Blaze Ashford's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Blaze Ashford had sharpened his knife for a man made of ice. Tonight he meant to cross the pass, find the sorcerer who froze his family's hearth years ago, and end him. His coat answered the plan. Flames rolled across the fabric and warmed the small room. He pulled on his boots and reached for the round door with the burning emblem. Then the wind hit the cabin like a fist. Timbers groaned. The red and blue embers along the logs flickered low. Blaze shoved the door open and stared into a wall of white. Snow fell so thick he could not see the trees. In one hour, a blizzard had sealed the only pass out of town. He had not even started the hunt. His lion rose from the hearth and padded to his side. The beast's blazing mane lit the doorway. Even that fire could not melt the storm fast enough. Blaze knew the pass. Drifts there already stood taller than a man. By dawn they would bury the road for a week. "The sorcerer did this," Blaze said. His breath steamed. "He knows I'm coming." He would not sit and wait. A week gave the ice-wielder time to run. Blaze buckled the knife to his belt and stepped into the cold. His coat spat fire that died in the falling snow. Each flame hissed out before it touched the ground. He pushed ten steps toward the pass and sank to his knees in white. The lion roared behind him. Blaze turned. A small shape clung to the cabin's doorframe, scales catching the ember-light. His drakecat. The creature had followed him into the storm and now shivered, half-buried, too weak to climb back inside. Blaze made his choice. He waded back, scooped the drakecat against his warm chest, and hauled it through the door. He slammed the round door shut behind them. The storm howled on the other side. He set the drakecat by the fire and watched its shivering slow. His hands shook, not from cold. The pass was lost. The hunt was stalled before the first step. But the drakecat had reached the door from outside. It had come from somewhere low, somewhere out of the wind. Blaze remembered the old tales the townsfolk told. Beneath the mountain ran tunnels, cut long ago by miners who feared the pass in winter. Hunters used them. Smugglers used them. He had always thought them a story. Blaze knelt and gripped the drakecat's chin. Snow still clung to its scales, but not deep snow. Sheltered snow. "You found a way under," he said. He stood and pulled his coat tight. The flames climbed again, bright and hungry. The pass was sealed. The tunnels were not. If the stories were true, the way led under the mountain and out the far side, past the sorcerer's door. But no one had walked those tunnels in years, and no one came back to say what lived down there now.