the rough barbarian furs, the heavy ironwood staff resting on my shoulder, and the quiet, volcano-like dragon heat humming beneath my skin.
Then, simultaneously, both twins dropped to their knees in the deep snow, pressing their foreheads directly onto the icy stone.
"HAIL THE UNSEEN GOD!" Castor cried out, his voice trembling with terrifying, intense religious fervor. "THE DRAGON REBORN IN FROST! THE DIVINE ARCHITECT OF THE NORTH!"
"WE BOW BEFORE YOUR INFINITE MAJESTY, O GLORIOUS LORD VALERIAN!" Pollux chanted in perfect, eerie unison, her hands raised to the sky as if receiving holy light. "THE PROPHET OF TERZA HAS RETURNED TO PURGE THE UNCLEAN!"
I stood completely still.
My eyebrow twitched violently beneath my rune-carved blindfold.
Beside me, Kaelen stared at the kneeling twins, then slowly turned her head to look at me.
Her mouth twitched, her shoulders began to shake, and she let out a loud, snorting laugh that echoed across the ridge.
"A-Architect of the North?" Kaelen wheezed, clutching her stomach. "O Divine Lord Valerian! Please, spare your humblest barbarian servants!"
’PFFFFT-HAHAHAHA!’ Wren cackled hysterically, rolling loops in my shadow. ’"THE PROPHET OF TERZA!" Kid, they put you on a pedestal higher than the Imperial Palace! Do a miracle! Turn snow into wine!’
"Get up," I rasped, my voice flat, tired, and devoid of all divine authority. "Both of you. Right now."
Castor lifted his head slightly, his violet eyes shining with unhinged, watery devotion.
"Forgive us, My Lord! Is our unworthy posture offensive to your divine perception? Shall we perform the ritual of thirty-three prostrations to cleanse our presence?"
"If you do thirty-three prostrations, I’m going to throw both of you off this cliff," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose behind my blindfold. "Stand up and speak like normal human beings."
The twins scrambled to their feet instantly, dusting the snow off their scholar robes with frantic, coordinated speed.
"As the Lord commands!" Pollux declared, puffing out her chest proudly. "We shall adopt a standard mortal posture!"
I took a slow, deep breath, forcing my heart rate to stay level.
I had dealt with Stage 4 Blood Archons, abyssal fiends, and whiteout blizzards, but five seconds with these two was already giving me a migraine.
"You are Castor and Pollux of the Terza branch," I noted, stepping closer. "In your scroll, you claimed to have pierced my ’fake death’."
Castor’s eyes lit up like stars.
He pulled out a small, crystal-encased compass from his robes.
"It was simple, Holy One!" Castor explained rapidly, gesturing with his hands. "When the Sec branch traitors claimed you died in the crevasse collapse, the Prim ancestral hall recorded your soul-lamp going dark. But the Terza family archaism records show that an ancient dragon core does not extinguish upon physical collapse—it undergoes metabolic inversion!"
"We tracked the residual harmonic shift in the northern ley-lines!" Pollux chimed in eagerly, taking a step closer. "And when the fake Imperial Decree was used to scam the Blood-Hound Vanguard... we analyzed the wax signature! Only a mind of divine, god-like intellect could use a dead traitor’s stolen soul-gems to pay his own mercenaries to betray him!"
"It was a basic scam," I sighed.
"AN INSPIRATION OF DIVINE GENIUS!" both twins shouted together.
Kaelen leaned on her bone bludgeons, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye.
"I like them, Sanguis. They’re completely insane, but they certainly appreciate your work."
I ignored Kaelen’s mockery, focusing my acoustic perception on the twins’ mana signatures.
Despite their completely unhinged personalities, their internal mana channels were shockingly refined.
Castor’s spatial array control was high-tier, and Pollux’s grimoire radiated a dense, ancient spirit-mana that rivaled senior mages from the Capital.
They were true hidden talents—scholars who had been sidelined by the martial-obsessed Prim and Sec branches because they didn’t excel in direct blood-aura combat.
"Listen to me carefully," I spoke, my voice dropping into a cold, serious register that immediately silenced their dramatic antics. "If you are going to work with me, there are three rules."
The twins stood at rigid attention, taking out tiny scholar quills as if receiving divine scriptures.
"Rule one," I said, holding up a finger. "Never call me a god, a lord, or a prophet. My name is Valerian."
"Rule one: The Holy One prefers a humble mortal mantle," Pollux whispered, scribbling furiously on a parchment scroll.
My eyebrow twitched again, but I pushed through.
"Rule two: Everything we do stays between us. The Prim main line, the Imperial Court, and the Clan Council must continue to believe I am dead."
"Rule two: Sacred secrecy of the Divine Shadow," Castor agreed solemnly, nodding vigorously.
"Rule three," I continued, leaning forward on my ironwood staff. "I didn’t bring you here to worship me. I brought you here because the Sec branch isn’t acting alone. Someone inside or outside the clan is supplying them with forbidden abyssal arrays and star-rot amulets. I need your archivist access to find out who."
Pollux’s scholarly demeanor instantly replaced her fanatical expression.
She opened her massive grimoire, her fingers tracing a series of dark, glowing runes on the ancient parchment.
"We have already begun the audit, Lord—I mean, Valerian," Pollux reported, her voice turning sharp and analytical. "Two weeks ago, before we marched north, we intercepted a encrypted manifest from the Terza archives. Elder Garren wasn’t receiving star-rot amulets from the Medeis family or the Southern Nobles."
"Where did they come from?" I asked, my dragon core pulsing attentively beneath my blindfold.
Castor stepped forward, his violet eyes turning deadly serious.
"The Eldritch Sun Sanctum," Castor revealed softly. "A forgotten, underground faction of ancient high-elders who claim to predate the Empire itself. They have been feeding forbidden abyssal cores to the Sec branch for over fifty years... in exchange for Sanguis blood samples."
Silence blanketed the snowy ridge.
’Eldritch Elders...’ Wren whispered inside my mind, her playful mood instantly evaporating. ’They aren’t just trying to overthrow your house, Valerian. They’re trying to harvest dragon-lineage blood to awaken something buried beneath the continental shelf.’
I stood in the howling northern wind, resting my hand against the cool, rune-carved leather over my eyes.
The conspiracy was vast, deeply entrenched, and far older than I had originally imagined.
But for the first time since my arrival in the North, I had a full tactical board: the Frost-Tooth barbarians as my physical hammer, the Terza twins as my eyes in the archives, and my own dormant dragon blood waiting to ignite.
I looked toward the twins, a cold, dangerous smile spreading across my face.
"Castor, Pollux," I spoke softly.
"Welcome to the team."
"Now stop kneeling in the fucking snow."