Chapter 12 — Ashen Reign
Chapter 12 — Ashen Reign
Snow churned into a storm of claws and steel. Lightning cracked across the clearing, splitting the night with blinding veins of blue-white. The Frostfang Chief stalked through the chaos, its staff raised, arcs of power hissing around it like a living storm.
The Frostward line wavered under the pressure. Shields groaned as the Chief’s magic struck again, shaking the ground and rattling every rib in my chest. Frostbitten air burned my lungs with every breath.
Captain Harven’s voice cut through the storm like a blade. “Hold the line!”
The Frostward veterans moved with brutal discipline, their formation tightening around the wounded. Torches flickered wildly against the stormlight, painting every face in sharp, hard lines. Elias braced his shield beside me; Lira crouched low with daggers drawn; Toren loaded another bolt with steady hands.
The Chief lifted its staff high—lightning erupted outward, a jagged line of white-hot death that shattered the first row of pines and sent snow bursting into the air like shrapnel. The Echo Mage touched the Artifact bracer on his arm, runes pulsing, frost blooming outward to intercept the strike. The lightning split against it but still hammered into the formation, driving men back with burned edges and ragged breaths.
Too strong.
Four Frostfangs broke from the treeline, their howls tearing through the night as they charged.
The Echo Mage moved fast—disciplined, deliberate. He drew a sharp line through the air, frost blooming in its wake. A jagged wall of ice erupted from the snow, catching the charging Frostfangs mid-stride. A second gesture snapped the wall outward like breaking glass. Shards sliced through fur and flesh, freezing blood in the air. The beasts stumbled, howls cut short.
The Frostward Order surged in behind the collapse—clean, synchronized, ruthless.
But the Chief didn’t falter. It advanced through its own pack’s blood, dragging the storm behind it. The air itself crackled with its presence. Lightning gathered along its staff until it looked less like a weapon and more like a piece of the storm itself.
Harven set his stance, knuckles white around his sword. Lieutenant Kaelen Voss barked orders, rallying the Imperial Guards around the wounded. The Echo Mage lifted his arm, fingers pressing against the Artifact bracer. The runes flared ice-blue—then a wall of translucent frost surged upward in front of the formation, jagged like a glacier’s edge.
The Chief swung its staff downward, and the storm answered.
Lightning slammed into the barrier in a crackling wave, blinding white swallowing the blue glow. The ground shook beneath our boots as the shield groaned—a low, straining sound like cracking ice on a frozen lake. The mage gritted his teeth, frost creeping across his jawline, the sigils burning hotter.
“Hold!” Harven barked. The shield line tightened behind the shimmering wall.
Another blast struck. The glacier barrier splintered, spiderweb cracks racing through the ice. A third hit turned those cracks into veins of white fire.
Then—
Shatter.
The ice wall exploded into a mist of shards. The backlash slammed into the front line like a hammer, snow and steam clouding the battlefield. The mage staggered, one hand clutching his bracer, breath tearing out in ragged bursts. His knees buckled but he didn’t fall—not yet.
“We’re losing ground,” Toren hissed under his breath. He wasn’t wrong.
The Chief stepped forward through the storm, its power swelling. Its staff dragged arcs of lightning through the snow, each step peeling the ground back in concentric rings. The front line buckled. Shields trembled.
The howl that followed wasn’t a sound—it was a force.
It tore through the night, and for a heartbeat, everything felt like it would break.
Then the world shifted.
The wind stopped. The storm stilled. Snowflakes hung suspended in the air like stars held on invisible threads. A new heat crept across the clearing—quiet, controlled, alive.
The Frostfang Chief froze mid-step, its ears twitching, the storm around its staff flickering like a flame caught in a sudden draft.
Embers drifted from the treeline. One. Then another. Then dozens.
A line of fire traced the snow, clean and deliberate, and with it came him.
Kael stepped through the frost as if the storm had always belonged to him. Flame coiled around his boots like a living thing, heat bending the cold to his will. His presence didn’t shout—it silenced everything else.
The Imperial Guards stiffened. Even Harven faltered for half a breath. Lira’s eyes widened, catching the emberlight.
