Heir of the Fog

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

Obsidian Sky

Before me stretched a cavernous passage so wide it seemed a buried canyon, stitched together by smaller tunnels and chasms of unknowable depth. The walls shimmered with clusters of red plants—petals shaped like razored fans, stems corkscrewing straight from basalt. I brushed one frond and felt a damp smear of crimson sap coat my fingertips, its color startlingly vivid in the lavender glow of scattered mana crystals.

A sudden wind threaded the corridor, cool and sharp, though no opening was in sight. The scarlet leaves rustled in unison and the sound, a faint, melodious hiss slid along my nerves like music played underwater. Beautiful, I thought, even while I marked the danger.

Their song existed only to lure wanderers like me into trance—bait for plant-borne predators that anchored themselves deeper in rock. Every hidden stalker here had crossed the threshold I still chased.

The lower caverns of Kharvad had promised challenge, but I outpaced most Saruk there within weeks. Despite the blessings granted by the Great Omen, strength that pulsed in my arms like molten steel, I remained a Saruk, never quite stepping into the darker fire that forged Vadruk. My kin would have returned home already, successes celebrated, yet I lingered.

So I climbed to these upper caves, territory reserved for those stronger than I was allowed to be. Rock vaulted overhead into blackness; veins of crystal spilled violet light across hollow bridges. The air smelled of iron and sap. Somewhere beyond vision, predators shifted.

With careful gaze I tracked movement: several Vadruk closing on my position, believing themselves unseen behind curtains of singing foliage. The lure should have fogged my senses, any orc elder would say so, yet my mind stayed clear. Another blessing, I supposed, though I could not name it.

I pressed my palms together, axes still hooked at my belt, and bent my head. "Great One," I breathed—too soft for echoes. He would not map the path; that was up to me. But I wanted him to know I still walked it, a lone Saruk standing where only Vadruk dared roam.

The song of the leaves rose, coaxing, almost mournful. Around me, red shadows shifted as onyx beasts tightened their circle. I reached for the hafts, feeling the etched blades answer my grip, and lifted them free. The air tasted like storm-rich soil, ready to be broken.

A last glance at the blood-bright plants reminded me that beauty could glow even in a snare. Then I set my stance, axes crossing before my chest, and welcomed the incoming Vadruk with a hunter's grin.

***

As the Frostkin multiplied, the five‑kilometer cradle of ice we first carved from the Abyss soon felt cramped. Their very existence, souls stitched into frost, defied the old rhythm of kill, absorb, ascend, and neighboring demigods sensed the trespass. Borders blurred; our mist pressed against theirs. Clashes became routine.

With each engagement the Frostkin's spear‑work sharpened, their cohesion thickened, and a curious feedback bloomed along our bond. The less I intervened, the more they flourished and each increment of their growth spilled back into me. My own will swelled, as though every victory distilled another droplet that I alone could drink.

Snow drifted in lazy spirals while I withdrew from battle and turned to quieter craft. I knelt on a sheet of glass‑smooth ice, chisel in one hand, a small hammer of condensed frost in the other. Around me rose half‑finished statues, human‑sized this time, delicate beside the eight‑meter titans prowling the perimeter. The chisel slipped; a strand of Meris's hair cracked and fell away. No matter. I breathed, and thin rime flowed to fill the mistake, mending the braid with crystalline threads finer than silk.

These figurines served no tactical purpose. They were practice and remembrance in equal measure: Elina bent over a book, Jharim in his forge, Lirien with her bow. And at the center, Meris, eyes uplifted, lips parted as if catching news carried on wind. However, frost could never match her true grace.

Time had no reliable pulse in the Abyss. Distances folded, echoes looped, and any rhythm Kara once used to calculate hours returned only errors. Days or months might have slipped past; I could no longer tell. But I still felt the pull to return to them.

"Master, another…slain…" The voice was thin but steady, more sensation than word. A Frostkin reported from kilometers away without sound, its core acting as conduit. Some of them had begun piecing speech together by mimicking phrases I spoke aloud; their tongues were absent, but their thoughts carried.

"Great work," I answered. Praise radiated back as a warm throb, and a fragment of will, extracted at that Frostkin's birth, returned to roost inside my chest, brighter than when it left. Ten unblessed forms stood in stillness nearby, each eight meters tall, carved not crudely but with obsessive care.

No two were identical—one bore a crown-like ridge across its helm, another a curved chestplate etched with lines like windblown snow. Even in dormancy, they reflected echoes of the minds they might one day carry. I walked their silent aisle, my palm trailing across flawless cuirasses chilled smooth as glass.

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From constant observation I had gleaned two certainties:

First, every sliver of will poured into creation returned at a life's end—amplified, as though the Frostkin refined it simply by existing and fighting.

Second, my mist could expand only as far as my mana reservoir allowed, but the Frostkin's presence lightened that burden. Alone I could sustain a twenty‑kilometer radius; with them sharing the load, the frostland widened and deepened, temperatures plummeting until even crimson horrors felt their joints stiffen on entry.

