The morning was quiet, stretching out in long, frozen breaths across Snowdrift. The cold was ever present, lingering at the edges of everything, curling into the bones of the village like something woven into its very foundation. Fires burned in the longhouses, their smoke twisting up into the grey sky, and the scent of wood and steel mixed with the distant smell of fresh killed game.
Neo sat outside Thal's hut, his sword resting across his lap, the metal catching the pale morning light. He had been working at it for a while now, running a whetstone down the blade in slow, steady motions, listening to the familiar scrape of stone against steel. There was something grounding about it, something methodical, something that allowed his mind to settle when everything else in him felt restless.
The fight with Tor the night before had burned away some of that energy, but not all of it. His body still felt tuned too tightly, still felt like it was expecting something, waiting for something that had not yet come. The movements, the stepping through the Rim, the way his body had flowed so effortlessly through battle it had changed something in him, something that would not go away no matter how much he tried to push it from his thoughts.
Tor had left earlier in the morning, heading into the forest to gather more firewood. She had said nothing before she went, only giving him a look before setting off with her axe resting against her shoulder. Neo hadn't needed to ask where she was going, and she hadn't needed to explain. It was something she did when she needed time to think, when she needed space, and after the conversation they had shared the night before, he knew better than to press her for more than she was willing to give.
His tail flicked once behind him as he continued working at the blade, the rhythm of the motion steady, even. The edge was already sharp, already well maintained, but it wasn't about necessity. It was about the process, about keeping his hands busy, about focusing on something tangible when his thoughts were anything but.
The village moved around him in slow, familiar patterns. A group of Jotun hunters passed through the central clearing, their cloaks lined with fresh snow, the scent of their kills still clinging to them as they made their way toward the storage halls. Further down the path, a woman carried a bundle of pelts over her shoulder, her breath curling into the air as she spoke in low tones to the merchant beside her. The sound of hammer on steel rang from one of the smithies, a steady, rhythmic noise that blended with the distant howl of the wind.
And yet, Neo could still feel something at the edge of his awareness, something pressing against the corners of his thoughts like a whisper he couldn't quite catch. He had felt it the night before, when Tor had spoken of Fall, when she had warned him of what was coming. It had been there when he looked toward the frozen sea, when he had felt the weight of something shifting, something unseen, something waiting.
He exhaled slowly, tilting the blade slightly, watching as the light ran along the sharpened edge. His fingers flexed around the hilt, adjusting his grip, testing the balance, the weight. The sword had always been an extension of him, something that felt more natural in his hands than almost anything else, but now… it was different.
It felt lighter.
Not in a physical way, not in weight, but in how it moved with him, in how his body responded to it. His tail flicked once more, curling slightly before stilling again. It had always been part of his combat, something he had learned to use to his advantage, but last night had been something else entirely.
He had fought differently. More fluid. More instinctual. More like something… other.
The whetstone scraped against the blade again, slower this time, the sound sharp in the quiet. His jaw tightened slightly as he forced himself to focus, to let the movement pull him back into something tangible, something real.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of pine and frost, and a moment later, he heard the familiar crunch of hooves against packed snow. Tor had returned.
She walked into view a moment later, her axe still resting against her shoulder, a bundle of firewood secured in her other arm. Her fur was dusted with snow, her breath steady and even despite the effort of carrying the load. She glanced at him once as she passed, then set the firewood down near the hut without a word.
Neo continued working at his blade, watching her from the corner of his eye as she adjusted the logs, stacking them properly before brushing the snow from her arms. She stood there for a moment after finishing, her ears twitching slightly as if she was listening for something beyond the usual sounds of the village.
Neo ran the whetstone down his blade one final time before setting it aside, shifting his stance slightly. "You're quiet."
Tor glanced at him, tilting her head slightly, then lifted her hands. "You think much."
Neo smirked faintly, leaning back slightly. "Yeah, well. Hard not to after last night."
Tor huffed through her nose, then signed again. "Still thinking of Fall?"
