The frozen river was not a path, but a boundary.
Damien's Mana-Vision parsed it in layers. The surface was a solid plane of dead-white cold. Beneath, a sluggish, dark flow of water still moved, its thermal signature a deep, murky blue. And beneath the rock of the far bank, his enhanced senses detected the faint, rhythmic tremors of something large moving on many legs. The troll had not been the apex predator here.
The bronze medallion in his hand was warm from his grip. The insignia—mountain over hammer—was clear to his touch. A settlement lay downstream. Civilization. Information. Danger.
He chose to cross. Not at the narrowest point, but where his Mana-Vision showed a fracture line—a deep crack in the ice sheet that ran from bank to bank, likely from a submerged rock. A weakness was a tool.
He approached the crack. With a thought and a whisper of mana directed through his Conquered Frost avatar, he extended his will into the fissure. He didn't freeze it solid. He asked the ice to remember its fluidity for a specific, narrow path. The water within the crack didn't thaw; it became a supercooled slurry. He stepped onto it. The surface held his weight, but with each step, his Rime-Step activated, flash-freezing a temporary, ultra-dense platform just for the microsecond his foot needed. To any observer, he was walking on water that magically did not yield.
Halfway across, the thing beneath the far bank stirred.
The tremors intensified. A section of the snow-covered bank erupted. Dirt, stone, and frozen roots showered the ice as a nightmare of chitin and grinding mouthparts heaved into the dim light. It was a River-Skitter Queen, a magnified, armored horror ten times the size of its Ember cousins. Its body was a segmented barrel of glossy black shell, and a dozen spear-like legs punched into the ice for purchase. Its head was a blind, sensory bulb, and its maw was a rotating drill of crystalline teeth. Its aura was a frantic, hungry orange—2nd Order, 5th Rank.
It didn't see him. It felt the vibration of his precise steps on the ice, a tiny, anomalous rhythm in the river's song.
It charged. Not with speed, but with inexorable, crushing momentum, a living avalanche of chitin.
Damien did not break stride. His mind, operating at the speed of his synchronized Avatar, calculated vectors, tensile strength of ice, and the beast's momentum. The System fed him data:
[Target' underbelly armor thickness: 40% less than dorsal. Primary sensory cluster located at base of mandibles.]
He had two seconds.
He stopped walking. He planted his feet on his slurry-path and sank.
Not through the ice. He commanded the supercooled water directly beneath him to yield, creating a man-sized sinkhole. He dropped into the frigid, dark flow of the river.
The Queen's charge carried it over the spot where he'd been. Its massive weight came down on the structurally compromised slurry-path Damien had just vacated.
CRACK-BOOM.
The fracture line he'd used exploded outward. A ten-foot section of the ice sheet, undermined by his magic and overloaded by the Queen's tonnage, collapsed. The beast's forelegs punched through into freezing water. It flailed, its balance lost, a screech of grinding plates echoing over the river.
Beneath the surface, in the silent, lightless cold, Damien was home.
The Primal Frost Constitution thrummed with pleasure. The river's chill was energy. He pushed with his legs, a silent torpedo of intent. He surfaced inside the Queen's flailing perimeter, right beside its submerged sensory bulb.
His Frost-Knife was in his hand. He didn't stab. He placed it against the junction where the bulb met the armored head, and unleashed a focused Icelance spell through the knife.
The effect was not a wound. It was an internal glacial spike. Ultra-compressed frost mana shot from the blade directly into the beast's neurological core. The intense, localized cold didn't just damage; it caused a catastrophic short-circuit in the creature's spirit and nervous system. Its flailing ceased instantly. Its orange aura snuffed out like a candle in a vacuum. A vast, frozen lock descended from the inside.
The massive corpse settled, half in, half out of the broken ice, already frosting over.
Damison pulled himself onto the solid ice of the far bank. He was soaked, but the water slid from him, freezing and falling away in sheets. He took a moment, his Avatar cycling the ambient cold to replenish the mana spent. The fight had lasted less than five seconds. It was less a battle and more a lethal engineering solution.
He harvested the Queen's core—a dense, cool crystal of water-aligned energy. More valuable than the troll's. He also pried free one of its smaller, spear-like leg tips. It was as long as his forearm, naturally sharp, and emanated a faint vibration-disrupting field. A useful material.
He continued downstream. Within an hour, the signs began: felled trees with axe-marks, the smell of woodsmoke and forged metal, the distant clang of a hammer. The forest gave way to cleared land, then to a palisade of sharpened logs.
The settlement of Hearth's Watch was a sorry lump of desperation against the mountain's foot. Its walls were patched. The guards at the open gate were haggard, their gear mismatched and poorly maintained. Their auras were the dull bronze of low 1st Order cultivators, barely above mortal.