A fresh report brushed my thoughts. "Master, slain… defier." Another boundary intruder reduced to shards. I murmured approval without tearing my gaze from Meris's effigy. Behind those gentle features I sensed Frostkin standing guard, hulking wraiths of winter whose purpose was to ensure I could indulge this fragile pastime of memory.

I left the statues and crossed an avenue of ice spires to a compact library I had shaped days earlier. Shelves formed of stacked slabs, books sculpted entirely from frost. It was no replica of the library in District 98, only an echo, but walking between those aisles let me breathe calmer, as if Elina herself might appear to huff at misplaced volumes.

Each time a neighboring domain fell, the mist inhaled new territory; the cycle repeated: battle, growth, return of will, expansion. Grief accompanied it—when a Frostkin's core shattered, the bond wavered with raw ache, but the surge of liberated will pressed me forward. Where once fifteen guardians patrolled, thirty strode now, spears at the ready, eyes glowing.

At some point the daily clashes became routine. But today was different. My warlock was close to crossing from Saruk to Vadruk, and every heartbeat of her ascent hammered like a drum inside my chest. I had worried when I sensed her climbing beyond the lower caves, yet I would not drag her from the path she chose.

Perhaps death would claim her, as it had many Frostkin before their wills could return to me. That was my first fear. Instead she survived every ambush, every ambushing pack of enemies ranked a stage beyond her own.

Through her eyes I watched her bleed and still rise, surrounded by Vadruk, onyx beasts whose power should have eclipsed hers, now lying in jagged heaps. Plant‑ridged torsos torn open, rootlike limbs severed, all testament to a brutality honed beyond the lower caves.

When the final monster fell, a hush lanced through the bond. I felt the First Rule—Brutality—ignite within her and register itself upon the world. In the same instant a foreign pressure pressed against my connection to her, as though some enormous hand reached to mold newly softened clay.

I would not permit it. No being alive or otherwise understood Rogara's talents as I did.

Will against will, I pushed back. The opposing force was vast yet eerily familiar, a déjà vu rooted in a memory I could not fully claim. For a breath I was no longer standing among frost‑etched statues; I floated in a silent void, black as polished obsidian, facing a blazing sphere of fire so immense it devoured every horizon. No scattered sky‑glow, no protective haze, just a bright sphere burning white‑gold.

Heat and mana radiated from that burning sphere in crushing waves, capable of vaporizing my consciousness with the flick of a filament. I braced for annihilation… and then the presence receded, as casually as a tide withdrawing from shore.

Back in my mist‑shrouded dominion, I knelt beside Meris's half‑finished figurine, heart racing. Whatever that will was, it had chosen to leave. When the foreign will withdrew mid-metamorphosis, Rogara's transformation stalled. Left unchecked, the half-reset of her cells would have killed her outright: tissues drifting toward an undifferentiated state even as her core hardened to onyx. Evolution truly was a kind of rebirth—one that needed a guiding hand to finish the heartbeat it had begun.

I poured life‑mana into her pattern the way a potter smooths spinning clay. Bones lengthened a fraction, muscles condensed. I fused core and heart as my own were, laced manalytic channels through every extremity, introduced managlobin so power would reach tissue on demand, creating the state of free-flowing mana that no other creature but me had. Over each modification I inscribed check-in runes to temper the regenerative blessing that once threatened to tear her apart. With her reserves and my craft combined, she would prove a nightmare for any Vadruk.

However, I decided to not change much of her stature. Orcs tended to grow significantly with each evolution, but her way of fighting resembled mine more than that of other orcs, perhaps a trait tied to her being my warlock, though I couldn't say for certain. Still, it suited her. She stood at merely 1.9 meters, small for a Vadruk, but her compact musculature left nothing lacking.

The entire procedure claimed only minutes, but by the end my lungs rasped as though rimed with frost. The mist dimmed, edges of my territory fraying until the Frostkin lent their strength to keep it breathing. I knelt, lungs burning cold, and wondered what kind of being could handle evolutions as casually as one might tune a harp string. The mana it wielded was beyond measuring.

Rogara exhaled. Her eyes opened—no longer ebony but a deep onyx streaked with silver motes. Through the bond poured emotions sharp and bright: triumph, reverence, a childlike spark of I made it.

Around me the Frostkin lowered their spears, then tipped the crystal blades together in a ringing clack. A heartbeat later each titan stamped its right foot, ice on ice, sending a dull boom through the frost‑plated ground. It was the salute they reserved for fallen or newly risen brothers, offered now to Rogara, the lone warm‑blood who shared their bond.

The gesture caught me off guard. Could they sense her presence across the distance? Did they grasp the weight of what had just transpired? I had no answer, only the echo of those measured footfalls rolling outward, a sound that surely carried far across the Abyss. Their tribute marked Rogara's ascent to onyx: not merely a body refined by life‑mana, but a vessel reshaped in my own image.

As quiet settled, a single flake of snow drifted onto my palm. Frost was a gift I had never granted Rogara; her affinity still leaned toward life, as mine once did. "Perhaps one day," I murmured, unaware the words rode the bond. Confusion flickered back from her, first emotion after the surge of triumph, yet I let the thought stand unexplained.