He straightens, expression tightening. “The ships remain frozen, as expected, but they’ve begun unloading from the ships. The humans are disembarking and…crossing the ice.”
The temperature in the room drops almost imperceptibly as my anger swirls.
“They’re moving on foot?” I ask quietly between clenched teeth.
“Yes, my king. Across the ice field and toward the beaches on our coast.”
The chamber stills, but it’s the quiet inside me that tightens first.
Across the ice.
Acrossmyice.
A decision that borders on madness.
They would’ve known it wasn’t just frozen water beneath them from our display of power, and yet they still choose to risk their lives to cross it.
I never thought humans entirely absent of brain cells, only that they have far less than the magical.
I stare down at the map as the inked silhouettes begin to shift across the pale illusion of the coast, small black marks inching forward on a frozen sea.
This is a suicide mission for them.
The realization settles sharply in my chest.
They don’t care if they die, as long as they make us bleed alongside them.
We showed them mercy, despite their attempt at an attack.
That ends now.
A cold pressure unfurls behind my sternum, so gradual I don’t notice until the frost creeps out again from beneath my boots.
The room is quiet, awaiting my orders.
I exhale slowly. “I see.”
The words are quiet, but they echo.
I rise in a single, fluid motion.
“Deploy no one,” I say, already moving from my seat. “I will handle this, once and for all.”
The portal opens before me with a breath of magic and a snap of cold.
I step through without hesitation, boots striking hard onto frost-laced stone. The air on the other side bites with heavy gusts of wind along the coast, carrying with it the scent of the sea.
The cliffs stretch before me, jagged and black beneath the moonlight, their edges rimmed with a sheen of enchanted ice. Below, the Pacific churns in slow, muffled waves beneath a frozen layer of water. Snow falls in quiet flurries, catching the light with every twist of the wind.
My guards are already stationed along the upperledge, a silent line of silver and steel. They bow their heads as I pass.
I walk to the edge without pause and easily see them–dark shapes like ants moving sluggishly across the ice, advancing in clusters. Their ships wait behind them like frozen carcasses in the water. Six hulking shadows, glazed in frost, held tight in winter’s snare.
Fools.
I let the wind sharpen as I lift my hand, magic rising with it–not in a rush, but in a deliberate pull, a call to every elemental thread this land has ever known. The ice responds first, and I feel as every inch of the ice beneath their feet answers to me, eager to do my bidding.
They came here to bleed my people.
