Winter Howl

Chapter Six – Bond in the Snow

The howl came again, closer this time.

It threaded through the air like something half-wild, half-wrong, pulling at Elysia’s ribs the way the shard’s light had done the night before.

Calian didn’t wait. “Stay with me.”

She almost protested, but his hand closed around her wrist, and the heat of him shocked her enough to follow without question. They cut through the drifts, snow swallowing their boots, the wind thick with the scent of pine and something sharp—like iron cooling after a forge.

It was in the hollow beyond the ridge that they found it.

The creature moved on four legs, but its form was twisted, bones jutting wrong beneath its fur. Its eyes glowed the same sick blue as the wolf from last night, and frost steamed from its body with every breath.

Elysia froze. “That’s not—”

“No,” Calian said, voice grim. “That’s not nature. That’s magic turned rotten.”

The beast’s head snapped toward them. It moved fast—too fast for thought. One moment it was crouched, the next it was a blur of claws and teeth. Calian shoved her behind him and met it head-on, his body moving with brutal precision.

Elysia’s heart pounded. She should run. She should get back to the village. But her palms were burning again—heat coiling in her veins, building like a storm. She raised her hands without meaning to, and the snow in the air seemed to thicken, spinning faster.

The creature lunged past Calian, straight for her.

She didn’t scream. She pushed.

The air cracked, sharp as ice breaking on a lake. A burst of white light exploded from her hands, slamming into the beast and sending it skidding across the snow. Frost raced over its body, encasing it in jagged shards until it stopped moving entirely.

Silence fell.

Her chest heaved. The light in her hands dimmed, leaving only the sting of cold against her skin. Calian turned to look at her, silver eyes bright with something between surprise and recognition.

“You are Snowweaver,” he said quietly.

She swallowed. “I don’t know what that means.”

“You will.” He stepped closer, the winter wind curling between them. “But know this—when you used your magic, I felt it. Like it was my own.”

Her breath caught. “You mean—?”

“We’re bound now,” he said. “And nothing in Frostwood is going to ignore that.”

Before she could answer, the ice around the creature cracked, and the sick blue glow bled into the snow, vanishing into the ground.

Calian’s expression darkened. “It’s spreading.”