The second day didn't begin with light; it began with the sound of the mountain's shifting anatomy. High above, the massive weight of the snowpack groaned—a deep, tectonic protest that sent a fine powder cascading down the ravine like a curtain of white ash.
Kael woke in the claustrophobic dark of his stone crawlspace, his face pressed against the rough, biting grain of the granite. His left arm was cold. It wasn't the spiritual, fluid chill of Umi that he had grown used to over the last two years; it was the dead, heavy cold of a limb that no longer received the message of a heartbeat. The fire that had flooded his system the day before, a frantic response to the trauma of the fall, had receded into the core of his chest. It left his extremities to fend for themselves in the sub-zero air.
He tried to sit up, and the world screamed.
His ribs, fractured by the violent recoil of the "Steam-Lock" explosion, grated against each other with a sickening, internal friction. Every breath was a jagged needle driven into the soft tissue of his lungs. He lay back down, gasping, his vision swimming with white spots that danced against the dark roof of the overhang.
"Breathe," he whispered, the word barely a puff of grey steam. "Gut... not throat."
He tried to find the rhythm Vane had hammered into him during those grueling sessions in the high pass, but the internal geometry of his body had changed. Where there used to be a balanced flow, there was now a blockage. The blue serpent mark on his spine felt like a lead pipe—cold, unyielding, and alien. It sat there, a silent passenger, draining a tiny portion of his precious heat just to keep itself from freezing solid into his marrow.
Hunger was no longer a sharp, predatory claw; it had evolved into a hollow, echoing ache that made his head light. The "Ghost-Eyes" from the day before had left his mouth tasting like copper and bile. He knew with a cold, logical certainty that if he stayed in this hole, he would die. The snow would eventually seal the entrance, and he would become just another frozen secret for the Wani peaks to keep.
He began the crawl again.
Dragging his left side was like pulling a dead animal through the dirt. He used his right elbow to hook into the frozen earth, his fingernails already torn to the quick and blackened by the frost. When he finally emerged from beneath the overhang, he had to squint against the cruel, mocking blue of the morning sky.
He needed water. He could smell it—the mineral scent of wet stone and ancient ice. About fifty yards away, the frozen river he had seen during his fall wasn't entirely solid. A thin ribbon of black water moved beneath a shelf of translucent ice, gurgling with a life he desperately needed to borrow.
It took him an hour to cover those fifty yards. By the time he reached the bank, his tunic was shredded at the elbows and his knees were raw, bleeding through the fabric and freezing into stiff scabs. He looked down at his reflection in the dark, moving water.
He didn't recognize the boy looking back. The soot and grease from Harbor City had been scoured away by snow and blood, leaving his skin pale and translucent. His eyes, usually a dull, disciplined amber, looked bright and feverish, the pupils blown wide. Along his jawline, a faint, reddish rash was forming—"fire-rash," a sign that his internal heat was leaking through his skin because he no longer had the spiritual capacity to channel it.
He reached out his right hand to crack the ice. He didn't use a strike; he didn't have the stability for it. Instead, he simply rested his palm on the surface and thought of the blast furnaces in the Industrial District. He thought of the way the coal glowed white-hot before it crumbled into ash.
A small, focused heat radiated from his skin. The ice hissed, a circular hole melting slowly beneath his touch. He dipped his head and drank, the water so cold it felt like a knife-thrust in his throat. It hit his stomach, and for a fleeting second, the Shiver returned—a tiny, microscopic ripple that moved along the blue mark on his spine. It was a momentary comfort, a sign that Umi was still there, however deep the sleep.
As he pulled his head back, gasping, he saw it.
Lodged in the rocks on the far side of the stream was a bundle of dark fur. It didn't move. It was a mountain hare, likely killed by the same rockslide that had brought Kael down. To a normal child, the sight of the frozen, stiff creature would have been grisly. To Kael, it was a miracle.
The sight triggered something primal. He scrambled across the ice on all fours, his breath coming in ragged, desperate hitches. He reached the hare, finding it frozen to the rock. He ignited his right hand again, the fire sputtering and unstable. He didn't aim for a flame; he just needed a dull, constant heat. He pressed his palm against the hare's flank.
