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In a space that greatly resembled the ancestral cave where he had once confronted an abomination formed of blood and ice, Hauke struggled against heavy chains of ice that bound him to a stone slab at the center of the vast cavern.

Rather than the crumbling and neglected shrine to his clan’s greatest protectors that he had entered with Ashlynn, the ancestral cavern constructed in Hauke’s mind appeared the way it had in the memories of the ancestors who were entombed there.

Powerful weapons hung on the walls, waiting for the hands that had once carried them in battle to pick them up again.

Five platforms ringed the space, each one large enough to hold an oversized ice statue bearing the iridescent horn of a powerful ancestor.

Only, within this mental space, the platforms didn’t hold statues but the spirits of the ancestors themselves.

At the moment, two of those platforms, the ones belonging to Ines and Ansgar, stood empty while their owners shared control of Hauke’s body to fight against Ashlynn, Heila, and the rest of Nyrielle’s forces.

The sounds of battle filled the cavern, and one of the walls was missing entirely, displaying instead the view from Hauke’s eyes as the icy walls of Lord Ritchel’s Ice Tomb closed around the young Frost Walker lord and the Mother of Trees.

"Please," Hauke pleaded, straining against the chains that bound him. "Please, you have to let me go before it’s too late! This is all just a misunderstanding," he said. "Just, just let me go, and I can talk to Ashlynn. She’ll understand, and she can put a stop to this before it gets worse."

"It’s already irreparable," an old woman said from a small stool made of ice.

Kimsel the Wise Crone was the oldest and most fragile of all the ancestral spirits that had formed a bond with Hauke, and arguably one of the weakest, but when it came to teaching, she was second only to Ines in her ability to persuade the young Frost Walker lord.

"Once they taste the power of weapons crafted from our horns, nothing stops the greed of hunters who wish to possess another," she said in a tone that sounded desolate and forlorn.

"Perhaps this little horned witch is not a wicked person.

Perhaps she would never desire another weapon for herself, but so what? "

"Witches gather in covens," Kimsel pointed out.

"And this little girl will use her blade around her brothers and sisters within the coven.

How long, then, until the others of her coven desire a blade of their own?

How long before they return to us, seeking a horn to craft into a wand or a severing knife? "

"But Lady Ashlynn is the Mother of Trees," Hauke argued. "She doesn’t need our power, and she would never hunt us for our horns. She only has two because Elder Paulus and his grandson betrayed us to the Tuscans. She nearly died stopping the Tuscans from killing me for my iridescent horn!"

"Did she protect you? Or did she reserve your horn for herself," a heavy, gravely voice said. Eraric the Frost Architect had once been the greatest shaper of Eternal Ice, not just of his own age but of any age. During his life, he’d laid down the foundations for what eventually grew into the Frost Walker’s current fortress guarding the High Pass.

He was also the person who had crafted the chains that bound Hauke’s mind to this place, leaving his body available to the ancestral spirits to ride like a well broken horse.

Where Kimsel felt greatly diminished, reduced in stature with dull gray fur that hung limply on her scrawny frame, Eraric was almost as tall and physically imposing as Ansgar.

Standing on his platform, he paid no attention to the battle taking place outside and instead focused his attention on the block of ice he’d willed into existence.

With a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other, he slowly worked at the block, slowly shaping it into a sword that was far too large for anyone but a Frost Walker or Tuscan to use with a single hand.

"I know you’ll deny it, young Hauke," Eraric said as the sound of his tapping hammer filled the cavern. "You haven’t lived as long as we have. You haven’t watched young heroes turn into corrupt and vile elders.

You haven’t seen time scour away a person’s morals and principles until nothing is left but their core of avarice and desire. "

"You said Elder Paulus betrayed you," Kimsel said, shaking her head as though she’d seen it happen with her own eyes.

"But at one point, surely he was like you are now.

Bright as the light falling on fresh snow and pure as ice formed beneath the surface of the lake.

Time changed him into something that could betray even his own clan.

You think that these witches are immune to the wearing away of time? "

"I do," Hauke insisted. Even though he’d only known them for a brief period of time, he’d seen the resolve in Ashlynn’s eyes when she charged out onto the ice to protect him and Heila from the Tuscan hunters, and he’d witnessed the fury in her eyes when she demanded justice for Andrus’s death.

He was certain that he hadn’t misjudged her.

"Besides," Hauke added. "She’s the Seneschal of Lady Nyrielle, a vampire who’s already centuries old. If anyone can ensure they keep their promises to not hunt us for our horns, it’s Lady Nyrielle. She was fair in her judgments, and she only demanded the horns of the people who did wrong."

"Vampires, worse than elders are," Eugen said, his childish voice contrasting sharply with his grim view of vampires. "Vampires like Lady Nyrielle, well do we know. Time, the millstone on their soul is."

"Remember, young Hauke," Eraric said as he cleaved off a large hunk of ice, freeing the sword from the ice that held it in place while he worked. "We’ve had dealings with a True Vampire before. None of us would exist without the sorcery of the Fangs of Death."