The ascent into the Dragon’s Teeth was a brutal climb through a world of jagged grey granite, howling gales, and creeping ice. The Great Northern Road, once a paved arterial highway of the Old Empire, narrowed into a precarious mountain ledge blasted by bitter blizzards that tore down from the glacial heights.
Seventeen thousand men moved in disciplined, silent columns. The warhorses of the Vanguard were wrapped in thick wool caparisons and spiked iron shoes, their breath pluming white like geysers in the freezing mountain air. Siege engines, disassembled and secured onto heavy timber sledges, were hauled by teams of shaggy draft-oxen through snowdrifts three cubits deep.
At the head of the host rode Aurelia and Malakor.
Malakor’s massive black stallion picked its way over the slick rock with unshakeable certainty. The warlord rode with his visor raised, his dark hair dusted with fine snow, his crimson-flecked eyes scanning the high crags above. His black plate radiated an invisible perimeter of abyssal heat, keeping the ice from forming on his reins and keeping his mount's flanks warm against the deadly draft.
Aurelia rode beside him on a pale northern courser. She wore a tailored coat of midnight-blue velvet layered over star-iron chainmail, her hood trimmed with white wolf fur. Where Malakor fought the cold with infernal heat, Aurelia embraced it. The snow seemed to part around her, drifting harmlessly off her shoulders. The three unified shards within her chest hummed with a quiet, joyful resonance, drawing ambient frost from the peaks and refining it into pure, crystallized ether that made her skin glow like polished alabaster.
"The throat of the Iron Pass lies just beyond this bend," General Kaelen shouted over the howling wind, riding up to Malakor’s left flank. "It is barely thirty paces wide, flanked by vertical cliffs five hundred feet tall. If Vane has fortified the gorge, a single company of archers could hold seventeen thousand of us for a month."
"He has done more than fortify it," Aurelia said softly, raising her gloved hand to signal a halt.
Her azure-and-starlit eyes narrowed as she looked ahead. The swirling snow parted for a brief heartbeat, revealing the entrance to the pass.
Spanning the narrow chasm was a colossal bulwark—the Gate of Horn.
It was constructed not from stone or timber, but from solid, opaque glacier-ice twenty paces thick, reinforced by the petrified ribcages of ancient mountain drakes. Atop the frozen ramparts stood hundreds of pale-armored sentries bearing the silver-sun sigil of the Solar Concord, flanked by massive ballistas loaded with bolts carved from enchanted blue permafrost.
"The work of the Fifth Shard," Aurelia noted, her tone calm, almost clinical. "Vane has used the Crown of the Void to weave an eternal blizzard around the gates. Any mortal warrior who steps within two hundred paces will have the blood frozen in his veins within three heartbeats."
"Then mortal warriors will not take the gate," Malakor replied, his deep voice a menacing rumble that cut through the gale.
He swung down from his war-saddle, his boots crunching heavily into the snowpack. He reached up, grasping Aurelia by the waist and lifting her effortlessly from her mount. He didn't release her immediately; he held her against his chest, his large hands anchoring her hips against his armored frame, his dark eyes burning with fierce, possessive adoration.
"Shall we show the Pale King how fragile his toys truly are, Aurelia?" he murmured, leaning down so his lips brushed the shell of her ear.
A shiver of electric warmth raced through her spine, completely eclipsing the sub-zero wind. She tilted her head back, meeting his smoldering gaze with a slow, lethal smile that made her starlit eyes dance.
"He thinks ice is his shield, Malakor," she whispered against his jaw, her cool fingers sliding up to tangle in his dark curls. "He does not know that I am the one who commands it to break."
Malakor’s lips pulled into a savage grin. He planted a swift, bruising kiss on her lips, tasting of snow, iron, and imminent ruin, before releasing her.
He drew his abyssal great sword with a sound like tearing thunder. The runes along the blackened blade flared to life, not merely with flame, but with a vortex of dark, hungry plasma that devoured the falling snowflakes around him in hissing bursts of steam.
Aurelia drew her twin star-iron daggers, stepping to his side. The three shards within her chest surged with absolute authority.
"Hold the vanguard at five hundred paces!" Malakor barked to Kaelen without looking back.
Together, sovereign and warlord strode forward onto the snowfield, two solitary figures advancing against an army, their fire and frost walking in terrifying, unified majesty toward the frozen gates of the north.