The western ravine burned with cold fire.
Not flame.
Not storm.
Something wrong skittered across the broken ice and stone—light without warmth, shadow without shape. Wolves huddled behind shattered rock and overturned sleds, their breath coming in white, panicked bursts as the last of the evacuees were pushed through the narrow pass beyond the bend.
Kael stood at the ravine’s mouth like a wall carved of blood and fury.
Behind him, Rowan and the loyalists formed a failing line.
Ahead of him—
The god walked.
It wore a man’s body.
That was the first cruelty of it.
Two arms. Two legs. A face that might have once been handsome before eternity carved it hollow. Its eyes were pits of pale fire, cold and endless, and frost cracked beneath each step it took as if the earth itself recoiled
