They say when you know you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. For me? It wasn’t flashes. It was a slow, dragging ache. A list of all the things I didn’t do. The names I didn’t learn. The letters I never wrote. The graves I never got to mark. Regret doesn’t come screaming at the end. It just sits with you—quiet, heavy, like a last drink you know you shouldn’t take. But here’s the thing: I never expected to grow old. Not with the work I do. Not with the things I’ve seen. I was made for blood and ash, for rage and silence. Some people are born under stars. Me? I think I was born under smoke.

  And now there’s nothing left between me and the frost-bitch but breath and rage. She stands there—ten feet tall, carved from glacier and fury, a cathedral of death in the shape of a woman. Her body is stone and ice, her skin a lattice of runes glowing white-blue with leyline fire. Her eyes burn like the world before it ends. But she bled once. Which means she can bleed again.

  So I tighten the grip on my axes, roll my shoulders, and smile through a mouth full of blood. Because this? This is the kind of fight I was born to lose. The monstrosity moved first. She surged across the floor like an avalanche had learned to walk, her limbs trailing frost and splintering ice as she closed the distance. I dove left, rolled through the impact radius of her first strike—her arm coming down like a siege tower—and felt the ground shudder as it missed me by inches.

  My back hit the ice wall. Hard. I pushed off and came at her low, my left axe arcing for her exposed flank. Steel met stone with a crack like thunder. My axe bit deep—deeper than it should’ve—and tore a chunk of glacial armor free. Beneath the plating, flesh glowed with swirling blue veins, like leyline fire had been tattooed into muscle. She hissed—an awful, hollow sound that echoed across the chamber like the wind howling through a tomb.

  She backhanded me with her other arm. I blocked with the right axe, but the force carried me off my feet and slammed me into the frozen ground. Something cracked in my ribs. Maybe two somethings. Breathing started to feel like I owed someone money for it. Didn’t matter. I rolled, shoved off the floor, and charged again.

  This time, I feinted left and caught her in the side of the knee with a tight, brutal swing. Another shard of armor went flying. The giant-witch staggered. I followed through—an uppercut with the right axe that cleaved a vertical line up her side, the blade catching on stone and screaming sparks as it dragged free. Her response was a roar, deep and ancient, and her fist came down like a mountain collapsing. I dodged late. Not late enough.

  The blow glanced off my shoulder, and something went numb immediately. The left axe flew from my hand, skittering across the chamber and vanishing into shadows.

  That was when she kicked me. I flew. Hit the far wall. The air left my lungs. For a moment, the world spun into black and ringing. But I’d taken worse. I always took worse. I staggered up, blood slick in my mouth, my right axe still in hand. The giant-witch came at me again, stepping over the remains of her fallen and the ruins of the ritual site she’d tried so hard to protect. Her footfalls were earthquakes. Her breath froze the air.

  I met her charge head-on. I ducked her first swing, slid low under her reach, and slammed my axe into her ribs. The handle cracked. The blade shattered. Damn thing had been with me for years. Hell of a way to go. But I didn’t stop. I dropped the haft, balled up my fist, and hit her in the stomach with everything I had. It was like punching the side of a mountain—but I saw it.

  A flicker. A stumble.

  And when she recoiled, I followed—blow after blow, fist and elbow, boot and knee, hammering into her like a battering ram made of spite. Every hit tore more armor loose. Every strike burned through the last of my strength. We ended locked in a breathless stare, blood and frost slick on the floor between us, her body missing chunks of ice and rune-light flickering erratic across her chest.

  I could barely stand. Every part of me hurt. My knuckles bled. My lungs screamed. But I was still up. And she was slowing. She tilted her head—like a beast curious about the knife in its ribs—and spoke. Her voice was a hollow echo, like wind through a graveyard.

  “You are kin to giants. I feel the blood. You were meant to rule beside me, not die beneath me.”

