Winter’s Rebirth: B1 - 14. Ignis Vector (Patreon)

Winter’s Rebirth Index

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Victor studied the ridge ahead, mind already calculating angles of attack, optimal positioning, enemy response patterns:

There are twenty-five hostiles minimum, possibly more scouts in the canopy. The champion is probably at the center of their formation—eight feet of muscle and three elements. If Kaia handles the boundaries, I’d need to—

“Victor.”

Sera’s voice cut through his tactical assessment, sharp enough to make him pause mid-step. Also, it was louder than he would have liked before dipping to a quieter tone.

“You’re about to send a sixteen-year-old girl who picked up a weapon two weeks ago on overwatch duty, as you’d call it in your previous world, and against erratic frost hobgoblins. Tell me you see the problem with that plan.”

He turned, finding Sera standing with arms crossed, her blindfolded face tilted toward Kaia. The amber-haired teenager was trying very hard to look brave, but failing spectacularly.

“I’m fine,” Kaia quickly mumbled, though her voice wavered and her teeth chattered. “I can handle—”

“No.” Sera’s tone left no room for argument. “You cannot. And that’s not weakness, that’s reality. Do not lie to your lord; it will only harm him.”

Victor opened his mouth to respond, but Sera raised a hand.

“I don’t want to hear what is on your mind. You’re supposed to be my knight for the day, soldier, yet here you are making unreasonable demands of two young women.”

She took a step forward, squaring up to him with her full five-foot height, her posture shifting from companion to commander. “You’re treating her like one of your soldiers from your Earth world war, and I understand you are trying to keep her alive—but here’s the thing, those were all males, Victor. Trained, fed, conditioned soldiers.”

The words hit harder than he expected. He wanted to argue that not every soldier was like that; there were a lot of boys in those trenches… Young boys. But her point held. This wasn’t Earth’s war but a frozen northern hellscape.

“Kaia is sixteen,” Seraphina continued. “She only recently started eating properly and rebuilding her malnourished body. She has deep-seated self-image struggles, which,” Sera paused as Kaia started to protest, “admittedly, I have not done the best job addressing, and that is on me.”

Victor saw it then. Kaia’s hands were shaking. Not just from the cursed cold or adrenaline, but from the crushing weight of expectation she’d placed on herself…that he’d placed on her.

“I can do some of it,” Kaia insisted, voice tight. “I can try to. I just need to—”

“Kaia.” Sera’s voice softened as she turned to face the shaking teen, still holding her bloodied axe in her white hands. “You feel like you’re failing him by being weak. It’s constantly playing out in your mind.”

“T-That’s not fair,” she whispered, red nose somehow becoming more red as emotions started to overtake her. “You can’t read my mind…”

“I read everyone’s mind, Kaia. I’m paranoid,” Sera responded without a hint of shame. “And you know that if he puts this responsibility on you, you will fail. That terrifies you. And if Victor has to compensate and gets hurt because of you failing him, you’ll blame yourself. You don’t think, but feel sure that everyone in your camp will blame you too.”

The words struck like a slap across the cheek. Kaia’s throat locked, a lump forming so violently she couldn’t even protest. Her eyes welled with tears, and she tried desperately to blink them away without success.

What am I doing? he asked himself, suddenly feeling somewhere between on the defensive and 100% in the wrong.

Victor’s heart broke, but the noblewoman’s words were digging right into his weak points, too… This wasn’t random; this was Sera going on the offensive mentally and emotionally in a way only a mind reader could. Only, she wielded a whip before offering honey.

Sera moved forward and pulled Kaia into a hug, her blindfolded face turning toward Victor with a frown that clearly said: you’re the villain right now.

He sighed heavily, the tactical mindset cracking as reality reasserted itself.

“I suppose I’m falling into old habits…”

“No, Lord, I just don’t want to cause trouble,” Kaia whimpered into Sera’s shoulder, voice breaking. “I don’t want to be a burden. I want to help, but my feet are so sore, my muscles are burning, I feel so cold, and—and I don’t think I can hold a bow straight. I’m weak.”

Victor remembered all the times she’d tried to pump herself up—I’m strong, I can do this—but physical limits were real, no matter how determined someone was.

“You’re not weak,” Sera said firmly, pulling back to look at the weepy-eyed teen. “You’re just trying to push yourself beyond what’s reasonable. Honestly, I am shocked by how far you’ve come. And when you hadn’t even picked up a weapon for more than two weeks.”

