Ludger pressed his palms together one more time, sealing the final joints with a pulse of magic. The rumbling beneath his feet faded. The newly built lodge stood there—broad, low, and sturdy, the faint steam rising from its surface as the last remnants of magic dispersed into the air.

Then, as the mana drained from his veins all at once, dizziness hit him like a hammer.

“Shit…” he muttered under his breath, staggering a step back and catching himself on the nearest wall. His head was spinning; the cold air burned in his lungs. He had pushed too much, too fast.

Darnell stepped forward, his eyes widening slightly. “You overdid it again, didn’t you?”

Ludger smirked weakly. “You call it overdoing… I call it getting the job done.”

The captain just sighed, shaking his head, while Kharnek stared at the structure with open disbelief.

“Impressive,” the northerner rumbled, his breath fogging in the freezing air. “You build like the earth itself obeys you.”

“Yeah,” Ludger muttered, rubbing his temple, “and the earth charges a damn high price for obedience.”

He looked up at the newly raised shelter—a fortress born from frozen soil. It wasn’t elegant, but it was solid. It would keep the cold out, give the people something stable.

And for now, that was enough.

The massive shelter had a faint warmth bleeding into the freezing air. It stood like a freshly awakened beast—silent, solid, and undeniably alive.

Maybe it was thanks to that, that no one moved to approach it.

The northerners stood in a loose half-circle, staring at the structure as if it might suddenly sprout claws. Their hands rested on their weapons out of habit, and their eyes flicked between the entrance and Ludger, who was leaning on the wall trying not to look like he was about to fall over.

He could feel their suspicion as easily as the frostbite in his fingers.

“Go on,” he said dryly, waving a gloved hand toward the building. “It’s not gonna eat you. Probably.”

That didn’t help.

They looked at each other, muttering something in their guttural northern tongue—no doubt something flattering like ‘the earth-sorcerer wants to bury us alive.’

Eventually, Kharnek let out a low growl and stomped forward. “If he wanted to kill you,” he barked, glaring at them, “you’d already be six feet under.”

That silenced them fast.

The commander ducked inside, his heavy boots thudding against the new floor, Darnell following after him with a torch in hand. Their voices echoed faintly from within as they checked the stability, the fire pits, and the airflow. The sound of boots against stone and low grunts of approval drifted out of the entrance.

Ludger took the moment to steady his breathing, hands on his knees, and muttered under his breath, “I should start charging rent for this kind of effort.”

After a few minutes, the two men reemerged.

Darnell brushed some dust from his gloves and nodded with visible satisfaction. “It’ll hold. Good airflow, good insulation, no signs of cracking. If we fill the fire pits, this thing will be warm enough to keep two hundred of the camp alive through the night.”

Kharnek’s eyes glimmered faintly as he looked back at the structure. “Sturdy. No tricks. Doesn’t even creak.”

Darnell exhaled a puff of mist and looked at Ludger. “Still, if we’re going to build more of these, I might need to request potions from Lord Torvares, anything to keep you from passing out halfway through a wall.”

Ludger smirked, trying to look less pale than he felt. “Potions would be nice. Or a second me.”

That actually drew a brief chuckle out of Kharnek, a rough sound like gravel grinding against steel. “I always knew you were a monster,” he said, folding his arms. “But at least you’re a reasonable one.”

Ludger raised an eyebrow. “Reasonable’s not the word most people pick.”

“Then they don’t know how to build a shelter from snow and stone in one breath,” Kharnek said simply.

The air around them was still cold and sharp, but the tension among the northerners had softened just a little. The monster from the battlefield was now the man who had built them a home in the frost.

Ludger leaned back against the newly formed wall, exhaling slowly. “Good,” he said under his breath. “At least they’ll hesitate to stab me after I’ve built their house.”

Night fell quickly in the north. The last sliver of sun vanished behind a wall of storm-gray clouds, and within minutes, the temperature plummeted like the world itself was exhaling frost.