Neo exhaled slowly. He didn't answer immediately, letting the silence stretch between them before nodding once. "You could say that…."
Tor watched him for a moment longer, then sat down near the fire, her hooves pressing into the snow as she adjusted her position. She didn't push for him to speak, didn't press for him to explain she just waited, the way she always did when she knew there was more to be said.
Neo ran a hand through his hair, tilting his head slightly as he stared at the firewood, at the small flecks of ice still clinging to the bark. His tail flicked again, then stilled ".…I don't like not knowing things."
Tor lifted a brow slightly.
Neo smirked faintly. "Yeah, yeah. No surprise there." He exhaled, resting his forearm against his knee. "But this… this is different. I've trained for years, prepared for a fight I thought I understood. Then you tell me there's something out there that doesn't stop. That's not a warrior. Not an enemy to be beaten. Just… something that moves, something that comes whether we like it or not."
Tor's ears twitched slightly, but she said nothing.
Neo sighed. "And the worst part? I can feel it."
Tor's gaze sharpened slightly.
Neo lifted his hand, gesturing vaguely toward the air. "I don't know how to explain it, but ever since Quincy… it's like something's been pressing at the edges of everything. I feel it when I close my eyes. I feel it when I step too close to the Rim. Like something's watching. Like something's waiting."
Tor didn't speak for a long moment. Then, slowly, she signed. "Miss Quincy too."
Neo exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. "Yeah, me to"
Tor huffed again, then reached for one of the logs, tossing it into the fire. Sparks curled up into the air, glowing embers rising before vanishing into the grey morning light.
Neo watched them disappear, his tail curling slightly behind him.
The air had been shifting for days, subtle at first, barely noticeable except to those who knew how to listen. The cold had deepened, settling into the bones of the land in a way that felt different from the usual winter frost. The winds had grown restless, curling around the village with whispers too faint to catch. The sky had become heavy, the clouds thick and stretched wide like an unbroken sea of grey.
Neo had felt it before anyone else, though he had not spoken of it. The weight of something unseen pressing against the edges of reality, the sensation of a presence just beyond the horizon, watching, waiting. It had been lingering for days, just out of reach, just beyond the edge of understanding.
Then, the storm came.
It arrived in the afternoon, sudden and violent, a great wall of swirling ice and wind crashing against the tundra just outside the village. It did not roll in like a natural blizzard, did not follow the rhythm of the world's breath. It simply appeared, a maelstrom of white and grey, howling as it swallowed the landscape beyond Snowdrift.
Neo had been near the centre of the village when he felt it. One moment, the air was still, the cold pressing but familiar. The next, the weight of the world shifted, cracked open like ice splitting beneath heavy boots.
His sword was in his hands before he had even registered moving, his tail snapping once against the ground as he turned toward the storm.
Tor was already moving, her massive form cutting through the snow with purpose, her axe in hand, her horns angled forward in a stance that spoke of readiness, of action, of understanding that there was no time to question.
The first screams came from the outer watch.
Neo and Tor were already running before the first horn was sounded.
They had seen many things in the tundra, beasts of ice, monsters of shadow, the restless dead who refused to find peace in the cold. But this was different.
The Typhon had no shape.
It was not a creature, not something that could be fought with steel alone. It was a storm given will, hunger, purpose. It moved through the tundra like a great roving abyss, churning with wind and snow, its presence pulling at the world around it and from within the storm, the dead rose.
They came from the ice, from the buried ruins of those who had perished long ago travellers who had lost their way, hunters claimed by the cold, monsters who had fallen in battles long forgotten. It mattered not what they had once been.
The Harbinger called, and they answered.
Figures staggered from the snow, their bodies half frozen, twisted, their eyes burning with a light that did not belong to the living. Some still carried the weapons they had wielded in life, rusted swords and broken spears clutched in hands that no longer felt the cold. Others were mere remnants of what they had once been, bone and ice held together by the Harbinger's will.
