Noria Storn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Noria stood at the shrine door and tried again to see the face. The memory gave her hands, a tall shape, a warm voice. The face stayed a smear of light. She pressed her fists to her eyes and forced it. Nothing sharpened. She could not know who had left her on the ice until she could recognize them. The frost pixie tugged at her sleeve. She led Noria past the shrine wall to a carved pillar of clear ice. Runes ran down its length, glowing faint purple. The pixie hovered before the stone and waited. Noria touched the frozen surface. The runes meant nothing to her. But her fingers moved on their own, tracing one mark, then the next, in an order she did not choose. She had done this before. A child's game, or a lesson. The memory pushed harder against the blur. "You're trying to help me remember," Noria said. The pixie's violet eyes held hers. She flew deeper along the wall, toward a low stone altar crowned with a frozen waterfall. Noria followed. Ice sheeted the altar's carved base. The frozen water hung still and glassy, smooth as a mirror. She knelt before it and looked. Her own face stared back, pale under the silver cloak. Then the surface seemed to hold a second reflection, faint behind her own. She had knelt here as a child. Someone had knelt with her. The warm voice had spoken over her shoulder, into this very ice. The memory flooded up, and the blur began to break. Noria stared harder. A jaw came clear. Then a mouth, set in a small smile. Silver hair, like her own. Eyes she knew. The face filled in whole, and her breath stopped. It was a woman. Older, but her features matched Noria's own. Same cheekbones. Same pale hair. The face was not a stranger's. It was almost her own, grown older. "You look like me," Noria whispered. The reflection in the ice did not change, but the memory did. The woman had knelt here and taught her the runes. The woman had given her the shrine to guard. And the woman had led her out onto the ice one last time. Noria pressed her hand flat to the frozen altar. She had the face now. She would know this woman anywhere. The blur was gone, replaced by a person she could hunt for across all of Alpenglow. But the memory carried more than a face. The woman's mouth had been moving as she left. She had said something, some word, some reason. Noria strained for it and caught only silence. She knew who had abandoned her. She still did not know why. The pixie settled on the altar's edge. Noria rose. "Find her," she said. "Take me to where she went." The pixie lifted into the air and led her back into the cold.