Chapter 11 — The Alpha’s Call
Snow whipped against my face as we pushed through the trees, the imperial horn still echoing faintly in the distance. Toren ran ahead, light on his feet, crossbow at the ready. Lira moved beside me in silence, daggers drawn, her breath quick and white in the cold. Elias trailed just behind, shield raised—not because we expected arrows, but because anything could come out of this forest tonight.
The horns had stopped. That was worse than hearing them.
“We’re close,” Toren whispered.
I nodded once. “Too close.”
The flicker of torchlight cut through the treeline ahead—imperial red and gold burning against the snow. And beside it… the low, wet growl of something not human.
We slid along the ridge. A shallow hollow opened below, ringed by half-toppled pines and wind-sculpted drifts. A handful of Imperial Guards had formed a tight knot around their wounded—shallow breaths steaming the cold. A single Frostfang prowled toward them, massive and snarling, its breath spilling in clouds of mist. Its eyes caught the torchfire and burned like coals.
“They’re wounded,” Elias whispered.
“Then we don’t have much time,” I said.
The Frostfang lunged.
“Now,” I snapped.
Toren dropped to one knee behind a snowbank—tchk—his bolt hissed through the dark, slamming into the creature’s shoulder and jerking its entire frame sideways, stopping its momentum cold.
Lira blurred forward, no magic in her feet, only training and hunger. Her first knife spun from her fingers and sank into the Frostfang’s chest with a heavy thud; her second flashed close and carved a neat gash across its foreleg.
The creature growled, pivoting clumsily—right into Elias. He drove his shoulder behind his shield and hit like a battering ram. The impact rang across the hollow, metal on bone, and the Frostfang staggered, pinned against packed snow.
I was already moving.
Echo Edge. Veil Edge.
Steel through cold air. No hum. No light. Just a single breath and a clean line. The Frostfang’s head parted from its body and fell, rolling to a stop in the blood-flecked snow.
Silence; save the crackle of torches and the thin hiss of falling flakes.
Lieutenant Voss stepped forward from the imperial line, blood dark on his temple, composure intact. His gaze passed over Toren’s braced crossbow, Lira’s steady daggers, Elias’s planted stance—then settled on the faint stain across my blade.
“Well done,” he said, voice even. It carried approval, not warmth. His eyes lingered on my sword, a faint crease in his brow betraying his puzzlement. A child shouldn’t have been able to strike like that. Yet there was no Echo, no trace of anything to name. Just a blade slick with Frostfang blood.
Boots crunched behind us. Captain Harven strode in with the Frostward Order, cloaks dark and stiff with frost. He halted near the headless corpse, studied the severed neck, and looked up at me. A single nod. His kind of praise.
“We cut down three on our approach,” Harven said, voice like the edge of a winter axe. “A pack, not a stray. If one slipped this close to the wounded, there are more.”
Toren looked toward the black pines. “West and north both. I can feel it.”
Elias tightened his grip on the shield. Lira’s eyes narrowed.
Harven lifted a hand. “Shields! Line on me!” His men moved with quiet precision, forming an angled wall that turned the hollow into a killing ground. Among them stood a figure in layered leather and plated sleeves, runes stitched along the bracers. He wore no officer’s crest—only a simple iron emblem at his collar, carved with the Echo-Frost Sigil.
One of our Five…
A silent reminder of Valemont’s mages and the power they were permitted to wield. Every duchy was only permitted five under the Emperor’s law. Seeing one up close always made the air shift.
Harven caught me watching. “Echo Mage,” he said, clipped, as if stating the weather. “Keep clear when he works.”
The air changed. Every hair on my arms lifted.
The mage touched the Artifact bracer on his left forearm, fingertips brushing etched runes like a familiar habit. The sigils pulsed faintly beneath the leather, whispering with restrained power.
The Frostfangs came in hard.
Shadow peeled off the treeline and became bodies—four, then six, then more—tall lupine shapes bounding low through the drifts. The first slammed the shield line and met iron edges; the second tried the flank and found spears waiting. The Frostward knights moved like a practiced hinge: shields absorbing, blades answering, boots digging for leverage. No panic. Only weight and rhythm.
The mage carved a clean arc through the air with two fingers. Frost rippled out in a thin, controlled wave, slicking the ground beneath the charging Frostfangs. Four beasts hit the ice at full speed, claws scraping and snarls twisting into panic as their momentum died in an instant. A second gesture snapped like a whip—chains of ice burst from the snow, lashing tight around each beast’s limbs in perfect unison. The Frostward knights didn’t need orders. Their formation shifted forward as one, blades angled low. Four clean thrusts struck home, steel sliding through ribs and lungs, ending the threat before it began.
