Page 126 of Iron Beneath the Snow

The door opened without warning.

Three figures entered in Frostvein grey, their faces partially obscured, their movements aligned in a way that spoke of training rather than improvisation. One remained near the door, controlling the exit, while the other two advanced immediately.

They did not speak.

Nothing in their posture suggested threat for its own sake; everything about them pointed to purpose.

They had come to take her.

The first attacker closed the distance quickly, a cloth already raised toward her face. Eira turned into the motion instead of away from it, driving her elbow into his throat with enough force to disrupt his breath and break the line of attack. He recoiled a half-step, controlled but not unaffected.

The second moved before the first fully recovered, catching her next strike mid-motion and twisting her wrist with practiced efficiency. She dropped her weight rather than resisting, forcing him to adjust his balance instead of completing the hold.

They adapted without hesitation.

There was no wasted movement, no attempt to dominate the exchange—only containment.

The first recovered and drove her back into the wall with sharp, efficient force, knocking the air from her lungs and scattering her focus just enough to create an opening.

“Quiet,” one of them said under his breath.

The word barely carried.

She answered by bringing her heel down hard onto the nearest foot. The impact landed cleanly enough to break something beneath it, drawing a sharp intake of breath, but the advantage lasted only a moment.

The second attacker had already drawn a narrow blade.

The steel found her throat with unsettling precision, settling directly over the mark.

The reaction did not build gradually.

It struck through her all at once.

The mark answered in a violent, uncontrolled rush that felt less like heat and more like something pulled too tight and forced to hold, the pressure snapping through her chest and down her spine before she could separate sensation from response. Pain followed immediately, bright and absolute, collapsing distance between body and instinct.

The attacker flinched despite himself.

For a brief instant, the mark beneath the blade pulsed visibly under her skin, light surfacing in a way that had nothing to do with flame.

His grip faltered—not enough to release her, but enough to fracture certainty.

And somewhere beyond the chamber, the thread snapped taut.

Soren

He had not been asleep.

The sensation struck through him without warning, sharp and immediate, as if something had reached inside his chest and tightened without warning. It was not distant, not abstract, but distinctly hers, carried through the thread with a clarity that left no space for doubt.

The mark beneath his collarbone flared violently, the surge forcing a staggered step back as the air left his lungs in a sudden, uncontrolled rush. This was nothing like the storm, nothing like cold or proximity.

This was a direct threat.

He was already moving before the realization fully formed.

The chamber door gave way under his hand, swinging open hard enough to strike the wall, and the corridor beyond blurred into motion as he moved through it without slowing. Voices rose somewhere behind him, guards reacting too late to matter, their shouts reduced to background noise that carried no relevance.

He did not need direction.