"You could have missed a few meals, you know?"
Silas' jab barely escaped his chapped lips, the howling wind swiftly carrying his words away into the white void. Each syllable formed a cloud of crystallized breath that was torn to shreds by the gale before it could fully form. The old man was staggering through snow that reached mid-calf, each step a battle against exhaustion, while struggling to support the massive burden that was Goro.
The giant's wounded leg had grown numb, the icy elements threatening to claim it for themselves. Blood no longer flowed freely from the gash — the cold had congealed it into a dark crust — but the damage was done. With each laborious step, the limb dragged through the snow, leaving an uneven furrow in their wake. Goro felt the chill settle deep in his bones, causing him to shake down to his very core. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, and his skin had taken on a bluish tinge that stood out starkly against the endless white surrounding them.
He chuckled, the sound more like a half-cough that rattled in his chest:
"What a sorry state I have found myself in. I swore I'd never add to the burden you carry."
Silas exhaled slowly, feeling the cold air assault his lungs like a thousand tiny needles. Frost had formed in his beard, tiny ice crystals clinging to the silver hairs. His muscles screamed under Goro's weight, shoulders and back, threatening to buckle, but he adjusted his grip on the giant's waist and pressed onward.
He opened his mouth, each word deliberate and clear despite his fatigue:
"Look alive, friend. Your efforts allowed us a few more moments of life. And freedom."
Silas was not just saying this to make Goro feel better, either. Since they had left the prison, Goro had supported both Rhys and Silas, acting as both a shield and a sword. When the gravity user had nearly caught them, it was Goro who had stood his ground, buying them precious seconds. When Rhys had collapsed, it was Goro who had carried him without complaint, mile after punishing mile.
Even during the prison escape itself, Rhys's plan — which endangered them in the end, what with him setting all those Marauders free from their containment cells — would have most likely failed without the mountain of a man. Goro had cleared the path when the guards closed in. His strength had been their salvation time and again.
Goro looked around at the blizzard, eyes narrowed against the stinging snow, trying to make out any kind of shapes or landmarks but was only met with a swirling white wall that seemed to press in from all sides. A glint of hopelessness dimmed the light in his eyes, usually so fierce and determined.
"A few moments indeed. We should begin searching for the boy…I mean, 'Master' Rhys."
After hearing the giant stumble with his words. Silas chuckled weakly.
"O ye of little faith."
They slowed down considerably, both men hunched against the relentless assault of wind and ice, eyes scanning the pristine expanse of snow for any sign of their unconscious companion. The blizzard made visibility nearly impossible; anything beyond arm's length was just gradations of white and gray, shadows moving within shadows.
"I'm sorry but…" Goro began, his words coming in broken fits between chattering teeth.
"I still need a little more convincing from the young man."
"Then why did you bow to him back in the prison?" Silas countered, the memory sharp despite their dire circumstances.
Goro shifted his weight, wincing as pain lanced through his injured leg. Fresh blood seeped from the wound, instantly freezing into tiny rubies on the snow.
"I was merely following your lead. I'm still questioning why you chose to give yourself to him. He's like an unsolved puzzle."
The nobleman thought he heard a sound then, cutting through the monotonous howl of the wind — something strange and out of place, like water sizzling on hot metal. He tilted his head, listening through the storm, then adjusted their direction to follow it. As they trudged through the snow, the going slightly easier now that they moved with the wind rather than against it, he spoke carefully, measuring each word:
"The ancestors of the Montclair family were one of the first major families to arise in all of Gehenna."
His voice took on a professor's cadence, drawing strength from the familiar rhythms of history and lineage.
"Do you know why, even after eons upon eons had passed, empires rising and falling like the tide, we still maintained relevance and power?"
Goro didn't answer aloud. He silently ruminated, thoughts swirling in his mind like the snow around them. The question wasn't rhetorical, but the giant was deep in his own internal struggle.
Silas suddenly stopped, bringing the limping giant to an awkward pause. His shaking hand shot out, pointing towards something in front of them and spoke:
"It's simple, really."
