The sky above the Frost Courts was a colorless sheet, thick with snow and silence.
Wind howled through the glacial spires of Valdrakken, the mountain citadel carved from ice and iron. Below its frozen bridges and obsidian halls, the people of the north huddled in silence, watched by statues with weeping eyes.
And far beyond the city's lights, beneath the roots of a dying glacier, a boy trained alone.
Kael Draven's blade sang against stone.
Again. Again.
Each swing carved a silver arc through the air, sharp enough to whisper.
His breath steamed in the frigid dark, muscles burning, frost caked across his shoulders. Around him, the ice reflected his movements in dozens of jagged shards. Not a sparring chamber—a tomb.
He had chosen it for that reason.
It reminded him of what he'd left behind.
---
Six years ago, Kael had stood beneath the Frost Court's banners—third son of King Veyrik, bearer of the Winter Sigil, heir to a power older than snow.
Then the vision came.
He'd seen it in fire—not ice.
The capital burning.
The Queen of Sorrow enthroned beneath a crown not made of gold, but of teeth.
He'd tried to warn them.
They had branded him cursed. Sent him to the outer keep. A quiet exile, wrapped in honor but soaked in shame.
Now, they whispered his name in fear.
Kael the Broken-Seer. The Winter's Traitor.
But none of them knew what he had begun to see since.
---
He paused his training and knelt before the ice-covered altar.
The shard lay waiting.
Not flame. Not mirror. Not hollow.
Frost.
A blade of white crystal, frozen through with lightning veins, hovering in still air. It didn't glow. It gleamed, like a silent threat beneath a calm surface.
Kael reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed it, the world went still.
---
He stood in a place that wasn't a place.
The sky above cracked like glass, spilling slow silver rain. Mountains floated like frozen teeth, and in the distance, he saw himself—older, cloaked in white, a crown of frost coiled above his brow.
Beside that vision stood another.
A boy in fire.
Ash.
The shard whispered between them.
> Paths converge. Frost and flame are meant to clash… and to bind.
Then another voice—quieter, older.
Feminine.
> You should have let him die.
The Queen.
---
Kael's eyes snapped open.
Frost cracked beneath him. The shard's glow dimmed.
He rose to his feet, heart hammering. The visions were growing stronger. Sharper. He no longer saw only what might come.
He saw what others were hiding.
And the Queen's shadow was thickening around the Court.
---
That night, he descended into Valdrakken.
The city streets glittered with alchemical frost-lanterns. Guards moved in tight patrols, armor etched with the sigils of the High Houses. All loyal. All cold.
Kael wore his hood low.
His breath misted as he crossed into the Silent Quarter—a district where seers, diviners, and heretics lived in uneasy peace.
He found her where he always did: the Whisper-Witch.
Old. Blind. Voice like rusted snow.
She sat in a hall of bones and smoke, surrounded by mirrors that didn't reflect what was there, only what was forgotten.
"You came," she rasped, without turning. "The shard is speaking more clearly now, isn't it?"
Kael nodded. "It's warning me."
"The Queen moves in the north," she said. "She walks in dreams. Whispers through mirrors. Her agents are already within the Frost Court."
Kael stepped closer. "Who?"
The witch did not answer.
Instead, she lifted a piece of silver glass from her lap.
It flickered—showing the face of his brother.
Prince Renlor.
---
Kael's blood froze colder than the air.
"Impossible," he whispered.
Renlor was the dutiful one. Loyal to their father. Bound to tradition.
"He bears no shard," Kael said.
The witch laughed—a dry, brittle sound.
"Because he gave it away. He swore fealty to her in exchange for power."
The glass shifted.
Now it showed a chamber Kael had never seen—high walls carved with spiral runes. At the center stood the Queen of Sorrow herself, cloaked in silence, her crown half-formed. She touched a piece of the Crown that pulsed with black light.
At her side knelt Renlor, head bowed.
Kael's fists clenched.
"How long?"
"Long enough," the witch whispered. "And now the Queen prepares to summon the First Frost Wraith—the one bound in your family's blood."
Kael turned away, the shard glowing softly at his back.
"She's coming for the North."
"No," the witch corrected. "She's already here."
---
Outside, snow began to fall heavier.
Kael stepped into the storm, his cloak snapping like a banner behind him. The Flame Shard's image had burned into his mind—Ash, the boy from the visions.
If the Queen feared him, Kael needed to find him.
Because no matter how far he'd fallen from his throne…
He would not let the Frost Courts fall with him.
---