CHAPTER 117
Frostkin Champion
My first return to the City of Ice was met with celebration. The Frostkin gathered in great numbers, their voices echoing between towers. The ruins I remembered were gone; in their place stood a city rebuilt by their own hands, its old grandeur reborn in clear, glassy ice.
My distaste for the Abyss was not something the Frostkin shared. They called it home, even now that the Isari had begun exploring beyond this dark place, scouting the way ahead on my command.
“Gods walk the land above,” Ella warned me, but I already knew.
Only now did I understand it was a consequence of the Great Ward weakening.
I had thought, more than once, of going ahead alone toward District 11. Curiosity pulled at me, but my promise held stronger. Even as a God, I feared what walked beyond. I was no war deity, no storm or blade. My divinity lay in creation, not in the act of tearing things apart. My power was my work, not my fists.
I had forged a little more than two hundred Glacier Steeds, but fewer than half had riders worthy of them. So I often returned to the City of Ice through Hazeveil’s shadow steps, vanishing from the district without any of them realizing I was gone.
Ciren and Miran had continued their craft in my absence, shaping new frost vessels, which I gladly filled with wills from the grey. Yet, all of that was secondary to the reason I returned: a single creation worthy of the auric core resting in my keeping.
For a long time, I wondered what to do with it. Surely, absorbing it would allow me to reach heights and power comparable to those of the old gods, perhaps even surpass some of them. The temptation was there, sharp and persistent.
But in the end, I was what I had always been—a maker. My strength did not come from hoarding power inside myself, but from what I gave form to. So the choice became clear. The auric core would go to the one who had stood with me longest, who had endured trial after trial, who had taken Sjakthar’s strongest strike head-on and survived when every other fell.
“I’m unworthy of such a gift,” Haldrin, one of the first of the Frostkin, said to me.
The City of Ice towered around us, its glassy structures scaled for giants. Even the smallest hall dwarfed the buildings of the human districts. In my absence, the Frostkin had raised new pillars and walls, every surface etched with scenes cut into the ice, memories that would never be forgotten.
That was their way of recording their own history, just as humans did with their libraries. The ice structures held carvings showing moments of pain, of triumph, of sacrifice, frozen monuments to those who hadn’t returned.
One panel showed the battle against Sjakthar. I saw Haldrin there, alongside the best of the Frostkin, charging into the God’s domain to stand at my side. They depicted him as a hero among the Frostkin, the juggernaut sent head-on against a God.
Frostkin filled the square around us, row after row of towering figures gathered to witness Haldrin’s ascension.
They were giants by human standards, but I did not feel small among them. My ice tendrils lifted me from the ground until I hovered at the height of their faces. I gestured toward the distant carvings of our battle, knowing every eye could pick out the scenes even from here.
“You are more than worthy,” I told him, even though I knew what I was about to do should have been impossible, guided more by instinct in this aspect than by knowledge.
Replacing a core within a Frostkin was simply unfeasible because that was where its will was stored. One would have to be utterly destroyed and reborn into a new core. Such a transition was bound to break the will of any who attempted it.
Even if a will somehow endured that kind of uprooting, the auric core itself was another problem. Its divine power would crush a mortal will, and if Haldrin survived both the tearing out and the pouring in, he would still awaken inside a core carrying fragments of a divine claim he did not understand.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
It would be an incomplete claim, one he could not fully command, without even the aura that any crimson bore. Yet in sheer power, he would still stand among gods.
Still, instinct told me his will would survive those three impossible feats. My touch on the aspect of creation told me it was feasible, that I could make this single will, the one from Haldrin, to occupy the core that once belonged to a God.
“There are many who might be more worthy,” Haldrin said. There was no fear in him, but his gaze slid to Ella, standing at the edge of the gathering.
As an Isari, her part in the battle against Sjakthar had tipped the scales more than once, and she was the one who, directly or not, pushed me toward ascension.
However, in doing so, she had also shown me that I could never fully trust her. “There isn’t,” I said. “But even if there were someone else, I doubt any other Frostkin would survive what I’m about to do.”
None of the Frostkin disagreed with my choice. One by one, their heads dipped in acknowledgment.
“You honor me, Creator,” Haldrin said at last.
“He shall endure, or be absorbed by the fragments of the claim.” The voices from the grey rose around me, clear and loud. Here, in the heart of the City of Ice, they would not be quiet.
“But only with a shell fitting the claim,” they added, the tone shifting into something that felt like a decree.
The voices spoke of what Ciren, Miran, and I had worked for months, most of a year. The lifeless vessel towered in the middle of the city, a landmark that Frostkin often came to stare at.
It stood twenty meters tall, more than twice Haldrin’s current height, built like a walking fortress rather than a beast. Its chest and back were layered in thick glacial plates, each one overlapping the next like interlocking shields.
Its legs were thick, column-like pillars, set in a wide, grounded stance. Massive anchoring plates formed its feet. When it braced, subtle ridges would extrude from the soles, biting into the ground to hold it steady against the recoil of what we had mounted on its back.
Two enormous cannons rose from its back, shaped from human designs but refined—strengthened to channel both ebony and onyx ammunition. Each barrel was a dense cylinder of ice, hollowed and smoothed until the bore gleamed like glass. The rounds were stored within the creature’s own ice-flesh, drawn up and loaded automatically, as naturally as a Frostkin drew breath.
This was not a mere ornament. It was human artillery married to divine engineering.
At the heart of the vessel, suspended within layers of reinforced ice, rested an auric core, the same core that had once belonged to the God of Perfection. Now I intended for it to bear Haldrin’s will instead.
“Brace yourself,” I told him. “Prepare for pain, and do not break.”
Then I sent one of my ice tendrils forward. It pierced his chest in a single, precise motion, striking the crimson core within and shattering it to fragments.
“Do not dissipate. Hold your shape. Take on your new form,” I commanded, speaking in the language of the world. The words themselves bent at reality, adding weight to my will, but I knew there was only so much that even a God’s command could do against what I was attempting.
For a heartbeat, his will trembled. Its presence thinned until even I could barely feel it, as though it were slipping apart into nothing. Then, without warning, it flared back to life. I seized it and pulled, guiding it toward the waiting auric core.
For a few heartbeats, the City of Ice fell utterly silent. Then the world changed. Power surged, and the auric core flared to life, blazing gold. Its light cut through the glassy ice, spilling outward until, for a few brief moments, the Abyss itself seemed lit from within.
Then he moved.
Haldrin towered over the gathered Frostkin, dwarfing even the tallest among them.
The claim settled into our design, fragments of it affecting the way the frost plates aligned, making each line fall into the next with a precision that was almost uncomfortable to look at.
The glowing then faded, yet something pale and gold flickered deep inside the ice whenever he shifted his weight. Each movement sent ripples of power—the strength to shatter mountains with his bare fists, to run through anything in his path with his massive shoulders, and human artillery on his back that would make any God think twice before facing him, even without an aura or a complete claim.
Haldrin turned his gaze to me first, then swept it over his gathered kin. Slowly, he raised his massive fist toward the sky and let out a roar that rolled through the city like thunder.
“Haldrin! Haldrin! Haldrin!” the Frostkin answered, their voices rising in unison. They repeated his name again and again.
In their chant, I heard it clearly, the birth of a God rising from a race I myself had forged.
Of all the dangers, this second step worried me the least. Haldrin’s will was strong enough to bear auric power; I had never doubted that. What unsettled me was the greater truth, that in making a God, I was pushing against the natural order itself.
Deep down, I knew the claim would still be there, at least in fragments. That echo of divinity could, at any moment, rise and swallow him whole.