Chapter Text
Next time, Varka was going to have a word with whoever had decided that investigating the Imunlaukr Clan was a brilliant idea.
Why?
Because the clan’s founder had come from Sal Vindagnyr, the sole survivor of a civilization struck down by Celestia’s nails, an act that had plunged the mountain into an eternal, cursed winter. Granted, Varka understood the logic behind it. Celestia’s purpose, supposedly, had always been the preservation of the world. Not any one nation. Not any one civilization. The world itself. Most likely, the strike had been meant to suppress Abyssal influence before it could spread.
But matters like that were far beyond his paygrade. Even as Grand Master.
No, what had brought him here were the rumors from Dornman Port, whispers concerning the last known traces of an aristocracy that had long since turned tyrannical.
In the age of Decarabian, the Imunlaukr Clan had been known for producing brave and gifted warriors, men and women who fought hard and died young. As a whole, the clan had adopted their progenitor’s belief that combat existed merely for the entertainment of the gods. They fought anyone and anything for the sake of fighting itself, and for no higher cause.
Then Barbatos had swept away the snows of Mondstadt, transforming the land into one of gentle breezes and verdant pastures. For the first time, the Imunlaukr Clan believed they had found something truly worth fighting for.
But then came the dark age of the aristocracy.
Why so many of Mondstadt’s so-called elite had suddenly turned corrupt, cruel, and seemingly determined to outdo one another in some unofficial contest of who could become the absolute worst, Varka had no idea. Maybe there had been something in the water. Maybe it had simply been what happened when the wrong people were given too much power for too long.
Either way, he saw little reason to sit there psychologically dissecting tyrants who had been dead for centuries.
Still, as if the Lawrence Clan’s crimes had not been enough, the Imunlaukr Clan had descended into tyranny in its own right. Their rule had grown harsh enough, and their conduct abhorrent enough, that the Gunnhildr Clan had severed ties with them entirely. According to the surviving records, the final break had come when the Gunnhildrs threw a bishop sent from Mondstadt out of the old church’s high tower. Then, for good measure, they demolished the church itself, because why not?
After that, the rest faded into history. Their accomplishments, their sins, and their name were buried together. With no living members, or at least no known ones, the clan’s bloodline was believed to have died out.
However, lo and behold, some keen-eyed knights in the Reconnaissance Company had uncovered reports of supplies going missing and being redirected toward Dragonspine. Reports that stretched back decades. Eula had personally overseen the investigation and found proof of activity there. Not recent activity, but enough to confirm that something larger had once been taking place on the mountain’s northern side.
As for why Varka was here instead of Eula? Because the activity had been proven to have ties to the Abyss. And when it came to dealing with those twisted remnants of fate’s unchosen paths, Varka’s experience was second to none. Nod-Krai, after all, was a land steeped in Abyssal influence, especially where the Wild Hunt was concerned.
Which was how he found himself walking through knee-deep snow on a mountain seemingly hell-bent on ensuring that no one remained comfortable for even a single moment. Then again, Varka supposed there was at least one positive side to all of this. Thanks to this so-called mission of his, he was not confined to his office, slowly drowning beneath stacks upon stacks of paperwork.
No, that particular burden had been dumped onto Jean.
Surprisingly, she had been understanding about it for once. Then again, when the ghosts of a long-dead, tyrannical clan began appearing in old records, missing supply reports, and suspicious activity around Dragonspine, even Jean could see the urgency. After all, if the Imunlaukr Clan was still active, if even a handful of its members had survived in secret, then it was not merely a historical curiosity. It was a potential threat to Mondstadt.
He sighed and crouched, gathering Anemo beneath his feet before launching himself upward in a single, powerful leap. The wind caught him like an old friend, carrying him higher and higher until he landed lightly near the Entombed City.
Nothing looked suspicious. Which said very little, because on Dragonspine, everything looked suspicious. After all, the mountain held the remains of Durin. A place like that did not need to look ominous to be dangerous. The snow, the silence, the ruined stone half-buried beneath frost, all of it felt like a warning that had simply grown tired of being ignored.
Varka drew out the map provided to him and studied it, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the snow. According to the records, most of the missing supplies had vanished somewhere along the passage between the ancient palace and Wyrmrest Valley.
Because of course they had.
