Morning rose cold over Frostford, the sky washed in pale silver. The town’s gates creaked open with stiff reluctance as Team Argent passed through, their breath fogging in the sharp air.

  Eis rode at the front beside Ronan, cloak pulled tight against the freezing wind. Behind them, Lira muttered into her scarf about how frostbite wasn’t in the job description, while Kael scanned the ridgeline with a hunter’s wary focus.

  Beyond the town’s edge, the ley road curved north into rising hills layered with thin snow. The world was quiet—too quiet for a place usually bustling with traders passing toward the mountain routes.

  It didn’t take long for them to understand why.

  It had been a few hours since they left Frostford when the horses shied violently, hooves scraping furrows into the frozen dirt.

  Kael raised a hand instantly.

  “Movement. Thirty meters ahead.”

  Ronan’s blades were already half-drawn.

  Lira flicked her wrist; a faint shimmer of mana gathered at her fingertips.

  Eis felt it too—disturbance, wrongness, a twist in the mana currents around them.

  Then the snow moved.

  Three shapes burst from the drifts—lurching, ragged, their limbs jerking in unnatural rhythm. Humanoid silhouettes, but warped: joints bent the wrong direction, skin stretched tight over bone, eyes hollow and milk-white.

  One shrieked, charging.

  Ronan met it first, intercepting with a brutal downward slash that split open a ribcage too shallow, too thin.

  Lira loosed a snap-fire spell—arcing light that seared through the second creature’s shoulder. It stumbled, but didn’t scream. It didn’t even react, simply lunged forward again, mouth gaping.

  Eis stepped in its path, blade flashing cleanly across its throat. The creature collapsed, twitching, steam curling from the wound.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The third rushed Kael. His arrow fired at point-blank range, embedding deep into its skull. That one dropped instantly.

  The world stilled.

  Only the wind remained.

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  Even Lira—usually the first to break quiet—stood frozen.

  Eis crouched beside the nearest corpse.

  Now still, it looked even more human.

  Under the torn, frost-burned skin, faint lines showed where runes had been branded—crooked sigils of crude augmentation. The face was sunken. Lips cracked. Hair matted.

  Not a monster.

  A person. Or what used to be.

  Ronan’s voice was low.

  “Slaver work?”

  Eis didn’t answer immediately. The creature’s hands were twisted, fingers rigid… except for something knotted around its wrist.

  A thin braided bracelet.

  Child-sized. Three strands—red, blue, white.

  Lira’s breath hitched.

  “That’s… that’s the kind kids make during midsummer festivals.”

  Kael swallowed, jaw tightening.

  “It means this one was local. A villager.”

  Ronan exhaled slowly, the sound heavy as iron.

  “They’re not just taking captives,” he said. “They’re turning them into these.”

  Lira whispered,

  “Gods… this could’ve been Arin.”

  Silence pressed around them, thick and suffocating. The northern wind cut through the clearing, scattering snow over the fallen forms.

  The truth settled over Team Argent like a weight:

  Vauren wasn’t just transporting victims.

  He was altering them.

  Breaking them apart and rebuilding them into something unnatural.

  Ronan straightened, voice firm but grim.

  “We burn them. They deserve better than this.”

  Kael nodded, already gathering kindling. Lira wiped her eyes and began shaping a soft ignition spell.

  Eis stood, staring north where the mountains loomed like jagged teeth.

  The whisper in the frost last night.

  The pull in the ley lines.

  The shadow calling her to return.

  Now she understood.

  This wasn’t just a hunt.

  It was a countdown.

  And whatever waited at the Sun Vault wasn’t finished.