The first of them reached the outer barricades before the watch had time to respond. Neo didn't wait his body moved without hesitation, without thought, without fear. He stepped forward and vanished. A flickering ring of purple light cut through the air, a brief glow against the white storm, and then he was somewhere else.
He reappeared at the barricades in an instant, his sword already in motion, the blade flashing in a smooth arc as he cut through the first of the risen dead. The body collapsed, but it did not stop moving, its frozen fingers still reaching for him, its head snapping toward him with an unnatural, jerking motion.
Neo snarled under his breath, pivoting sharply as he blinked again, disappearing and reappearing in a smooth, fluid movement that placed him just behind another corpse his blade struck before it could turn. The dead did not bleed the dead only fell and rose again.
Tor reached the barricades a moment later, her axe crashing down with the force of a hammer breaking stone. The undead she struck did not rise again her strength alone shattered them, breaking ice and bone alike, leaving nothing for the storm to reanimate.
Jotun warriors followed soon after, their weapons already drawn, their war cries lost in the howling winds. They did not hesitate. They did not falter. They knew what had to be done.
Neo blinked between the attackers, moving in bursts of speed, his blade cutting through the reanimated corpses before they could reach the barricades. But the storm was still there churning, growing, pressing against the village like an unseen weight.
This was not a battle of numbers, this was a battle against a force that did not end.
Neo exhaled sharply, his tail flicking behind him as he took a half step back, watching the storm beyond the dead, watching the heart of it. Something was in there, something waiting, something watching.
Tor cut down another corpse before glancing toward him, her brow furrowed. She signed quickly. "We hold."
Neo clenched his jaw. He knew what she meant. They couldn't push into the storm, couldn't meet the Harbinger at its core. It had come for them, but it had not yet moved upon the village itself. Neo exhaled through his nose, adjusting his grip on his sword before signing back. "For how long?"
Tor didn't answer because she didn't know and that was the problem.
The dead kept coming, but the Jotun held firm. Their weapons flashed through the snow, their strength unwavering as they pushed back against the tide. But the storm did not weaken. It did not falter.
Neo blinked from one corpse to the next, striking, cutting, moving before they could respond. He could feel the strain creeping into his muscles, not from exhaustion, but from the sheer effort of keeping up. The battle was not one of strength or skill. It was one of endurance.
Tor struck another attacker down, stepping back slightly, her breath curling in the air. She signed quickly. "Storm does not leave."
Neo gritted his teeth. She was right.
The Harbinger was not here to test their defences. It was here to stay, a cold, sinking realization settled into him. This wasn't a battle this was a siege.
Neo exhaled sharply, scanning the battlefield, his eyes narrowing. If they did not act soon, if they did not break the Harbinger's hold it would never leave, and Snowdrift would fall.
His grip on his sword tightened. "Then we don't wait." His tail curled slightly, his stance shifting. They had spent days waiting. Days letting the weight of something unseen press down upon them, no more. Neo inhaled slowly, then looked to Tor. "We take the fight to it."
She met his gaze then, after a pause, she nodded. The storm howled and Neo stepped forward to meet it.
From the walls of Snowdrift, he could see where the tundra turned white with movement. It wasn't the wind pushing snow. It was something inside the storm, deeper than the blizzard's reach. It was waiting. Watching. The Typhon had come.
When the first bodies rose, they did so with silence. There were no groans, no war cries just a slow, deliberate crawl from beneath the ice. Travelers lost to the frost. Hunters buried beneath avalanches. Beasts that had frozen in motion and now twitched forward with glassy, unblinking eyes. Some still wore their armor , rusted and torn. Others were only bones held together by cords of ice and sinew.
Neo moved without command. His blade was in his hand before anyone called for it, his tail flicking behind him as he sprinted along the ramparts. The Jotun weren't far behind. Tor had already disappeared through the northern gate, axe in hand, her massive form cutting a wide path through the drifting snow. The horns above the watchtowers began to sound not with panic, but with precision. Snowdrift was not a village of fear. It had weathered centuries of cold and blood. But this was not something the village had ever faced.
