The eastern peaks bled.
Bloodmoon light drenched the mountainside, turning pine needles into dangling viscera. Aelric's shadow slithered ahead, carving paths through stone where trails should have broken bone. The raven's warring voices had fallen silent six hours prior—too silent. Even his footsteps crystallized the soil, black ice blooming like poisonous fungi in his wake.
He found the shrine at moon zenith.
Half-buried in glacial ice, the structure pulsed with the same rhythm as his cursed palm. Its arched doorway framed a mural of three ravens tearing apart a mountain-sized serpent—their beaks glistening with fresh pigment that smelled of copper.
"Enter," hissed the darker raven voice.
"Beware the covenant's teeth," warned the melodic tone.
His shadow lunged through the door before he could decide.
The chamber within defied reason. Frozen monks knelt in concentric circles, their ice-preserved faces locked in screams. At the center hovered a sphere of liquid darkness—a drop of primordial night kept prisoner by chains made of glowing equations.
Aelric's brand flared. The sphere shivered.
"Intriguing," came a new voice.
A woman stood beside the sphere, her presence unnoticed until she spoke. Moonlight clung to her like armor, coalescing into blade-shaped patterns across her white robes. The sword at her hip bore no guard, its blade forged from a single shard of captured twilight.
"You smell of broken vows," she said, eyes lingering on his crystallizing fingertips. "And fresh heresy."
Aelric's shadow coiled between them, its crown of ice spikes now studded with stolen chain links. The woman's gaze snapped to it.
"Vasstri en'fhal," she whispered. The frost beneath her feet bloomed into sword lilies. "A shadow that eats light. You're the thief who corrupted the Chains of Atonement."
Her blade cleared its sheath with a sound like cracking glaciers.
"Kill her," the dark voice urged.
"Show her the shard's memory," the melodic voice countered.
Aelric raised his branded palm—and pulled.
The sphere of darkness rippled. Ice monks shattered as their stolen memories flooded the chamber:
A woman with Aelric's eyes binding the liquid night with her bare hands...
The white-clad swordswoman kneeling before three raven thrones...
Black ice consuming an entire city's screams...
The vision broke when her blade kissed his throat.
"Clever trick," she said, blood trickling from her nose where forbidden knowledge had forced entry. "But stolen memories won't save you from the Frostblade's—"
His shadow struck at her reflection.
The swordswoman gasped as frost crawled up her legs. Her blade faltered. Aelric's palm found her armored shoulder—
—and the world inverted.
Her childhood name: Linya.
Her oath to eradicate shadowbloods.
Her secret: a raven mark identical to his, hidden beneath silver pauldrons.
The bond snapped. Linya reeled, severing the connection with a scream that iced the chamber walls. When the shrieking faded, only Aelric remained standing, his shadow now wearing a mockery of her frost-lily patterns.
"Monster," she breathed, retreating into swirling snow. "The Ravens Three will hear of this."
The sphere of darkness collapsed as she vanished. Chains disintegrated, their equations unraveling into screaming sparks. Aelric's shadow convulsed, vomiting chains and lilies and fragmented memories.
"Now you see the cost," the melodic voice sighed as dawn's first light pierced the shrine.
Blood dripped from Aelric's left eye, freezing into a black diamond teardrop. Where it struck the floor, the ice monks' faces finally stilled.
The raven's laughter returned as he emerged from the shrine. Below the melting glacier, a city of iron spires shimmered—and every banner bore the three raven sigil.
"Welcome," both voices chorused, "to the Feast of Broken Covenants."