The stair was cut too clean to be mortal.Each step held a thin seam of ice that didn’t melt under breath, only brightened as they passed—as if recognizing a clause and filing it away. The air tasted of iron that had never known rust. Taren walked between them, small boots soundless on stone. Zevran’s shoulder brushed Kaelira’s cloak once, then not again. Winter preferred space between things. It called that space judgment.The first landing opened on a narrow hall lined with pillars carved into the faces of beasts: wolf, stag, serpent, hawk. Runes circled each throat like collars. When Kaelira crossed the threshold, the collars lit.“Names,” Zevran said, voice pitched low, respectful. “They will take ours if we let them.”“They can try,” Kaelira murmured.A figure stepped from the frost ahead—neither man nor woman, tall as a doorframe, skin the blue-white of river ice. Its hair hung like spun glass; its eyes were coins hammered thin. No
Last Updated : 2025-11-04 Read more