Solid mountain rose on one side. On the other, the land dropped away sharply toward the cavern where Durin’s heart still beat beneath the ice. It was exactly the sort of place where no one would expect supplies to disappear, because where in Teyvat would they even go?
Had the losses occurred near Starglow Cavern, he might have understood. There were old structures there, hidden routes, places where someone could shelter from the cold or store stolen goods without immediately freezing to death. But here? There was nothing resembling protection unless one counted hilichurl campsites, and those were definitely still active and well used.
Varka made a mental note to send the Logistics Company a report once he returned. Someone needed to ensure the local hilichurl populations did not grow large enough to threaten the mountain passages.
However, after being struck in the face by a freak gust of icy wind for what had to be the nth time, Varka found himself seriously questioning the supposed elites’ choice of location for whatever grudge-fueled, cult-adjacent enterprise they may or may not have been guilty of maintaining.
Mondstadt had no shortage of excellent places for secret activities. Abandoned ruins, forgotten cellars, isolated manors, suspiciously deep wine caves. Take one’s pick. Dragonspine, however, was not one of them.
Dragonspine was ice, snow, jagged rock, and then, for variety, more ice.
There was barely any food. There were far too many monsters. The terrain was treacherous, the air was thin, and both the weather and the mountain itself seemed to resent the continued existence of anything warm-blooded. Even the Fatui, who were hardly known for prioritizing comfort, only maintained small, scattered outposts here for limited periods of time. Everyone with the slightest instinct for self-preservation understood that Dragonspine was not a place suited for living.
It was a place suited for freezing, suffering, and making extremely poor decisions under the illusion of secrecy.
Still, Varka pressed on.
A short distance ahead, something shifted in the snow.
He stilled.
At first glance, it looked soft. Round. Fluffy. A rabbit, perhaps? He had seen plenty of them across Mondstadt over the years: brown and sandy ones darting through the Whispering Woods, dark brown rabbits near the city gates and Dawn Winery, and, of course, the snow rabbits that made their homes on Dragonspine itself, white as fresh powder, with those distinct black-tipped ears that made them look almost deliberately adorable.
This one, however, was mint-green.
Varka narrowed his eyes.
He was reasonably certain that, in all his years of travel, warfare, diplomacy, monster hunting, and general exposure to Teyvat’s many absurdities, he had never once encountered a mint-green rabbit. And yet, sure enough, just beyond a large, frost-rimed boulder, a soft green tuft protruded from the snow.
An ear, perhaps?
Varka approached slowly, one hand hovering near his weapon, unsure whether he was about to discover some unknown species of alpine hare or yet another reason to question the wisdom of coming to Dragonspine alone.
The tuft vanished behind the rock. That, at least, made sense. Rabbits were skittish creatures. Rabbits, however, did not generally throw sharp objects.
Varka moved on instinct. The projectile sliced past his shoulder with a silver flash and buried itself in a nearby tree with a hard, splintering crack. Starsilver, he noted absently. A jagged shard of it, crudely shaped but thrown with enough force to pierce frozen bark.
His gaze snapped back to the boulder. There, half-hidden in the cold, stood a boy. A young boy. He could not have been older than ten. Perhaps younger. He was barefoot in the snow, dressed in little more than rags, with no boots, no gloves, and no cloak thick enough to keep the cold from sinking into his bones, and yet despite it all he was not shivering.
He simply stared.
Which granted children did that, sometimes. They stared at the world with wide eyes, drinking in everything around them with wonder too vast for words. Creepy at times, yes, but it was how they understood what was around them. Still whatever wonder this child had once possessed had clearly died long before Varka found him.
Looking into his eyes was like staring into a black hole. They were dark green, almost fathomless, save for the crimson glow burning beneath each pupil. That red light climbed upward in a thin, unnatural slit, giving his gaze the shape of something predatory. Something ancient. Something that did not belong in the face of a child.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The wind dragged snow between them in pale, twisting sheets, hissing over the ice and catching at the ragged edges of the boy’s clothes. Varka kept his hands where the child could see them, his posture loose, his voice carefully low.
“Well,” he said, glancing briefly at the starsilver shard buried deep in the frozen tree, “that wasn’t very friendly.”
The boy did not blink.
Varka looked back at him and offered the smallest, most harmless smile he could manage. “Anyway, my name is Varka.” He paused, giving the child space to answer. “What’s yours?”
