The Frozen Peak looked different in the morning.
The storm that had swallowed Barnett the day before had passed completely. The ice caught the early sunlight and scattered it in every direction. The sky above was a pale, cloudless blue, stretching endlessly in every direction.
The four of them stepped out of the tent and into the cold air.
Vyvian stretched his arms above his head. "Alright. How long until we reach Valenor, Rem?"
Rem folded the tent and answered, "By evening, if we move at a consistent pace."
Barnett was already adjusting his clothes and checking the small bottle in his inner pocket carefully. He looked up and nodded. "He's right. Evening is reasonable, but only if we don't slow down."
Faye pulled her collar up against the cold and looked at the path ahead. "Then let's move fast and stop talking about it."
There was an energy between the four of them that hadn't existed the night before. They moved with it, their pace was quick and their footsteps steady across the ice.
The path descended gradually from the peak's highest point, winding between pale rock formations that cast long shadows across the snow. Below them, just barely visible through the cold haze at the base of the hills, the land changed color. Greener. Warmer. The edges of Valenor's region beginning.
Rem fell into step beside Barnett after a while.
"So," he said, with the careful tone of someone asking something he genuinely wanted to know the answer to. "What sickness does your mother have?"
Barnett's easy expression shifted slightly.
"The town doctor said it's life threatening," he replied. "In most cases, people don't recover from it. But he told us there was a medicine that could help with recovery if we got it in time." He paused. "That's why I went to Prythos."
He touched his coat briefly over the pocket where the bottle rested.
Faye had been walking just behind them. She looked at Barnett's profile for a moment, at the way he said it simply, without asking for anything in return.
"She's going to be alright," she said.
Barnett glanced at her. Something in his expression softened.
"Yeah," Rem added. "Don't worry."
Barnett smiled, genuine but small. "Thank you. Both of you."
Then, from somewhere ahead on the path, a sound reached them.
Not wind. Not footsteps.
Something larger.
"GUYS."
Vyvian's voice came from around the bend in the path where he had walked slightly ahead. It carried a very specific quality that all three of them had learned to recognize.
Alarm.
They rounded the bend quickly.
Vyvian stood completely still, his head tilted back, staring upward.
Above them, crossing the sky with the slow and unhurried movement of something that had never needed to rush, was a creature so large that its shadow fell across the entire width of the path and the rock formations on either side of it.
A serpent.
But not like any serpent Vyvian had ever become or imagined becoming. This one stretched across the sky like a living river, its body so long that its tail disappeared into the distant haze behind them while its head was already far ahead. Scales covered its length, but they were not hard and flat. They were feathered at the edges, each one catching the wind and generating currents that rolled downward in warm waves, pressing against the four of them on the ground like a gentle but enormous breath.
Around its neck, a thick mane of green fur moved in the wind, flowing and graceful, trailing behind the creature's head like something decorative and ancient at the same time.
"A dragon?" all four of them said together.
For a moment nobody moved.
Rem recovered first, his eyes tracking the creature's path across the sky with careful attention. "Barnett. Is this normal near Valenor?"
"No," Barnett said, his voice genuinely surprised. "I've never seen anything like this. Not once in my entire life growing up there."
"Is it hostile?" Vyvian asked, still not moving.
Rem watched it for another moment. The creature showed no signs of awareness that four small figures stood on the ice below it. Its eyes, visible briefly as its head passed overhead, were forward facing and distant, focused on something far beyond the peak.
"It doesn't look like it's going to attack us," Rem said.
That was enough.
All four of them ran anyway, pressing against the rock formation at the side of the path until the great shadow passed over them and the creature's form continued its slow crossing of the sky, indifferent to everything below it. The feathered scales continued generating their warm wind long after the body itself had moved past, the current fading gradually like the wake of a ship on still water.
Then it was gone.
The four of them stood in the returning silence and looked at the empty sky where it had been.
"Well," Faye said.
Nobody added anything to that for a moment.
Then they continued walking.
The descent from the Frozen Peak took another hour, and as the ice gave way to harder soil and the first patches of grey-green scrub appeared along the path's edges, the cold began to ease. The air lost its bite and became simply cool, pleasant after the sustained chill of the peak.
Faye fell into step beside Barnett.
"Tell us about Valenor," she said. "What is it like?"
