Page 16 of Frostforge, Passage Six
In this brief moment of quiet, Thalia allowed herself to simply breathe.The weight of Mari's head settled into her lap as her sister finally succumbed to exhaustion.Thalia stroked her hair gently, her fingers tracing patterns as they had when Mari was small and frightened of storms.
***
Night descended over Verdant Port like a bruise spreading across skin, deep blues and purples replacing the fiery hues of sunset.Lanterns flickered to life along the harbor, their glow insufficient against the darkness that had claimed the city both literally and figuratively.Thalia sat on the worn stone steps of her childhood home, listening to the unfamiliar quiet of a street that had once hummed with life at all hours.The slums had escaped the worst of the destruction—the Wardens apparently finding little value in the poorest district—but scorch marks still marred the weathered walls, and doors hung from broken hinges like wounded creatures.Inside, her mother and Mari slept the deep sleep of the emotionally exhausted, but Thalia found rest impossible despite the day's chaos still echoing in her limbs.
Fires dotted the cityscape before her, small gatherings of survivors huddled around warmth and light.The harbor remained the center of activity, where the newly liberated citizens of Verdant Port organized supplies and tended to the wounded.It wasn't the order Thalia remembered from her childhood—this was clearly the desperate improvisation of recently freed captives—but it was a start.Life reasserting itself in the face of destruction.
Thalia traced her fingers along a crack in the step beneath her, following its jagged path across stone worn smooth by years of use.How many times had she sat here as a child, watching the ebb and flow of slum life, dreaming of something beyond these narrow streets?Now those streets felt like fragments of a memory that no longer matched reality.
The Greenspire home had survived, its walls still standing, its roof mostly intact.But the herb shop that had sustained their family—the small front room where her mother had mixed remedies for sailors and dock workers—was empty now, its shelves cleared by Warden soldiers, its carefully cultivated plants trampled or stolen.
She closed her eyes, trying to conjure the Verdant Port of her memory.The calls of street vendors in the morning, the clatter of carts on cobblestones, the smell of fresh bread from the baker three doors down.But the sensory tapestry refused to materialize.The baker was gone—her mother had mentioned his execution in the first days of occupation when he'd tried to defend his daughter from Warden soldiers.The street vendor who had sold salted fish wrapped in paper cones had fled before the wall was completed.The family across the way, whose youngest son had played hide-and-seek with Mari, had been taken to a different processing center and never seen again.
A coldness settled in Thalia's chest that had nothing to do with the night air.This was her home, yet it no longer felt like home.Too much had changed.Too many were missing.
Footsteps on the cobblestones pulled her from her thoughts.Thalia's hand moved instinctively to where her glacenite blade would normally rest, but she had left it inside, unwilling to subject her family to the hallucinations it might trigger in such close quarters.
Kaine emerged from the shadows, his pale Northern features stark in the dim light.He carried a bundle under one arm—scrolls and papers bound with cord—and his expression held none of the relief that should have followed their victory.Instead, his brow was furrowed, his mouth set in a grim line that spoke of troubling discoveries.
"Couldn't sleep either?"he asked, though the question seemed perfunctory, a prelude to more urgent matters.
Thalia shook her head."Too quiet.Too strange."
He nodded once, understanding without need for elaboration.Then he knelt beside her on the step, laying the bundle between them.His fingers, calloused from years at the forge, carefully untied the cord.
"I found these in the captain's quarters of the largest warship," he explained, unrolling the first scroll."There are more—many more—still aboard.Roran helped me decipher some of the Warden language.His parents taught him more than he let on."
The parchment was covered in neat, angular script—the Warden tongue rendered in ink the color of dried blood.Diagrams filled the margins, showing what appeared to be family trees with symbols and annotations attached to various names.Thalia leaned closer, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar characters.
"These are records," Kaine said, his voice dropping lower, though there was no one nearby to overhear."Detailed, systematic records of magical lineages throughout the Southern Kingdoms.Not just Verdant Port—dozens of coastal cities and even inland settlements."
He pointed to a section where the same phrase appeared repeatedly, marked with emphasis."This term—Roran says it translates roughly to 'magic in bloodlines.'Or ‘heredity’—something along those lines.It appears in document after document."
Thalia's skin prickled with unease."Why would they do this?"
Kaine unrolled another scroll, this one showing what appeared to be a map of the Southern coastline, with settlements marked and annotated."These aren't random raids anymore, Thalia.The Wardens are targeting specific populations, specific families.And look here—" He pointed to dates inscribed beside various locations."They've been building this log for years, systematically working their way up the coast."
"They need these people for something," she murmured, her mind racing through possibilities, each more disturbing than the last."Something that requires a certain type of magic.Magic that’s linked to lineage."
The word left a sour taste in her mouth.It suggested a purpose far more calculated than the chaotic violence normally associated with Warden raids.This wasn't opportunity or chance—this was strategy, long-term planning.A project.
“This information needs to get back to Frostforge,” she said without thinking.
Kaine nodded.“At the first opportunity.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thalia woke to the familiar creak of warped floorboards and the unfamiliar whistle of wind through new cracks in the walls.Morning light sliced through gaps in the ceiling that hadn't existed when she left for Frostforge two years ago, casting thin golden blades across the worn blankets.
She lay still for a moment, breathing in the scent of home—salt-tinged air, old timber, and the faint ghost of herbs that had once hung in bundles from every available beam.The shack felt smaller than she remembered, or perhaps she had simply grown larger in its absence, expanded by experiences that had stretched her beyond the confines of these humble walls.
She rose on aching muscles, each movement a reminder of yesterday's battle.Her body had been forged by Frostforge's training into something stronger than the girl who had once lived here, but even that strength had its limits.The wooden floor was cool beneath her bare feet as she padded across the small sleeping area.
Mari's pallet lay in the corner, a bundle of thin blankets from which only the crown of her sister's head was visible.The steady rise and fall of the blankets reassured Thalia that Mari slept peacefully—perhaps the first real rest she'd had since the Wardens came.
Thalia's fingers brushed the wall as she passed, tracing a deep gouge that split the wood like lightning through a summer sky.Warden blades had done this—carved their violent signature into the place she had once felt safest.
The damage was everywhere: a section of the roof partially collapsed, a window frame splintered and empty of glass, and walls scarred by impacts and scorch marks.The small home that had sheltered three generations of Greenspires had been wounded by the occupation, just as the people inside it had been.
