The siblings had carved a fragile routine into the ice. Mornings were for sparring—or what passed for it. Tae practiced clumsy swings with his father's broken Frostblade, its jagged edge humming with unstable energy. Lian meditated, her breath fogging the air as she strained to conjure more than fleeting illusions. Yun, though, had stopped training altogether. He sat cross-legged, staring at the cavern wall, tracing the black veins in the ice like they were old friends.
"We're getting weaker," Tae muttered, watching his breath curl into the dark. The Frostblade shard fused to his left hand pulsed, hungry.
"Speak for yourself," Yun said without turning. "It's teaching me things."
"Stop calling the Watcher 'it,'" Lian snapped. "It's not a pet."
Yun's Rimefire Eyes glinted. "No. It's much hungrier."
Tae stood abruptly. "We need meat." Their supplies—stolen Crimson Teeth rations—had run to mold and rot.
"I'll go with you," Yun said.
"No. Stay with Lian."
"She's safer alone than with me," Yun said, his voice too calm.
Lian flinched but nodded. "He's right. I'll… keep working on the mirages."
The brothers left in silence, their boots crunching over frozen sludge.
They found game quickly—a hare, its fur white as the snow. Tae's blade struck true, but as he knelt to retrieve it, the wind died.
Silence.
Then—a growl, low and resonant, like glaciers grinding bone to dust.
The creature emerged from the blizzard like a living storm. Tiger-shaped but twice the size, its fur was translucent ice, revealing veins of black sludge beneath. Its eyes were twin voids, and its maw dripped a substance that hissed and smoked where it struck the snow.
Yun froze. "It's not alive. It's… made."
The beast lunged.
Tae shoved Yun aside, the Frostfang's claws raking his shoulder. Blood sprayed, freezing midair into crimson shards.
"Run!"
They fled into the cave's upper tunnels, the Frostfang's roar shattering icicles overhead. The walls trembled, black ice oozing like pus from cracks.
The Watcher's laugh echoed, warped and wet, as the brothers stumbled into a dead end.
The Frostfang cornered them, its breath frosting the air into jagged blades.
"We can't fight that!" Tae hissed, pressing Yun behind him.
"We can," Yun said, his eyes blazing. "Use the shard. Let me use this." He raised his hands—black ice already spiraling up his wrists.
"No! We don't know what it'll—"
The Frostfang lunged.
Tae swung the Frostblade on instinct. The shard screamed, its power ripping through the air in a wave of jagged ice.
The Frostfang staggered—then laughed, its maw splitting into a grotesque mimicry of a human grin.
"You cannot kill what is already dead," it rasped in the Watcher's voice.
Tae's strikes grew wilder, each swing draining him. The Frostfang toyed with them, claws shearing off chunks of the cave walls. Yun's ice shards glanced harmlessly off its hide.
Yun's Rimefire Eyes flared. Black ice erupted from his palms, spearing the Frostfang's leg. The beast howled—but the ice spread, consuming its limb.
"Stop!" Tae roared. "You're losing control!"
Yun grinned, tears of black sludge trailing his cheeks. "Good."
The Frostfang pinned Tae, its jaws snapping inches from his face. Yun plunged his hands into the beast's chest.
The world shattered.
Black ice engulfed the Frostfang, its body exploding into a storm of crystalline shrapnel. The cave collapsed around them.
They emerged hours later, bloody and trembling. Tae's Frostblade shard had grown, encasing his arm to the elbow. Yun's eyes were now fully black, save for pinpricks of red light.
"We need to get back to Lian," Tae said, voice hollow.
Yun stared at his hands. "She won't recognize us."
The cave was silent when they returned.
Too silent.
Lian's makeshift bed was empty. Her journal lay open, the pages filled with frantic sketches of the Watcher's black sun—and a final entry:
"They're here. The dead. They're herding us."
Then Tae saw it—the ice wall.
Where there had once been a mural of the Devourer, there was now a gateway. And impaled on its jagged edges, frost blooming from her chest, was Lian.
Her eyes snapped open—black, burning.
"Welcome home," she rasped in the Watcher's voice.
Lian's body hung suspended in the ice, her limbs twisted at unnatural angles, frost blooming like flowers from the wound in her chest. Her eyes—black voids flickering with pinpricks of crimson—locked onto Tae and Yun. The voice that slithered from her lips was a chorus of whispers, grating and wet, as if a thousand throats had been sewn together.
"Welcome home, little keys."
Tae's Frostblade shard trembled in his grip, its jagged edge humming with a hunger that mirrored the pounding in his skull. Yun stood frozen beside him, his Rimefire Eyes wide, black ice creeping like vines up his arms.
"Lian…?" Tae's voice cracked.
