The higher they climbed into the Gray Peaks, the more the air felt like breathing crushed diamonds. The mana here wasn't the soft, filtered energy of the Academy; it was raw, jagged, and ancient.
"Kael, stop," Silas whispered, his hand trembling as he gripped his sword hilt. "The wind... it's stopped."
Silas was right. The constant howling of the mountain gales had vanished into a tomb-like silence. Even Varg, usually a restless shadow on Kael's shoulders, went perfectly still, its single eye dilated until it was a pool of liquid ink.
From a cave mouth draped in frost-covered vines, a figure stepped out.
It wasn't a golem or a mindless beast. It was a Silver-Maned Fenrir, a wolf the size of a cottage, its fur shimmering like moonlight on a glacier. But it didn't snarl. It walked with a heavy, regal grace, and its eyes—golden and ancient—were fixed entirely on Kael.
"A child," the wolf spoke. The voice wasn't sound; it was a vibration that rattled Kael's teeth, a telepathic weight that felt like a mountain leaning on his mind. "A child who carries the scent of a thousand sun-bleached battlefields. How did a ghost from the Old Ashes find its way into such a small vessel?"
Silas fell to his knees, the sheer pressure of the Beast-King's presence forcing the air from his lungs. "A Great Speaker..." he wheezed. "Kael... don't move... they kill for sport..."
Kael didn't bow. He didn't flinch. He stepped forward, his boots crunching on the frost.
"I am no ghost," Kael said, his voice dropping into the gravelly roar of the Viking Chief. "I am the man who is going to peel the crown off the Hidden King's head. And you're standing in my path, dog."
The Wolf-King paused. A low rumble started in its chest—not a growl, but a laugh.
"Dog? You have the tongue of a King, little spark. But your body is a cage of meat." The wolf's eyes turned toward Varg. "And your beast... it is a hollow thing. It mimics the shape of power, but it has no soul of its own. It is a mirror reflecting a dead man."
Varg shrieked, its obsidian surface boiling. It hated being called hollow.
"I challenge you, Ancient One," the Wolf-King said, lowering its head, its massive fangs glinting like scimitars. "If you can make me bleed before the moon hits the peak of the sky, I will give you the Winter-Heart Core. If you fail... I will eat your soul and free it from this pathetic, small prison."
"Kael, no!" Silas cried out. "That's a Calamity-Rank beast! You can't—"
"Silas, stay back," Kael commanded.
He felt the Viking soul within him surge. This was what he had been missing. Not the bullying of noble children, but the life-or-death gamble of the hunt.
"Varg," Kael whispered. "He says you're a mirror. Let's show him a reflection he'll regret seeing."
Kael didn't summon the axe. He knew the wolf was too fast for a heavy blade. Instead, he reached into his memory—not of a weapon, but of a feeling. The feeling of the Great Serpent Jörmungandr wrapping around the world.
"Mimicry: The Constrictor's Coil."
Varg didn't stay on Kael. It exploded outward, turning into thousands of razor-thin, black wire-filaments that covered the entire clearing. They hung in the air like a lethal spiderweb, almost invisible in the moonlight.
The Wolf-King lunged. It moved like lightning, a blur of silver fur.
But as it passed through the air, the Varg-wires tightened. They didn't break; they stretched, acting like high-tension cables. The wolf's own speed became its enemy. The wires sliced into its silver fur, hissing as they met the beast's mana-reinforced hide.
Kael didn't watch from afar. He used the wires as a path. He leaped into the air, his feet catching the Varg-filaments as if they were solid ground. He sprinted through the sky, a blur of black and gold.
He reached the Wolf-King's back.
"Now!" Kael roared.
The wires suddenly retracted, pulling Kael down toward the wolf's neck. In mid-air, Varg solidified around Kael's right hand, forming a Seax-Dagger of pure obsidian, humming with the Earth-Core energy they had stolen from the Golem.
Kael drove the blade down.
The Wolf-King twisted with impossible agility, but the blade caught the edge of its ear, slicing through the silver flesh.
A single drop of glowing, blue blood hit the snow.
The Wolf-King stopped. The wires vanished, flowing back into Kael's shadow as he landed in the drift. The silence returned, deeper than before.
The Beast-King turned, looking at the drop of blood in the snow. Then, it looked at Kael.
"You are a fool," the wolf whispered. "But you are a fool with the teeth of a god."
The wolf exhaled, and a pulse of white light erupted from its chest. A small, frozen crystal—the Winter-Heart—floated toward Kael.
"Take it. But know this, Bone-Breaker: the Hidden King did not come to this world alone. He brought the Norns with him. They are weaving your death even as we speak."
The Great Wolf turned and vanished into the mist of the cave as if it had never existed.
Kael caught the crystal. It was so cold it burned his palm, but Varg immediately wrapped around it, the violet marbling on its surface turning into a deep, glacial blue.
"Kael..." Silas breathed, stepping forward. "You... you just survived a Great Speaker."
Kael looked at his hand. The obsidian claws were trembling—not from fear, but from the strain. The boy's body was cracking under the power.
"He said Harald didn't come alone," Kael muttered, his eyes fixed on the northern horizon. "The Norns... the weavers of fate. If they're here, then this isn't a war for a kingdom."
He squeezed the crystal until his knuckles went white.
"It's a war for the afterlife itself."