”

  The storm never stopped in the North.

  It only learned new ways to hurt.

  Snow hammered the icefields like shards of gss as Kael stood at the edge of the rebel outpost, staring into a white horizon that swallowed sound and distance alike. The Halo beneath his jacket hummed softly, reacting to something unseen—like it was listening to the nd itself.

  He hated that feeling.

  Behind him, the Northern Rebel compound breathed like a wounded animal. Steel walls reinforced with scavenged Ascendant pting. Heat vents exhaling clouds of steam. Guards patrolling with rifles older than the war but maintained with ritual care.

  And inside those walls, the rebels were splitting.

  THE FRACTURE

  “They brought the curse here.”

  The voice echoed through the council chamber, sharp as broken ice. Commander Rask Ivern, scarred and broad-shouldered, stood before the assembled rebels with his fists clenched.

  “Every city the Halo passes through burns. Every resistance cell tied to it dies.”

  His eyes locked on Kael.

  Kael didn’t flinch—but Lyra felt the accusation hit like a bde.

  “He saved us in the icefields,” Lyra snapped back. “Without him, we’d all be dead.”

  “Or without him, Gravehound wouldn’t know where to look,” Rask replied coldly.

  The room murmured.

  Some rebels nodded. Others shifted uneasily.

  Maerin’s death still haunted them. The underground sanctuary reduced to ash. Children’s names carved into memory, not stone.

  Gravehound’s shadow stretched long—and Kael stood at its center.

  THE TEST

  The elder tactician, Sera Voln, raised a gloved hand.

  “Enough.”

  Silence fell.

  “We do not condemn by fear,” she said. “But neither do we trust blindly.”

  Her gaze turned to Kael.

  “There is an Ascendant rey buried beneath the northern ice. A listening post. If the Ascendants are tracking the Halo, the signal will pass through it.”

  Rask smirked.

  “A suicide mission.”

  Sera nodded.

  “A test.”

  Kael exhaled slowly.

  “Then I’ll destroy it.”

  THE ICEFIELD MISSION

  The rey sat beneath a frozen canyon, its entrance hidden by colpsed gciers. Ascendant drones patrolled the air, their lights slicing through snow like searching eyes.

  Kael moved first.

  Too fast.

  Lyra watched him tear through the defenses like something unleashed. Ice cracked under his steps. Energy surged from the Halo, bending gravity, shattering metal, tearing drones from the sky and smashing them into frozen stone.

  It wasn’t heroic.

  It was terrifying.

  Even the rebels fighting beside him stared in stunned silence.

  Inside the rey chamber, Kael reached the core—a pulsing Ascendant crystal broadcasting into the void.

  He hesitated.

  Then crushed it.

  The explosion rippled outward, colpsing the canyon and burying the facility forever.

  AFTERMATH

  The rebels returned battered—but alive.

  The signal was gone.

  Proof that Kael wasn’t leading the Ascendants to them.

  But proof came at a cost.

  Several rebels refused to look at Kael. Others whispered behind his back. Some watched him with something close to reverence.

  A god.

  A weapon.

  A threat.

  That night, Lyra found Kael alone again, snow collecting in his hair as he stared north.

  “They’re afraid of you,” she said quietly.

  Kael didn’t answer.

  “They were afraid of my father too,” she continued. “Until he died for them.”

  Kael finally spoke.

  “What if they’re right?”

  Lyra stepped closer.

  “Then we prove them wrong.”

  In the distance, thunder rolled—not from the storm.

  From something waking.

  Far beyond the icefields, a masked figure knelt before a burning Ascendant altar, repcing his shattered mask with a new one—sleeker, sharper, carved with deliberate cruelty.

  Gravehound smiled beneath it.

  The North had chosen its battlefield.

  END OF ISSUE #12