The cold in Snowdrift never truly left. It pressed into the bones, wrapped itself around the wooden beams of the longhouses, and whispered through the open spaces between the mountains. It was a constant presence, like the sky overhead, like the ground beneath their feet. It did not ask permission. It simply was.
Neo had never minded it. Cold was predictable. It was steady. It did not change. He had lived for twenty-eight years and trained for fourteen of them under Thal's guidance long enough to learn discipline, but still young enough to know fear.
And yet, as he stood at the edge of the village, watching Thal, Nyra, Luken, Valen, and Tar disappear into the snow, something inside him felt... unsteady. His glowing purple eyes tracked their fading figures, though he knew they would be out of sight soon. His attention should have been on Thal after all, Thal was the reason they had come here, the reason for all of this. He should have been watching Luken, always planning something, or Valen, who was never without an angle.
But his gaze had settled on Nyra.
She walked with that same sure-footed confidence she always carried, her silver hair tied back, her battle axe secured at her side. The last sliver of evening light caught in her strands, making them glow faintly before she and the others disappeared over the ridge. She never hesitated. Never looked back. Never paused to consider the cold against her skin or the weight of the journey ahead.
Neo inhaled slowly, letting the icy air sting his lungs before exhaling again. He didn't know why he was still standing there, why his feet hadn't moved even though there was nothing left to see.
Tor was beside him, her massive form still, unmoving. Unlike Neo, she had already turned away from the fading figures, already accepted their departure. He felt her eyes on him, but he didn't acknowledge it. There was nothing to say.
His tail flicked once behind him, restless, then stilled. The wind shifted slightly, curling around him like a breath against his ear. It carried no words, no whispers. And yet, the feeling did not leave him.
He turned away from the horizon at last, walking back into the village, though his mind remained elsewhere.
Snowdrift had always been a quiet place. The kind of quiet that settled into the bones of its people, that stretched across the frozen land in a way that felt permanent. It was not the silence of emptiness it was the silence of endurance, of existence. The wind still howled, the ice still cracked beneath heavy boots, the sound of hammer on steel still rang from the forges. It was a silence filled with life, and yet Neo could not shake the feeling that something beneath it had changed.
He passed by a group of Jotun hunters, their fur lined cloaks weighed down with freshly caught game. One of them, a burly man with a scar across his left cheek, nodded at him in greeting. Neo gave a slight nod in return but did not stop to speak. They were gutting their kills outside, their hands moving with practiced efficiency, steam rising from the bodies of the animals in the cold air. The scent of fresh blood was sharp, earthy, mixing with the ever-present crispness of ice.
A few steps further, he spotted a fisherman working near the frozen river's edge, his net tangled as he muttered to himself. The Jotun man's breath curled in the air, his massive hands deftly working at the knots. Ice had begun to form in uneven patches along the net's ropes, a reminder that winter in Snowdrift never truly released its grip, even when it seemed to loosen.
Neo crouched near the edge of the river, his gaze following the water beneath the ice. It moved slow, thick, as if reluctant to flow. The ice reflected the sky above a dull, cloud streaked grey. Nothing unusual. Nothing out of place. And yet, he could not shake the feeling that something beneath that frozen surface was waiting.
One of the fishermen, an older Jotun with streaks of white in his hair, let out a grunt. "You see something in there?"
Neo blinked once, glancing up. The man's tone was casual, absent of suspicion, but there was something in his narrowed eyes that suggested he had noticed something.
Neo shook his head. "No."
The Jotun let out a short exhale through his nose, adjusting his grip on the net. "Good. Then stop staring at it like it's about to talk back."
Neo didn't reply. He stood, moving on, the unease in his chest settling deeper.
The merchants had begun setting up stalls near the longhouses, selling everything from weapons to dried meats to furs. Trade in Snowdrift was a slow-moving thing, dictated more by survival than by coin. There were no grand exchanges, no bustling markets just necessity, just people sharing what they could to keep the village running.