Kael raised his hand. Fire gathered—not wild, but bound, shaped, alive. The air bent around him, heat pressing down on the frozen world like a held breath.
His voice cut through the stillness.
“Ashen Reign.”
Flames didn’t just burn—they descended. A corona of fire split the sky, cascading down like molten rain made of judgment itself. Every ember that had drifted moments before now roared into a storm. Frost turned to steam. Snow exploded outward. The charging Frostfangs were erased in an instant—washed away in a river of fire so controlled it curved around the Imperial wounded like a blade drawn with purpose.
The Chief staggered as a column of flame slammed into its chest, lightning crackling futilely against a tide of heat that answered to no storm.
For a heartbeat, everything was fire. The night bent beneath Kael’s will.
Lightning met fire. The clearing trembled.
The Chief struck again, bolts slashing the night, but Kael was faster. He moved like the flames themselves—sharp, precise, unrelenting. Each arc of lightning found its answer in a blade of fire. Each step closed the gap.
Flames spiraled from his outstretched hand, splitting into three threads that wound around the Chief’s staff. The lightning faltered, twisted back, and the wood cracked like old bone.
Kael’s hand opened.
The fire surged forward, not as an explosion, but as a spear of ash and heat that punched straight through the Chief’s chest. It let out a strangled howl—half beast, half storm—and the light in its staff guttered out like a dying ember.
The Alpha fell. Smoke curled from its fur. Steam rose from the ground where snow had once been.
Kael stood amid the fading embers, the battlefield silent around him. His eyes found mine—blue fire meeting blue frost.
He gave a single nod—subtle, sharp—not just acknowledgment but something else beneath it. Approval. An unspoken understanding between two people who lived too close to the edge. Then he turned, the snow hissing beneath his boots, and walked into the treeline. His trail burned faintly red, westward, until the darkness swallowed him whole.
No one spoke for a long moment. Only the sound of breathing, metal shifting, and the slow crackle of dying fires filled the hollow.
Lieutenant Voss was the first to move. He holstered his blade, scanning the battlefield with a cold, assessing stare. The Echo Mage leaned against a frost-slick tree, one hand pressed over the faint glow of the Artifact bracer, still trembling slightly. Captain Harven moved among his soldiers with quiet authority, checking for wounds, pulling the injured into a tighter cluster.
Voss crossed the field to meet him halfway. Snow crunched beneath their boots, their voices low but steady.
“Your men held,” Voss said, tone more even than his eyes. “Better than most.”
Harven wiped a streak of black blood from his blade with a torn strip of cloth. “We train for winter, Lieutenant. But that—” he flicked his gaze to the smoldering corpse of the Chief “—was something else.”
Voss didn’t answer immediately. His jaw tightened as his eyes followed the faint trail of embers stretching westward. “An Echo Mage,” he muttered. “And a powerful one.”
Harven’s brow furrowed. “Yours?”
“No.” Voss’s tone was clipped. “But he’s not staying in Valemont, either.”
For the first time since Kael’s appearance, Voss’s composure cracked just enough to show the calculation underneath. He glanced back at the Imperial Guards, then at the trail again. “Between us, Captain… we’re after that mage. Looks like he’s headed beyond your borders.”
Harven’s mouth set in a firm line. “Then this is where we part ways.”
Voss gave a curt nod. “My thanks to the Frostward Order—and to House Valemont. Your aid won’t be forgotten.”
He turned, barking low commands to the remaining Imperial Guards. They moved quickly to secure the wounded, reorganize their ranks, and prepare for departure.
“We move at dawn,” Voss said to his men. “We follow west.”
Snow settled again, quiet and heavy. The Frostward Order stood their ground, battered but unbroken. I watched the faint glow of Kael’s trail fade into the distance, the cold biting at my throat.
Such a powerful mage…
Kael’s fire hadn’t just burned through the Chief—it had torn open the night itself. He’d changed everything.
I never met anyone like him in my past life. Not then. Not ever.
My breath clouded faintly in the cold, mingling with the drifting smoke.
I wonder what became of you… and what will happen to you now.
The trail still glimmered faintly westward—a path the Imperials would chase, but not truly understand. I closed my fingers around the hilt of my sword, the leather cold beneath my palm.
I hope to see you again.