“B-But it’s not good enough for what Lord Victor needs…”

“Nonsense,” she insisted. “You’re a growing sprout that needs to sink her roots deep, but if you’re exposed to too much sun too quickly, you’ll wither… I had a teacher who taught me that lesson when I was in your same clothes…” The mind reader’s nose crinkled. “And, no, Victor, it is not ‘same shoes’ but same clothes. Get the saying right. Earth terms…”

Kaia couldn’t help but softly giggle through her tears. “I don’t understand both of you. Why are you being so nice to me now?”

“Perhaps that’s the point,” she soothed, pulling her axe aside to draw the girl in one last time. “I love hard and am a very petty woman, Kaia. It may take some time, but I’m an acquired taste, like wine.”

The silence that followed was heavy and awkward.

Sera broke it after pulling away again, her voice measured. “Everything in moderation and at your proper pace—which can be pushed, yes—but what Victor is asking requires skills a soldier develops over time. That could take months for you… Years for others.”

She turned her blindfolded face toward Victor. “May I see her memories? Guide her to what she can realistically give you? I ask both of you for this, and I know we must be quieter, but you can handle any trouble with those enhanced senses of yours.”

Kaia looked at Victor, uncertain.

He nodded, feeling the weight of his miscalculation and tilting his head slightly, enhancing his hearing and vision to scan the area; they hadn’t been discovered yet.

“Go ahead, if Kaia agrees.”

“Well?”

Kaia gulped, then nodded, still clutching her axe with both hands as if for protection.

Sera placed her hand gently on Kaia’s temple, and for a moment, violet light seeped from beneath her slightly off-center blindfold. The teen’s green eyes unfocused, then refocused with a sharp intake of breath.

“She has fifteen arrows,” Sera said quietly, withdrawing her hand. “And with her current physical state, muscle fatigue, and limited training…she’ll likely only hit one target with those from this ridge. Maybe. If she’s lucky. She’s not a marksman, Victor, she’s been mainly trained as a skirmisher… And that first fight with the hobgoblins you had with her has left its toll already. I was right. You are asking too much. What say you?”

Victor absorbed that information, his tactical mind adjusting rapidly. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help anything. He needed a path forward that both of them could accomplish.

“This is on me. I got too ambitious,” he stated without a moment’s hesitation. “It shows I’m not thinking clearly when I make a plan without knowing the limits of my units—not that you’re my unit, Lady. I’m just pointing out the leadership failure. I agree.”

“Kaia,” he gently coaxed, turning to her. “What did we talk about at camp?”

Kaia wiped her eyes. “That…I’m stronger than I know?”

“And about being smart.” He smiled despite the situation. “Sera’s right. I was getting ahead of myself. That’s my fault, not yours.”

He saw Sera’s blindfolded eyes narrow—a scowl he could feel even without seeing her full expression. Then she reached up and untied her blindfold, revealing an almost cute glare from those glittering amethyst eyes that seemed to hold distant stars.

“I find it disarming when men swallow their pride… Your willingness to leave your mind open and be utterly honest gives me chills that have nothing to do with the cold.”

That made Kaia giggle, and Victor couldn’t help but shrug.

“What do you want me to do, waste time and bluster with a mind reader? I respect you… Even more after what you just did, standing up to me for my page, here. I could say you’re the perfect actor and this is all a ploy, but…that sort of paranoia is too exhausting for me. I just accept you at face value, just as you have to do the same to me.”

“Well, aren’t you the peculiar one?” she whispered, lilac irises creasing with what looked to be a rare smile. “You continue to defy my sure expectations of men. It’s so rare for me to find men who don’t instantly want to sleep with me at this age… A cultural and principled thing about age from your old world, it seems. Interesting.”

Kaia choked as the noblewoman looked directly at her, then at Victor, her expression serious and moving right past that subject.

“I am obviously going to defer to your tactical and field combat experience, Victor. I would be a fool not to.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “But I can’t run forever like you can. I have physical limits too, as you can quite clearly see with this perfect, still-growing figure. And mental limits, as well—which is why I was resting in your shadow in preparation for this.”

Victor crossed his arms and shook his head with a silent laugh. “You have a certain way of talking, lady, that truly bewilders with those tiny jabs you always throw.”

