I was supposed to be dead.
The cold told me otherwise.
It gnawed at me—this endless white silence, this world that was not my own. My fingers twitched, numb and raw, buried beneath the weight of snow that shouldn't exist. My lungs burned with each shallow breath, the air too thin, too wrong. Above me, three pale moons stared down, their light sickly and foreign.
Three moons.
I knew then. This wasn't home.
My body was a ruin. Ribs cracked, blood thick and sluggish in my veins. The last thing I remembered was fire—the covenant's price, searing through flesh and bone.
(A covenant—not just a vow, but a law. The universe demands balance, and if the scales tip, it will take until they're even. Even if what's left of you isn't enough.)
I had torn the threads of fate apart, reshaped destiny with my own hands, and for what? To die in the snow of a world that didn't know me?
A laugh rattled in my chest, bitter and broken.
Humans are cruel like that. We chase freedom even as we chain ourselves to our choices. I had gambled everything—my name, my past, my very existence—and now? Now I was nothing. A fading pulse. A ghost in the snow.
Was this punishment? Divine mockery? Or just the inevitable end of a man who thought he could outrun consequence?
Then—
—I saw her.
Fate.
Not a concept. Not a force.
A woman.
She stood in the snow, untouched by the wind, her silhouette sharp against the endless white. Her hair was the same color as the snow, long and unbound, blending with the storm. And her eyes—gods, her eyes—were pale grey, like frosted glass.
Is she blind? I wondered.
But then she turned her head, and those clouded eyes focused on me with terrifying precision.
She was looking right at me.
Not through me. At me.
As if I were still someone worth seeing.
My lips parted, but no sound came out. Only blood, warm and metallic, trickling down my chin.
She took a step forward.
The snow didn't crunch beneath her feet.
The world held its breath.
And then—
She wept.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, silver as the moonlight, merging with the falling snow. Each drop hissed where it struck the ground, melting through the ice like acid.
I didn't understand.
Was she mourning me?
Or was this something worse?
(The covenant always takes. But sometimes, it gives back. And what it gives is never what you wanted.)
Her lips moved. A whisper, lost to the wind.
I strained to hear—
—and the world shifted.
(TO BE CONTINUED)