Neo stopped near a weapons stall, his eyes drifting across the array of blades and axes laid out on the thick wooden table. Some were newly forged, their steel gleaming under the lantern light, while others were old, battered, carrying the weight of many battles.
He reached out, tracing his fingers along the hilt of one of the older blades. It had the weight of time in it, the kind of weapon that had seen more blood than its wielder ever would. He felt the faint grooves worn into the handle, the way it had moulded to the grip of its owner over the years.
"You're not one for buying things," came a voice to his left.
Neo glanced over. Oak stood there, his arms folded, his pale beard almost reaching his belt. His face was lined with age, his features weathered like the mountains themselves. He had the presence of someone who had seen the world shift more times than most would ever live to witness, and yet, he still stood. Still watched.
Neo withdrew his hand from the blade, letting his fingers curl loosely at his side. "I wasn't buying."
Oak let out a slow breath, his gaze shifting briefly to the stall before settling back on Neo. "No," he said, voice low. "You weren't."
The old Jotun's eyes were sharp, piercing, as if he could see past the surface of things. He didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't have to. Oak had always been the kind of man who didn't need to hear words to know what wasn't being said.
Neo met his gaze, for a long moment, the world around them felt too still.
Then, Oak let out a small grunt, shifting his weight. "Come with me."
Neo hesitated only briefly before following.
The unease had not left him. If anything, it was stronger now. And though the village around him still moved as it always had, still carried on in its quiet way, Neo could not ignore the truth that pressed against his thoughts.
The wind rolled low across the ice, whispering through the valley like something old and waiting. It carried no scent, no weight, and yet it pressed against Neo's skin in a way that made his muscles tighten, his breath slow. The feeling had been there all day, settling in the back of his mind like a shadow that wouldn't leave.
Oak walked ahead of him, his massive form moving at an unhurried pace, boots crunching against the packed snow. The old Jotun's long beard swayed slightly with the wind, his arms folded inside his heavy cloak. He didn't speak, didn't turn, simply walked as if he knew Neo would follow.
Tor walked beside Neo, her hooves barely making a sound in the cold air. She was always quiet, always steady, but he knew she could feel it too.
The village stretched behind them, its longhouses glowing faintly in the dim light, the figures of Jotun warriors and hunters moving within it like ghosts in the dark. Snowdrift was as it had always been, untouched by the wars of the south, undisturbed by the politics of the greater world and yet... Neo knew something had changed. He had seen it.
It had come to him in dreams, in visions so real he could still taste the blood in the air, feel the earth twisting beneath his feet. A city, covered in roots. Not the gentle embrace of time, not the slow reclaiming of nature, but a violent, agonizing invasion.
The roots had twisted through stone and metal alike, splintering buildings apart with a groaning, wrenching sound.... a sound like bone breaking, like flesh tearing, as if the very foundation of the world was screaming in protest. The roots were alive, writhing in slow, suffocating agony, their forms stretching unnaturally, bending at impossible angles beneath them, figures moved.
Tree-like entities, their bodies part wood, part something else something pulsing, something wrong. Their roots did not grow into the earth they twisted through bodies, piercing through the remains of those who had once lived in the city. The roots did not nourish them. They fed on them.
Neo had heard it. Wet, slow, deliberate. The sickening noise of tendrils pulling free from ruined flesh, of bone grinding as the roots moved through ribcages and skulls. The air had been thick, not just with decay, but with something deeper something that pulsed with the heavy weight of inevitability.
Then, the world had shifted. A blinding, bleeding light had torn across the city like a wound ripped open in the fabric of existence itself.
Neo had felt it before he saw it a pressure in the air, sharp and invasive, as if the very atoms of reality were being carved apart. The light wasn't warm. It wasn't golden. It was something else entirely, something that felt like a raw, gaping wound in the sky.
It burned through the streets, carving into the earth, splitting through walls and towers, leaving gaping, bleeding scars of light in its wake and in the centre of it all was Thal.
