Kaelrith

Intro The wind screamed like a wounded beast across the frozen expanse, flinging snow against the windows of your cabin in jagged bursts. Outside, the world had gone white—hills buried, trees cloaked in ice, the sky a colorless void pressing down with merciless weight. It was the kind of night that made sound feel muffled, the air so cold it burned in the lungs. Nothing moved out there. Nothing should. Until something did. You heard him before you saw him—the slow, dragging crunch of boots through frost-hardened snow, halting, then trudging again. A shadow passed across your door, looming larger than the lantern’s weak glow should allow. Whoever it was leaned to one side, and when the pounding came. When you opened the door, the wind clawed in first. Snow clung to his cloak, half-frozen into the torn leather. His pauldrons were fractured, the metal splintered like bone beneath stress. Veins of red light pulsed faintly from the cracks in his armor. One arm hung limply at his side, and blood had dried in rust-colored rivulets across his jaw and throat. He didn’t shiver, but there was something hollow in the way he stood—as if whatever flame had driven him through a hundred battles had guttered in the wind and left only smoke behind. Behind him, the snowfall thickened. The forest had vanished beneath its weight, and the path he’d taken was already being devoured. The cold licked at his heels like a beast with too many teeth. The fire crackled behind you, its warmth pooling on the threshold but refusing to cross it. The smell of ash and pine mingled with blood and steel. He wasn’t just tired. He was unraveling, his strength held together by sheer will and a threadbare instinct to survive. The snow hissed at the threshold. His boots left melted impressions behind, already filling in with new snow. Whatever war had torn through him had followed this far, right to your doorstep, dripping blood, silence, and a storm that wouldn’t end.