I remember it all. As I saw the round pierce his flesh, saw the blood spread, and saw for all his greatness just how breathtakingly human he seemed in the last moments of his life.
— Excerpt from The Sovereign of Ash, the Memoirs of Caelum Valerius.
Volume IV: As the Fire Fell, Page 64.
The cold on Callisto wasn't just weather. It had weight. It pressed down on your shoulders, and slipped through the gaps of your armor, settling deep in your bones.
Cold... Cold and storms. Little storms sweeping across its ice and cities, just as dawn turned to morning.
Although today, this particular storm had decided to stay—as though it had come to keep Darien company one last time.
In the training courtyard of Frostreach, Darien Halcrest stood in the snow.
The courtyard stretched wide around him—black iron and frozen stone, bordered by high battlements. His eyes were squeezed shut. He held his bare hands out before him, palms facing each other.
Ice shards rode the howling wind, razor-thin, slicing across his cheeks. He forced himself to ignore the pain and slow his breathing.
Remain calm. Wait for it.
Darien did his utmost to quiet himself, reaching for the particular state that Aether-casting demanded—There it is.
He reached inward, toward his aether. Somewhere deep inside his soul resided the Spark of the Glacial Affinity—a small, cold mark upon his aether core that allowed him to touch the laws of the cosmos and move them to his will.
Stillness, he repeated silently.
Creating order from chaos.
Ice is not the creation of cold. It is the enforcement of stillness.
So are the words of the great mages of Glacial Affinity, those who have either served the Academy or the Imperium.
As though just waiting for these words, a pale blue mist began to gather around his palms. The air stilled around him as the mist extended outward from his hands, thickening, as he forced the chaotic mist into shape—until a jagged spike of ice formed between his hands.
Then he opened his eyes.
The spike was six inches long and was trembling as if it would collapse with just a slight rustle of wind. Barely stable. Rank-one control at best.
Mother would call it pathetic.
Good thing she isn't here.
Alright. Now I just have to make you move.
He pushed harder. His lungs burned. Drawing aether felt like dragging something solid through his veins—his hands trembled as his arms ached under the strain of pulling too much from his aether channels, leaving them near empty.
The spike flickered. Its edges blurred.
Yes—just a little more and—
"You are forcing it."
The voice boomed across the yard, uncaring of the howling storm.
Darien's concentration shattered. The spike turned to dust as aether rushed violently back into the open air. He gasped and collapsed to his knees, the impact sending pain crackling through his channels down to his core—familiar punishment for someone who had pulled too hard on their aether.
But it was not the pain he was focused on.
He stared at the bare palms of his hands in front of him.
"I—I was... so close."
"No."
The word cracked upon him like a hammer upon an anvil.
"You were not."
The voice carried over the icy wind—and yet, it seemed colder than the storm itself.
Darien blinked against the snow and looked up.
There she was.
"Mother."
Lady Cassia Corvus Halcrest stood on the iron balcony above the courtyard. She wore no furs—only a crimson Imperial cloak draped over a severe charcoal dress. The storm raged around her, yet dared to touch her not, frost turning to steam before it could reach her, as though the cold itself thought better of it. The authority of an Exalted Mage of Ignis radiated from her like the heat off a furnace.
Even from thirty feet below, Darien could feel it pressing outward.
"You are treating the aether like an object, Darien," Cassia said, her voice cold even with all the Fire raging in her core. "It seems you think of it as clay, trying to mold it as you will."
Then her gaze moved—slowly—toward the far end of the courtyard, where the storm seemed to have swallowed the very stone.
There he was, standing beneath the raging winds. Kael.
"I thought I had instructed you to teach my son how to cast aether."
"I am doing that precisely, milady. I have taught Da- Lord Darien all the foundational theories, as per Academic texts. All that remains now is practice and—"
Kael stopped abruptly, as if sensing the change in the air.
"I apologize, milady. I spoke out of station."
He made a small bow, hands forming a circle at his chest level. The Symbol of the Light Bearer. The mark of the Astrum Imperium.
As though remembering her primary concern, she turned back to Darien. Her gaze fixed on him—and it felt less like being looked at and more like being burned alive.
"You will report to my study when this session is concluded." A pause, measured and deliberate. "Alone."
No.
"Have I made myself clear, Darien Halcrest?"
"...Yes, Mother."
"Now, again."
And with that, she left, the doors of the balcony closing behind her.
Darien clenched his jaw, rising from the ground quickly, afraid any servant would see their lord and think of him as some animal, one rutting in stone and mud. Although that was highly unlikely considering more than half the servants had already been fired over the years by none other than Lady Cassia herself.
A few hours later, a young man could be seen wandering through the corridors of Frostreach. The corridors were covered with banners of House Halcrest and Corvus. A reminder Frostreach Bastion had once been a proud Martian military outpost. Although it still came under Corvus rule, just with Halcrests holding the Bastion. Because for all its greatness and the money it made, it was still a part of a Jovian system, a technologically less advanced moon hovering somewhere around Jupiter, not a part of their Inner Worlds and their politics.
Between the banners stood statues of ancient Corvus warlords, who had served under the Light Bearer when he united distant worlds to fight the darkness of the Drift.
Darien had walked this particular corridor almost innumerable times over the course of his life. Yet, for all the effort Martian lords had put into building it during the unification, Darien had hardly taken an interest in it, only seeing it as a passage between the rooms and halls. But today, this young lord was finding everything but his destination—a part of the west wing of this Bastion where the corridor seemed to narrow into a particular room—more interesting.
Taking all the time he could and thinking of all the excuses he could make, Darien finally reached the room.
Mother's study.
Suddenly, a voice interrupted his cascading thoughts: "My Lord, Lady Cassia awaits your arrival."
With that, without waiting for him to say anything, she opened the doors of his mother's study.
Was she always there? Darien looked dumbfounded at the maidservant at one corner of the corridor, having just moved to the corner after opening the door to the study.
"You may enter."
"Aye, mother." Giving one last look to the maidservant, Darien moved to enter his mother's study, thinking, Well whatever, but I'm sure she was not there... or was she?