The Winter-Heart didn't just sit in Kael's hand; it fought him. The air around his palm began to crystallize, jagged needles of frost spreading up his obsidian-clad arm.
"Kael! Drop it!" Silas shouted, his own breath hitching in the sudden, supernatural cold. "Your heart will stop before you can sync with that much mana!"
Kael didn't drop it. He leaned into the pain. In his first life, he had survived the Great Famine of the North by huddling against the carcasses of slaughtered elk. He knew cold. Cold was an old friend.
"Varg... EAT," Kael choked out.
The Shifter didn't hesitate. The black-gold matter surged over the blue crystal, swallowing it whole. For a second, everything went silent. Then, a pulse of absolute zero energy exploded from Kael's chest.
The snow for fifty yards around them turned into solid, translucent ice. Silas was knocked back, sliding across the frozen ground.
Kael stood in the center of the storm. His hair, normally dark, flashed with streaks of silver. His eyes didn't just glow; they burned with a pale, glacial blue light that made the shadows of the trees look like ink.
Varg was changing. The "World-Eater's Shroud" wasn't just obsidian anymore. It was now inlaid with Frost-Runes—the same ancient symbols Skane had carved into his longships to ward off the sea-monsters.
"Template Unlocked: The Jötnar's Reach," Kael whispered.
"Impressive," a new voice clipped through the frozen air. "To see a Shifter consume a Speaker's core without imploding... the King was right to be concerned."
Kael didn't turn around. He didn't need to. He felt the heat—a sharp, oily heat that cut through his new frost-aura like a hot knife through lard.
Standing on a ledge above them was a woman. She wore the white-and-gold silks of the Capital's Inquisition, but her eyes were stitched shut with silver thread. Resting on her shoulder was a Solar-Salamander, a beast made of living magma that dripped onto the snow, hissing into steam.
"I am Elara, the King's First Silence," she said, her voice devoid of emotion. "You are a ripple in the pond, Kael. And I am here to make the water still again."
"Another dog," Kael said, his voice echoing with the dual-tone of the Shifter. "Harald always did hide behind women and priests when the real fighting started."
Elara's head tilted. "You speak of the King as if you knew him before he wore the crown. Blasphemy. Burn him, Ignis."
The Salamander opened its mouth. A beam of concentrated, white-hot fire shot toward Kael, melting the path in a fraction of a second.
In his old life, Skane would have dived for cover. But Kael was testing his new teeth.
"Varg: Glacial Wall."
Kael slammed his hand onto the frozen earth. A massive slab of enchanted blue ice erupted from the ground. When the fire hit it, there was no steam—the ice was so cold it simply absorbed the heat, turning the white fire into harmless grey mist.
"My turn," Kael growled.
He didn't run at her. He reached out his hand and made a grasping motion.
The air around Elara suddenly froze solid. Not just the moisture—the mana itself turned into jagged spears of ice that hemmed her in from all sides.
"What—?" Elara gasped, her blind eyes twitching under the thread. "This isn't student magic! This is..."
"This is the North," Kael said, appearing behind her in a blur of frost-mist.
Varg had formed a Heavy Greataxe of Blue Ice in Kael's hands. It wasn't just a weapon; it was a fragment of the Winter-Heart itself.
Kael swung.
Elara barely managed to leap away, her Salamander spitting a wall of lava to cushion the blow. But Kael's axe didn't hit her—it hit the ledge. The entire cliffside flash-froze and then shattered, sending tons of stone and ice tumbling toward the valley floor.
Elara landed gracefully on a lower branch, but her silks were singed and her "Silence" was broken. She was breathing hard.
"You... you aren't a child," she whispered, the silver threads over her eyes beginning to glow. "You're a King of the Old Ashes."
"Tell Harald," Kael said, the frost-runes on his armor glowing brighter. "Tell him the winter he thought he escaped has followed him here. And tell him I'm not just coming for his head. I'm coming for his soul."
Elara didn't fight further. She knew when a hunt had turned into a suicide mission. She vanished into a plume of solar fire, leaving only the scent of ozone and burnt pine.
Kael stood on the precipice, the heavy ice-axe dissolving back into Varg's shifting form. He looked down at his hands. They were cracking. Small lines of blood seeped through his skin where the Frost-Runes had burned him.
"Kael!" Silas ran up, slipping on the ice. "You let her go! She'll tell the King everything!"
"Good," Kael said, falling to one knee as the exhaustion finally hit. "I want him to be awake. I want him to hear my footsteps in every corridor of his palace. I want him to know that no matter how high he builds his throne... the Bone-Breaker is beneath it, pulling at the legs."
He looked at the sky. The moon was setting.
"We move North tonight, Silas. No more hiding. We're going to the Capital."