Tenaro shifted his weight, his torso swaying forward until his chest hovered over his folded shins.
“‘Here again?’” his eyes narrowed into thin slits, as if peering into thick fog.
“Tsss–!”
His right hand shot up, clamping over his left shoulder, but red began to bloom between his fingers, dark and insistent.
“What do you mean ‘here again'?”
“Woah, has that always been there?”
Tatsu's eyes were pinned on Tenaro's injury.
“Looks like an animal gave you the scratch of doom.” he grinned, his fingers curling up and down.
A thin, rhythmic coil of steam wound upward from the tears of his skin, a ghostly white ribbon that vanished along with the wind.
Tenaro watched as blood slid down his arm.
“Huh…” Tatsu's focus drifted, snagging on a honey-brown skin near Tenaro's ankle.
He leaned in, his shadow stretching across the snow. The hem of the left leg of Tenaro's pants didn't end in worn linen from ankle to knee; it stopped in a jagged line.
His gaze jerked to the right, a gleam catching his attention. There, resting on a protruding plateau of rock, were Tenaro's twin swords.
A strip of snow-stained cloth bound their hilts together–a fabric that matched the missing section of Tenaro's leg.
Tatsu's head tilted, his lips pulling apart as if to let a question that wouldn't form.
“Did–? Wow…”
His eyes began a frantic, jagged rhythm, bouncing from the bared ankle to the bound steel, then back again.
Tenaro's voice cut through the silence like a cold blade.
“You said ‘here again’,” Tenaro said, words flat and heavy as lead. “You didn't answer my question.”
Tatsu froze.
Not stiff. Just… paused, like a thought tripped over itself mid-step.
His grin lingered a heartbeat too long, crooked and uncertain, before it slowly slid off his face. The restless bounce in his posture softened. His fingers stopped twitching. Even his eyes finally settled. He swung one leg over the other, settling into the snow.
The wind blew past them, tugging at any loose fabric, whispering over the stone which Tenaro's swords lay.
But Tatsu didn't look away this time. His brows knit together, studying Tenaro's face, tracing the lines of his face.
“Huh…” his gaze drifted away from Tenaro.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The magnificent structure possessed the patient malice of a mountain, casting a long, cold shadow that felt like a physical weight pressing against their skins.
The shade of the base loomed in dark color, the colour fading into dark grey towards the top of it.
Tatsu didn't realize his hand was moving until his fingertips brushed against his jaw, tracing the lines of his chin over and over.
“Well…” his voice came low, carrying the weight of memory before it turned into words.
***
Tatsu's boots crunched lightly over the frost-lined floor, the sound echoing off the cold and icy walls like soft percussion.
Each step left a faint imprint, quickly glazed over by the drifting powder.
“The old man d-didn't tell me it'll be this cold.”
His shoulder hunched just enough against the whispering breeze, hair lifting with every gust, strands catching the dim light like threads of silver.
Above him, the cavern ceiling stretched wide and pale, stalactites hanging like frozen chandeliers.
Tiny bioluminescent creatures clung to the ice, pulsing in gentle rhythm, their light bouncing off the glimmering walls and painting shifting patterns on his face and arms.
On his right hip, hung the scabbard carrying one of his swords, ‘ryūkō’. The scabbard had a glossy black color with emerald green lacquer spiraling around it, echoing the hilt's green and golden specks.
The golden-capped tip of the scabbard was shaped like a dragon's tail fin pointing elegantly downwards. The mouth was slightly flared, engraved with tiny claw marks.
On his left hip, hung the scabbard carrying ‘Karyū’. The dark crimson faded to black at the tip of it. Flame-shaped patterns Etched along the length.
The tip flexed a jagged flame shape, blackened steel with hints of red. Engraved to the mouth were fangs biting the blade, the deep crimson of the hilt also fading into black at the edges, like molten fire.
Tatsu shifted his weight with careful precision, the movement deliberate, as if testing the floor's icy grip before committing to the next step.
“This is such a pain in the ass…” he concentrated not to slip and fall.
The wind wove between the stalactites, brushing against the skin at his neck and loose folds of his clothing, carrying a crisp, biting chill that made him tighten his stance and flex his fingers.
His breath came out in faint clouds, curling and twisting upward to vanish among the hanging icicles. Every step was measured, yet fluid, each footfall reacting to the subtle give of frozen ground.
Shadows stretched and recoiled around him, the pale blues and greens of the bioluminescence catching his eyes and flickering over the hilts of his swords at either side, glinting with every careful movement.
He moved with awareness, a lone figure threading through a luminous, frozen cathedral.
Then, the structure loomed.
It was a monolith of brutal, charcoal-grey stone, its surface seemed to take in light instead of reflecting it.
Soft green light bled through the crystalline patches of the walls.
Sheets of ancient ice clung to its flanks in jagged patches. The shadow it cast wasnt just a lack of light; it was a cold, heavy curtain that made the air feel thick.
The monolith didn't just reach for the ceiling; it pierced it. The massive spine of stone vanished upward into a jagged tear in the cavern's roof, disappearing into the solid rock above as if the structure had grown through the mountain like a fossilized tooth.
His pace dipped into a cautious approach. The air here was dead–the usual groan of shifting ice had been strangled into a suffocating silence.
“Woah…”
As he turned his eyes into slits, the stone revealed its inner life. Deep within the translucent lattice, emerald fissures mapped the walls like a nervous system.
They soldered with a ghostly luminescence, a rhythmic green thrum that timed itself to the thud of the blood in Tatsu's ears.
His left thumb moved of its own accord, clicking the crossguard of Ryūkō just enough to reveal a silver of steel.
The metallic ‘tink’ was a gunshot in the stillness.
Under his left boot, the frost snapped.
A silver seam, no thicker than a strand of hair, ignited in the ice at his feet. It traced a violent, perfect arc around the building–a ribbon of neon white that turned the surrounding frost into a field of shimmering diamonds.
As light hit the monolith, the emerald veins in the stone flared, the subsurface glow turning the stone into a vibrant, pulsing heart.
Tatsu turned to stare back at the silver boundary, then at the impossible height of the stone spine vanishing into the ceiling.
He leaned his weight forward, muscles tensed and feet rooted on the ground. His left hand ready to unsheathe at any moment as the line underfoot surged with a blinding, electric hunger.
