The wind over the Vale had changed.
It no longer carried the scent of frost and pine, nor whispered with the distant hush of snow slipping through trees. Now it smelled of ash — of something ancient that had stirred from slumber. The trees bent under its weight, not from weather, but from warning. And the earth beneath Amelia's feet trembled in tiny, almost imperceptible pulses, like the last heartbeats of something dying far beneath the ground.
She stood at the edge of the balcony, overlooking the northern ridge. Her hand hovered over her wrist, where the frost-mark now shimmered constantly, no longer dormant but alive, throbbing softly with the pulse of an unseen tide.
Behind her, Lucien watched in silence. His transformation had stabilized, but something inside him still churned — a quiet conflict between what he had been and what he had become. No longer vampire, no longer a child of night. There was blood in him now that belonged to winter, and it hummed in tune with hers.
"They're moving," Amelia whispered.
Lucien stepped beside her, gazing past the mist-draped pines. "Who?"
She didn't answer. She didn't have to.
He felt it too.
Something was coming.
Later that night, the frost mirror above the ruined fireplace flickered again. Amelia was alone then, tracing the symbols in the stone, when the room fell utterly silent. No wind. No distant wolves. No breath.
And then she saw her again.
Eira.
The woman of winter, wrapped in pale light and memory, stood inside the reflection. Her eyes were hollowed by time, yet burning with purpose.
"You carry more than my blood," Eira said. "You carry a spark of what I once was. And now he hunts it."
"Who is he?" Amelia asked, barely breathing.
"Malrik," Eira whispered, and the mirror trembled. "He was once bound to me. A lover. A liar. A traitor who sought to shatter the frost for his own rebirth. I entombed him beneath the Second Gate — but the Hollow King's fall weakened the seals."
"Why me?" Amelia asked. "Why now?"
"Because gates respond to pain. And you are full of it."
The vision vanished. The mirror cracked again, hairline fractures stretching outward like veins across glass.
That night, Amelia couldn't sleep. She felt the pull — not just a call, but a command. Something beneath the northern ice had woken. And it remembered her name.
By morning, Lucien had already packed. Without asking, without speaking. He knew where they were going. And what might be waiting.
Their journey north was marked by silence. Not emptiness — but respect. There were no more questions between them, only breath and movement and shared dread. The further they traveled, the colder it grew. Not just in temperature, but in nature. The cold felt wrong. It was not the clean, ancient frost of the Vale — it was bitter. Hollow. Like winter twisted into something cruel.
Three days in, they found the first body.
Not human. Not vampire.
It had been something once — now it was ice and cinders. Frozen mid-scream, its body reduced to a shell of frost-covered bone. Lucien crouched near it and brushed back a layer of snow to reveal a blackened sigil.
Amelia flinched.
It matched the shape her wrist had taken in her dream.
They pressed on.
The mountains loomed closer each night, and the sky turned a deeper shade of dusk. By the time they reached the Shattered Vale — a rift between glaciers where the first Frost Pact had been forged — the stars no longer shone above them. Just clouds. Endless, churning, blood-tinted clouds.
And the wind had begun to whisper names.
Hers.
Lucien's.
Eira's.
In the heart of the Vale, beneath a crust of ice so thick it sang when they walked over it, lay the Second Gate.
It pulsed — deep, rhythmic, like a buried heart refusing to die.
Lucien looked at her, eyes filled with old fear and new love. "Are you ready?"
Amelia closed her eyes.
"No."
But she stepped forward anyway.
The air grew impossibly still as Amelia descended toward the glacier's heart. Lucien stayed at her side, silent, his senses attuned to every unnatural ripple in the atmosphere. There was no sunlight anymore—just an eternal dusk broken by the faint shimmer beneath the ice, like stars frozen mid-fall.
The frost beneath their boots cracked but didn't give. It wasn't fragile—it was watching.
Her mark burned hotter the closer they got. Not with heat, but with pressure, like a tether tightening. She clenched her jaw and pressed forward, each step harder than the last. She could feel something underfoot, just beneath the ice: a structure. A door.
Then Lucien stopped.
He inhaled sharply and turned his head to the right.
"I smell blood," he said. "Old. Familiar."
She followed his gaze.
And there, half-buried in a ridge of ice, stood a figure. Motionless. Hooded.
Amelia's blood ran cold, which was saying something, considering she barely felt warmth anymore.
