Frostclaw burned its own altars before dawn.
Not in defiance.
In preparation.
The first reports came with the cold light of morning—messengers racing across borders with eyes too wide and voices too thin.
“They’re slaughtering their shrine-keepers,” one scout rasped. “Draining them. We watched the blood run into the mountain like offerings.”
Kael’s jaw locked.
“They’re severing Heaven manually,” Rowan said grimly. “If the gods won’t answer them—they’ll build something that does.”
The shadow stirred darkly inside me.
When gods grow silent, priests do not lose faith. They grow ambitious.
Frostclaw’s retreat had been illusion.
They had not withdrawn to recover.
They had withdrawn to transform.
By midday, strange smoke began bleeding from the northern peaks—thick and black-red, thr