“What can I say?” She tied the blindfold back in place with deliberate care. “I already told you I am an acquired taste. Be careful not to get addicted… Wine has its pleasures and dangers, after all.”

It amazed him how easily she pivoted from command to provocation—as if vulnerability and control were interchangeable tools. Yes, his mother would adore her.

“So,” the noblewoman interjected with a smile, “here’s what I need for your ‘tactical awareness,’ Victor: time to steal those paralytic bulbs from the hobgoblin camp. I can also sabotage some of their equipment while I am there—cut bowstrings, drop blades in snow—I like to multi-task. But it will take time.”

She crossed her arms in a challenging way. “You will need to handle the ridge lookouts during that window—neither of us can handle that in a timely fashion. Which leaves one question.” Her blindfolded face tilted toward the teen. “Where does Kaia fit into this revised plan? The stage is yours—finish the play, my provocative knight.”

Victor suppressed a snort; she had a way of making him feel like he was walking on a tight rope…yet he enjoyed it. That was rare in a woman. At least, the women he knew on Earth, not that there had been many outside of civilian military roles.

He thought for a moment, weighing her words and the strange warmth behind them, then smiled at both of them.

“Okay. How long will it take you to get down there and do what you need to do?”

Sera considered that for a moment, tilting her head while watching a patch of snow fall to scatter against the brush nearby. “…Walking within the shadow world has its own dangers, Victor. Some creatures could be prowling in it within this cursed forest… Things that can find me. And if the light changes suddenly—a torch flickers, a fire flares—it can cause problems.”

She paused, calculating. “If everything goes smoothly? Twenty minutes. Oh, and Kaia, let us keep our little emotional confessions between us, shall we? We girls don’t need others seeing past the veil we drape over our eyes… Our little secret?” she asked with a sly smirk, one finger resting against her full, down-turned lips.

Kaia actually lit up at that in a way Victor never would have anticipated.

“Sure, Lady Sera.”

“Good. You’re stepping into womanhood splendidly. Also, in public, Lady Seraphina, we must keep up appearances.”

“Mhm.”

“Perfect. Silence is golden.” Victor looked at Kaia as she straightened. “You don’t need to hit anything—if you do, all the better. You just need to distract them. Fire arrows in the direction of targets you see outside the main combat zone I’m in. Draw their attention. That’s more than enough.”

Kaia bit her lip. “But…I want to be by your side, supporting you. I’m not great with a bow. How are you going to fight several dozen frost hobgoblins and a champion? What if the female hobgoblins come out to help them? What if they take hostages?”

Victor shook his head firmly. “Trust me. None of that will matter once I go all in… It isn’t safe for anyone to be nearby. And Sera, you shouldn’t be anywhere near the center of the camp when I do launch my first attack with my bow, because I can’t keep everyone safe when I’m using certain techniques. I don’t have the control needed yet.”

His expression softened. “When I make an entrance, everyone will be focused on me. It will be chaos.”

That seemed to settle things, and the dark-haired noblewoman gave him almost an excited side-glance before it was quickly masked. Kaia still looked uncertain, though.

“You’ll have a real story to tell the settlers when we get back,” Victor added. “You’ve done more than you know already, making it all the way here with me past the hobgoblins, owls, a whole new settlement, and the hike here… You’re amazing.”

Kaia forced a smile. “Thank you, Lord, but I don’t feel amazing… It means a lot when you say that, but it still sucks not being able to help more.”

“You have and are helping,” he assured her. “Don’t downplay your efforts. You’re here because I trust you…and even this paranoid mind reader has trusted you with her tears. I think the number in that club could be counted on one hand, including me.”

“Smooth…” Sera mumbled dully.

That got Kaia back in the mindset, building up her confidence again.

“Good. You look ready. So, let’s complete our mission. Lady Sera?”

“Oh, is it my turn now?” she dryly snickered, fading into the shadows. “Very well. Go on. I don’t need to hold your hand. By the way, I left you a present in your left waist pack to make your job easier. The answer is yes. Don’t lose it… And don’t miss.”

Victor’s brow furrowed as he opened it up and found a small vial of teal liquid—a common nerve agent poison. The champion could probably burn it out of its system, yet that would take time and focus. Not easy when in a fight.

“Never.”

The next twenty minutes were executed with surgical precision.

