The cold hit like a war hammer, an all-consuming force that numbed his skin within seconds. He couldn't see. Nothing existed except for an endless white void which swirled and screamed around him. The howling wind drowned out everything, turning the world into a chaotic, frozen nightmare.
Behind him, distant voices barely managed to cut through the storm.
"FIND HIM!"
"He's not getting far in this shit!"
Chael didn't slow down.
'I've already slipped from your grasps, you mongrels.' Chael muttered to himself and he tread in the snow with Echinda's unconscious figure over himself. 'No chance in hell you're catching me again.'
The Black Storm wasn't just any blizzard. It was death itself, a force of nature that swallowed up anything foolish enough to wander into it. Even the mercenaries knew better than to chase blindly. They would stumble, get lost, maybe even freeze to death.
But Chael knew these storms.
The Ashwara Clan had trained him for this since birth, drilled survival into his bones. He had hunted in these very conditions, learned how to listen to the wind, how to feel the land beneath the snow, how to move when his eyes could see nothing.
That didn't make it any easier, though.
His body was breaking. His arm was ruined, his fingers shattered, his ribs burning with every breath. Each step through the snow felt like wading through thick, icy mud. He could barely move his legs. His breath was coming too fast, too ragged, and Echidna's weight was only making things worse.
He considered dropping her and just going on his own more than a few times, but he decided against it. He still had questions to ask her.
Her snarky, 'I dunno what you're talking about' only made him more curious.
The voices behind him were already fading, drowning in the storm's endless howl.
Then, just as the cold seemed to reach into his very bones, a memory surfaced.
He had been eight when his father died in front of him. He was cut down in the snow. He still remembered the way the old man had fallen, how the blood had seeped into the ice..
He had been forced to take the Ashwara throne, not because he wanted it, but since he was the rightful heir of the clan. Since he was very young, he was also very gullible so it was a perfect situation for the snakes in his clan, which happened to be most of them, to manipulate him.
He hadn't become chief out of duty. In fact he could've run away, from his responsibility and everything - just like his mother shortly after his father had died.
Instead, he became chief purely out of spite because he understood the games those old fogeys were playing and merely pretended otherwise.
Betrayal and deceit was all that was shown to him by all those who he had ever cared about. Yet he never cared and played along to everyone's expectations. He really had no purpose anyway, besides being spiteful and petty.
To his father. To the throne he never wanted. To the elders he spitefully crushed beneath his heel just to keep them from taking what wasn't theirs.
He had ruled a clan out of sheer hate.
And now?
Now he was the last one left.
A bitter smirk twisted his lips. How poetic.
Somewhere in the white abyss, a deep, guttural growl rumbled through the wind.
Something huge.
Something ancient.
Only the deadliest beasts thrived in the Black Storm.
Chael clenched his jaw and pushed forward. If he stopped, he was dead.
****
He was currently somewhere in the northern part of a continent known as Mirelia, also known as the Silver Expanse.
Mirelia was a land of endless ice and frozen tundras, where winters never relented and only the strongest endured. It was a land of warriors, nomads, and war-born tribes like the Ashwara, who carved their existence from the ruthless frost.
Yet, at Mirelia's heart stood Enir-Ilim - a sprawling city that stretched for thousands of miles and it was a kingdom disguised as civilization.
Chael knew the truth.
He had walked its streets and had seen its filth beneath the gold and stone. From the outside, Enir-Ilim was an empire of grandeur, power, and wealth. But Chael had seen what lay beneath the mask - the twisted, rotting core that no one spoke of.
He never spoke of his past there. Not to anyone.
But he had bled in those streets.
And he had killed in them too.
Beyond Mirelia, couple of tens of thousands of miles south, lay Valoria-a land where the sun burned red as blood and deserts stretched beyond the horizon. A world of warriors and warlords, where kingdoms were born in the fire and torn apart just as quickly.
Closer to Valoria, was Thalasia - a land Chael knew little about. Only whispers reached Mirelia of Thalasia's libraries, its sages, and the knowledge hidden within its walls.
Together these three continents harboured a human civilisation of roughly one billion. These continents exist in a vast ocean known as the Primordial Sea, so vast that it's rumoured that the landmass makes up less then one percentage of this realm's structure.
But right now, none of that mattered.
Because right now-
Chael was dying in the Black Storm.
The wind screamed in his ears, a howling force so powerful it nearly lifted him off his feet. His legs burned and his body was frozen and stiff. Every step through the knee-deep snow like dragging himself through iron chains.
It was as if the storm was alive and it swallowed everything in a curtain of white death. The world no longer existed - there was no sky, no ground, no horizon. Only cold and ice.
Echidna's weight was slowing him down by a huge margin. The right decision to ensure his survival was the drop her and move forward on his own.
But something in him wouldn't let him.
Maybe it was pride.
Maybe it was the fact that he no longer care about his own life.
Or maybe he just wasn't done with her yet.
He walked.
One step. Then another. Each footfall a war against the storm.
His fingers throbbed and every broken bone screamed. His breath came in sharp gasps, burning his lungs from the inside.
Then—
Darkness.
This was one of the only scenarios in which darkness would actually be comforting.
Chael knew he had stepped into a cave. He staggered inside, the storm screaming behind him.
The second he crossed the threshold, the wind dulled, muffled by the stone. It was still cold as death, but at least he could breathe.
His knees almost buckled and his broken fingers burned from the frost and pain.
But he kept moving deeper into the cave, past the howling winds, until he knew they were safe enough.
Then, finally, he dropped Echidna onto the ground, who was still out cold.
His breath came in harsh gasps and his vision swimming but he was still alive somehow.
Chael moved quickly, despite the way his body screamed with exhaustion.
He grabbed the tether still attached to his wrist, the same one from his fight with Merken, and looped it around Echidna's wrists, binding them tight. The knot was sloppy and his fingers weren't working like they should - but it would hold.
Satisfied, he exhaled a slow breath and reached into the small pouch tied to his belt.
Inside were Cinderfoil leaves.