The figure straightened. A man—tall, gaunt, dressed in a tattered black cloak lined with silver trim. His face was half-covered in a frost-iron mask, but the eye that peered from beneath glowed with dim, unnatural flame.
Lucien tensed. "Casien."
The man inclined his head. "Still brooding, Lucien? I hoped your bond with the girl would at least gift you some wit."
Amelia narrowed her eyes. "You were supposed to be dead."
Casien smiled faintly. "I was. Now I'm not. Death is overrated."
Lucien stepped forward. "What do you want?"
"To stop Malrik," Casien said. "Or, failing that, to stop you from failing."
Amelia's heart stuttered. "You know about the gate?"
Casien gestured lazily to the glacier beneath them. "Everyone left from the old blood does. He's moving. If you want a chance to shut him in again—or kill him—you'll need help."
Lucien's jaw clenched. "And you're just volunteering?"
"I'm self-interested, not suicidal. If Malrik wakes fully, the last of the vampire lines fall. The world won't see another night without burning."
Amelia stepped forward, staring him down. "Then let's open the gate."
Casien blinked. "What?"
Lucien turned sharply. "Amelia—"
But she held up a hand.
"I can't destroy him unless I understand what he is. And I can't understand what he is from the outside. I have to see. I have to know."
Casien looked at Lucien, curious. "You never told her?"
"Told me what?" Amelia asked.
Lucien's mouth opened, but no words came.
Casien answered instead.
"That Malrik isn't just after your power, girl. He is your power."
Amelia's pulse skipped.
"What?"
Casien stepped closer, his tone low, almost reverent. "Eira wasn't just a queen. She was a container. A vessel, forged from snow and grief, to hold the rage of an elemental god. When she fell, her spirit fractured. Half of it froze beneath this gate. The other half passed on—in blood, in memory. Through you."
Amelia staggered back. "No. No, I'm not—"
"You're a key," Casien interrupted. "And a cage. He needs your acceptance to break free. But you, with enough force, might also end him."
Lucien's voice was strained. "That's why the mark changed."
Casien nodded. "And why the gate responds."
Amelia was silent for a long time. The glacier groaned beneath them, and the air trembled with the pressure of something waking, aware of its name being spoken.
Then she stepped forward and touched the ice.
The mark on her wrist flared.
The glacier split.
A line of white-hot frost carved its way down the center, revealing a staircase of black stone descending into darkness.
A scream echoed up from below—inhuman, ancient, layered with thousands of dying breaths.
Casien unsheathed a curved blade from his belt. "Well. That's our invitation."
Lucien turned to Amelia, grasped her hand. "You don't have to do this alone."
She met his eyes. "I'm not."
Together, the three of them descended into the gate.
The cold deepened with every step. Not physical, not even magical. It was a memory—raw, ancient, and drowning. The darkness here felt things. And it did not forget.
The stairwell opened into a cavern of obsidian frost, domed and endless. In its center stood a dais, encircled by glyphs pulsing in dull violet light.
And in the center of the dais—
A man stood.
No chains.
No cage.
He looked... normal.
More than that—perfect.
Tall, draped in shadow-lined robes, with hair as dark as spilled ink and eyes like liquid ice. When he turned, it was as if the air bent to accommodate him. And when he smiled, Amelia felt something deep in her heart shiver.
"Ah," he said, his voice smooth, amused. "The frost child arrives."
Lucien took a step forward, fangs flashing. "Malrik."
The man's gaze flicked to him. "Lucien. Still clinging to that tired rage? I thought death might have improved your manners."
Casien stepped beside Amelia, silent, tense.
Malrik extended a hand toward her. "Come closer, Amelia Vale. We have much to discuss."
She didn't move.
"What are you?"
"I am what comes after love dies," he said simply. "The part of a heart that survives rejection. That becomes ash."
He lowered his hand and stepped down from the dais.
"I do not want to destroy you," he said. "I want to restore you. Together, we can rewrite winter's legacy. You were never meant to serve. You were meant to rule."
Lucien snarled. "She belongs to no one."
Malrik's expression didn't change. "She belongs to herself. I am offering her a kingdom."
Amelia's breath hitched. The air pulsed around her. Her mark burned white-hot.
And her vision fractured.
She saw herself standing at Malrik's side, a crown of fros
t atop her head, the world bent in endless winter at her feet. She saw Lucien, chained, begging her to remember.
And then she saw nothing.