Victor moved through the canopy like a ghost, amber channeling giving him the speed and strength to leap between massive branches. He purposefully used those with the least snow so as not to slip or make a sound.

The first scout died with an arrow through the eye socket—a clean kill before it even knew he was there. The second managed to turn its head before Victor’s projectile entered its throat. By the time Sera signaled from behind one of the fallen trees nearest to the camp, violet stone shining, five hobgoblin scouts lay dead in the snow.

Victor returned to the ridge where Kaia waited, kneeling beside her behind the massive root structure that provided cover. She was already buzzing with questions, pulse no doubt racing as the time drew close, and whispering as softly as she could.

“Why can’t you just shoot an arrow through the champion’s skull? Like you did to the dire wolf alpha?”

Victor grimaced. “Good question… It’s different when dealing with a sentient hobgoblin. They’re constantly on the lookout for danger—do you see how he scans the treeline every few minutes? He uses amber, ruby, and sapphire—enhanced senses and defenses.”

He waited a moment, having her peek out behind the pine and roots. “Our height is helping to dampen our sounds. We need to be very careful. This only works if we catch them by surprise, just like the wolf, only a bit differently.”

“He’s looking our way,” she hissed, ducking low as the giant, eight-foot-tall creature merely scanned the ridge a distance away, pounding his chest once, snapping his fingers, and shouting at a few nearby goblins. “Did he see us?”

“I don’t think so. He’d be acting way more aggressively if he had. But you’re right that he’s not focused on prey—like the alpha was locked onto the elk, tunnel vision. This champion will see the attack coming with amber slowing his perception of time, the second he hears the crack of my bow… It’s loud, as you know.”

He paused, then took out Sera’s poison and slung around his quiver, laying it beside the teen. “Sera really is something special… Not that you aren’t, but I didn’t even have to ask. I just thought about this, and she provided it. It’ll give me an opening.”

“She…is better than I first thought,” Kaia grumbled lowly. “She’s so…mature, and her words are silky. You’re right. I should learn from her.”

“Maybe not everything,” Victor mused, coating one of his penetrator arrows—the heavy, armor-piercing type with a narrow head designed to burrow deep. “Be yourself, Kaia. I don’t need a second all-knowing noble lady jabbing me and teasing me every second… You’re perfect just the way you are.”

That put a bigger smile on her face than he’d seen throughout the whole day.

“Understood.”

“Good. Alright. I need you to distance yourself and get ready. Once I fire this… Focus on the task at hand—the forest line. It will be hard to pull your eyes away from me, but recover fast. Okay?”

“…Okay?”

Her confused eyes lingered on him before she shuffled away, taking his quiver with her as he pointed at it to get her attention.

He took another deep, deliberate breath, letting it out slowly, rolling around his neck.

The first strike sets the whole pace… Caldren, I wish you were here to see me use your technique for the first time in live combat. The fact that those shadowmane managed to hurt you that much really does show how badly age wears on you…even if you’re a legend.

I hope to be able to use Ignis Vector as many times as you could in your youth… No, more with amber—just like my father. First, I need to actually get to the point of being able to use it in live combat… I’m not there yet.

There it is. The champion is beginning the rounds. It’s time…

He nocked the arrow, channeled amber, drew his unique bow, poison slick on the metal, and waited. Below, the hobgoblin champion paused by the central fire, pointing at a diagram made in the mud toward several leaders, he assumed.

One breath.

Two.

Victor released.

The string screamed.

The arrow didn’t fly—it detonated forward, a thunderclap through the trees.

The champion twisted, too late. Steel and poison smashed through ribs, punching out the other side in a spray of black-blue mist. The brute staggered, bellowing, flame already bursting from its figure, gathering it to sear the wound shut.

The forest answered with chaos—horns, shouts, and snatched steel.

Snaps and snarls in their unique language echoed what Victor already knew. Seraphina had left them a little surprise of her own in broken bows and lost weapons.

Victor rose and walked into the open on the ridge, leering down at his targets. Fire crawled over him like breath returning to a forge, coiling instead of spilling.

Kaia stumbled back further from the heat, choking as the frost evaporated, swirling upward. He no longer heard her after the first gasp.

He activated the Ignis Vector technique.

Heat drew tight to his frame, ruby light sheathing every tendon, every breath. The air around him warped, the snow hissing into vapor. He repelled it from his skin at the same time, keeping himself safe while compressing it into the thinnest layer possible until it became plasma.

