The liquid light of the Temple's pool clung to Arthur's void-hand like a second skin, hardening into a gauntlet of frozen starlight. The moment it solidified, the cavern's song shifted—a harmonic resonance that made the very air vibrate with potential.
Elyra's breath fogged in the suddenly chill air. "The Frostfang Vault answers."
Arthur's new gauntlet pulsed in time with his heartbeat, its light refracting strange patterns across the cavern walls. With each thrum, the vision of the icebound fortress grew clearer—he saw glacial peaks weeping black tears, Storm Guild drills boring through permafrost, and deep below, the second heart's slow, irregular pulse.
"They're close," the parasite whispered. "Too close."
Nyra tested her freshly healed ribs with a cautious stretch. "How far to these mountains?"
"Three weeks by caravan," said Elyra's crystalline-eyed companion, Garrel. "Half that if the Harmonizer can wield the old paths."
All eyes turned to Arthur's glowing gauntlet.
The Forgotten Road
Dawn found them standing before the Temple's most sacred artifact—a doorway carved from a single massive vertebra, its archway filled with swirling mist. Up close, Arthur could see the mist wasn't vapor at all, but countless microscopic crystals suspended in air, each humming at a different frequency.
"The veins of the earth remember," Elyra explained, pressing her marked hand to the bone. "Walk where the Primordials walked."
The mist parted.
Where there should have been stone wall, an endless tunnel now stretched—its walls composed of layered light, its ceiling lost in luminous fog. The air smelled of ozone and something older, like the moment before lightning strikes.
Nyra eyed the passage warily. "This feels like the sanctum."
"Because it is one," Arthur realized. "Just... smaller." His gauntlet warmed as he stepped forward, the light adjusting to his presence. "A path between sanctums."
The journey defied time.
One moment they stood at the threshold; the next, they'd walked for hours, though their legs reported no fatigue. The tunnel's walls showed fleeting images—other travelers from other times, some robed in Zenith sigils, others barely human. Twice, Arthur caught glimpses of a hooded figure keeping pace just beyond sight.
Then the light ahead shifted, and the tunnel spat them out onto a mountainside so cold it stole the breath from their lungs.
The Frostfang Wastes
The storm hit like a living thing. Wind howled through jagged peaks, driving ice shards that cut exposed skin. Arthur's gauntlet flared, creating a bubble of calm around their group, but even its power couldn't stop the cold entirely.
Nyra squinted through the blizzard. "There!"
Half a league up the slope, orange torchlight flickered—the unmistakable sign of Storm Guild excavators. Their drills' metallic shrieks echoed off the glaciers, a discordant counterpoint to the mountain's deeper groan.
Elyra's robes iced over instantly. "They've breached the outer seals."
Arthur's gauntlet pulsed urgently. Beneath their feet, the second heart's rhythm stuttered—the guild's interference was destabilizing its prison.
"Run," the parasite urged.
They climbed through wind that tasted of frozen metal. As they neared the dig site, details resolved:
- A dozen Storm Guild engineers in heated armor
- Two massive drills powered by crackling lightning cores
- Three Hollowborn guards, their crystalline growths specially reinforced for the cold
- And at the center, overseeing it all, a figure in gold-chased armor that made Arthur's scars ache—Archon Veyl, Maelis's successor
Nyra's blackfire guttered in the storm. "That's the bastard who sent Kael after us."
Elyra signaled her companions to flank left. "We'll handle the guards. You two reach the vault."
Arthur's gauntlet flared in agreement.
The Breach
They attacked as the storm reached its peak.
Elyra's group struck first—her void-marked hand unraveling a Hollowborn's crystalline armor with a touch, Garrel's eye-beam slicing through drill cables. In the chaos, Arthur and Nyra slipped past, following his gauntlet's pull toward a freshly bored tunnel.
The deeper they went, the stranger the ice became. Normal glacier blue gave way to veins of black, then entire walls of shimmering obsidian. The air thickened with each step, until breathing felt like inhaling ground glass.
Then the tunnel opened into hell.
Archon Veyl stood before a massive obsidian door, his gold-chased armor reflecting the light of a dozen floating lanterns. The door itself was half-melted, its intricate Zenith carvings running like wax under some unimaginable heat.
But worse—far worse—was what lay beyond the door.
A chamber of pulsating black ice, its walls breathing like living flesh. And at its center, suspended in a cage of frozen lightning, floated the second heart—a sphere of perfect darkness shot through with crimson veins.
Veyl turned, his faceplate retracting to reveal eyes as void-touched as Arthur's.
"Ah," he breathed. "The thief arrives."
His armored hand plunged into the heart's cage.
BATTLE IN THE VAULT
The moment Veyl's gauntlet touched the second heart, the mountain screamed.
Ice shattered. The obsidian door exploded outward, its fragments moving unnaturally slow, as if time itself had thickened. Arthur barely raised his own gauntlet in time—the impact still sent him skidding backward, boots carving trenches in the frozen floor.
Nyra wasn't so lucky. A shard the size of a dagger caught her thigh, punching clean through muscle. She went down with a choked cry, blackfire instinctively cauterizing the wound in a sizzle of burning flesh.
