The slam of the temple door was the last sound I heard before my world turned into a nightmare of red static and biting ice. Inside the sanctuary, the temperature was dropping at a terrifying rate.
Without my active consciousness to stabilize the geothermal flow, the pipes were seizing up. The modern living room, once a paradise of charcoal velvet and soft music, was now a tomb of freezing shadows.
I lay on the rug, my body flickering like a dying candle, watching the red numbers of my system bleed away into the darkness.
[Faith Level: 12% ... 11% ...]
[Guardian Heartbeat: Rapid. External Temperature: -40°C]
Outside, Arkael was walking into a wall of death. The moment he stepped past the threshold, the wind hit him like a physical blow from a giant. He wasn't the "King of Shadows" anymore.
He didn't have his enchanted black steel to deflect the frost or absorb the impact. He didn't have his cape of shadows to wrap around his soul and hide him from the world.
He was just a man in broken, heavy metal plates strapped over a linen tunic. His armor, once his pride, was now just a cold weight that sucked the heat out of his body.
The Nameless Mountain was a vertical labyrinth of granite, frozen moss, and razor-sharp ice. The "Frost-Root" I had mentioned in my fever didn't grow in the warmth of the temple; it grew in the "Breath of the North," the highest, most exposed crags where the wind was fast enough to strip skin from bone.
Arkael took his first step into the knee-deep snow. The cold was not just a temperature; it was a physical weight. It pressed against his chest, making every breath feel like he was inhaling broken glass.
He looked up at the peak, which was hidden behind a swirling veil of white and grey. To any sane person, the climb was impossible. But Arkael wasn't looking for a path; he was looking for a miracle.
"I am... not... stopping," Arkael gasped. His breath turned into a cloud of ice crystals before it even left his lips.
He began the ascent. Without the system's guidance, the mountain was a shifting puzzle. He had to rely on his old instincts—the instincts of a soldier who had spent years sleeping in frozen trenches.
He found a narrow ridge of rock that hadn't been completely covered by the drift. He placed his metal-clad boot down, the steel clinking sharply against the stone.
Within minutes, his fingers began to go numb. The leather gloves he had found in the temple were designed for gardening, not for ice-climbing.
They were already wet, the moisture turning into a thin layer of ice that bonded his skin to the metal of his gauntlets. Every time he gripped a rock, it felt like his skin was being pulled away.
"Manager..." he whispered, his voice lost in the roar of the wind. "Stay. Do not... close your eyes."
He fell for the first time on the second terrace. His boot slipped on a patch of "black ice"—ice so clear it looked like the rock beneath it. He went down hard, his metal knee-guard slamming into the granite with a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil.
The pain was sharp, human, and immediate. He didn't have the dark mana to numb his nerves anymore. He felt the bruise forming, the dull throb of a cracked kneecap, and the biting sting of the wind on his exposed neck.
He didn't stay down. He crawled. He pulled himself up using the modern chef's knife he had taken from the kitchen. He drove the stainless-steel blade into a crack in the ice, using it as a makeshift piton.
The knife was high-quality, but it wasn't meant for this. The blade groaned under his weight, the handle slippery with his own blood where the jagged edges of his gauntlets had cut his palms.
As he climbed higher, the air grew thinner. The "Divine Fever" I was experiencing was vibrating through the mountain itself. Arkael could feel it—a rhythmic pulse of heat and static that told him the temple was dying. Every pulse was a reminder that he was running out of time.
"Almost... there," he lied to himself.
He reached a wide, flat ledge that jutted out over a thousand-foot drop. The wind here was so strong it threatened to lift his heavy, armored body and toss it into the abyss. He stayed low, stomach-to-the-stone, dragging himself forward. And then, he saw it.
Underneath a jagged overhang, protected from the direct fall of the snow but bathed in the freezing moonlight, was a cluster of glowing blue flowers. The Blue Lily. The Frost-Root. They looked like jewels made of frozen water, their petals translucent and pulsing with a soft, rhythmic light.
Arkael let out a jagged breath of relief. He reached out, his fingers inches away from the cure. But the mountain had one last guardian. From the swirling white mist to his left, a shadow detached itself from the storm.
It was larger than a wolf, lower to the ground than a bear. A Frost-Stalker. Its fur was the color of a winter sky, and its eyes were two glowing coals of amber hate. It had been tracking Arkael since he left the temple, waiting for the moment he was most vulnerable.
The beast growled, a low-frequency rumble that shook the very ledge they stood on. It saw Arkael's broken armor, his trembling hands, and his lack of a proper sword. To the Stalker, this wasn't a fight; it was a harvest.
Arkael didn't panic. He had stood before armies. He had faced the light of the Church's most powerful inquisitors. He forced his frozen legs to lock into a combat stance. He held the chef's knife in a reverse grip, the way he used to hold his dagger when he was an assassin in the shadow-pits.
"I have faced gods," Arkael whispered, the words coming out as a hiss of steam. "I have burned cities. You are just a hungry dog in a white forest."
The Frost-Stalker lunged. It was a blur of white fur and silver claws. Arkael didn't have the speed he once had, but he had something better: experience. He knew exactly where the beast would aim—the throat.