The snow never melted in Norveil. It fell day after day, swallowing the roads, the forests, the graves. Some said the sky had forgotten warmth. Others whispered that it stayed frozen because of the blood spilled beneath it.
Kairo Draeven didn't care which was true. He walked until the numbness became silence, until he forgot what pain felt like.
When the soldiers found him days after the Hunt, half-dead, skin blue, eyes gray like winter smoke, they didn't ask questions. They just dragged him back to the fortress. To them, he was a survivor. A wolf that refused to die. And in Norveil, that was enough reason to be kept alive.
The Wolf Corps barracks were nothing like a home, no warmth, no laughter, only the sound of steel against steel and the whip cracking over failure. Kairo returned to training the day after his wounds closed.
The instructor, a scarred veteran named Garron Vex, tossed him a wooden blade.
"You lived through the Hunt," Garron said, his voice gravelly. "That means you've earned your name."
Kairo blinked. "My name?"
Garron smirked. "Kairo Draeven. The ghost who walks. You'll keep that. But remember, " He stepped closer, grabbing Kairo by the chin, forcing him to look up."Names mean nothing here. The moment you fail, we'll carve yours off your skin."
The older boys laughed, not cruelly, just emptily. That was Norveil's kind of laughter. Kairo only nodded.
Every day after that was a ritual of exhaustion. Wake before dawn. Run until your lungs burned. Fight until your fingers bled. Eat until the hunger stops hurting. Sleep if you can.
But Kairo didn't dream anymore. Luna's voice had been buried with her, deep under snow he could never dig through again.
One morning, as the horn sounded across the yard, the recruits lined up. Garron paced before them, his heavy boots crunching frost.
"Today's lesson," he said, "is control. Power without control is a storm that eats its own."
He pointed at Kairo. "You. Step forward."
Kairo obeyed.
A larger boy, one of the senior Wolves, stepped out too, twirling his practice spear."Teach him how to fall," Garron said flatly.
The boy grinned. "Gladly."
The fight began before Kairo could even raise his guard. The spear slammed into his ribs, cracking bone. He stumbled back, air knocked from his lungs. The older recruit laughed. "You're not a ghost. You're a corpse waiting to freeze. "
Something flickered inside Kairo, not anger, not fear, just a hollow hum.
When the next strike came, he caught the spear's shaft mid-swing. His grip didn't slip, his hand didn't even tremble. He twisted, snapping the weapon in half, and slammed the wooden shard into the boy's chest.
The other recruit flew backward, crashing into the snow. Silence fell.
Garron's eyes narrowed. "Interesting."
He crouched near Kairo, studying the faint gray glow pulsing under his collarbone, the mark of the Specter Heart.
"Where did you learn to move like that?" he asked.
Kairo's voice was quiet. "I didn't."
"Then what was that?"
He looked up, meeting the instructor's eyes with a calm that didn't belong to a child."Instinct," he said.
Garron smiled. "Then we'll teach you how to obey it."
Years passed in the rhythm of discipline. Pain. Training. Silence. Repeat.
Kairo became stronger, faster, colder. He stopped hesitating when striking. He stopped bleeding when cut. His movements grew precise, mechanical.
The others called him The Quiet Fang.
By sixteen, he was no longer a trainee; he was a full Wolf, assigned to the Outer Hunts, where the Corps hunted rebels and raiders across the frozen frontiers.
The first time he killed a man, there was no ceremony. Just snow, and blood, and silence.
It happened during a raid on a smuggler camp. Kairo's unit cornered a group of men stealing rations from the capital supply lines. The others shouted, laughed, and celebrated the capture, but one man bolted. Kairo followed.
He caught him by the throat and slammed him against a wall of ice. The man begged, not in Norveilan, but in a southern tongue Kairo didn't understand. His eyes, however, said enough.
Please.
The plea echoed inside him, soft, fragile. It reminded him of Luna.
For a moment, his grip loosened.
Then Garron's voice echoed from behind: "Do it, Draeven."
Kairo looked back once, at the mentor who had turned him from boy to blade, and something inside him shut off. He tightened his hold until the man stopped moving.
When he let go, the smuggler slid to the ground. Kairo stood still, staring at the blood on his gloves.
Garron clapped his shoulder. "You hesitated," he said. "Next time, don't."
Kairo didn't answer. Because the truth was, he hadn't hesitated. He had decided.
The next few winters bled together. Kairo's name spread across Norveil, not as a hero, but as a shadow that never missed.
The high generals began to notice. One night, Garron summoned him to the commander's hall.
The room was dim, lit only by oil lamps flickering against cold stone walls. At the center sat General Aedra Norveil, the ruler's right hand, tall, silver-haired, eyes like frostbite.
"You are Kairo Draeven," she said. Her voice was calm, but every syllable carried weight. "The boy who returned from death."
Kairo stood straight. "Yes, General."
"I've read your records. Eight missions. No failures. No comrades lost."She leaned forward. "Tell me something, boy. Do you fear death?"
He paused. "No."
"Good," she said. "Because Norveil needs men who don't."
She rose, walking to the window that overlooked the snowfields. "You've heard of the Rebellion in the southern mines?"
"Yes."
"You'll lead a unit to silence it."
Kairo blinked. "Lead?"
Aedra turned, a faint smile on her lips. "Yes. You're ready."
For the first time in years, something inside him shifted, not pride, not joy, but a small spark of warmth. Maybe Luna would've been proud.
The rebellion was crushed within a week. Kairo led his unit through blizzards and ambushes, cutting through enemy lines like wind through ice. But victory in Norveil was never clean.
When they returned, the capital greeted them with cheers, but the cheers didn't reach Kairo. He stood at the edge of the courtyard, snow landing softly on his hair, eyes empty.
Garron approached him quietly. "You've done well," he said.
Kairo shook his head. "They weren't soldiers. Just miners. Families."
Garron shrugged. "They stood against the kingdom."
"They wanted food," Kairo said flatly.
The instructor's gaze hardened. "You're thinking like a man. Stop. You're a weapon. Weapons don't question the hand that wields them."
Kairo looked down at his reflection in the ice. He saw the scar under his eye, the faint glow of his heart beneath his ribs, and whispered:
"Then what happens when the weapon starts to think? And, what happens when the weapon has its own will?"
Garron didn't answer.
That night, Kairo couldn't sleep. He sat outside, staring at the horizon where the storm clouds met the mountains. The wind howled, but beneath it, he heard something else. A pulse. A whisper.
The Specter Heart beat faster, brighter. Pain shot through his veins, cold and electric.
He clutched his chest, gasping. Images flashed before his eyes: Luna's smile, the Hunt, Garron's words, the dead miners. Everything blurred into light and shadow.
Then the world exploded.
A shockwave of frost burst from his body, freezing the ground around him. The barracks' torches flickered out. Frost crawled up the walls, coating everything in ice.
When he opened his eyes, his irises glowed faint blue. Breath fogged the air in front of him like smoke.
He whispered to himself, voice trembling, "Is this power… or punishment?"
The answer came not from the wind, but from within his chest: Neither. It is memory.
The snow fell quietly. Kairo sat there until dawn, frost clinging to his lashes, and for the first time in years, he felt alive.