Veyl emerged from the wreckage transformed. The heart's darkness swirled up his arm like living oil, reforging his armor into something sleeker, deadlier—a second skin of interlocking obsidian plates. His eyes had vanished entirely, replaced by pulsing crimson light.
"You don't understand what you interrupt," Veyl intoned, his voice layered with something ancient and hungry. "This power was promised to the Dawnwrath line centuries ago."
Arthur's gauntlet flared in response, its frozen starlight brightening. The parasite's voice was a growl: "He seeks to chain what should be free."
Nyra dragged herself upright, her teeth bared in a bloody grin. "Talkative bastard, isn't he?"
Veyl moved.
One moment he stood before the heart's cage. The next, his reforged fist connected with Arthur's chest. The impact should have shattered ribs—instead, Arthur's gauntlet reacted instinctively, absorbing the blow in a shower of sparks.
The counterattack came from pure instinct. Arthur's void-hand seized Veyl's wrist, and for one terrible instant, their stolen powers connected.
A vision flashed:
- A younger Veyl kneeling before the Storm Council
- Maelis's corpse on a slab, her chest cavity hollowed out
- The Council's promise: *"Bring us a heart, and you'll inherit her parasite"*
- The truth beneath: They'd never intended to give him anything
Arthur wrenched free, gasping. "They're using you! The Council sent you here to die!"
Veyl's crimson eyes flickered. "Lies."
Nyra struck while he hesitated. Her blackfire, concentrated into a searing lance, punched through his armor's weakest joint—the elbow. Veyl roared as the flames burrowed inward, his control slipping just long enough—
Arthur lunged for the heart.
THE SECOND BOND
The heart's cage resisted at first, its frozen lightning arcing painfully through Arthur's gauntlet. Then his void-hand pulsed—the first heart's power recognizing its sibling—and the barrier shattered like glass.
The second heart floated before him, its crimson veins pulsing in time with his own scars. Unlike the first bonding, there was no hesitation—the sphere *leaped* to meet his grasp.
Contact.
Agony and ecstasy collided as the heart's essence flooded his nervous system. Arthur's back arched violently, his scream echoing through the vault as the transformations spread:
- His gauntlet dissolved, the liquid light surging up to his shoulder
- New scars erupted across his chest, burning violet-black
- His left eye's vision dissolved into a kaleidoscope of overlapping realities
Veyl howled in rage, charging through Nyra's suppressing fire. His corrupted blade aimed straight for Arthur's exposed throat—
And stopped mid-air.
Arthur hadn't raised a hand. Hadn't even blinked. The attack simply... ceased, as if the air itself had solidified to protect him.
The parasite's voice was awed: "Reality bends where two hearts beat as one."
Veyl's snarl turned desperate. He struck again, faster this time—a flurry of blows that never landed. Each attack froze inches from Arthur's skin, suspended in time.
Nyra limped closer, her eyes wide. "Arthur...?"
He turned—and saw himself through her eyes for the first time.
The changes were undeniable. His right arm was pure void now, the left threaded with glowing scars. His formerly brown eye had transformed, the iris replaced by swirling motes of light. When he breathed, the air shimmered around him like heat haze.
Veyl stumbled back. "Abomination."
Arthur flexed his transformed hand. Power thrummed through him, different from before—not just strength, but authority. The mountain's song resonated in his bones, its rhythm answering his slightest thought.
He spoke a single word: "Kneel."
The command hit Veyl like a physical force. His armor shrieked as unseen pressure drove him to the ice, his crimson eyes dimming under the weight of Arthur's will.
Nyra's hand found his. "Don't kill him."
Arthur blinked. The rage cleared just enough to see the truth—Veyl wasn't the enemy. Just another pawn in the Storm Council's game.
The Archon gasped as the pressure lifted. His voice was raw: "What... are you?"
Arthur turned toward the crumbling vault entrance, where Elyra and the others fought off reinforcements. The second heart's power sang in his veins, whispering of ten more prisons, ten more battles to come.
"The reckoning," he said.
And walked into the storm.
THE COUNCIL'S GAMBIT
The Storm Guild forces broke when they saw their Archon defeated.
Elyra's group secured the drill site as Arthur led Nyra from the collapsing vault. Outside, the blizzard had calmed to a gentle snowfall—the mountain's fury soothed by the heart's bonding.
Garrel whistled at Arthur's transformed state. "Two hearts in two weeks. The Temple's prophecies spoke of this."
Elyra bowed deeply. "The Harmonizer walks among us."
Nyra, leaning heavily on Arthur, snorted. "He's still an ass who gets us into avalanches."
But her grip on his hand never loosened.
As they prepared to descend, Veyl's rasping voice carried across the ice: "You think this ends here? The Council already moves on the Emberwild Citadel."
Arthur froze. The third heart's location snapped into focus—a volcanic fortress in the southern wastes.
Elyra's face paled. "The Ignis Guild's stronghold."
Nyra's flames guttered. "My old home."
Veyl coughed blood onto the snow. "They'll be waiting for you, Zenith. With weapons you can't imagine."
Arthur turned his void-hand palm-up. The snowflakes avoided his skin entirely, repelled by some unseen force.
"Let them try."
Far to the south, a volcano's long-dormant peak pulsed with ominous light.