Then the world bent forward with him, gravity compressing every cell in his body.

[Brief POV Shift: Kaia]

One moment, Lord Victor stood a distance away, wreathed in the hottest flames she’d ever felt, the shine burning her retina.

She blinked.

The next moment, he was gone—only a trail of light remained, a streak of fire cutting through the air like one of those falling stars in stories.

Her eyes snapped down to the camp just as the impact hit—she felt it vibrate up her leg, the cursed chill somehow vaporized with the snow nearby.

The explosion sent a sound she’d never heard before assaulting her ears.

When her spotted vision cleared enough to see, she saw the impossible.

Fire erupted in a twenty-yard radius, swirling upward into a tornado of heat. Superheated ice became steam. Snow evaporated instantly. Hobgoblins in the immediate area turned to charcoal, their screams cut short.

The champion stood at the center, barely burned. Fire flowed around it rather than through it, its ruby channeling forming a protective barrier that felt impossible for such a display of raw power from her lord.

It reached behind its back and drew a massive greatsword—easily six feet long, clearly taken from some past raid on southern settlements, she assumed.

Kaia’s attention then snapped to movement at the treeline as Lord Victor blurred into apocalyptic movement—everything was on fire.

More hobgoblins appeared, hesitating at the cycling inferno and chaos—six of them.

Her hands shook as she rose, drawing her bow. Her muscles screamed in protest, but she channeled amber, feeling it flow through her the way she’d been taught.

She fired.

The arrow missed by a foot.

Dammit! Stop shaking… Oh?!

But the hobgoblins saw it land. They pointed toward her position, snarling.

She didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.

And below, fire roared.

Her lord was fighting an army down there. The least she could do was keep these six from flanking and firing arrows at him from a distance. Sera was actually petrified standing beside the scorched and burning tree, looking as stunned as Kaia felt.

But she had a mission to complete!

She reached for another arrow, accidentally pulling one with a ruby-coated head—one of Victor’s fire arrows. She quickly set it aside, finding a regular shaft.

Her second shot flew.

This one hit—buried itself in a hobgoblin’s shoulder. Not a kill, but it staggered.

The other five began pointing and climbing toward her position, probably not wanting to get between their boss and the living firestorm—Kaia didn’t blame them.

You can do this, Lord Victor!

She fired again, missing only by a hair’s breadth, but the next one would land—it didn’t, but she kept her focus.

I can do this!

[Return to Victor's POV]

The firestorm raged around him, embers and ash swirling in the superheated air.

Victor moved through it like a demon given flesh.

His amber-enhanced claymore sang as it carved through the first hobgoblin to panic leap past a fiery patch—a clean diagonal cut that separated torso from legs. The second tried to raise a shield; Victor’s boot shattered its knee before his blade took its head.

Amber and ruby channeled in perfect sync, the mental siege overlaying reality as he battled closer and closer to the wall. Every grinning enemy wore his face—mocking, sneering copies fighting him from all sides as he carved through the battlefield both mentally and physically.

He moved with superhuman speed, weaving between attacks, his sword a blur of motion.

A hobgoblin burst upward with a sharp channel of wind, coming down a spear thrust at his back. Victor pivoted, letting it pass inches from his ribs, then grabbed the shaft and pulled. The creature stumbled forward into his elbow strike—face crunching, skull fracturing.

The champion roared, finally recovering from the arrow by searing its own flesh and internal lungs. It was just as tough as he’d predicted.

It charged, greatsword raised, all three inner stones flaring. Fire wreathed one arm, ice the other, while amber enhancement turned its muscles into iron cords.

Victor met the charge head-on.

Their blades collided with a sound like thunder. The force drove Victor back three steps, boots carving trenches in scorched earth.

The champion pressed, using its superior strength to try to overpower him. But Victor had fought enemies stronger than him before—like his father.

He channeled amber harder, mentally entering a duel with two versions of himself within the meteor-filled landscape, maneuvering around the falling madness—at least in his soul-space he was able to use the Ignis Vector, repositioning and meeting a tricky technique his father had taught him.

On the outside, Victor matched the creature’s strength blow for blow. Their swords locked, enhanced edge against enhanced edge, both straining for ground.

Yet, Victor did something the champion didn’t expect.

He employed a sword technique, which the monster had never had to learn, as it relied on brute strength. With a twist of his wrists and a pivot of his hips, the greatsword was redirected—not blocked, but guided past him.

