Chapter 17: The Frost of the Ancestors

The journey to the Tundra Graves was a march into a world of white silence. As we pushed north, the vibrant life of the Silver Heart was replaced by a landscape so cold it felt brittle, as if the air itself might shatter if we spoke too loudly. The ground was no longer earth; it was a thousand feet of permafrost, housing the remains of every Alpha since the dawn of the Great Shift.

"The ley-lines are screaming," Kaelen muttered, his breath blooming in thick clouds of steam. He held a brass compass that spun erratically, the needle vibrating with a violent, violet energy. "Silas has already tapped into the intersection. He’s draining the residual power from the graves to keep his rift open."

Thane walked at the front of our small group, his massive shadow-steel blade strapped to his back. His wolf was restless; I could see the hackles of his shadow-spirit rising and falling beneath his skin. He didn't like this place. No wolf did. To us, the Tundra Graves were a place of rest, but here, the air felt like it was being inhaled by a giant, unseen lung.

"Movement," Jace whispered, dropping from a jagged ice shelf above us. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated until they were nearly solid black. "They aren't shadows, Elora. And they aren't the King’s men."

"Then what are they?" I asked, my hand hovering over the silver scar on my arm.

"The Sentinels," Jace replied, his voice trembling. "The ancestors. He’s woken them up."

As we rounded the final ridge overlooking the Great Burial Plain, the horror of Silas’s plan became clear. The graves had been torn open. From the icy pits, figures were rising. They weren't skeletons; the permafrost had preserved them perfectly. They were massive, ancient Alphas, their fur matted with ice, their eyes glowing with a hollow, violet light that signaled they were being puppeteered by the Abyss.

"The blood... returns..." a hundred voices whispered into the wind, a sound like grinding glaciers.

"They're a wall," Thane said, drawing his blade. The obsidian metal hummed in defiance of the cold. "They won't let us reach the center unless we go through them."

"Don't kill them if you don't have to," I commanded, stepping forward. "They are being used. Their spirits are trapped in their own marrow."

I unleashed a wave of Golden Deprivation, aiming not for the bodies, but for the violet tethers connecting them to the central rift. The golden light washed over the frozen plains, and for a second, the Sentinels faltered. Their violet eyes dimmed, and I saw a flash of the noble warriors they had once been.

But then, a thunderous crack echoed through the tundra.

From the center of the graves, a massive pillar of white-gold light shot into the sky. Silas—the High King—rose from the earth, his staff raised high. He looked more powerful than before, his armor now fused with the bones of ancient kings.

"You're late, Elora!" he roared, the sound causing the ice beneath our feet to splinter. "The intersection is primed. The ancestral memory is mine! I can see every hunt, every kill, every shift in the history of our race. I am no longer a King. I am the Pack!"

He pointed his staff at the Sentinels. The violet tethers turned into thick, barbed chains of shadow. The ancient Alphas let out a collective, pained howl and shifted—their bodies contorting into monstrous, multi-limbed horrors of fur and ice.

"They're coming!" Jace shouted, drawing his daggers.

The battle on the frozen plains was a chaotic blur of silver and shadow. Thane was a whirlwind of destruction, his great-blade cleaving through the ice-armored monsters. Kaelen threw vials of liquid heat that hissed as they hit the permafrost, creating pockets of steam to mask our movements. Jace was a ghost, dancing between the legs of the giants, severing the shadow-chains with his enchanted steel.

I fought my way toward Silas, the gold light on my arm clashing against the violet waves he threw at me. Every step was a struggle; the ground itself was trying to pull me down, the voices of the ancestors begging for release or screaming for my blood.

"You think you can save them?" Silas laughed as I reached the base of his white-gold pillar. "They are the foundation of my new world! To save them, you have to destroy the very history of your kind!"

"Then let history burn!" I screamed.

I didn't use my hands. I reached out with the Tri-Mark bond. I pulled Jace, Kaelen, and Thane into a tight, spiritual circle. I didn't take their energy; I shared the pain of my nineteen years of servitude. I shared the cold, the hunger, and the nothingness.

I turned that collective suffering into a localized vacuum.

The air around the pillar vanished. The violet light flickered. Silas’s eyes widened as he realized I wasn't attacking his power—I was attacking the reason his power existed. I was depriving him of the ambition that fueled his magic.

"You... you would destroy it all?" he gasped, his staff beginning to crack. "The legacy... the strength of the Alphas..."

"The strength of an Alpha is a lie built on the backs of the 'nothing' girls," I said, my voice cold as the ice around us. "And it’s time for the lie to end."

With a final, shattering surge of gold and silver, I slammed my fist into the base of the white-gold pillar.

The ice beneath us didn't just break; it detonated.