CHAPTER 122
Blood on Blue Ice
Haldrin’s roar rolled across the surface world like a shockwave, so vast and raw that I knew it would carry all the way to New Araksiun’s districts.
He pulled the swarm toward himself with nothing but that roar and the sheer weight of his presence. Mana rolled off him like heat from a bonfire, bright and brutal, impossible to ignore. He became a living fortress at the front, large enough to halt the tide and keep our frontline safe.
Rogara finally had her relief.
Thrum.
But even Haldrin at the front was not enough to calm what was happening behind us. The rear line bowed under endless assaults, and our river formation began to fray as chainrunners peeled away from the inner and side lines to reinforce the back.
“Fixed—fixed!” Gorin shouted, his voice nearly swallowed by the roar of battle. “The second wheel is fixed!”
“Forward! Run! Back into position!” Gustav bellowed, forcing order into the chaos by sheer will. He was drenched in blood, yet even as he shouted, some of it vanished, pulled away as Bloodreaver drank greedily.
His eyes shone red, and the killing intent he radiated was so fierce that no one dared disobey.
It was done. The wagons could move again, and so could we. But three more chainrunners joined the hall of the dead before the formation could stitch itself together. Three more who would never return to their families, and still, their sacrifice paved our way.
The bridge’s blue ice accepted the red without care, as if it had always been meant to carry it, its true color.
At the far end of the bridge, Haldrin fought without fear as hordes came at him. Crimson beasts climbed from the Abyss in numbers, scrambling for purchase against his armor, desperate to slip past him and reach us.
He met them with a calm that belonged to gods alone, certain that none of them would pass.
Their auras pressed toward us, each one challenging the unclaimed domain we walked upon, and once again, I found myself with no choice but to call the mist.
What came from me was thinner than the true mist, weaker, and not drawn from the Abyss. Still, it was enough. I pushed my claim across the bridge in a veil so slight it could pass for common fog, but it carried something that could not be mistaken: the pressure of a God’s aura.
Their auras met my veil and stalled, scraping against it and searching for weakness. But nothing below a God could pierce what I had made by aura alone, not while I was awake.
Among the crimson beasts fighting Haldrin was a cousin of dragons: a wyvern, as the chainrunners called it. A rare breed, broad-winged, capable of breathing fire so intense it could make rock seem like butter.
The wyvern’s wings snapped inward as it dove, its massive form becoming a descending weapon. Its hind talons thrust forward, long and hooked, aimed for the center of Haldrin’s back, hoping to impale him and end him in a single crushing impact.
A crack like thunder rolled along the bridge when talons struck. A ring of wind burst outward, flinging frost and ice-shards across the span in glittering spray. The impact should have torn through him, should have split him open like brittle glass.
Instead, the claws barely sank into Haldrin’s back.
They bit into his ice skin and stopped—far, far from his core.
Before Haldrin could seize it, the wyvern beat upward, then swept low again. It kept just out of reach and opened its jaws. Fire poured out in a continuous torrent, bright and violent. If Haldrin did not melt, the bridge behind him might, and the wyvern knew that was what he wanted to protect.
Haldrin stood unarmed, and the vastness of his ice-forged body carried a flaw. His movements, though unstoppable, were slow.
Again and again, he reached for the wyvern, trying to seize it or strike it down. Each time, the beast slipped away just beyond his grasp. It noticed his struggle, and it exploited the weakness.
The wyvern wielded the second rule well.
It bathed Haldrin in fire, then swept the torrent sideways, deliberately painting the bridge with heat. The ice hissed and cracked. The message was clear: move, or watch the path behind you crumble. It tried to force him to expose himself, to reveal more weakness, to make him vulnerable.
Poor wyvern.
It had used cleverness and ruthless fire to live for centuries, to face countless powerful foes, and to reach the strength of crimson. But on this fated day, it underestimated the champion of the City of Ice, a God in his own right.
Haldrin corrected that mistake quickly.
Haldrin inhaled, and his right arm rose again, this time even more slowly, as if he were giving the wyvern time to understand what was about to happen.
The wyvern ignored the gesture and continued to burn him, stubbornly committed to the idea that enough heat could erase the ice.
Thrum.
The pulse from the Deep Abyss reverberated beneath us, impossibly loud for something so far below. The mist of that place brushed the world in faint threads, but it never truly touched Haldrin that far away. He did not need it.
The ice around his arm crackled as he moved, fractures spidering through the air in its wake, leaving faint traces of frost behind.
Thrum.
Around Haldrin, more beasts joined the battle, creatures capable of enduring the wyvern’s fire, some wielding flames of their own that joined it. Many thought Haldrin was finished already.
Haldrin continued his slow movement, forming a punch without haste, as if none of them mattered.
