Chapter 15: The Echoes of Ice and Thunder
The cold crept in first — not the sting of winter, but something deeper.
Kael awoke to a strange silence, lying half-buried in snow and surrounded by fractured ice. His fingers twitched. His limbs were stiff as iron. Every breath rattled in his chest like frost-covered glass.
He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious.
The Dravhallow sky had dimmed, heavy with clouds. Dusk, maybe. Or a storm rolling back in. He blinked, vision adjusting to the pale light.
Slowly, he sat up. His body screamed in protest.
Every muscle felt like it had been unraveled and rewoven with barbed wire. The Maelstrom Overdrive had devoured his Essence — left him drained on a level he'd never felt before. He could barely muster enough energy to heat his hands, let alone cast even a basic flicker-tier technique.
Kael clutched his coat tighter.
"Note to self," he muttered hoarsely. "Don't use storm-tier death combos alone in a frozen death valley."
A weak grin tugged at his lips. But the smile didn't last.
Because something wasn't right.
The Varnok's corpse was gone.
Where it had landed — a shattered cliffside above — there was now only scorched rock and… a trail. A long one. Half-melted snow, claw imprints burned into the frost, and blackened Essence residue. As if something had dragged the body away.
Kael's gut twisted. "No. You died. I watched you—"
He stopped.
A sound echoed across the peaks. A slow, distant pulse. Not a roar. Not a voice. More like a heartbeat. Deep. Rhythmic. Ancient.
Boom.
Kael turned sharply, every instinct sharpened by fatigue and fear. Something beyond the ice ridges was stirring — something massive, deeper in the frozen ruins.
He forced himself to stand, leaning heavily on a jagged spear of ice. His Essence was still depleted. He had no tools left but his mind and a half-functioning body. Retreat was smart. Recovery was smarter.
But something in him burned to understand. What had he awakened?
Instead, Kael pulled his coat tighter and began the long trek down the slope — toward the place where the Varnok trail vanished beneath a frozen arch of blue-glass ice.
Every step was an effort.
But every step was also progress.
⸻
Later… Back in Elandor
Kael returned to Emberlight battered, frostbitten, and nearly comatose. A field medic nearly fainted seeing the state of his Essence channels.
The guild's healers kept him in bed for a week. During that time, Arlan visited daily — silent at first, then furiously scolding Kael in between peeling oranges and fixing his blankets.
"You could've died," Arlan muttered, more than once.
"I didn't," Kael replied, voice barely above a whisper.
"You burned yourself out. Again."
"And I'll probably do it again."
A pause.
"…Idiot."
Kael smiled.
But while his body recovered, his thoughts didn't rest.
The Varnok in Dravhallow had been intelligent — coordinated. That alone was disturbing. But the way it vanished… the strange pulse afterward…
Something's shifting. Something bigger than a surge.
Kael began keeping notes, even in bed. Sketches. The claw pattern. The resonance of the Essence pulse. Ice formations he didn't recognize. All of it.
Whatever was moving beneath the snow wasn't done.
⸻
Weeks Later — The Fire Rekindled
Kael stood again on the guild training fields, arms folded, watching Emberlight initiates spar under the noon sun. He looked thinner. Paler. But his gaze had sharpened.
He stepped forward, summoned a flicker of Lightning to his fingertips — and felt the storm respond.
Still here, he thought. Still mine.
He had learned his lesson.
Maelstrom Overdrive was a weapon, yes — but one that demanded a higher threshold. A sharper edge. It couldn't be his trump card. Not yet.
He needed more control.
More balance.
And perhaps… answers to what waited in the frost.