Amelia staggered as the vision shattered. Cold breath poured from her lips in jagged gasps, and the mark on her wrist blazed brighter than ever before. Malrik watched her, patient as the grave, as if he knew she was already caught in a web he'd spun long before she was born.
"I know what you saw," he murmured. "It's not a lie. It's a memory. Yours."
Lucien growled low in his throat, placing himself between Amelia and Malrik. "Stay back."
Malrik's gaze didn't shift. "How ironic. The creature who was once enslaved by blood now chains himself with it again. Tell me, Lucien — what happens when she chooses to become what she was meant to be?"
"I trust her," Lucien said. "Something you'll never understand."
Malrik tilted his head. "Even love has limits. She will reach them soon."
Amelia's hand was shaking. Not from fear — from strain. The pulse inside her mark was becoming unbearable, like something beneath her skin was trying to claw its way out. She took a step back, and the chamber responded — the glyphs around the dais flaring violently.
"I came to understand you," she said, voice trembling. "Not to join you."
Malrik's smile faded.
"Then understand this," he whispered. "The moment you opened this gate, you made a choice. You think you can close it again? Banish me? You are me. Half of you was born in this frost."
Behind her, Casien shifted. "He's baiting you. Don't listen."
"I'm not," she said — but she was.
Because part of what Malrik said felt true.
She could feel his power in her veins. It mirrored the echo in her dreams, the pull she had tried to ignore since the Hollow King's fall. Was it really her own strength, or something older blooming through her bones?
Then Malrik raised his hand.
The frost around them snapped and split, and shadows rose like tendrils from the cracks. Screaming faces formed within them — wraiths, drained souls, vampire echoes chained to Malrik's will.
Lucien leapt forward with a roar, slicing through the nearest one with his blade. The creature hissed and shattered into mist, but two more took its place.
Casien moved to intercept, summoning blackfire from his palms. "Go!" he shouted. "Get her out!"
Amelia backed away, eyes wide, her mark flaring like a beacon.
Malrik advanced, never lifting his feet. He floated above the stone like he belonged to another world entirely.
"You cannot run from yourself, Amelia," he said. "And you cannot run from me."
Then her mark cracked.
She screamed.
Light burst from her wrist — not silver, not blue — but violet, laced with black, tendrils of frost and flame spiraling upward into the chamber's ceiling.
Lucien turned, eyes wide, only to watch her collapse to her knees.
"Amelia!"
Her vision split again.
This time, she wasn't on the dais.
She was inside the frost. Floating. Falling. Watching memories that weren't hers bleed into the ones that were.
Eira's laughter. Malrik's kiss. The birth of the Vale. The betrayal at the edge of the Frozen Sea. The sealing of the First Gate. And the forging of the Second, with Eira's body as its final anchor.
She saw herself — and she saw not-herself — over and over, through centuries, shaped by grief, frozen by duty.
"I don't want this," she whispered into the void.
A voice answered her.
"But you were made for it."
She gasped as the memory ended, and suddenly Lucien was kneeling beside her again, his face full of pain, sweat beading on his brow.
The frost was crawling up his chest.
Black frost.
Malrik had touched him.
"No—Lucien—" she grabbed his hands, trying to channel light into him. Her mark pulsed in response, but the ice didn't recede. It only slowed.
Casien dragged her up. "We have to go. Now!"
"I can't leave him!"
"You can if you want him to live!"
Malrik hovered at the center of the chamber now, his body wreathed in darkness and flame. The wraiths had backed away, encircling him in reverent silence.
"You can seal the gate again," Casien snarled. "You just have to choose. Right here. Right now."
Amelia's heart raced. Her skin burned. Her body trembled with power she didn't understand. She looked down at Lucien, whose breath was slowing, eyes fading into ice-glass. And then at Malrik — still waiting.
She screamed.
The cavern split.
Light surged from her, no longer violet, no longer frost — but pure, white, furious. It carved the glyphs off the floor, shattered the shadows. Casien threw up a shield. Lucien's body convulsed, the frost retreating from his heart.
Malrik's smile died.
And then—
Everything fell silent.
A thunderclap ripped through the chamber.
The light went out.
Amelia collapsed.
She awoke somewhere else.
Still underground. Still cold. But alone.
The gate behind her was sealed again — but it was glowing now, not dormant. Pulsing softly, like it was breathing.
Lucien was gone.
So was Casien.
And in the frost-covered wall beside her, a message had been carved in the ice:
"HE TOOK HIM."