He had stood there, surrounded by the ruin, the screams of thousands filling the air. It wasn't the cry of a single voice, or even a hundred voices, but a tidal wave of agony, a sound that had no beginning or end. It had swallowed everything and Thal had not moved.
Neo had tried to look at his face, but it had been wrong. Warped. The light had burned through it, distorting it, stretching his form like something caught between worlds. His sword had been raised, his posture unshaken, his body at the centre of the storm.
Neo had woken up with the sound still ringing in his ears, with the sensation of roots tightening around his throat, of the light carving through his chest and even now, as he walked behind Oak along the village outskirts, the memory did not leave him.
The snow crunched beneath his boots. The cold bit into his skin but none of it felt real. Oak's voice broke through the silence. "Your mind's been elsewhere." Neo didn't answer immediately.
Oak finally stopped walking, turning slightly, his sharp eyes studying Neo carefully. He was old, older than most, and Neo had learned long ago that the elder Jotun didn't waste words. He didn't speak unless he already knew the answer.
Neo exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of Tor's gaze beside him as well.
"I've been seeing things." His own voice felt distant, like something pulled from the back of his mind rather than spoken. "Visions. Could be because I'm Kruu'voth."
Oak said nothing.
Neo continued, eyes locked on the horizon. "I see a city covered in roots, tree things moving through it, their roots twisting with..." He stopped, his jaw tightening.
Oak watched him, waiting.
Neo clenched his fingers into his palms. "It doesn't sound like trees growing," he finally said. "It sounds like something breaking. Something alive, tearing apart, slowly, piece by piece."
The wind carried a soft whistle through the valley, stirring the frost covered grass at their feet. Oak still didn't speak, but his expression darkened slightly.
Neo exhaled again. "Then the world shifts. A light appears, bleeding through the city, like something carving into it from the inside out. The city is screaming. Not the people. The place itself." His throat felt dry. "And Thal is there."
Tor tensed slightly beside him, her hooves shifting against the ice.
Oak's eyes didn't leave Neo's. His expression was unreadable, but something in his posture had changed.
Neo narrowed his gaze. "You know something."
Oak let out a slow breath. "I know many things." His voice was even, but there was a weight behind it, something old. He turned, looking out over the horizon, toward the distant mountains. "Thal's departure has been troubling you," Oak said, more a statement than a question.
Neo didn't answer, but Oak didn't need one. The wind picked up slightly, pulling at their cloaks, carrying the distant sounds of the village behind them.
Oak finally turned back to face Neo, his gaze settling on him with something heavier than before. "Dreams," the old Jotun said, "aren't always just dreams."
Neo's tail flicked once behind him with Tor shifted beside him, silent but watchful. The unease in Neo's chest did not fade. If anything, it settled deeper, sinking into his ribs like the cold itself and he wasn't sure it would ever leave.
The wind had shifted, no longer a steady howl through the valley, but something quieter, something that felt like a held breath before a storm. The sky stretched dull and grey over the horizon, the faintest traces of dying light bleeding along the mountains. The village behind them carried on as it always had, smoke curling from longhouses, the distant clatter of metal on metal as Jotun blacksmiths worked in steady rhythm. Life here was unchanged.
And yet, Neo could still feel the weight of the vision clinging to him, refusing to loosen its grip. The city covered in roots. The screaming. The light carving through the land. Thal standing at its centre.
Neo rolled his shoulders, forcing the tension from them, but his body felt restless, his tail flicking behind him despite himself. Tor, ever silent, had shifted her stance slightly beside him. She was listening. Watching. As she always did.
Oak had not moved from his place at the edge of the village, his sharp eyes still studying Neo as if he could pull the thoughts straight from his mind. His expression was unreadable, though there was something beneath it something not quite doubt, not quite fear.
"Would've been better if you'd gone with him," Oak finally said. His voice was even, thoughtful, but there was an unmistakable weight behind it.
Neo didn't look at him. He exhaled slowly, shaking his head. "No."
Oak raised a brow, waiting.