The smell hit him first—the scent of singed fur and cold musk. It made his mouth water with a terrifying intensity. As the ice melted, he managed to pry the creature free.
He didn't have a knife. He didn't have a flint. He looked at the hare, then at his own trembling hands. "Everything has a weight," he muttered, his voice a ghost of Vane's rumble.
He used a sharp, jagged piece of slate to skin the animal. His movements were clumsy, his left hand occasionally twitching and ruining the cut, but he didn't care. He found a small, dry patch beneath a cedar tree and piled up a few dead needles and twigs.
He spent the next two hours trying to start a fire.
In the Fire Nation academies, children were taught to ignite tinder with a simple, elegant snap of the fingers. Kael wasn't in an academy. Every time he tried to produce a spark, the cold from his left side would surge across his chest, dousing the heat before it could leave his palm.
"Work, you piece of..." He choked on a sob, his right hand shaking.
He closed his eyes and tried to forget the ice. He pictured the way his father looked when he was truly angry—the way the air around Vane would shimmer with heat. He channeled that anger. He thought of Zane Arlo's silk-glass voice. He thought of the way the ledge had felt as it disintegrated.
A roar of orange flame erupted from his palm.
It was too much. The fire hit the twigs and disintegrated them instantly, turning the wood into ash before a single ember could catch. The recoil sent a shockwave of pain through Kael's fractured ribs, and he slumped over, screaming into the dirt. He lay there for a long time, the taste of copper in his mouth, realizing the fire was no longer a tool; it was a beast that had taken up residence in his marrow.
Eventually, he gathered more wood. He didn't try to "bend" the fire this time. He used the slate stone to strike against a piece of iron-rich ore he had found near the river.
Strike. Spark. Nothing.
Strike. Spark. Nothing.
His hands were bleeding by the time a tiny curl of smoke rose from the dry needles. He blew on it gently, his lungs protesting. When the first orange flame licked at the wood, Kael felt a sense of triumph that was almost hollow.
He cooked the hare over the small flame, holding the meat over the heat until the outside was charred and the inside was barely warm. When he took the first bite, his body almost rejected the heavy, gamey grease. He forced himself to chew. He needed the protein to knit his bones; he needed the fat to fuel the fire in his chest.
As he ate, the sun began to set, painting the snow in shades of violet. The silence of the mountain was absolute. No birds sang. Then, he heard it.
A long, low howl echoed from the ridges above. It was deeper, more guttural than a wolf. A mountain-cat.
Kael froze, meat still in his mouth. He looked up at the darkening Spire. The predators could smell the blood. They could smell the weakness. He looked at his fire—it was a beacon, an invitation.
He had to move. He packed the remains of the hare into his tunic, the grease soaking into his skin. He stood, his legs shaking so violently he had to lean against the cedar tree for support.
"You're still in there," he whispered to the mark on his spine. "You're hiding."
The mark didn't pulse. Kael began to walk away from the river, heading deeper into the pine forest. He found a hollowed-out log, half-buried in a drift, and crawled inside, pulling a pile of dead leaves over the opening to mask his scent.
He lay there, clutching the remains of the hare to his chest. The internal heat was building again, that jagged, uncomfortable pressure. He thought of Vane—wondering if his father's body was still falling, or if it had found a place to rest in the ice.
"I'm surviving, Pa," he whispered into the dark. "I'm a Thorne."
But as he drifted into a fitful sleep, the image of Zane Arlo's blade kept flashing in his mind. Outside the log, the mountain-cat prowled the perimeter, its yellow eyes reflecting the faint, dying embers of the fire Kael had left by the river. It sniffed the air, catching the scent of blood and something that smelled of ozone and sulfur.
The cat didn't move in. It knew the fire in the boy would eventually burn itself out.
Should I move on to Day Three, where Kael must face the predator or find a way to navigate the treacherous forest while his fire-rash worsens?