The wyvern, sensing danger, rose higher as it realized Haldrin was about to strike.
Haldrin cared not.
For the wyvern had been within his range when the attack began, when his intent first formed and he would not miss.
Thrum.
He could not miss.
Thrum.
Reality would not allow him to miss.
Thrum.
For he called upon the fragment of his claim—a claim upon perfection.
High above, the wyvern faltered mid-flight. No matter how far it climbed, the weight of Haldrin’s will still pressed upon it, like an invisible hand closing in.
At last, Haldrin struck. The blow shattered the silence, shaking the bridge, the surface world, and even the beasts below. Monsters staggered and fell from the force alone, yet his fist met nothing but empty sky where the wyvern had been.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Far away, the wyvern made no sound at all. It simply came apart in the sky, crushed by a strike that should not have reached it, one that shouldn’t have touched him and still, it did.
Below, Haldrin slowly lowered his fist. A smear of crimson rested upon his ice skin, proof that the impossible strike had connected. To every witness, he had punched empty air. To reality itself, he had struck with perfect precision.
That was the power of a claim capable of being used in battle, even if only a fragment of it—authority to tell reality what must be true.
It was simply… unjust.
I could not imagine defeating Haldrin in direct combat. He was my creation, yet with that claim, he had become far stronger than I. Haldrin could likely take the City of Ice itself if he wished, for my claim could not be used as his was.
For a moment, I wondered if that meant I was a lesser God, even with an aura of my own. But then I realized a claim’s power could not be defined only by how much life it could forfeit.
Was it not even more unjust that I could bring such beings into existence?
Interrupting my thoughts, Gustav turned to me. “Please tell me that thing is on our side.”
Gustav had already noticed the similarities among my creations, especially that they were all made of ice. Yet he still needed confirmation.
Gorin, still shaken by Harold’s death, forced a smile. “Of course it is. It’s like the Guardian,” he said.
“More like the thing that would eat the Guardian. That thing is… huge,” Cairen added dryly.
Gustav let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “No shit. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have noticed. I could’ve sworn it was as small as your tiny sword. Maybe you should go pick its teeth with it and see if it’s going to bite us.”
“Grumpy old man, use your eyes,” Artemis said. “It’s clearing the path ahead, just like the fire-broom lady. It’s just… larger and… a tiny bit more terrifying.”
Then she paused, scanning forward. “Where’s the fire-broom lady?”
“She’s out,” I said. “She collapsed from mana exhaustion, but she’s alive.” I pointed to the wagon where Rogara lay. She had done far more than anyone should have been asked to do, and we owed her for it.
With Haldrin at the front and the back lines moving again, it finally gave the rest of the chainrunners some breathing room. It would not last, but they knew to take what they could.
Haldrin held himself back. I could tell he understood how easily he could shatter the bridge if he fought without restraint. Even limited, he drove the beasts away long enough for our line to reach the far side. The crossing ended, not cleanly, but successfully.
He wielded his claim with a mastery that made it look as if he were born with it. Connecting blows across impossible distances, defending against strikes that should have landed. Their awe was only suppressed by the fear they had upon seeing his brutality.
At one point, a giant lizard beast lashed its tail toward Haldrin’s face. He lifted his hands a fraction too late. The strike should have snapped his head back. Instead, nothing happened. No mark. No sound.
Then his hands came up fully, moments after it was delivered, yet it was only then that the blow arrived, landing cleanly against his palms with a sharp crack. A perfect defense, a lie, but one that the world accepted, because Haldrin had a claim strong enough to challenge the truth.
His form was the same one the chainrunners had seen at the beginning of the bridge, and the resemblance was clear to them. They could not help but stare at that being of myth, a true God. None of them knew what he truly was, but the way he moved made them feel it anyway.
Above all, he was an ally nonetheless, and the morale and confidence that had been shaken didn’t merely return. They turned into something louder: a sudden urge to shout toward him, to show their gratitude toward the one standing ahead of them.
It was never clear who began it, but when the first chainrunner lifted his weapon high and shouted toward Haldrin, the sound spread quickly. One voice became many, and before long, no one passed him without offering praise.
A silent God still notices.
Haldrin’s gaze shifted, and I suspected he remembered the Frostkin after the hunts. He raised his right arm in return, mirroring the gesture. The chainrunners froze for a breath, startled by the response, and when understanding dawned, their shouts rose louder than before.
In those brief moments, my thoughts drifted to the orcs I had seen in the Abyss. Their brutality, the way they carried themselves through violence, the bestial nature I once believed belonged only to fog beasts and not to humans.
Only in the fog could I see how wrong I was. The fog brought out their true nature.
Humans were no more than beasts on the inside, ones who had learned to pretend otherwise for far too long.
“Haldrin, do you desire to join our run?” I spoke, not loudly, but I knew he would hear it.