The champion stumbled, overbalanced by its own momentum.

Victor swept its leg.

The creature fell, and Victor was on it instantly. He dropped his claymore, grabbed the champion by its massive arm, and executed a slam, flinging it with full strength into the hard, heated soil his flames had exposed. 

Eight feet of muscle and fury slammed into the ground hard enough to crack earth, sending dirt erupting around them. And before it could recover, Victor drove his knee into its throat—crushing the windpipe, disrupting its breathing.

The champion thrashed, stronger than most creatures Victor had fought, even when poisoned. However, that could have been burned out of his system by now. But he held firm, using leverage and positioning rather than raw strength.

“Sera! Now!”

She flickered into view at the edge of the firelight, wincing as she jumped through a burning patch. Her leather smoked, but she didn’t hesitate.

She crushed three paralytic bulbs in both hands, then squeezed the nectar directly into the champion's wide, struggling eyes as it roared spittle at her with a blast of frost that crystallized against her raven hair.

The clear liquid ran down across Victor’s neck as he held the creature down.

The champion’s movements weakened, muscles went rigid, and then it began to lock up—whatever type of channeling it did seemed to be disrupted. 

Sera placed one hand on the champion’s twitching face, hissing at how cold it was, and slid the other through Victor’s hair to make contact with his scalp.

“Hold on. Its soul is strong,” she whispered. “This isn’t like before—it’s going to hurt.”

The world inverted.

Victor was no longer in his body. He was inside the champion’s memories, Sera guiding him deeper than she’d gone before with the scout, searching.

[Shared Vision]

Darkness. Then—light.

Cold light that bled through ice like veins under pale skin.

Victor gasped as the world lurched into focus, pain erupting behind his eyes—a labyrinth carved by purpose, not nature. Frost-slicked walls pulsed with trapped magic, the air sharp with copper and wet stone. The smell of rot and frozen breath clung to everything.

Cages lined the corridor, frostbitten fingers clutching iron bars. Human women—young and old—huddled in isolation, lips blue, eyes hollow. The scent of infection and blood threaded through the cold.

In the corner cell, the snow woman lay.

Skin white as carved bone, hair a shimmer of blue silk streaked in black. A ruby was fused to her throat—a power suppressant the champion had fused into her flesh—faintly glowing with power. She sat utterly still. The other hobgoblins avoided her, fear stitched into every step.

The memory convulsed.

Deeper tunnels flowed like water. A roar of heat meeting cold—steam and whispers mixing. They were traveling further north to meet someone at the treeline outside the cave.

A frost hobgoblin commander.

He appeared in the dark, dragging a chain thicker than Victor’s arm. Ten feet of scar-scored hide, veins of sapphire burning under the skin, plate armor taken from dead nobles welded to its flesh. A dozen magic stones dangled from its neck, each the size of a pebble, taken from the nobles he’d captured over the past five winters of his leadership in the ‘southern harvest lands’ as they called it.

Something massive stirred behind it that tightened Victor’s chest as the chains scraped against ice. A smell of blood and ozone.

An ogre—twenty feet tall—its muscles layered with frost, eyes empty but obedient. The chain linked them, master to beast—a pet.

Then—another presence that had Sera and him linger on the memory longer than any other, the pain growing sharper. But the revelation was too insane to look away from.

Half-human. Half-hobgoblin.

A female. Too graceful, too composed and refined for the brutish race in her extravagant dire bear fur. Her voice slid through the frozen air in perfect Imperial Common, soft but commanding that the hobgoblin champions had been trained to understand.

“These are…acceptable. Use the herbs I gave you, Cho-ga, or they’ll die before I can use them. If you fail to deliver another batch, then you will suffer the same fate as your predecessor. I need them to be functional and alive, fool. You are only increasing the snow witch’s undead horde like this…”

The vision fractured.

Flashes—

—A fortress of ice at the far northern mountain range’s base, tens of thousands of hobgoblins marching in formation, fifty miles from them.

—Champions and commanders kneeling before hobgoblin generals, carved from stone and shadow with incredible power.

—Maps etched in frost, lines of fire marking the northern expanse that they were losing ground on…fears of extinction from colossal creatures and humanoid figures this champion quaked at. Frost giants.

—A throne room inside their mountainous kingdom of pure ice, black stone, and something vast breathing within it, fiery chambers of magma.

