The ascent into the Razorback Spine began not with the crunch of freezing drifts, but with the hiss of boiling steam.
Six thousand veterans marched in two tight, disciplined columns along a goat-path carved into sheer granite, three thousand paces above the cloud-line. To their left, walls of pale, frosted slate plunged into endless grey chasms; to their right, jagged glaciers hung like frozen daggers from the mountain’s jagged brow. Yet none of the soldiers shivered.
Aurelia walked fifty paces ahead of the vanguard’s front rank.
She wore no heavy fur mantle—only her boiled-leather harness, dark iron vambraces, and the ancestral blade at her hip. With every step of her steel-toed boots, waves of golden-silver warmth rippled across the mountain stone. The snow melted three strides before her feet touched it, parting into clean, dry gravel, while a dome of tempered aether arched over the marching army, holding the gale-force blizzards at bay like water breaking against an invisible keel.
Behind her, Malakor led his shadow-drake steed by the reins, his great sword slung across his back. His gaze never left the ridge lines, scanning the jagged crags for scouts, but every few moments his amber eyes flickered back to her back—protective, possessive, and keenly aware of the toll every league took on her marrow.
"We make the summit by nightfall," Malakor said, quickening his stride until his armored shoulder brushed against hers. His presence brought a familiar, grounding scent of iron and scorched cedar. "The scouts report no smoke from the beacon towers at the high crest. Cassian truly believed the winter was enough to guard his back."
"Arrogance is a disease of men who rule from velvet cushions," Aurelia murmured.
Beneath her breastplate, the Six Shards pulsed with a steady, deep thrum. Melding the astral warmth of the First Shard with the earth-shaping gravity of the Fifth was effortless now, but the power hummed against her skull like an eternal storm. She felt the pulse of the stone beneath her boots, the ancient roots of the continent groaning as she commanded the frost to yield.
Malakor’s free hand caught her elbow, gently slowing her pace by half a step.
"You're drawing too deeply, Aurelia," he warned, his voice low enough that the soldiers behind them could only hear the wind. He stepped closer, his thumb pressing firmly against the bare skin of her wrist, sending a bolt of dark, grounding heat into her pulse point. "Save the fire for the capital. You don't need to carry every man's comfort on your shoulders."
"If our men freeze, we arrive as a broken host," she countered, turning her head to meet his gaze. Her silver-violet eyes flared with defiant brilliance, though the faintest shadow of exhaustion lingered beneath her lashes. "I will bring an unbroken army to Cassian’s doorstep. I want him to look out upon the walls and know that neither the gods nor the earth itself could stop me."
A slow, wicked grin spread across Malakor’s scarred mouth.
Without breaking stride, his hand slid up her arm, his fingers tangling into the loose silver curls at the nape of her neck, pulling her close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his lips.
"Fierce, beautiful sovereign," he growled against her temple, his teeth lightly grazing her ear before his mouth drifted down to the arch of her jaw. The soldiers behind them feigned sudden interest in their bootlaces and the mountain view, well aware of the butcher’s temper. "Your wrath is more intoxicating than any wine in the high solar."
A breathless laugh escaped her lips, her tension softening against the brutal certainty of his touch. "Keep your hands on your sword, warlord. We have three miles of sheer ice before the southern descent."
"My sword is always ready, empress," he muttered with a wolfish tilt of his brow, his thumb stroking her jawline one last time before reluctantly releasing her. "And so am I."
Before they could reach the crest, a sudden, piercing whistle sliced through the thin mountain air.
High upon the jagged overhang of the Eagle's Beak, three hundred yards above the defile, iron-shod shapes stepped out from behind the glacial walls. They were not imperial guardsmen in silver surcoats; they were mercenaries draped in the dark, oiled pelts of the Sunken Syndicate, their crossbows strung with barbed, blackened quarrels.
"Ambush!" shouted Lord Boros from the second rank.
A volley of iron shafts rained down toward the narrow column, aimed not at the soldiers, but directly at the ice-pack suspended above the pass, seeking to trigger an avalanche that would bury the entire vanguard in a thousand tons of shattered glacier.
Aurelia didn't draw her sword.
She reached out with her bare hand, her fingers splaying toward the sky as the Six Shards ignited in an explosive detonation of white-hot radiance.
"Burn," she commanded.
A geyser of starlight erupted from her palm, shooting straight up the frozen cliff face like an ascending pillar of sunlight. The falling quarrels disintegrated into harmless ash mid-air. The massive glacier did not break into an avalanche—it flash-boiled in an instant, exploding into a towering wall of scalding steam that swept the Syndicate mercenaries off the cliffs like dust before a broom.
The screams of the falling traitors faded into the abyss below.
Aurelia lowered her hand, her breath coming in a sharp, crystalline plume.
Beside her, Malakor’s broad chest was heaving with silent, dark laughter, his hand resting on the hilt of his great sword.
"Subtle," he observed, his eyes gleaming with savage approval.
"We are past the time for subtlety," Aurelia replied, her chin lifting as she stepped onto the high crest of the Razorback.
Before them, stretching out across the southern horizon beneath the twilight sky, lay the sprawling, glittering spires of the Capital—unaware that the wrath of the Veil stood upon its heights, ready to strike.