Page 2 of Frostforge, Passage Four

Thalia crested the final ridge before Frostforge, her boots crunching through the thin crust of snow that always seemed to dust these heights, even in late summer.

Her knees still shook from the days at sea; the ship’s voyage had felt more turbulent than usual, though that might have been merely Thalia’s imagination in overdrive, imagining storm sharks roiling the waters around the thick wood of the hull.

Ahead, the academy loomed, its towers and battlements carved from the very mountain face — ancient gray quartz stone, wholly imposing.

Every step toward it felt heavier than the last, as if the fortress itself generated its own gravity, pulling her back into orbit after her brief season of freedom in Verdant Port.

Behind her trailed the convoy of Southern students who had shared her ship journey, their faces pinched with exhaustion from the high-altitude trek from the fjords below.

Most of them stumbled more than walked, still unaccustomed to the thin air that clawed at their lungs.

Thalia's own breath came easier now, after three years of conditioning, but her chest still burned from the final ascent.

"Look at them all," Luna whispered at her side, her voice a conspiratorial hush that somehow managed to sound both innocent and calculating at once. "So many first-years this time."

Thalia nodded, swallowing hard as she counted the fresh, terrified faces.

More replacements, she thought, for all those who hadn't survived their first, second, or third years.

The academy's brutal mortality rate made itself known in the simplest mathematics: many entered, few remained. She had beaten those odds so far.

She took comfort in Luna's presence beside her, the smaller girl draped in a patchwork of furs that made her look like a strange, wild creature of the mountains.

Luna's lopsided grin peeked out from beneath a hood lined with rabbit fur, her clever eyes darting from face to face, cataloguing, remembering.

One of Thalia's first and closest friends at Frostforge, Luna wore her oddness like armor, allowing others to underestimate her — but Thalia knew better.

"Almost home," Luna said, the word home tinged with irony.

The massive iron doors of Frostforge yawned open before them, exhaling a cloud of frigid air that tasted of stone and metal.

Thalia crossed the threshold into the frost-rimed main hall, and a bone-deep cold embraced her like an old enemy.

The chill penetrated her layers instantly, a familiar greeting that whispered: You are back, you belong to us now.

You always did. Like the world outside of the fjord, the continent carving its way into the ridges of the Rimspire was nothing but a distant dream.

The hall buzzed with tense energy as Northern and Southern students gathered in loose formations, eyeing each other with barely concealed wariness.

Absence had only seemed to breed further distrust between these factions.

Thalia caught a particularly fierce glare from Einar Frostborne, a Northern fourth-year whose disdain for Southerners was matched only by his skill with ice magic.

Frustration ignited in her chest, hot and quick.

These tensions between North and South had caused nothing but strife during her time at Frostforge — distractions from the real enemy that waited beyond their shores.

"Still the same old nonsense," she muttered to Luna, who merely hummed in agreement, her attention already fixed on the raised dais where the instructors were assembling.

Instructor Wolfe took the podium, her broad shoulders square beneath her ceremonial furs, emerald eyes scanning the crowd with predatory precision.

Thalia was struck by Maven's absence; the one-eyed instructor had been a fixture at every opening assembly since Thalia's arrival.

She had been present to witness the former head instructor's ultimate betrayal last term, but still, Frostforge's opening ceremony felt strange and foreign without Maven's scarred face glowering down at them.

Looking around, Thalia was suddenly reminded of the absence of last year's senior students, now graduated and deployed to various military outposts across the realm.

She felt a pang as she remembered that Kaine was gone, off to the military with the rest of the graduates.

His steady presence in the Howling Forge would be missing now, leaving Frostforge different, diminished.

Wolfe raised her hands, and the hall fell silent. "Before we begin," the instructor said, her voice like metal scraping stone, "a moment of silence for those lost in the Isle Warden raid last term."

The stillness that followed pressed against Thalia's ears like deep water.

In that silence, the ever-present cold of Frostforge felt even colder, as if the very air remembered the lives extinguished by Isle Warden blades and storm magic.

