The cold hit differently outside the walls.
Inside Kaelstrid Hold, the wind was an old companion—sharp, familiar. Out here, beyond the reach of fire and stone, the cold was a predator. It crawled beneath Riven's furs, bit at his wrists and neck, and watched from every tree.
Snow blanketed the path as he descended through the pinewood trail Veyra had marked on the hand-drawn map. The trees thickened with every step, tall and skeletal, their black branches clawing skyward like frozen bones. Ice creaked underfoot. Far ahead, the distant rumble of the Sea of Butchers pulsed like a heartbeat beneath the cliffs.
Riven moved with purpose. No hesitation. No curiosity. He was not here to explore—he was here to shape something that belonged to him alone.
He found the place three days into the forest.
It wasn't much. A shallow ridge where stone met root, a collapsed cavern partially buried by snow and time. But beneath the weight of years, he uncovered it—a cave mouth veiled by frost-hung ivy and silence. The cold air that drifted from within smelled untouched, clean. Forgotten.
He stepped inside.
The stone walls were slick and green-veined, and the air trembled with the sound of dripping water echoing far back into the black. He didn't light a torch. He welcomed the dark. He claimed it.
This would be his hold. His crucible.
Each morning, Riven trained in the clearing outside the cave.
No tutors. No praise. Only cold steel and silence.
He began with the forms his father had taught—measured strikes, calculated steps. Then he broke them. Rebuilt them. Slowed them down. Sped them up. Added weight to his arms, his back, his legs. He trained until the trees around him were marked by the edge of his blade, until his breath came ragged and the snow beneath him melted with the heat of his effort.
At night, he retreated into the cave, carved out a place to sleep, and etched marks into the stone—one for each day. He hunted game with traps, snared fish from a frozen stream. Hunger taught him patience. Solitude taught him clarity.
One morning, the silence broke.
The scent of smoke.
He climbed the ridge near the trees and saw it—a fire on the coast, not far from where the sea cliffs dropped into icy black. Figures moved in the distance. A longship. Rough sails. Men with axes.
Pirates.
They called the waters the Sea of Butchers for a reason.
Riven watched them from the cliffside for hours. He studied the way they moved. The way they laughed. The way they let their guard drop.
Then he returned to his cave.
He wasn't ready. Not yet.
But he would be.
The next week, he trained harder. He fashioned straw dummies and struck them until his hands bled. He imagined their faces. He imagined their arrogance, their threat to his land. His people. Himself.
On the fourteenth day, he descended from the forest with nothing but a cloak and his training blade. He watched the pirates from the treeline until night fell.
Then he moved like a shadow between their fires.
He didn't kill—not yet. He watched. He waited. He stole a knife, then a second. Learned their language. Their routes.
And then he returned to his cave with something new: purpose.
By the end of the season, the cave no longer felt like a hiding place.
It was a forge. And Riven Kaelstrid was the sword within it.