  I spat blood. Wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “You’re not a queen,” I said. “You’re a corpse in a frost suit playing at power.”

  Her eyes narrowed. I took a step forward.

  “I’m not your kin. I’m your end.”

  And with that, I picked up the broken half of my axe, gripped it like a dagger, and got ready to finish what we’d started. There was no sound. No cry. No scream or warhorn. Just something deeper. Something that hummed through bone and marrow like the slow tightening of a noose. We both felt it. Me and the frost-witch. A wordless signal passed between us—a promise, maybe. Or a curse. Either way, we moved. Not out of rage. Not even duty. It was just time.

  I rose to meet her. And then my foot slipped. Maybe it was the frost. Maybe a patch of half-frozen blood. Could’ve been hers. Could’ve been mine. Hell, at that point, it could’ve belonged to the gods. Didn’t matter. My boot slid, and my weight went wrong, and just like that—I faltered. That was all she needed. She hit me like a runaway freight wagon, all jagged ice and ancient hate wrapped in stone. I tried to roll with the punch, twist with it, bleed off the force. But it wasn’t enough. Not by a mile.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The world spun sideways. I flew—arms flailing, ribs cracking, back screaming—until the cavern wall caught me like an iron embrace. I slid down onto the ice, trailing blood behind me like a broken banner. I came to rest beside what was left of Tavor. The spear that took him was still embedded, pinning him to the wall like a warning. His eyes stared out—glass-hard and unmoving. Empty.

  Accusing. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. But I muttered back anyway.

  “I know. I know.”

  I wasn’t gonna live long enough for his ghost to haunt me. That was the only mercy left. I coughed—pain lancing through my ribs like glass—and checked the rest of me. One arm still worked. Barely. My breath wheezed out in ragged pulls. My vision kept trying to collapse in on itself. My heart sounded like it was remembering a slower rhythm.

  But the worst part? I was alone. Or at least, that’s what I thought. The frost-witch knew it too. She moved toward me slow, like death out for a stroll. Her shape shifted as she walked—ice cracking and refreezing with every step, stone flexing with unnatural grace. She didn’t run. She didn’t need to. She knew I was finished.

  She started to talk—because of course she did. They always talk.

  “Your strength was impressive,” she said, voice echoing off the cavern walls, hollow and cold and too large for the body that carried it. “But it will serve me now. My form is only the beginning. I will bind the glacier to my will. Your blood will feed the leyline, and I will rise stronger still.”

  I didn’t answer. My tongue felt like leather. My jaw wouldn’t unclench. She kept walking. Taunting. And then, from a patch of dark near the far wall, came a voice I knew better than my own shadow.

  “Sarge…”

  I turned, neck screaming as I moved. Maren. Gods. Maren. She was crawling toward me, leaving a trail of blood, her face pale and lips cracked. One eye swollen shut, armor broken in two places, but her hand—her hand still held tight to something.

  A vial. She pressed it into my palm, weak but determined. It was small. Smooth. Cold as the ice around us. Not army-issue. This was the kind of potion you had to earn… or steal. Maren looked up at me, just long enough to smile.

  “Not stolen,” she whispered. “Acquired.”

  And then her head lolled. I didn’t know if she was dead or just gone to the black for a while. Didn’t matter. There wasn’t time for grief. Not yet. I looked at the vial. Officer’s seal. Crystal, not glass. Concentrated magic swirling inside like bottled lightning. I didn’t have the strength to uncork it. I barely had the strength to stay conscious. But I had teeth. So I shoved the whole thing in my mouth and bit down.

  It shattered.

  The taste hit me like fire and metal—blood and magic, rage and light. The healing potion poured down my throat in a flood of glass and grit. My body screamed. My veins lit up. Pain tore through me as bones knit wrong and right again, as lungs cleared and strength came roaring back like a wild dog finally let off its chain.

  I spat shards of glass and laughed through the blood.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “The officers really do get the good stuff.”

