Aliyah Frostborne's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Aliyah knelt on the cracked tundra ice, lifting the rune-etched lantern toward the great arch of frozen glass. Three winters of silent work had brought her here. She wanted the spirit to see her — not her ancestor, not the curse on her skin, but her. The lantern's blue wisp trembled in her hands. She spoke the only words she had, words without a true name, and the arch hummed back wrong. The ground beneath her split into pale, branching fractures, like veins under thin skin. A tall, hollow-faced thing began to push through the gate. Its long limbs unfolded from the mist. The frost-marks on her arms burned white-hot, and she knew at once she had called the wrong hunger. Then the snow behind her erupted with light. A wolf made of moonlit ice leapt between her and the wraith, its howl shaking the whispers from the arch. It circled her once, pressing its glow against her shoulder, and a word bloomed inside her skull — quiet, exact, hers to speak. Aliyah spoke the name. The arch sealed with a sharp crack. The wraith folded into nothing. The wolf turned its blue eyes on her, and for the first time, she felt the tundra spirit truly look back.