The Typhon didn't act like a storm. It didn't surge, didn't break and scatter with the wind. It pressed forward in slow circles, a spiral of ice and wind coiling outward like a snake through the snow. Neo blinked through the Rim for the first time that day, stepping through a circle of purple light and appearing beside the first of the risen dead. His sword cut through frozen flesh. The body fell, then began to crawl forward again, its limbs moving like they remembered nothing but the order to obey.
He blinked again, disappearing in violet shimmer. Then again. Then again. He moved across the line of attackers, cutting them down before they could swarm, but for every one that fell, more came. They moved in silence, but the wind carried their presence.
Then the Typhon moved. Not like a shift in wind, not like the storm turned it was as if something behind it had leaned forward, and the storm followed the gesture. The wind surged like a whip crack. Bodies flew not stumbled, not marched, but were hurled like stones from a catapult. Dozens. Scores. They hit the walls. The gates. They landed inside the village. Some burst on impact, bones cracking against the stonework. Others rose, limbs twisted back into place.
Tor met the first of them near the northern longhouses. Her axe came down like a thunderclap bone splitting and ice shattering. The Jotun fought around her in a semicircle, disciplined, not scattered, holding the corpses away from the doors. Children were moved into the central keep. The forges were extinguished. Snowdrift shifted from village to fortress in minutes.
Neo kept phasing through the dead, trying to hold the outer line. He blinked behind one, drove his blade through its neck, then spun into another, severing its arms in a smooth arc. The third caught him by the shoulder. Its mouth opened, but it made no sound. Just hot, fetid breath that shouldn't have existed in a frozen body. He blinked again, vanishing from its grasp and reappearing at the village gate. He landed in a crouch, panting once, then straightened.
The Typhon was closer now. Just beyond the hills. Still spinning. Still growing. The dead didn't rise from the storm they were thrown. It was not a weather pattern. It was a weapon and Neo had to see.
He stepped into the Rim and the world peeled back like a curtain, casting Neo in silence. Here, the sky was obsidian, untouched by moonlight or stars, a ceiling that seemed to shift ever so slightly like the surface of still water. The land beneath his feet was cracked and glowing in slow pulses of red, as though the earth itself had been scorched long ago and never truly healed. Everything was darker here. Echoes of Gaia moved in distorted reflections buildings bent at odd angles, shapes twisted beyond recognition, as if memory itself had forgotten how they were meant to be.
But it was the Typhon he came to see and here, in this broken mirror world, the storm was no longer wind or snow or swirling fury. It was a body. A towering, breathing thing. Mist coiled off it like steam off a beast's back. Tendrils reached out in slow, crawling spirals, digging into the earth and dragging out the dead like weeds from a rotted garden. Travelers, beasts, long lost warriors it mattered not. They rose with cracks of bone and the soundless screams of lives already spent.
Neo took a step closer, narrowing his eyes as the centre of the storm began to shift. In the eye of the Typhon, where nothing should exist, something stirred. It wasn't immediate, not violent. It was worse than that it was deliberate. Purposeful. Something that moved because it wanted to, and because it had not moved in a very long time. A shape emerged.
It was not man, nor beast. It had limbs, yes long, misshapen things that flexed in slow, fluid arcs. Its body pulsed in and out of density, like it didn't quite belong to any one plane. Its spine curved unnaturally, and jagged fragments jutted from its shoulders like broken wings or torn bone. Where a head should have been was a warped, crown like mass, a tangled convergence of horn, ice, and something that shimmered like void light then it turned.
No eyes. No face. No breath but it saw him.
Neo felt the chill cut straight through his bones not from the Rim, not from the cold, but from the gaze. The moment its focus locked on him, he felt as if the entire plane shifted under his feet, like he had stepped too close to the edge of something endless. There was no thought, no hunger, no rage just knowledge. The kind of knowing that came before fire, before storms, before death.
It leaned forward. The tendrils of storm and spirit began to reach slowly, like a hand stretching toward a candle's flame.
