Chapter 51: While Other Fight Beasts, We Fight Cold
The snow never stopped screaming.
It wasn’t loud, not in the way beasts roared or weapons clashed, but it howled all the sa. A constant, needling shriek carried by the wind, slicing through skin, through breath, through thought. The twins felt it everywhere. In their ears. In their bones. In the hollow ache crawling up their limbs.
White swallowed the world.
Jagged ridges of ice stretched in every direction, half-buried under rolling drifts. The sky hung low and gray, heavy with the promise of more snow. No sun. No sense of ti. Just cold... endless, biting cold.
The older twin staggered forward, boots crunching through frozen powder, legs trembling with every step. Frost clung to his lashes and brows, turning each blink into a small agony. His fingers were numb inside his gloves, stiff and unresponsive, like they no longer belonged to him.
"Keep... moving," he said, though his voice ca out thin, nearly torn apart by the wind.
Behind him, his brother slipped and fell hard, the breath knocked clean out of his chest. He lay there for a mont, staring up at the blank sky, chest heaving, eyes glassy.
"I’m tired," he muttered. Not whining. Not dramatic. Just empty.
The Yoka turned back imdiately, trudging through the snow and hauling him up by the arm. The mont skin t skin through torn fabric, pain exploded. Cold burned worse than fire here.
"Don’t say that," he said, forcing his brother upright. "You say that, you stop. You stop, you die."
They moved again.
Every step felt heavier than the last. The cold had long since chewed through their outer layers, biting into muscle, into bone. Their breaths ca out in ragged clouds, sharp enough to hurt their throats. Their noses were raw and bleeding. Their lips cracked every ti they spoke.
No beasts. No battles.
Just survival.
That was the cruel part.
They had expected monsters. They had prepared for claws and fangs and sudden death. But the snowy region did not care about strength or technique. It did not rush. It waited. It let exhaustion do the work.
Yuka’s teeth began to chatter uncontrollably.
"I can’t feel my feet," he said quietly.
The words hit harder than any blow.
Yoka knelt despite the cold, screaming at his knees, ripping open his brother’s boot. The skin beneath was pale, tinged with blue. No feeling. No response.
"Move them," he ordered. "Stamp. Now."
"I’m trying."
Yuka stamped weakly, tears freezing as they ford. "I am trying."
The wind picked up.
Snow blasted sideways, erasing their tracks instantly, swallowing any proof they had ever been there. The world narrowed to a few feet of visibility. Shapes twisted in the storm, forming cruel illusions of shelter that vanished the closer they ca.
They pushed on anyway.
Minutes blurred into sothing worse than hours. Hunger gnawed at them, but eating felt pointless when their bodies could barely burn the fuel. Their strength leaked out with every shuddering breath.
At one point, the Yuka slowed. Just a fraction. Just enough.
Yoka noticed imdiately, grabbing his arm and pulling him forward, nearly dragging him through the snow. "Don’t you dare," he snapped, panic cracking through his voice. "Don’t you dare do this to ."
"I’m not," Yuka whispered. "I just... It’s warm. I don’t feel cold anymore."
That terrified him.
Yoka stopped, turned, and slapped his brother across the face. Hard. The sound was swallowed by the storm, but the shock cut through the haze in his brother’s eyes.
"Stay awake," he growled. "You sleep here, and I’m burying you myself."
Yuka blinked, nodded weakly. "Okay... okay."
They found no cave. No shelter.
Just a broken slab of ice jutting from the ground like a frozen wound. Yoka forced his brother behind it, using their bodies to block the wind as best they could. He tore strips from his own inner lining and wrapped them around his brother’s feet, rubbing them until his hands scread with pain.
His own fingers were starting to lose feeling.
He ignored it.
They huddled there, shaking violently, breaths ragged, teeth clattering. The storm raged on, uncaring. The trial did not pause. The world did not offer rcy.
Far away, others fought beasts and bled for glory.
Here, the twins fought the cold.
And the cold was winning.
...
The cave was small, low-ceilinged, and damp, but to Gabi it felt like a fortress.
Firelight flickered against rough stone walls, casting warped shadows that crawled and stretched like living things. The sll of roasting fish filled the air, sharp and oily, mixing with the earthy scent of wet rock and moss. A thin stream ran just outside the cave mouth, its quiet trickle a rare sound of calm in a world that had done nothing but try to kill him since the trial began.
Gabi squatted close to the fire, turning a skewer of fish with careful, almost delicate movents. The flas licked at the pale flesh, skin crackling softly as fat dripped and hissed. His tail lay curled behind him, scales dull with dried blood and dirt. Every so often, it twitched on its own, like it had a mind separate from his.
He stared into the fire, yellow reptilian eyes reflecting the flas.
Six hours.
That was how long he had survived out there. Six hours of hiding, crawling, listening. Six hours of his body doing things before his mind could catch up.
He swallowed and looked down at his hands.
They were steady now. Scaled fingers, calloused palms, nails thick and sharp. They didn’t look like the hands of soone who shook at loud voices or avoided eye contact. They looked like weapons.
"I didn’t plan that..." he muttered, voice low, almost afraid of it echoing.
The Shadow Leopard’s eyes flashed in his mind. The way his chest had tightened. The way fear had swallowed everything else. And then... nothing.
Not panic. Not thought.
Just movent.
He rembered how the world had narrowed. How sounds had dulled except for his own breathing and the heavy thud of his heartbeat. He rembered the heat in his muscles, the way his vision sharpened, the way his body had lunged without asking permission.
Like a beast cornered.
Gabi’s jaw clenched.
"I didn’t even think," he whispered. "I just... went."
The mory unsettled him more than the fight itself. He was not brave. He knew that. He had always known that. Fear had always lived close to his heart, coiled and ready. But out there, when death lood too close, sothing else had crawled out from underneath it.
Sothing raw. Sothing violent.
His grip tightened around the skewer until the wood creaked.
"I was scared," he said, almost defensively. "I was terrified."
But that didn’t change the fact that he had torn the beast apart with his own hands and teeth and speed that didn’t feel real. That he had felt alive in a way that made his stomach twist now.
The fish was done. He pulled it from the fire and took a bite, barely tasting it. His mind was elsewhere, replaying monts he didn’t fully rember. Blood on his arms. His own growl tearing out of his throat. The way his thoughts had gone quiet.
His tail lashed once against the stone floor.
"What if I can’t stop it next ti?" he murmured.
The fire popped softly, answering nothing.
He leaned back against the cave wall, eyes half-lidded, listening to the stream outside and the crackle of the flas. Safe, for now. Fed, for now. But the question lingered, heavy and uncomfortable.
When threatened... he didn’t fight like himself.
He fought like sothing that had been waiting for an excuse.
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