Chapter 0004
846 Words
Tamsin
The screams of dying Alphas tasted like snowmelt.
I stood atop the fractured moonstone spire of the Council’s citadel, watching Cassian’s gilded empire burn. Hybrids and Deltas swarmed the streets below, their frost-gloved hands tearing through silver-plated gates. Lysette’s mutated shadow lurked at the city’s edge—a grotesque spire of marrow-addled flesh, her once-perfect curves now distended into a pulsing hive of venom sacs and snapping bone spurs. She’d become a living warning, her very existence mocking the lie of “genetic purity.”
Leo knelt at my feet, Eternity’s Vow embedded in the ice between us. The marrow-light I’d forced into his veins writhed beneath his skin, blue tendrils flickering like trapped lightning. His once-golden eyes now mirrored the chasm’s void—a consequence of our new bond.
“They’re retreating to the human sectors,” he rasped, blood freezing on his lips. “Cassian’s remaining forces are using civilians as shields.”
I crouched, tracing the frost patterns spreading from his collarbone. “And?”
His jaw twitched. Resistance. The marrow-light flared, and he convulsed, veins bulging black. Good. Let him feel the bite of shackles he’d helped forge.
“The Frost Citadel,” he choked out. “They’re excavating it. Found something… older.”
Veyra snarled in recognition. The visions returned—a fortress carved from living ice, its spires piercing a sky choked with dead stars. My ancestral birthright, desecrated by Cassian’s drills.
I yanked the sword free. “Rally the hybrids. We march at twilight.”
Leo didn’t move. “There’s… another prisoner. In the human quarantine zone.” His gaze flickered to my frost brands. “Someone you’ll want to meet.”
The marrow-light in my chest pulsed colder.
The Flesh Markets
Humans called this place the Glass Labyrinth—a slum where gene-splicers and organ traffickers peddled their wares under UV lanterns. Tonight, it reeked of panic. Cassian’s deserters had turned the district into a fortress, their sniper nests glowing with silver-tipped ordnance.
They never saw the ice coming.
I stepped over the frozen corpse of a blood-purist lieutenant, his face preserved in a rictus of terror. My hybrids fanned out, their warped forms devouring the shadows—some with too many eyes, others with translucent skin revealing bioluminescent veins. Beautiful monsters.
The prison block’s door hissed open, releasing a wave of antiseptic stench. Rows of containment pods lined the walls, each holding a Delta child. My Delta children. Their spiral brands glowed faintly under surgical lights, scalpel scars crisscrossing their tiny arms.
Cassian’s final experiment: harvesting Delta DNA to reverse-engineer the Frost Witches’ power.
A whimper drew me to the last pod. The girl inside couldn’t have been older than six, her silver hair matted with blood. But it was her eyes that stopped me—violet, like mine after the chasm.
Another hybrid?
Her tiny fist pressed against the glass. Frost bloomed where she touched.
Veyra howled. Kin.
The pod exploded in a shower of ice. The girl collapsed into my arms, her breath shallow. “They… took Mama to the Citadel,” she whispered. “Said her blood… opens the gate.”
Mama.
The word detonated memories I’d buried:
A woman singing in a language of ice. Hands roughened by combat caressing my hair. The night she vanished, our hut littered with bloodstained Council insignias.
“Name,” I demanded.
“Anya.” The girl’s frost brands pulsed. “Mama’s name is… Dr. Elara Voss.”
The world tilted.
My mother—alive.
The Frost Citadel
Cassian’s drills had violated the citadel’s sanctum. Titanium scaffolds clawed at its glacial walls, steam rising where plasma torches melted ancient ice. Hybrid corpses littered the approach—failed attempts to breach the inner vault.
The girl’s shivering intensified as we neared the entrance. “Mama’s… inside. With the thing.”
Leo stiffened. “Thermal scans showed a lifeform in the core chamber. Massive. Not wolf. Not human.”
The citadel’s doors groaned open, exhaling air colder than death. My marrow-light flared, illuminating walls carved with forgotten histories—Frost Witches battling winged leviathans, their ice spears piercing suns.
Cassian awaited us in the heart chamber.
My mother hung suspended above an altar of black ice, her body threaded with glowing wires. Beneath her, a creature stirred—a colossal being of shifting rime and shadow, its form defying mortal eyes. The true First Alpha.
“Took you long enough.” Cassian’s voice buzzed through a respirator, his body now fused with the citadel’s machinery. “Elara’s blood was the key. But yours…” He licked cracked lips. “…yours will be the catalyst.”
The creature roared. The sound fractured reality, ice splintering into fractal patterns.
Anya screamed. My hybrids fell, clutching bleeding ears. Even Leo crumpled, marrow-light boiling in his veins.
I stepped forward, Eternity’s Vow humming with power. “You mistake vengeance for desperation.”
Cassian laughed, tendrils snapping from his spine to impale my mother. “No. I mistake you for a goddess.”
Her blood hit the altar.
The citadel woke.
- Writer