I had hoped to leave Haldrin to deal with the aftermath of our passage above the Abyss. Yet as I looked along our formation, all I could see was bloodied armor, trembling hands, sagging shoulders. It was impossible to pretend we didn't need his assistance.
“IT WOULD BE MY HONOR!” his voice rolled across the surface like thunder. “BUT I AM NOT AS FAST AS MASTER OR THE LITTLE ONES.”
His voice was nothing like mine—vast, booming, and carried effortlessly on the wind. And he was right. The riders were only human, yet with their Glacier Steeds, they moved like a living current. To slow ourselves to match Haldrin would have been to invite ruin.
The run had stretched far longer than intended on the bridge. I could feel corruption creeping through the fog like a sickness, and I knew that by now nearly every monstrosity in Araksiun must have sensed us. Delay was no longer merely dangerous—it was suicidal.
“You should still come,” I told him. “We do not know what lies ahead, and your presence alone could prevent stragglers from reaching us.”
As I spoke, I felt chainrunner’s eyes turning toward me, puzzled, uncertain, perhaps wondering to whom I was truly speaking.
“IT SHALL BE DONE!” Haldrin answered without hesitation. Only after the last chainrunner cleared his side did he turn and begin to move.
After our exchange, those near me stared. Above all, Gustav kept his gaze on me for long moments, and in his silence I knew a thousand questions swirled.
They recognized Haldrin for what he was, something born from my will and with that recognition came unease they couldn’t hide.
I would explain everything to them, my position as God of Creation, what had happened to me while I was away, all in due time, when we had space to breathe.
That was what I told myself.
Leaving my present problems to a future Omen seemed the wiser choice, as the Omen standing here had a run to survive.
As my mind returned to the run itself, a colder realization settled in. Rogara would not recover in time to help us further, and our three strongest chainrunners, Artemis, Cairen, and Gustav, were already worn far thinner than they should have been this early.
They were not merely tired; they were stretched to breaking. Artemis had slipped back into sleep the moment she found stillness. Gustav’s breathing carried the edge of another impending rage, and Cairen’s movements were slow, deliberate, weighed down by exhaustion.
“Ella, you are there, aren’t you?” I spoke, again not loudly, but this time I called upon the wind to carry my voice farther, to reach even distant ears.
The veil I summoned was too thin, too pale an imitation to grant the vision and hearing my true mist offered. Yet instinct pressed at me all the same. I was being watched. If my eyes could not catch the watcher, there was only one kind of presence that moved like that, slipping between light and shadows—The Isari.
My words had barely settled when they emerged. Tall forms of ice slid out of shadow, their semi-reflective frost plates bending the light so strangely that I saw too many shapes at once, then too few. A trick of their skin, a trick of the fog, a trick of the mind.
Still, I knew the count. Fifteen.
Ella stood among them, unmistakable once my eyes accepted the shifting light. Her antennae angled toward me, tasting the air as if my voice had left a scent.
“Here? There?” she said in her fractured voice. “We stood in many places, waiting. Waiting for your call.”
“Did you anticipate I would make such a call?” I asked.
“Anticipated?” Ella echoed, and the word sounded strange in her mouth. “Perhaps. One thread among many threads, but still… a thread. One where master would require us most.” Her antennae twitched once, sharply. “So we waited.”
“We need eyes and blades ahead,” I said. “Not just to keep pace with the riders, but to outrun them when it matters. We need the Isari.”
They were not a battle unit, but speed was their specialty. Fifteen Isari could bring down even a few crimson if they fought smartly. Against onyx, they were more than enough to carve a corridor through the swarm.
“Indeed, but is it a need?” Ella asked, her tone shifting. “What of my brothers and sisters? Ahead lies a path more treacherous than the Abyss. The land of gods.”
She paused, as if trying to look for the right words. “Die. That is what you ask of us. Die for the little ones. We would die for you, creator. But is our sacrifice a need for the little ones?”
Her loyalty was to her kind first, and I couldn’t condemn it. If anything, it was Ella's challenges, spoken without fear, that most often forced me to measure my own choices.
How many Frostkin had already died holding the tide of crimson beasts from reaching us? How many still fought in the Deep Abyss, clinging to the hope that Haldrin would return and relieve them before the Abyss claimed their names?
That… I did not know.
“I will not command, only ask. It is your choice,” I said then.
“Choice?” Ella repeated, and something like bitter amusement entered her voice. “No choice. Master goes to the land of gods and never returns. The City of Ice dies. And we, after. Who gives us breath, if not the creator?”
She was not wrong. If I never returned, the City of Ice would not die in a single year, but it would begin to fade all the same. The mist would thin with time and eventually vanish. The ice would crumble and at last, so would the Frostkin.