Cold stone greeted Thalen Greyharth at every turn.
The keep rose from the mountainside like a stubborn scar — all jagged walls and narrow towers, its stones darkened by age, frost, and a thousand winters that refused to let anything soften.
The wind whistled through the battlements, threading itself between iron braziers and armored men who stood at their posts like statues carved from steel.
Thalen walked its inner corridor with slow, measured steps.
His boots echoed too loudly.
That annoyed him.
At Greyharth Hold, noise blended into life — voices, laughter, arguments, the clang of training steel. Here, every sound stood alone. Each footstep announced him. Each breath fogged in the thin mountain air.
"So this is it," he muttered under his breath.
Warden of the Mountain Watch.
The title still felt strange in his mouth.
Before arriving, he had imagined grandeur — a fortress commanding the peaks, riders charging through snow, horns sounding warnings across the ranges.
And there was awe, he'd admit that much. The view alone could steal the breath from a man: endless white ridges, cliffs plunging into mist, the Frosthorn Range looming like ancient gods frozen in stone.
But awe faded quickly.
What remained was isolation.
Cold. Thin air. Stone that smelled of dust and old iron. Men wrapped in mail and furs who spoke little and watched much. Veterans, most of them. Mountain-born knights who'd likely been riding these passes since before Thalen learned to hold a blade straight.
Musty armored men, he thought grimly.
A pair of guards stiffened as he passed. One nodded. The other didn't.
Thalen noticed.
He always noticed.
They didn't bow. Not fully. Not the way men bowed to his father.
Not yet.
He stopped near an open archway that overlooked the inner yard. Below, riders drilled in silence, horses stamping impatiently against frost-hardened ground. Commands were given short and sharp. Efficient. No wasted words.
Good soldiers.
Dangerous ones.
And none of them were his.
Not truly.
Thalen rested his hands on the cold stone railing and exhaled slowly. The wind clawed at his cloak, tugging as if trying to pull him back into the mountains themselves.
They don't know you, he thought.
And they don't care whose son you are.
His father's voice echoed faintly in memory — firm, unyielding.
Titles are given. Respect is earned.
Thalen laughed.
Now, standing alone in a mountain keep that did not feel like his own, the truth of it settled heavy in his chest.
He was young.
They knew it.
He was brash.
They could smell it.
To them, he was not the Warden of the Mountain Watch.
He was a lord's son sent north to play at command.
Thalen's jaw tightened.
"Well," he murmured, fingers curling against the stone, "they'll learn."
A door creaked behind him.
"Lord Thalen."
Thalen turned. A broad man stood there, beard threaded with gray, armor worn smooth by years of use. His eyes were sharp — assessing, not unkind, but not impressed either.
"Captain Rorik," Thalen said, recognizing him.
"You don't walk softly for a man your size."
Rorik huffed a quiet laugh. "Mountains don't reward softness, my lord."
Thalen corrected him without thinking. "Warden."
A pause.
Then a nod. Slight, but deliberate. "Warden, then."
It wasn't respect.
But it was a start.
"The men are restless," Rorik said. "New command always brings it. They'll test you."
"I'd be disappointed if they didn't," Thalen replied, a grin tugging at his mouth.
"Means they still have teeth."
Rorik studied him a moment longer. "And what will you do when they bite?"
Thalen didn't answer right away.
He looked back out over the yard. Over the riders. Over the mountains that swallowed sound and men alike.
"I'll bite back," he said finally. "Harder."
The captain's lips twitched — not quite a smile, but close.
"Good," Rorik said. "The Frosthorns respect only that."
As the captain turned to leave, Thalen straightened his shoulders.
Cold stone or not. Thin air or not.
This was his post.
And whether these men liked it or not, he would prove that he was no boy sent north to freeze quietly.
He was a Greyharth.
And the mountains would learn his name.
The wind was harsher beyond the Frosthorn Range.
Wulfric Greyharth rode at the head of a long column of mounted men, their cloaks snapping like torn banners behind them as the path narrowed into a jagged spine of stone and ice.
Snow crunched beneath iron-shod hooves. Breath came out in white plumes, man and horse alike, as the cold gnawed through fur, mail, and bone.
This was the Hollow.
No towers rose here. No proud walls marked borders.
Only mountains that watched.
Behind Wulfric stretched two dozen riders — scouts, outriders, seasoned men with scarred hands and eyes that missed nothing. They rode in disciplined silence, spaced carefully along the winding pass. These were not parade soldiers. These were men who knew how quickly a wrong step could mean death.
Beside Wulfric rode Captain Eirik Stonevein.
He was a thick-necked man with a beard streaked white by age and frost, his armor patched rather than polished. His horse moved with practiced ease, sure-footed even on treacherous stone. Stonevein had patrolled the Hollow longer than Wulfric had been alive.