  I rose. One hand tight. One arm steady. A fire burning in my chest that didn’t come from potions or magic. The frost-witch saw me stand. She stopped. Her expression twisted—not with fear, but something close enough to kiss it. I didn’t speak. Not yet. But I was coming. And I was going to end her.

  The potion worked fast. Too fast, maybe. All the cuts, the bruises, the ragged breaths and crooked joints—they vanished like bad memories. My shattered shoulder knit itself back together with a pull and a pop, the pain receding behind a wall of magic and heat. My heartbeat evened out. The dizziness cleared. There was energy in my veins again—hot, clean, alive. I spit the last shards of glass onto the floor and watched the frost-witch hesitate.Her steps slowed.

  Good. I grinned.

  And then I crouched, low and ready, fingers curling around something heavy at my feet. Tavor’s axe. He’d never been one for hand-to-hand. Carried it more like a walking stick, really. But the damn thing was forged solid, dwarven steel, wrapped in runes, the head broad and brutal. For a normal soldier, it was a two-handed beast meant for cleaving through armor. But in my hands?

  It was a throwing axe. A fine one. And it sang. I felt the enchantment coiled inside—something simple and old, stitched by Tavor’s own hands. Fire. Not flashy, not some noble’s pyrotechnic display. Just enough heat to remind you that frost can burn too.

  “Thanks, Tavor,” I muttered.

  Then I ran. The frost-witch raised her arms, leyline fire swirling in the air around her like a blizzard learning how to scream. Runes flared across her body. Ice cracked. Stone flexed. She was afraid. I could feel it—radiating off her in waves.

  Not fear of death. Fear of me.

  I hit her low, driving Tavor’s axe into her thigh just above the knee. Bone cracked beneath the swing. The enchantment kicked, flames licking across the ice plating. She shrieked, a sharp, hollow sound that echoed like a glacier splitting in half. I didn’t give her time to recover.

  I wrenched the axe free and pivoted, slamming the haft into her jaw. She staggered. I drove my boot into her chest, using her weight to push off and spin behind her. Another blow—this time to her spine—shattered the runes carved there. The glow dimmed. She whirled, clawed hand raised, but I ducked under the arc and drove my elbow into her ribs. Ice shattered. Frost sprayed.

  Her arm lashed out, caught my side. Pain bloomed, but I rolled with it. Tavor’s axe came up again and I brought it down on her shoulder, the fire runes sparking to life, carving through the glacier-grown armor and deep into the joint. She screamed again. Louder.

  Good.

  She tried to run. A shuffle. A limp. A desperate move that might have worked if I hadn’t been born for this exact kind of moment. I followed. Step by step, blow by blow, I chopped her down to size. The fire in the axe bit deeper each time. Chunks of ice and enchanted stone sloughed off her body like shattered glass. Every time she reached for magic, I broke the focus. Every time she tried to speak a spell, I drove the breath out of her lungs.

  It was a brawl now. No finesse. No form. Just hate and steel. She dropped to one knee, breath ragged, face half-melted from the fire, the leyline glow sputtering in her veins. The chamber flickered, the storm dying with her. I walked up slow, axe dragging behind me like a reaper’s scythe.

  Her head lifted, barely.

  “You could’ve ruled,” she rasped, voice broken, echoing. “You are of the blood. You carry the strength of the old ones. You—”

  I didn’t let her finish.

  “You talk too much.” I raised the axe high over my head. “And your end’s long overdue.”

  Then I brought it down. Straight through her skull. The blade bit through bone and ice and stone, and Tavor’s fire exploded in a final blaze of angry light. The glow in her eyes died. Her body froze in place for a heartbeat.

  Then cracked. And crumbled. The frost-witch—this ancient, arrogant, glacier-fed monster—collapsed in a pile of stone and steam, the last breath of her magic hissing into the air like a dying curse. I dropped the axe beside her remains, leaned on one knee, and let myself breathe. It was over. For now. Sort of…