Barnett considered the question for a moment, his eyes on the path ahead.
"It's a beautiful place," he said. "Large. Busy. There's a lot of wealth there, a lot of movement. Merchants, noble families, people from other regions passing through." He paused. "I grew up there, so I should probably say more good things about it."
He smiled slightly, but it was a complicated smile.
"Honestly, Valenor was never truly home to me. Not the city itself." He looked ahead at the distant green below the hills. "My mother is what made it home. After my father died, right after I was born, she raised me on her own. She never let me feel like anything was missing. She never let me feel like I wasn't enough." He was quiet for a moment. "It's really the people we love who make a place feel like home, isn't it? Not the place itself."
Faye's reply came quietly, with a weight behind it that she didn't explain.
"Yeah. You're right."
A brief silence settled between them.
"Tell me about your place," Barnett said, looking at her.
Rem's voice came from just behind them, calm and precisely timed.
"Let's save those conversations for later." He gestured ahead to where Vyvian had once again moved ahead of the group, his pace noticeably faster than everyone else's, his red cloak moving steadily in the cool air. "Look at Vyvian. We should catch up."
Faye looked at the path ahead. Then she nodded, grateful in a way she didn't say out loud.
They picked up their pace and closed the distance to Vyvian.
Walking beside Barnett now, Vyvian glanced at him after a comfortable stretch of silence.
"Barnett. Have you ever seen or encountered a creature with muddy, cracked skin? Coarse voice. Hideous looking. Large."
Barnett thought about it carefully.
"No," he said. "I've never seen anything like that." He paused. "But what you're describing matches something my mother used to tell me when I was young. She always said if I ever encountered a creature fitting that description, I should run without a second thought. No hesitation. Just run."
He looked at Vyvian with quiet curiosity. "Why do you ask?"
Vyvian kept his eyes on the path.
"We were told the same thing," he said simply. "I just wanted to know if you'd heard it too."
Barnett nodded slowly, accepting the answer.
They kept walking.
--Ten years earlier--
The room was small and warm, lit by a single lamp on the table beside the bed. Outside the window, Valenor moved through its evening routines, distant voices and the clatter of the market closing down for the night.
A woman sat on the edge of the bed where a young boy lay beneath a thick blanket, his eyes wide and curious rather than sleepy.
She held something in her hand.
A pendant. Simple in its construction, a thin cord holding a jewel that caught the lamplight and held it in a way that seemed slightly too complete, as though the light that entered it never quite came back out the same way.
"Look at this, Barnett," she said softly.
The boy sat up immediately, eyes fixed on the jewel.
"Our family is supposed to guard this with our lives," she continued. "You are our only child. When the time comes, you will carry this pendant after me."
"What does it do?" Barnett asked.
She smiled gently. "There is a saying in our family. Whoever carries this jewel is guarded by its spirit."
"Really?" His eyes widened. "Can I wear it?"
"Not yet." She tucked the pendant carefully away and reached over to smooth his hair back from his forehead. "But when the time comes, you will know. And when that time comes, you must wear it and guard it."
She settled him back against the pillow.
"Now sleep."
The lamp cast its warm light across the small room as the boy closed his eyes, already half dreaming of jewels and spirits and things he didn't yet have words for.
--Present--
The pond appeared beside the path without announcement, fed by snowmelt from the peak above, its surface perfectly still and clear. The water reflected the afternoon sky so cleanly that looking into it felt like looking upward.
All four of them stopped without needing to discuss it.
They crouched at the water's edge and washed their faces, the cold water sharp and clean against their skin after the long morning of walking. Barnett cupped water in both hands and held it there for a moment before splashing it across his face, exhaling slowly as he did.
Vyvian looked at his own reflection in the still water.
His eyes looked back at him and he looked away.
Ahead, through the last stretch of descending path, the land opened into something wider and warmer. Rooftops were just barely visible in the distance, pale stone catching the late afternoon light.
Valenor.
"Come on," Faye said, standing and wiping her hands on her clothes. "We're close."
Barnett stood beside her and looked at the distant rooftops with something in his expression that was both eagerness and something older and quieter beneath it.
Home. And everything waiting for him there.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Let's go."
The four of them continued down the path together, the Frozen Peak behind them and Valenor ahead, the afternoon light growing warmer with every step they took toward it.