"Not anymore," the Watcher crooned through Lian's mouth. Her head tilted too far, tendons snapping like frozen twigs. "But you already knew that, didn't you? You felt her die."
Yun choked. "Liar!"
The Watcher laughed, Lian's body shuddering as ice cracked and reformed around her. "Come now, Yun. You felt it too—when she screamed for you in the dark. When the dead took her."
Tae lunged, the Frostblade shard screaming as it carved through the air—but froze inches from Lian's throat.
"Go ahead," the Watcher purred. "Cut. Let me show you what happens."
The blade trembled. Tae's breath came in ragged gasps, his corrupted arm seizing as the shard hissed: "Feed me. Feed me. FEED ME."
Yun grabbed his wrist. "Don't! It's her body!"
The cavern groaned as the Watcher stepped free of the ice, Lian's corpse moving with jerky, puppet-like grace. Black sludge dripped from her wounds, hissing where it struck the ground.
"You misunderstand me," it said, trailing a frostbitten finger along the cavern wall. The ice veins pulsed in response, revealing scenes of horror: the Mu-Ryong clan's massacre, the Emperor's court scheming, the Crimson Teeth's shadows burned into stone. "I am not your enemy. I am your salvation.**
Tae spat. "You killed our sister."
"I saved her," the Watcher corrected. "Just as I saved you from the Frostfang. Without my gifts, you'd both be carrion."
Yun's hands clenched, black ice spreading to his elbows. "What do you want?"
"Freedom." Lian's corpse gestured to the gateway, now throbbing with a sickly light. "Your ancestors imprisoned me here, using your bloodline as a lock. But now…" She smiled, her jaw unhinging. "The key is finally turning."
The Watcher swept a hand toward Yun. "You feel it, don't you? The ice singing in your veins. The visions of what you could become.*"
Yun staggered as memories not his own flooded his mind:
A city of black glass, its spires piercing a bleeding sky.
A throne of frozen corpses, their faces his own.
Lian, alive and screaming, trapped in the ice.
"Let me show you more," the Watcher whispered.
"No!" Yun clawed at his eyes, but the visions worsened.
Tae grabbed his brother, shaking him. "Fight it, Yun!"
"Why?" The Watcher loomed over them, Lian's hair snapping like icicles in an unseen wind. "You both reek of desperation. Tae—your arm is rotting. Yun—your mind is unraveling. Without me, you'll die here. With me…" It leaned in, Lian's breath frosting Tae's face. "You could burn the world.*
Tae raised the Frostblade, his corrupted arm trembling. "Leave. Now."
The Watcher laughed, the sound echoing through the cavern like shattering glass. "Or what? You'll kill your sister? Again?"
Yun's Rimefire Eyes blazed. "We'll find another way."
"There is no other way," the Watcher snarled. The gateway flared, its light revealing the silhouette of something colossal shifting beyond. "The Emperor will hunt you. The clans will shun you. Even your precious Murim world will crumble. Only I can give you the power to survive.*
Tae's blade faltered.
The Watcher pressed closer. "Your father knew this. He begged me for mercy as the Emperor's dogs dragged him away. Such a pathetic end for a warden."
Yun roared, black ice erupting in a wave—but the Watcher caught it midair, crushing the attack to dust.
"Temper, temper," it chided. "You'll need control to reclaim your birthright."
The cavern shuddered as the reanimated Mu-Ryong corpses shambled closer, their eyes glowing the same cursed black as Yun's.
"Decide," the Watcher hissed. "Serve me, and I will spare your sister's soul. Refuse…" Lian's corpse twitched, her hand plunging into her own chest and pulling free a pulsing shard of black ice—her frozen heart. "...and I will make you watch her suffer for eternity."
Tae's resolve wavered. The Frostblade shard whispered, "Yes. Yes. YES."
Yun stepped forward, his voice eerily calm. "Take me instead."
"Yun, no—!"
"A trade?" The Watcher's grin split Lian's face ear to ear. "How noble."
Yun's Rimefire Eyes dimmed, the black ice receding. "Free Lian. Leave my brother untouched. And I'll… I'll open the gate."
The Watcher studied him, then tossed Lian's frozen heart to the ground. "A bargain struck."
As the Watcher vanished, Lian's body crumpled. Tae caught her, her skin already warming, her breath returning in shallow gasps.
"Yun!" Tae turned—but his brother stood at the gateway, his hands pressed to the ice.
"I'm sorry," Yun whispered.
The gateway screamed, its light devouring the cavern. When it faded, Yun was gone.
In his place, etched into the ice, were words in the Watcher's jagged script:
"The key is in the lock."
And somewhere in the depths, Lian began to scream.