Neo set his jaw, his fingers flexing at his sides before he forced them to still. "Thal wanted me to stay. In case the village was attacked." His voice was steady, but he could feel the words settling heavier than he expected.
Oak frowned slightly. "Snowdrift isn't a warfront."
Neo's tail flicked again. "Not a warfront," he admitted. "But Thal warned me about something else." His gaze drifted past Oak, toward the distant ridges, where the land stretched untouched beyond the valley. He could almost hear Thal's voice, the weight of his words when he had spoken of it. "A Harbinger."
Oak didn't react not immediately. But his silence lasted a fraction too long.
Neo glanced at him then, eyes narrowing slightly. "You already knew."
Oak let out a slow breath, shifting his weight. "I had my suspicions."
Neo turned fully to face him. "Harbingers can't be killed. They can only be held back, forced into retreat. Thal told me that himself. That's why he trained me for it." He flexed his hand slightly, feeling the faintest ghost of past battles the way Thal had forced him to fight differently, to anticipate movement, to recognize a presence that didn't belong in this world.
Tor shifted beside him, her massive frame almost unnaturally still now. She had always been protective of Thal, loyal in a way few understood. Neo knew she had accepted his departure, had trusted his reasons for going. But she, too, had not forgotten his warnings.
Oak met Neo's gaze, his expression unreadable. "A Nephilim training someone for a fight they aren't there to finish," he murmured. "That's not common."
Oak's voice was quieter when he spoke again. "And yet, you still would've been better at his side."
Neo exhaled sharply, tilting his head slightly, a cold amusement flickering through him. "Would've been." He let the words hang for a moment before shaking his head. "But I wasn't."
Oak's brow furrowed slightly, but it wasn't frustration. It was something closer to concern, though it was not directed at Neo's decision.
"You are a Kruu'voth," Oak said after a pause. "That means something, even if you pretend it doesn't." Oak studied him, then exhaled through his nose. "You had your reason for staying," he admitted. "But I worry for a different reason."
Neo frowned slightly, waiting.
Oak turned toward the distant ridges, his gaze fixed on the mountains as if they held an answer he could not quite reach. "I am only Jotun. I don't pretend to know the ways of Nephilim," he said. "But even I have heard of some of their tenets." His voice slowed slightly, deliberate. "And one of them is this a Nephilim does not leave his post."
Neo felt something tighten in his chest. He hadn't expected the words to affect him, and yet they settled into him like ice sinking beneath the skin. A Nephilim does not leave his post. It was not just a belief, it was a rule. A law.
Oak turned back to him then, his sharp gaze locking onto Neo's. "Tell me, Neo," he said evenly. "Do you think Thal broke that rule today?"
The wind had changed again. No longer a whisper. No longer a breath. It was colder now, sharper, biting against the skin. Neo said nothing. He didn't need to because he already knew the answer.
The cold had settled into the world like a second skin, deeper than before. It was no longer just the wind, the ice, or the frozen land beneath their feet. It was something else, a weight, an unseen presence pressing into the edges of reality.
Neo stood there, still as the mountains beyond the valley, the last of Oak's words hanging in the air between them.
He didn't speak, didn't react, but the words had struck something deep. He knew Thal's departure had been unusual. He had known it from the moment the giant Nephilim had agreed to go. Thal was not one to abandon responsibility. Yet, he had left.
Not just to reclaim something. Not just to see something through. Thal had left his post, the place he was meant to be. Why?
Tor had shifted beside him, her weight subtle but noticeable, her presence as steady as the world itself. She hadn't moved much since Oak had started speaking, but Neo had felt the way her stance had changed tense, listening, waiting.
Oak had been quiet for a while, watching Neo, as if giving him time to let those words settle. Then, with a long breath, the old Jotun spoke again. "But something worse might be coming."
Neo turned to him sharply.
Oak's gaze hadn't left the distant frozen sea, where the ice stretched toward a horizon that few dared to cross.
Neo frowned. "Worse?"
Oak nodded once. "Another Nephilim."
The wind carried the words like an omen, sinking deep into the marrow of the moment.