Damien observed from the tree line, his Ghost-Walk active, a void in the sensory landscape. He watched traders with carts, hunters with meager catches, and the palpable air of fear. He heard snippets: "…skitter packs growing bolder…" "… tribute to Lord Ferros is due…" "… the Frost-Touch sickness in the north quarter…"
This wasn't a place of power. It was a place on the brink of being extinguished. Perfect.
He needed to enter without causing alarm. He couldn't appear as a powerful, unknown cultivator. He needed a cover. He looked at his clothes—rags from the Moros lab, patched with skitter-hide. He smeared river mud on his face and hands. He hunched his shoulders, diminishing his newly powerful frame. He became a bedraggled, half-frozen hunter.
He walked out of the trees and shuffled toward the gate, clutching the troll-hide sack. The guards barely glanced at him.
"State your business," one yawned.
"Hunter," Damien mumbled, his voice raspy from disuse. "Got… pelts. Heard a… blacksmith here takes trade."
The guard waved him through. "Try Borin's. Down the mud-track, past the well. Don't cause trouble."
Damien entered Hearth's Watch. His Mana-Vision painted a grim picture: leaking thermal signatures from poorly chinked huts, the weak, flickering auras of malnourished people, the concentrated heat of the forge. And threading through it all, a sickly, creeping cold-energy that didn't belong to him—the Frost-Touch sickness. A magical malady, a corruption. His Frost Constitution recognized it as a cheap imitation, a bastardized, toxic form of cold.
He found Borin's smithy. The man inside was a bear of a human, his aura a steady, warm 1st Order, 7th Rank, his heat signature blazing from the forge. He was working on a simple iron plowshare, his face grim.
Damien placed the troll-hide sack on a bench. "Trade," he said simply.
Borin wiped his hands, opened the sack. His eyes widened at the sight of the Spirit Quartz and the Forest Troll core. He picked up the troll's leg-spike. "Where'd a ragged thing like you get this? And a troll core?"
"Found a dead one," Damien lied flatly. "By the river. Something bigger killed it. Took what was left."
Borin grunted, buying the story of a scavenger. "The quartz is low grade. The core's decent. This leg-tip… unusual. Vibration-dampening. Good for a tool handle. I'll give you five silver imperials, a warm cloak, and a decent skinning knife for the lot."
Currency. Clothing. A non-magical tool. It was a start. "And information," Damien said.
Borin's eyes narrowed. "What kind?"
"The sickness. The Frost-Touch. Where does it come from?"
The smith's face darkened. "North. The old silver mine. Was the lifeblood of this town 'til six months ago. Then something… woke up down there. Miners came back with a chill no fire could warm. Then the coughing of ice shards. Then they die, frozen from the inside out. Now the mine's sealed. Lord Ferros's tax collector still demands his silver, sickness or no." He spat into the forge. "We're a dying town, boy. Your silver won't be worth much soon."
A corrupted mine. A source of toxic frost energy. To the town, a plague. To Damien's Glacial Devourer, it might be… food. Or at least, a puzzle to solve. A problem that, if solved, would make him indispensable.
He took the silver, the thick wool cloak, and the sharp, simple knife. "Where is the mine?"
Borin stared at him. "You're not hearing me, boy. It's death."
"I'm good at finding things in the dark," Damien said, his pale eyes pointed unerringly at the smith's face. "If I find a way to stop it, what would it be worth to Hearth's Watch?"
Borin's suspicion warred with desperate hope. "You're mad. But if you could… the Town Council would grant you the Miner's Bounty. A claim-share of the mine's output. A permanent seat. Maybe even a petition to Lord Ferros for land rights." He leaned forward. "But you'll just die. Like the others."
Damien turned to leave. "We'll see."
He had a new objective. The town's problem was a potential key. To earn trust, he needed to solve an impossible problem. To grow stronger, he needed to consume unique energies. The mine served both purposes.
[New Directive Generated: 'Purge the Silver Vein Mine'.]
[Objective: Neutralize the source of the Frost-Touch corruption. Reward: Foothold in Hearth's Watch, initial resource stream, data on anomalous frost-entity.]
[Risk Assessment: High. Corruption signature indicates potent, sentient ice-spirit or cursed artifact. Estimated threat: 2nd Order, 7th-9th Rank.]
As he walked through the muddy lane to find an inn, he felt eyes on him. Not the curious stares of townsfolk. A specific, focused gaze that carried the faint scent of ozone and polished metal. His Avatar twitched, sensing a scan.
Someone in this dying town had cultivation beyond the norm, and they had just noticed the void where a ragged boy should have a spirit-signature.
The game in Hearth's Watch had more than one player.