The wind howled low across the plain, scattering snow in thin, ghostly veils that shimmered in the dim blue light of the torches inside the tents. Even the most stubborn northerners—those who had crossed their arms earlier and declared they’d rather freeze than step into an imperial-made building—started to move.

Groups of broad-shouldered warriors trudged in, their boots caked in frost, the steam from their breath mixing with the faint warmth inside.

They didn’t say much as they entered, only grunted or nodded toward Ludger when they passed him. Some still eyed him warily, but exhaustion and cold outweighed pride tonight.

Ludger watched them go in, arms folded. “See?” he muttered to Darnell. “Didn’t even have to threaten to bury them alive this time.”

The captain smirked faintly and continued overseeing his own men, who were finishing the loading of the wagons. Inside the crates, faint bluish light pulsed—shards of the glacial mineral Kharnek’s people had mined from the labyrinth. Each piece was sharp and unnaturally cold, yet when infused with mana, it could store energy for days.

As his soldiers secured the last wagon, Darnell gestured toward the open plains. “We’ll need to set up the rest of the camp around this structure. If we keep spreading out like this, we’ll waste too much manpower just keeping paths clear of snow.”

He crouched near the firepit, drawing a rough outline in the dirt. “The next few buildings should follow this layout—big central halls, minimal outer structures. Shared heat, shared space. Saves both time and energy.”

Ludger knelt beside him, studying the sketch with narrowed eyes. The design was functional and compact—simple longhouses connected by covered walkways, creating a sort of fortified half-circle around the labyrinth’s entrance. “Efficient,” he said. “We can expand these later once the temperature stops trying to kill us.”

“That’ll take a miracle,” Darnell muttered.

Kharnek, standing nearby with his arms crossed, snorted. “You’ll get used to it. Or you’ll die and stop complaining.”

Ludger sighed. “Inspirational as always.”

Still, as he looked at the rough plan, he could already see how it might work. The north was harsh—too harsh to settle permanently without heavy reinforcement—but a small, strong base here could become something more later.

Darnell nodded toward the wagons as his men finished securing them. “We’ll send these back south tomorrow. The minerals should be enough to cover supplies for the next few weeks. But you know how it is—sooner or later, most of these people will have to move closer to the border. This land’s not meant for permanent settlement.”

Ludger exhaled through his nose, watching his breath mist into the cold air. “Yeah. But before that, we’re making sure they have something that lasts through the winter.”

He looked toward the shelter again, where faint orange light flickered through the cracks of the doorway and muffled voices echoed inside—laughs, arguments, life.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. And for now, in the middle of the frozen north, that was enough.

Before long, Ludger finally turned his attention to the crates stacked beside the campfires. Inside, faint blue light pulsed through the slats—soft, steady, and oddly hypnotic.

He crouched beside one and pried it open with his knife. Inside lay several chunks of crystalline ore, rough-edged and irregular, but unnaturally smooth to the touch. Each piece gave off a faint chill that made the air around it shimmer. It wasn’t like regular ice—it didn’t melt, even this close to the fire. Instead, it radiated cold that bit straight through gloves and skin.

“Damn…” Ludger muttered, holding one shard closer. “It’s like holding winter itself.”

The mineral was beautiful in a brutal sort of way—translucent blue, faint veins of white mana threading through it like lightning frozen mid-strike. The faint hum coming from it wasn’t just his imagination either; the stone resonated with his mana sense, vibrating faintly like a quiet note at the edge of hearing.

He stood up, turning toward Darnell, who was finishing some paperwork beside a lantern. “You ever seen this stuff before?”

The captain walked over, his eyes narrowing as he examined the ore. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That’s Froststeel Ore. Comes from deep inside frost-type labyrinths like this one.”

He tapped one of the shards with his gloved knuckle, frowning when a mist of cold air drifted up from the impact. “Pain in the ass to handle. It absorbs ambient heat, even from forges, so you can’t melt it easily. You need to let it age first—wait a few weeks until it stops glowing like that.”

Ludger tilted his head. “It loses the glow?”