She thought of Instructor Morrow, his body found amid the wreckage of the eastern tower, and of the students who had fallen defending the academy — some she had known, others merely passed in hallways, all of them gone.

She met Luna's gaze during the silence, finding her own grief mirrored in her friend's usually mischievous eyes.

Then she felt a presence at her side, a shift in the air that was both familiar and surprising.

She looked up to see Roran standing next to her, wrapped in a heavy storm-grey cloak that seemed to absorb the light around him.

His dark eyes found hers — searching, steady, unreadable.

Thalia blinked, her heart lurching against her ribs.

He looked thinner than she remembered, his walnut-brown skin bronzed by a summer spent beneath the Southern sun, but the familiar tilt of his brow, the calm he always carried, was like a balm to her wounded spirit.

Without thinking, she leaned into him slightly, warmed by his proximity.

The hush in the hall hung heavy around them, and Thalia couldn't stomach it; she had to resist the urge to bury her face in Roran's chest and shut it all out.

The names of the dead whispered through her mind like ghostly fingers, and beneath them, the fear that by year's end, her name might join theirs.

Instructor Wolfe's voice finally broke the silence, and Thalia exhaled in relief.

"To those who did not survive the Isle Warden raid," Wolfe said, her voice like flint striking steel, "we remember you.

" A collective breath rippled through the crowd like wind over glacier ice.

"And to those of you still standing — welcome back to Frostforge. "

Her sharp gaze swept over the gathered students, lingering on the nervous first-years.

"Make no mistake. War waits for no one. Your status as students does not change the fact that you have been recruited for war, and war will find you, whether you are ready or not.

Thus, it is our duty to prepare you — and your duty to prepare yourselves — with every waking moment. "

Wolfe leaned forward, her hands gripping the edges of the podium, the polished metal of her rings catching the cold light. "You should always expect the battle to come in the night."

***

The assembly hall emptied like a draining tide, students flowing toward the corridors in currents of hushed conversation and speculation.

Thalia followed the press of bodies, wedged between Luna and their other roommate, Ashe Redwood, as they squeezed through the massive iron-bound doors.

The familiar weight of Frostforge settled around her shoulders — the chill that no amount of forge-heat could fully banish, the distant echoes bouncing off stone walls, the smell of ice and metal and sweat.

She'd returned, as ordered. But the academy felt different now, changed in ways both visible and unseen.

"Did you see Marr's face when he mentioned the increased patrols?" Luna whispered, her voice pitched just loud enough for Thalia to hear. "He knows something he's not telling us."

Ashe scoffed, the red streaks in her black hair catching the light from the wall sconces.

The scarlet-dyed strands were a signifier of her clan in the Northern Reaches, a cultural marker that indicated her ability to survive the hostile wilds.

"He always knows something he's not telling us. That's what makes him Marr."

They rounded a corner, and Thalia's steps faltered.

The corridor wall to their right bore a massive scorch mark, black and ragged against the pale stone.

It stretched from floor to ceiling, the edges crumbling where intense heat had weakened the ancient mortar.

She'd heard about the attack, of course — news had reached Verdant Port even before the survivors did — but seeing the physical evidence made her stomach clench.

Luna noticed her hesitation and followed her gaze. "They say that's where Instructor Morrow fell," she said quietly. "Trying to hold back three Wardens at once."

Thalia brushed her fingers against the blackened stone.

It felt wrong somehow, as though the violence that had created it still lingered in the scorched surface.

Frostforge had always seemed impregnable, a bastion of ice and stone.

Now it wore its wounds openly, like a soldier refusing to hide his scars.

"Come on," Ashe said, tugging at Thalia's sleeve. "We should go unpack before the evening meal. Our room assignment is the same as last year — they didn't bother reshuffling after..." She trailed off, her usual bluntness failing her.

After the dead were counted, Thalia finished silently.

"Are you coming up?" Luna asked, her dark eyes searching Thalia's face with that perceptive gaze that missed nothing, despite her carefully cultivated appearance of distraction.

Thalia shook her head. "I'll meet you there later. I just need to..." She gestured vaguely down the corridor that led deeper into the fortress.