Neo's instincts screamed. He spun on his heel and pulled himself out, blinking fast, activating his phase without hesitation. His breath caught for only half a second before the violet ring spiralled into existence and snapped shut behind him.
He landed in Empyrean with force, knees hitting snow, sword slipping from his hand. The wind slapped against his face. He gasped once, chest heaving, not from exhaustion but from pressure. From the memory of being seen.
A second later, Tor was at his side. Her presence steadied him. She knelt, gripping his forearm and pulling him upright with one smooth motion. Her expression was already tight, jaw clenched, eyes scanning him for wounds he didn't have. She signed quickly. "You saw it?"
Neo nodded, still catching his breath. "It's not a storm," he muttered, voice low. "It's wearing the storm. Like a coat. A mask."
Tor stilled, but her eyes darkened. She signed again, slower this time. "It saw you?"
He met her gaze, swallowed, and gave a grim nod. "Yeah. And it was about to reach."
Tor stood, pulling him up with her. Her axe was already back in her grip, but her eyes lingered on the horizon. The Typhon still loomed there, growing, shifting. The dead still crawled beneath it, and the air around the village shuddered with every breath it exhaled.
"It's coming," Neo said softly. "And it knows exactly where I am."
Neo's breath slowed, he stood there staring at the storm on the horizon, his blade still forgotten in the snow beside him. Tor said nothing, her presence was steady, her stillness heavy. She was watching him the way someone might watch a blade being drawn for the first time curious, cautious, already bracing.
The image of the thing in the Rim still clung to his thoughts. Not just what it looked like, but how it had moved. How it had seen. That broken crown. The tendrils. That form, stitched from something too old to be remembered, too wrong to exist in Gaia. It hadn't attacked him directly, but it hadn't needed to. Its gaze alone had felt like a fracture in reality. But that was the thing he had seen it. Really seen it.
And it hit him, then, quiet and clean like the edge of a blade.
Thal had never spoken about seeing the Harbingers. Never once described them in any physical way. He knew they existed, knew how to fight the armies they brought, the corruption they spread, the scars they left behind, but never the Harbingers themselves. Even after all his years, all his victories, Thal had never described their shape. Never once said what they looked like.
Neo turned toward the snow covered ridge, toward the horizon where the storm loomed just beyond reach. The wind curled between the longhouses like a breath through stone, dragging frost across the path in thin, splintered ribbons.
It was because Thal had never entered the Rim.
Neo blinked once, his mouth slightly open, the thought unfolding inside him like slow fire. The Nephilim were powerful, godlike in their endurance, unbreakable in battle. But they didn't step into the in between. They didn't walk the Rim. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe they weren't supposed to.
Neo's eyes widened slightly, a flicker of awe mingling with something else…. possibility.
The Harbingers couldn't be killed because they were never seen. Never known. They moved like storms, like diseases, like myths. Thal had taught him that they couldn't be destroyed, only held back, defeated, stalled. But if you couldn't see a thing's body, how could you ever break it? If all you ever struck was its shadow, how could you ever bring it down?
Neo could, he could see what Thal never had because of the Rim.
That terrible, silent place dark, pulsing with echoes and wrong shapes it was more than just a tool for movement, more than a way to outpace the dead. It was a way to see beneath the lie. To step beyond the mask. The Harbinger wore the storm. Wore death. Wore fear. But that wasn't its body.
He had seen the body and if it could be seen…
He looked down at his hand, fingers still trembling slightly from the encounter, and then clenched them into a fist. It could be killed. He didn't say it aloud. The words were too heavy to be spoken, and too dangerous to be said without proof. But the thought settled in him like a root curling into soil.
Thal had trained him for years to survive what could not be destroyed. But maybe Neo hadn't been made to follow in Thal's path. Maybe he had been trained to go somewhere Thal never could.
Maybe this was why Thal had chosen him. Not just to protect the village, not just to face a Harbinger but to see it.