Another creature barreled along the left, jaws wide. The mage didn’t even look—he tapped the Artifact bracer twice, and a sheet of rime snapped up, no thicker than paper, angled to deflect the charge. The Frostfang slid along it, off-balance, and crashed shoulder-first into a waiting shield.
“Hold your line,” Harven murmured, as if to the weather. He pivoted and cut low, hamstringing a beast, then stepped past the fall and thrust clean between its ribs. His men flowed around him, no one crowding, no one breaking formation.
“Stay with the wounded,” I told my three. “Nothing gets past us.”
We formed a second ring around the wounded Imperials—Elias front and center like a wall, Toren a half-step back with another bolt already notched, Lira low and coiled on the right.
Another Frostfang lunged toward us—fast, feral.
Toren’s bolt snapped through the air and drilled into its knee. The creature faltered, stumbling forward. Lira’s next blade struck the inside of its other thigh with a wet crunch, forcing its weight to buckle. Elias raised his shield high and brought it down like a hammer, slamming into the creature’s skull with a sickening crack.
The Frostfang thrashed once. Tried to rise.
I vaulted onto its back and drove my blade between its shoulder blades, forcing the steel down into the space where its heart would be. The creature spasmed, then went still, blood blooming dark against the snow.
The fight broke like brittle glass. One by one, the Frostfangs faltered, then fled—not shattered, but blooded enough to reconsider. The last of them bounded toward the trees, a smear of white and gray vanishing into black.
Silence rolled back over the hollow, thick and breathless.
Harven lowered his sword, steam trailing from the blade. Around him, the Frostward Order checked wounds, reset shields, cleaned edges with gloved hands. The mage exhaled and flexed his fingers once, frost feathering away from the runes on his bracers.
Lieutenant Voss stepped to Harven’s side, eyes still on the field. “Your men held,” he said. “Efficiently.”
Harven’s mouth twitched—almost a smile. “We train for winter, Lieutenant.”
Voss’s gaze slid past him, to the headless corpse several paces away and the faint red along my sword. His expression didn’t change, but something in it marked the detail and filed it away.
“Gratitude to House Valemont,” he said at last. “Your… assistance will be included in my report.”
Assistance. I said nothing. I’d rather be underestimated.
Lira helped a guard bind a forearm. Elias was already checking another man’s splinted leg. Toren scanned the ridge with a hunter’s stillness.
That was when the ground began to shake.
It started as a low murmur beneath our boots—subtle, like the forest was holding its breath. Then the sound followed: a growl, deep and old, a pressure against the air more than a noise in it.
The treeline split like cloth, and the creature stepped through—taller than any man, its pelt a storm of frost-white and iron-gray. Its staff was not merely held; it was wielded—black wood veined with lightning that pulsed in rhythm, like a heart that belonged to the storm itself. The air stiffened as the arcs danced, hissing against the frozen ground, the scent of ozone rolling out ahead of it like a warning.
The Imperial Guards froze. Even the wind drew back.
Lira’s voice was a thread. “That’s not like the others…”
She was right. This one didn’t move like a beast. It stood like a king.
A Frostfang Chief.
Lightning climbed its staff and split the night apart. Bolts cracked outward, striking half-buried trees, exploding bark into splinters. The ground trembled beneath the weight of it, snow peeling away in steaming curls. The air itself seemed to tighten, pressure building in my chest until it hurt to breathe.
The Frostward mage stepped forward—and for the first time, I saw something like fear. His stance widened, but his fingers twitched against his Artifact bracer. Sweat—or maybe frost—clung to his temple. Whatever he sensed, it was stronger than anything we’d faced tonight.
The Chief raised its staff slowly, almost lazily. A jagged arc ripped across the clearing, scorching the frozen ground and leaving a blackened scar in the snow. One of the younger Imperial Guards staggered back, falling to one knee just from the shockwave.
Even Harven’s knuckles tightened around his sword.
I tightened my grip on the hilt. My pulse stayed even, but my mind did not. In my past life, they didn’t come this far south for years… So why now?
The Chief tilted its head back and released a sound that wasn’t meant for human throats. It wasn’t a roar—it was resonance, a deep, thrumming howl that crawled through the clearing like thunder buried beneath the earth. The air tightened in my chest, each breath turning sharp. Snow burst upward in spiraling rings, caught in the pulse of the sound. The torches bent low as if bowing to it, their flames shrinking against the night. It wasn’t just a beast’s cry.
It was a call.
The mage’s jaw clenched. “That power...” he whispered under his breath.
And the storm began to walk.