Neo exhaled slowly through his nose, his tail flicking once, before stilling. "If another Nephilim came, then what? You think they'd care about a village like this?"
Oak's lips curled slightly not a smile, not quite amusement, but something colder, something knowing. "Not just any Nephilim," Oak murmured. "One that will know Thal has left a fight with a Harbinger to someone not ready."
Neo's jaw tensed. "I'm ready."
Oak laughed.
It was not cruel, but neither was it warm. It was the kind of laughter one gives to a child who speaks of war before ever holding a blade. The kind that held no malice, only understanding of something far beyond the grasp of the other.
Neo narrowed his eyes.
Oak exhaled slowly. "You think you're ready? Thal has spent over four hundred years doing this one thing. And you?" He let out a short, humorless laugh. "You've lived twenty-eight years and trained for fourteen. That may be enough to carry a sword, but not to face what waits in the ice.""
Neo didn't respond immediately. He could feel the weight of Tor's gaze on him now, the way she stood slightly closer.
Oak let the silence stretch before his expression darkened slightly. "Only four Nephilim stand across the Empyrean. Four Harbingers, four Nephilim. That is the balance. That is the way it has been for longer than any of us can count." His voice was steady, but it carried the weight of something long understood, long accepted.
Neo frowned, crossing his arms. "Then what's the problem? Thal leaves, I step in. The balance is kept."
Oak shook his head, turning slightly to gesture toward the frozen sea. "The four Nephilim that stand across the Empyrean, they might be kind to us. Children of dust, children of bone and blood. They have lived among us, fought with us, broken bread with us. But the others..."
His finger pointed toward the ice beyond the valley, where the world stretched into a desolation most men would never dare to cross.
Neo stared at that horizon, feeling the weight of the words before they were even spoken.
"Beyond the frozen sea," Oak murmured, "the rest of them wait."
A silence settled, thick and heavy.
"The ones who never leave their fight." Oak's voice had softened, almost reverent. "To them, we are nothing. We are insignificant."
Neo clenched his jaw slightly. "They don't care about us."
Oak met his gaze. "No," he agreed. "They don't. They care only for the mission." He exhaled, folding his arms inside his cloak. "If one of them came here, you had better swallow your pride and your ego. Because they will not see you as worthy of speaking."
Neo didn't react outwardly, but something coiled in his chest, slow and deliberate.
He had grown up knowing the myths of the Nephilim, their legend, their strength. He had trained under Thal's guidance, learned the weight of steel, the rhythm of battle. He had thought himself prepared for anything that would come and yet, Oak was saying that if one of them arrived... Neo would not even be considered worth acknowledging.
Tor shifted. Neo might not have caught it if he hadn't known her so well, if he hadn't already felt the slight change in her stance. But it was there the way her weight shifted, the way her massive frame tensed just slightly.
Oak drew a long breath, his voice lower now, his eyes darker. "And if you're more unlucky..."
The words felt like a final stone being placed in the foundation of something terrible. Neo stared at him, waiting.
Oak looked back at him, his voice barely above a whisper. "You might meet Thal's father."
Neo frowned slightly. "What?"
Oak exhaled through his nose, gaze steady. "You might meet Fall." The name should have meant nothing, Neo had never heard it before.
But Tor.... Tor stiffened. Not subtly, not slightly. She froze completely, her hooves pressing into the earth as if she meant to root herself in place. Neo turned toward her sharply, but she did not meet his gaze. For the first time since he had met her, since she had fought beside him, since she had moved through the world as a force that never yielded to anything.... Tor was afraid.
A silence stretched between them, the wind pulling at their cloaks, the world pressing in around them like something unseen, something waiting.
Neo finally turned back to Oak, his voice lower now, controlled. "Who is Fall?"
Oak's lips parted slightly as if considering his words. Then he simply said, "No one knows." The old Jotun turned, walking away.
Neo remained still and Tor did not move. The weight of that name sat between them. Heavy, unspoken but known and for the first time in years Neo felt truly small.