Tor watched him carefully, her brow furrowed in that way that meant she was reading more than just his face. She signed, slow and steady. "You think something."
Neo glanced at her. "Yeah." His voice was quiet. "A lot of things."
She tilted her head, waiting.
Neo turned back toward the storm, his pulse still slow, but steady now, anchored. "What if they couldn't kill them," he said, almost to himself. "Not because they're too strong… but because they never actually saw them."
Tor said nothing.
Neo's voice grew more certain with each word. "Thal. The other Nephilim. They fought what the Harbingers did. What they sent. What they caused. But I don't think they ever saw their actual bodies." He paused, staring into the white veil of the Typhon. "I don't think they could ever step into the Rim."
Tor's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.
Neo continued, quieter now. "I did. I saw it." He exhaled through his nose, not smiling, but something close something cold and fierce and real. "And this time, I'll look longer."
The wind howled. The dead moved through the snow like forgotten things, but for a moment, all Neo heard was silence. The kind that came right before someone did something impossible.
The wind never stopped. Not even for a breath. It moved through the bones of the village, through the ribs of its wooden walls and between the pillars of frost covered stone, whispering warnings that no one could fully hear. The Typhon had not retreated. It lingered just beyond the hills, churning, grinding, growing not a weather pattern, but a siege engine made of storm and silence.
Neo stood at the edge of the village wall, the snow halfway up his boots, breath curling in slow, steady plumes. His sword rested on his back. His fingers were bare, curled once, then twice. The chill stung but didn't bite. Not anymore. His mind was far from this place, already calculating the next phase, the next step, the next breath that would take him where the others could not follow.
Behind him, the clash of steel and bone rang faintly in the wind. Tor and the Jotun held the barricades, axes singing with purpose, boots hammering the ground with defiance. The dead kept coming silent, shambling things drawn from the deep frost, limbs broken but moving, eyes hollow but burning. Tor stood in the heart of it, her axe cleaving arcs through the undead tide, each swing a wordless declaration that Snowdrift would not fall.
Neo didn't look back. He knew Tor would not stop him. They had fought together too long for her not to understand the moment. He had made his decision, and she would make hers. She would hold the line. She would protect the living and Neo he would go find the truth buried inside the storm.
His tail curled once, his body lowering into a calm stance. No rage. No adrenaline. Just focus. The memory of the Harbinger's form still flickered at the edge of his mind limbs that shifted through dimensions, horns that spiralled like frozen time, a gaze that stripped the soul clean of pretence. It wasn't fear that lingered. It was certainty.
He had seen the body. Now, he had to see more.
He lifted his hand. Fingers parted. A thin violet ring began to etch itself in the air before him, smooth and silent, humming with that low familiar pulse. The circle widened, revealing the weight of the Rim.
The Rim met him like an old memory. The village behind him was a warped silhouette, its walls twisted, its towers leaning like rotted teeth, but he didn't look back, he turned toward the Typhon. Here in the Rim it was already changing. It didn't twist like wind or roll like cloud. It opened, spread, unfolded into its true shape like a predator stretching its limbs after a long hibernation.
In Empyrean, the wind pulled harder. The storm stretched closer. Snowdrift's gates creaked beneath the weight of ice and force. Tor's blade split a corpse from shoulder to hip, bloodless and cold. Her axe moved with practiced grace, carving another opening in the dead mass pressing in from the north. The others fought around her in a broken circle, holding, bleeding, pushing.
Above them, the sky darkened in slow swirls, like the storm had noticed the shift. Like it had realized something was missing.
A new presence arrived. It did not walk into the village. It did not stride through the snow. It simply was distant and watching. No words. No movement. No form, at least not one the eye could settle on. Just the faint outline of something standing far out across the tundra, beyond the reach of the Typhon.
It did not enter the storm. It watched it. Watched the dead. Watched the Rim shimmer faintly where Neo had vanished. It stood there in the white vastness, quiet and unmoving and the air around it bent ever so slightly, as if the wind itself remembered something older than the ice but no one saw it…. Not yet.