He spoke without looking at him.
"Beyond this ridge," the captain said, gesturing ahead with two fingers, "the Frosthorns fall away. Land flattens some. Looks kinder. It isn't."
Wulfric nodded once, eyes forward.
"The wind shifts there," Stonevein continued. "Carries sound strange. A man can hear hoofbeats that aren't real. Or miss the ones that are." He glanced sideways at Wulfric now. "That's how fools die."
"I'll remember," Wulfric said.
Stonevein grunted approval.
They rode on.
The path dipped sharply, cutting between stone walls crusted with old ice. Ancient markers — half-buried cairns and broken spears — jutted from the snow like bones. Wulfric took them in quietly, committing the land to memory.
"These passes," the captain went on, "aren't just for traders and shepherds. Smugglers use them. Raiders too, when winters grow desperate."
His voice hardened. "And worse things, when peace thins."
Wulfric glanced toward him. "Worse than men?"
Eirik Stonevein was quiet for a long moment.
Then he spat into the snow.
"Men are the easy part," he said. "Men can be reasoned with. Or killed."
The wind rose, slipping through the narrow pass with a low, hollow moan, as if the mountains themselves were breathing.
Stonevein gestured with his chin toward the jagged ridges ahead. "The North wasn't always just a border," he said. "Before crowns. Before banners. Our ancestors were set here to guard something."
"Old stories," he said carefully.
"Aye." The captain nodded.
"That's what they call them now. Stories to scare children into behaving."
His mouth twisted. "But stories don't give places names that last a thousand years."
"The Mountain Hollows," Wulfric murmured.
Stonevein's eyes stayed forward. "Our ancestors wrote legends that the mountains aren't solid," he said. "They're empty. Somewhere beneath all this stone lies something buried. Something the North swore would never see daylight again."
The riders behind them had fallen even quieter.
Wulfric knew the tale. Every northern child did.
A beast.
An ancient thing.
A remnant from before the world learned restraint.
Whatever it was, it was said that to find it was to be erased — not killed, not devoured, but forgotten. Names lost. Deeds undone. As though the mountain swallowed memory itself.
"Legends," Wulfric said, though his voice lacked conviction.
"Warnings shaped into myths."
Stonevein snorted. "That's what I told myself for forty years." He shifted in his saddle, leather creaking. "It's hard to believe in monsters when you're more worried about frozen toes and bandits."
He paused.
"But there are nights," he went on, quieter now, "when the wind doesn't sound like wind. When the hollows answer back."
His jaw tightened. "And I've heard stone move when no avalanche fell. Felt the ground tremble when nothing passed."
Wulfric listened. He did not interrupt.
Stonevein exhaled through his nose. "I don't claim it's real," he said. "Only that the men who first stood watch here believed it was. Enough to give their lives. Enough to swear oaths that outlived their bones."
The captain finally turned to him.
"That's what we guard, Warden. Not just borders. Not just peace."
His eyes were sharp, searching. "We guard what should never be found." The wind swept down the pass again, colder than before.
Wulfric faced forward, gaze fixed on the snow-veiled mountains ahead.
Legends were just stories.
Until they weren't.
"Then we watch," he said simply. "As our fathers did."
Stonevein studied him for a heartbeat — then nodded once.
"Aye," he said. "That we do."
Wulfric absorbed every word.
Unlike Thalen, he did not chafe at instruction. He did not mistake command for mastery. A title, he knew, was only ink and breath. Out here, the Hollow answered to men who survived it.
He was the third son.
Young.
Unproven.
Surrounded by veterans who could spot weakness the way wolves scented blood.
And so he listened.
He asked questions when the captain paused. Quiet ones. Precise ones. About snowfall patterns. About which passes froze first. About which villages still paid tribute — and which had gone silent.
Stonevein answered them all, slowly at first, then with increasing respect.
"You don't talk much," the captain observed at last.
Wulfric shrugged beneath his cloak. "Talking doesn't keep men alive."
Stonevein barked a low laugh. "Your father taught you that?"
"No," Wulfric replied. "The mountains did. I just listened."
They crested a rise.
Ahead lay the northern passes — broad, open, and deceptively calm. The Hollow stretched out like a waiting mouth, wind sliding low across the snowfields. Somewhere beyond those ridges lay lands unclaimed, paths uncharted, threats unnamed.
Wulfric felt the weight of it settle on his shoulders.
Not fear.
Responsibility.
He was not here to impress.
Not here to be loved.
He was here to prove — to his father, to these men, and to himself — that House Greyharth did not falter when the world grew cold.
He straightened in the saddle.
"Captain," he said, steady and clear. "We continue."
Stonevein studied him for a breath — then nodded.
"Aye, Warden."
And together, they rode deeper into the Hollow, where the mountains watched in silence, measuring whether this young Greyharth would endure… or break.