Snow melted slower in Stormbreak Vale.
Even as spring crept down from the high peaks, frost clung stubbornly to the roots of the pines. Althar stood outside Valebridge Hold, staring across the frozen lake, listening to the shifting ice beneath its surface. Each crack sounded like an omen.
He didn't know why his chest felt heavy.
Until Seris approached, carrying a letter—one that hadn't passed through any known route, any known courier.
No signature. No wax seal. Only his name.
To the one who was once heartless.
She watches you. But so do I. There are others who remember what came before the Crown and before the Empire. Meet me where fire first met frost.
No eyes. No blades. No war.
—K
Althar read it twice, then once more in silence.
He did not show it, but his hand tightened around the paper.
Kaelis.
His daughter.
The last time he had seen her, she had been twelve. Quiet, brilliant, too perceptive for her own good. He had locked her away when she showed signs of emotion—his greatest failure, though he hadn't known it then.
Now she served the very woman who had orchestrated his death.
And yet…
"She's reaching out," Seris said carefully. "A trap?"
"Maybe," Althar replied. "But if it's not…"
He didn't finish.
That night, Althar rode alone into the vale's high crags, where sulfur springs steamed from the earth and old elemental altars dotted the cliffside. Long ago, flame-walkers and frost-shapers had made peace here—for a moment.
And there, by a scorched stone circle half-buried in snow, she waited.
Kaelis stood in a white cloak lined with blue-gold trim. Her face was older now—sharper cheekbones, colder eyes—but Althar recognized her in an instant.
She turned when she heard him. No smile. No warmth.
Just silence.
He stepped down from his horse, keeping his hands where she could see them. No blade. No tricks.
"Kaelis," he said.
A long pause.
Then she spoke, voice quiet, crisp like glass.
"You called me daughter once. But you never meant it."
Althar didn't flinch. "No. I didn't know what that meant back then."
"And now you do?"
He looked at her, this reflection of his past mistakes, twisted by the Empress's hand and his own coldness.
"I'm starting to," he said honestly.
Kaelis exhaled. Not quite a sigh. Not quite forgiveness.
"I saw what you did to the Heir," she said. "No one survives them. But you… you felt something, didn't you?"
Althar didn't answer right away.
"Yes," he finally said. "Rage. Fear. Guilt. All the things I spent a lifetime burying. They're still here. And now I use them to fight."
Kaelis looked at the sky.
"I was sent to kill you."
"I know."
"She's watching everything. Her crows never sleep."
"I know that too."
Then she looked at him—truly looked—and something flickered in her eyes. Not weakness. But choice.
"I burned the scroll," she said.
Althar said nothing.
Kaelis reached into her cloak and pulled out a small obsidian shard.
"Her voice lives in this. One word, and she knows everything. Where I am. Who I speak to."
Althar's hand instinctively drifted toward his sword.
Kaelis saw it, then shattered the shard between her fingers.
A soft wind stirred the trees. Nothing else.
"I've made my choice," she said.
Althar stepped closer.
Not to embrace her. Not yet.
But to acknowledge the crack in the mask she wore.
"She'll come for you," he warned.
"I know."
"And you'll be hunted."
"I already am."
"And what do you want from me?"
Kaelis paused.
Then, in a voice softer than he'd ever heard from her, she said:
"A second chance. Not just for me."
Althar nodded.
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was shared.
Back in the Midnight Palace, the Empress stood before her mirror, its waters strangely still.
A servant bowed beside her.
"My Empress… Kaelis has gone dark. Her shard is silent."
The Empress did not reply.
Her eyes narrowed.
She reached into the pool and whispered, "Bring forth the Seeker."
The waters rippled.
Far away, a coffin of silver cracked open beneath the ocean's floor.
And something forgotten stirred.