Pain.

Light.

Another flash—

A burning settlement.

They were back to the events that took place over the last few days. The noble girl with the lost leg was defeated and held high by the champion, her scars of wind on its chest seared closed—she was fifteen, and the champion did not think she was one of the great nobles who were powerful, or, as they knew them, reincarnates.

A rescue attempt! Knights in silver and red banners—his cousin’s colors—cutting through the chaos. The prince himself laughed as he parried this champion’s sword, glowing with ruby flare and lightning crackling around him that shocked the brute.

“We’re here for the snow woman!” he shouted. “Save the stupid baroness’ daughter if you can, but don’t be gentle after her defiance… None of this would have happened if she’d just handed over that snow woman.”

“What about your sister, my prince?”

“There’s a reason I didn’t bring her, Jackson… An example needs to be made.”

They weren’t saving—they were collecting. It made Victor’s blood boil. The king had raised and tricked his twin sister into thinking she was his child.

Then the air shifted.

A tremor. A growl that lived in the bones.

A dire bear larger than any Victor had been warned about rose from the lake, cracking ice with a dead snake over seventy feet long in its mouth that it dropped on the sight of them. Amber and jasper burned through its fur in patterns—stones at least pebble-sized—breath steaming like geysers as the earth trembled with its magic with each step.

Twenty-six feet as it rose on two legs to its full height, it towered over the petrified nobles and hobgoblins engaged in battle.

Then, it roared, dropping to two legs and still fifteen feet tall as it launched forward at unreasonable speed.

“Shit, that thing’s huge! Fall back!” his cousin yelled, bolts of lightning ripping forward only to be met by upturned earth, the bear channeled with its earth magic. “Fall back!”

The champions echoed the same order, breaking through both memory and mind—

—and then everything snapped.

Darkness swallowed light.

The smell of ozone and blood lingered.

Victor gasped, breaking the connection. His head spun, his mind trying to process everything he’d seen.

Sera slumped against him, trembling from the effort as her blindfold slipped away, exhaustion in her cosmic eyes. They flickered, showing something gold below the amethyst’s channeled magic before she managed to hastily resecure it.

Below them, the champion convulsed weakly, still paralyzed but beginning to burn away the toxin. Sera drew her dagger without hesitation—one slash across the throat, then a precise stab through the heart.

The champion’s eyes went wide. It tried to burn the wounds closed, tried to channel amber for one last surge of strength, throwing them off and struggling to its feet. It lurched at Sera, the raven-haired girl throwing her arms up to protect her face, no scream.

Yet, Victor was there, though, kicking it hard enough to send the dying creature tumbling into a group of hesitant hobgoblins and what remained of his pools of fire.

They scattered, screaming, fleeing toward the trees as their leader bled out and burned in the flames, unable to channel flames to protect itself.

Victor stood slowly, breathing heavily. His mind twisted with questions about everything he’d seen—the half-hobgoblin. This massive settlement changed everything he thought about the north, the organized army, the hobgoblin king on the ice throne, and his cousin’s casual cruelty…the colossal things even the king feared past the northern mountains.

But right now, none of that mattered.

“Move,” he growled to himself, forcing himself up. “You have a mission to complete…”

He picked up his claymore and turned toward the cave entrance.

“Victor?” Sera’s voice was quiet. “What about the stragglers? What about Kaia?”

“They all would flee after witnessing that,” he grunted, rubbing his temple from the migraine behind his eyes. “The wildlife will pick them off eventually. They’re on this side of the river, cut off from their settlement. Right now, my focus is on the prisoners.”

He looked back at her and Kaia, who had climbed down from the ridge, breathing hard, blood leaking from a few new wounds from fighting the scouts, but she was alive.

“The females in the cave…the young ones we saw…” He paused. “I don’t think you’d want to see what needs to be done… Neither of you.”

Understanding passed between them.

“Wait until I come out, my lady… I’ll handle the dirty work,” Victor mumbled quietly.

Then he walked toward the darkness, claymore in hand, to do what survival in the north demanded.

The screams that followed echoed through the caves for several minutes before everything went quiet and the last hobgoblin lay cut in two.

With that work done, he turned to the petrified girls, all blindfolded, wrapped in fur pelts that the half-hobgoblin woman must have given the champion to give them.

He still had a mission to complete.

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