CHAPTER 221: MARKINGS

There are stories told in Nevareth’s oldest taverns, whispered by hunters who’ve survived encounters with the mountain’s true masters, about creatures that predate the empire itself.

The Glacier Elk is one such legend, a beast so massive, so ancient, so impossibly dangerous that only fools and the suicidal actively seek it out.

Emperor Soren Nivarre, it seemed, was both.

He’d been tracking the creature for hours, following signs that most hunters wouldn’t recognize and fewer still would dare pursue. A depression in snow too large to be anything smaller than catastrophic.

Trees stripped of bark at heights that suggested something with the reach of a siege engine. Frozen ground cracked under weight that physics shouldn’t allow, bearing the distinctive pattern of cloven hooves each the size of a man’s torso.

And everywhere, that smell, the particular scent of old ice and older magic, the kind that made mortal instincts scream warnings about predators and prey and the terrible mistake of confusing which category you occupied.

Soren inhaled deeply, tasting winter and violence on the wind, and his smile widened into something that would have concerned anyone who knew him well enough to recognize what it meant.

This was going to be fun.

The tracks led north and up, climbing toward peaks that disappeared into storm clouds that never dispersed, toward territories where the cold stopped being merely uncomfortable and became actively hostile to life.

The kind of cold that turned exposed flesh black in minutes, that froze lungs mid-breath, that killed with the patient certainty of an executioner who knew time was always on their side.

For Soren, it felt like coming home.

His ice magic sang in his veins, responding to the environment with the enthusiasm of a caged thing finally released into proper wilderness.

Frost spread from his footsteps without conscious thought, creating purchase where none existed, forming bridges across crevasses, building stairs up cliff faces that should have required hours of careful climbing.

He moved through the frozen landscape like he was part of it, not conquering the terrain but flowing with it, understanding its rhythms and dangers on some fundamental level that transcended mere knowledge. This was his element. His kingdom. His birthright carved into every glacier and snowdrift and frozen peak.

The Glacier Elk’s trail led him past frozen waterfalls where ice formed in layers like geological strata, each one marking a different age, a different winter, time itself made visible in crystalline form.

He paused at one, touching the surface with bare fingers, feeling the magic locked inside, centuries of accumulated cold, waiting for someone skilled enough to wake it, to weaponize it, to understand that ice was never merely frozen water but potential violence held in stasis.

Beautiful.

Everything about this hunt was beautiful, the isolation, the danger, the certainty that he was tracking something that could kill him as easily as he intended to kill it. No politics here. No court machinations. No careful navigation of Vetra’s schemes or nobles’ ambitions or the thousand small cuts that came with wearing a crown.

Just predator and prey and the fundamental question of which was which.

The trail narrowed, forcing him onto a ridge so thin he had to turn sideways, his back pressed against rock face, nothing but empty air and lethal drop on his other side. Ice bridges formed under his feet as he walked, delicate constructions that would have taken master craftsmen days to build, appearing and solidifying in heartbeats because Soren willed them into existence and the ice obeyed.

He wondered idly what the observers back at camp were thinking, watching through their scrying magic as their Emperor casually defied death in pursuit of prey that any sane person would have abandoned hours ago.

Probably having collective disbelief. Aldric was definitely extremely angry. The man would lecture him for days about appropriate risk assessment and imperial dignity and setting better examples.

The thought made Soren grin wider.

He climbed a vertical cliff face using ice like ladder rungs, each handhold forming exactly where and when he needed it, his ascent more dance than struggle.

His father, the late, unlamented Emperor who’d seen his son as tool rather than person, had trained him in this. Had thrown him into frozen wastes with nothing but his magic and survival instinct, had left him to either adapt or die, had beaten lessons about power and control into flesh and bone until they became indistinguishable from breathing.

Soren had hated every moment of that training. Had fantasized about patricide more times than he could count. Had eventually enacted those fantasies when his father’s cruelty finally crossed lines even Nevareth’s brutal culture couldn’t ignore.

But the skills remained. The understanding of ice magic that went beyond mere technique into something closer to instinct, to identity. His father had wanted to create a weapon. Had succeeded, though not in ways the old bastard would have appreciated.

Because Soren had learned something his father never understood: power without purpose was just violence. And violence without control was just madness.

He could be violent. Could be mad. Could be the monster his father had tried to forge.

But he chose when. Chose where. Chose the target with precision that his father’s blunt-force approach to cruelty had never achieved.

Like now, hunting prey that tested his limits, that demanded his full attention, that required him to be the weapon his training had created but wielded by his own will rather than another’s command.

The summit of the cliff opened into a landscape of deep snow drifts, some piled high enough to bury buildings, all of them hiding dangers, crevasses, sudden drops, patches of false ground that would collapse under weight.

Soren navigated them with the confidence of someone who could sense the ice beneath, who knew where it was solid and where it was treacherous, who moved through winter’s traps like he’d designed them himself.

The Glacier Elk’s tracks were fresher here, deeper, the spacing suggesting increased speed. It knew it was being followed. Was trying to lose its pursuer or lead them into danger or both.

Good. Prey that fought back was so much more satisfying.