“Eventually,” Darnell said, nodding. “Once it stops drawing mana from the air, it becomes workable. You can forge it into blades, shields, or armor if you’ve got the patience. But the process eats through fuel and materials like you wouldn’t believe. Still, it holds enchantments like nothing else. It is something that will help us quite a bit, it is pretty valuable. There aren’t many who can produce stuff with this material in the empire.”

Ludger flipped the shard in his hand, watching the faint light pulse through it like a heartbeat. “So... frost monsters drop the hard-to-forge metal. That’s just poetic.”

Kharnek, who had been standing nearby, let out a low grunt. “Our smiths call it Jarnhielm. The metal of the mountain’s breath. It cuts cold into those who wield it wrong.”

Ludger raised an eyebrow. “That’s a name with flair. Maybe I’ll steal it for marketing.”

Darnell snorted. “You’ll need a smith crazy enough to actually work the stuff first.”

Ludger smirked faintly, turning the shard in his hand again before setting it back into the crate. “Then I guess I’ll have to find one. Seems a waste to leave power like this lying around.”

The ore hummed quietly as he closed the lid, its pale glow bleeding through the cracks like a heartbeat buried in ice.

Ludger ran his thumb along the sharp edge of the Froststeel shard, watching how its glow flickered faintly with his touch. For a second, he imagined a full suit of armor forged from it. Blue light gleaming in the dark. Weapons that could freeze flesh and shatter steel.

“Maybe that’s where you went wrong,” he murmured, half to himself. “If you’d had proper smiths and tools, maybe the war would’ve gone differently.”

Kharnek grunted, his tone low but without offense. “Aye. We thought the labyrinth would give us the edge. Thought we could mine the Froststeel, shape it into weapons fit for our warriors. But that ore doesn’t bend for just anyone. Our forges weren’t strong enough. Our blacksmiths weren’t trained for it. We wasted months breaking hammers and burning fuel for nothing.”

He reached into the crate himself and lifted one of the stones. The light reflected off the scars on his hand, and for the first time that night, there was something softer in his eyes. “It mocked us,” he said. “All that strength, right beneath our feet, and we couldn’t claim it. The empire was going to come for it eventually — so we fought first. We didn’t win, but at least we fought for something ours.”

Ludger leaned back against a wagon wheel, the thought settling heavily in his mind. They were fighting for resources. For survival. Not glory, not conquest. Just a chance to own the land and the labyrinth before the empire got its claws into it.

“Still,” he said after a pause, “you managed to find the labyrinth before anyone else. That takes skill. Or luck.”

Kharnek gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Not luck. Our shamans felt it.”

“Felt it?”

“Aye,” the commander said, pointing toward the north where the storm clouds churned endlessly in a slow spiral. “They said the land changed. The air thickened. The winds shifted and began to sing. That’s when the snow started falling harder, the animals fled south, and the sky turned like that.”

Ludger squinted, following his gaze. The clouds above weren’t natural — they circled the mountain like the eye of a great beast, swirling with dull gray light. The same pattern appeared above every labyrinth he’d seen before, but here… it was denser, almost alive.

“So they guessed a labyrinth would appear,” he said quietly.

Kharnek nodded. “Not guessed. Knew. The shamans said the world bleeds mana before it births a labyrinth. They can taste it in the air.”

Ludger exhaled slowly. “Guess they were right.”

He turned the Froststeel shard over in his hand one last time. The faint glow reflected in his eyes as he thought of the future — if he could bring proper forges here, and the right smiths, then maybe this alliance wasn’t just politics. Maybe it could turn into something that would reshape the north itself.

He smiled faintly, the kind of grin that never reached his eyes. “If we play this right,” he muttered, “we might just turn this frozen wasteland into something the empire can’t ignore.”

Kharnek gave him a look — half wary, half amused. “Careful, boy. Sounds like you’re starting to think like a northerner.”

“Maybe I am,” Ludger said, setting the shard back into the crate. “Or maybe I’m just tired of letting other people write the same stories over and over.”

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