Goro squinted in that direction, eyes stinging from the cold, trying to make sense of the sight before him through the haze of exhaustion and pain that clouded his mind…
And he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
The blizzard blew mercilessly in every direction, a howling maelstrom of ice and fury, but at its centre was an impossible calm. It didn't dare touch the still form that lay there. Rhys's unconscious body rested on the ground as though placed there deliberately, not thrown as Goro had done so himself. A beautiful black flame with licks of violet and crimson embers burned gently around him, casting eerie, dancing shadows across the snow. It created a perfect radius of protection, a boundary the storm could not cross.
Most astonishing of all, the snow had all but boiled away within that circle of strange fire, leaving patches of green grass revealed beneath — a little spring island surrounded by dreadful winter.
Steam rose where snowflakes ventured too close to the boundary, instantly vaporizing with that same sizzling sound Silas had followed.
Goro stared, transfixed by the impossible scene. His pain momentarily forgotten, he straightened slightly, the weight of disbelief warring with the evidence before his eyes.
Silas wore a satisfied grin on his face, the expression transforming his weathered features. Ice crystals caught the strange light in his beard, making it shimmer with colours that had no place in this colourless world.
"Faith… and foresight."
It was as if those three words explained everything.
And so they limped toward the circle of otherworldly warmth.
***
After laying his eyes on the menacing blizzard, Rhys felt his consciousness abandon him as he fell. Not down as one would expect, but inward.
It didn't feel like sleep. Not really. But he wasn't exactly awake, either.
It was like being stuck between channels on an old TV, all static and shadow-puppets of real events flickering around him. A very familiar feeling.
He was back in the weird 'in-between' place again.
'I'm dead, aren't I?'
Deep down, he knew that wasn't the case but he still entertained the possibility. But why did he pass out in the first place? It started during his battle with the super powered guard. It clearly had something to do with his flame aspect. Whatever it was.
Pulling him away from his thoughts, the void cracked once more. He landed on the obsidian ground, sending faint ripples outward in muted pulses of light. Although, something had changed this time around.
Ahead, the world was split.
On one side, silence:
A vast emptiness that seemed to drink in sound, light, even thought. A place without edges. Without gravity. Without presence. The air didn't move. There was no wind, no warmth, just an eerie stillness that pressed against him like a glass wall. Shapes loomed at the edge of vision; tall, sharp, and angular; but no matter how long he stared, they never resolved. As if the place itself refused to be witnessed.
It wasn't really darkness. More like absence.
The other side was the opposite.
An inferno of hues he couldn't name, streaked with purples and bruised blues and brilliant flashes of crimson gold. Flame moved in slow spirals, licking the air in defiance of gravity, yet it gave off no smoke. It didn't destroy. It…sang?
Within the fire danced fractal patterns that seemed to echo his heartbeat, fast and wild. The rhythm was alive.
He took a step back instinctively, not from fear but from the pressure. The two halves of the space — the hollow and the blaze — didn't blend. They clashed, pulsing against each other like rival storms frozen in their moment of collision. Where they touched, the air screamed silently, the floor beneath warping in chaotic tremors.
And Rhys stood at the fault line. A single point between stillness and hunger. The cold vacuum and the consuming fire. He didn't understand any of it. So he said…thought… the only thing that came naturally.
'…Holy shit.'
The fire flared suddenly, brighter and more violent. The silence recoiled. Or maybe the other way around. The constant struggle made it unclear. Rhys staggered, catching his balance on nothing but instinct. His spiralling tattoo suddenly became wild, the runic glyphs were constantly rearranging themselves as if they couldn't decide on a shape.
Something was trying to pull him in both directions. The space where both sides pushed against each other, vying to claim him. Rhys felt stretched, like a thread pulled tight between two storm fronts.
Then something else shifted.
Behind him, unnoticed until now, a familiar door appeared. It was silently calling him back.
It was made of veneered wood that was painted over white. Stickers decorated the surface, suggested that the room belonged to a kid… a kid that Rhys had already met.
From behind it, the kid's voice came in faint, like a memory trapped in glass.
"Make sure to come back alive."
His heart clenched.
'Lenny, that psychopath.'
Just then, all at once, the fire surged. The void screamed.
And Rhys felt himself being yanked back to the waking world. He didn't know if he moved… or if the world just decided to move him.
Pulling him towards the door, back to the Abyss.