Silence met him again as the boy only stared, those dark green eyes fixed on him, crimson light burning beneath the pupils like embers under ice.
Varka exhaled softly through his nose. “Wow,” he murmured. “Tough crowd.”
The boy blinked.
Varka blinked back.
For one strange, suspended moment, they simply stood there, staring at each other through the falling snow. Then the boy crouched and Varka had the sneakiest suspicion he knew exactly what he was reaching for.
“No,” he said at once. “Don’t even think about it.”
The boy blinked again. Then, with the solemn defiance of a child who had absolutely thought about it and decided to do it anyway, he snapped his arm forward.
Another shard of starsilver flashed through the air.
Varka twisted aside, the projectile slicing past his coat close enough to tug at the fabric before it vanished into the snow behind him. He looked back at the boy.
The boy stared back, and for one fleeting moment, Varka genuinely thought that perhaps staying in his office would have been the wiser choice. So he allowed himself exactly one breath to mourn the fantasy of a warm office, a closed door, and paperwork that, for all its many sins, generally did not try to stab him.
Then the boy reached for the snow again.
“Ah, no,” Varka said, and moved.
The wind answered him.
Anemo gathered beneath his boots in a sudden burst, kicking up loose powder in a white veil between them. The boy’s hand closed around something sharp just as Varka crossed the distance, fast enough to make the snow hiss beneath him. He did not draw his weapon. He did not raise a fist. He simply hooked two fingers into the back of the child’s ragged collar and lifted.
The boy left the ground with all the offended silence of a cat being picked up against its will. For half a second, he dangled there. Then twisted. Varka had expected that. What he had not expected was the sheer, boneless ferocity of it.
The child bent almost double, one bare foot snapping toward Varka’s wrist while his other hand came up with another sliver of starsilver that had apparently been hidden somewhere in his rags. Varka turned his hand aside, caught the boy by the back of his tunic instead, and leaned away just in time for the shard to cut a silver line through the air where his cheek had been.
“Impressive,” Varka said.
The boy bared his teeth. They were very small teeth, but it did not make the expression any less unsettling. Still he didn’t have time to ponder over it as the boy kicked him in the chest. It wasn’t a strong kick, or atleast, not by any reasonable adult standard, but it landed with enough force to make Varka’s coat thump against his breastplate. Even worse the child immediately tried to use the momentum to twist free, however Varka tightened his grip and just like that the boy went still.
Not calm. Not resigned. Still.
His expression had not changed. His dark green eyes remained fixed on Varka’s face, crimson slits burning steadily beneath his pupils, but something in the set of his shoulders had shifted. The wild thrashing had stopped, replaced by a terrible, focused patience.
A child waiting for an opening or a soldier waiting for a mistake.
Varka’s humor faded.
Slowly, he lowered the boy back down until his feet touched the snow, though he did not release him completely. The moment the child had ground beneath him again, his toes curled into the frost as though feeling for purchase, but there was still no shiver. Still no sign that the cold had any hold over him at all.
He had not to comment on it. “Listen,” Varka said, keeping his voice even. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The boy stared at him, and for one brief, baffling second, Varka had the distinct impression that he was being judged. Which somehow felt almost offensive. Because apparently, murder mountain was acceptable. Eternal winter, cursed ruins, monsters, Abyssal traces, and the frozen corpse of a dragon? Perfectly reasonable.
But Varka?
No, apparently that was where this child drew the line.
“I know that sounds exactly like something someone who was here to hurt you would say,” Varka admitted. “But unfortunately, honesty has terrible timing.”
The boy’s brows furrowed. Not by much; only the faintest crease formed between them, as though confusion had managed to slip past whatever cold, careful thing had locked the rest of his expression in place.
It was, Varka had to admit, undeniably adorable. Which was deeply inconvenient, because adorable children were not supposed to glare at people with abyss-touched eyes while standing barefoot in cursed snow, dressed in rags, and armed with improvised knives. Out of some instinct for self-preservation, he kept that observation firmly to himself.
“There we are,” he said instead, softening his voice by another degree. “That’s better than throwing things, right?”
The crease deepened.
Varka paused. “Well. Marginally better,” he amended. “Still not ideal, but progress is progress.”
The boy’s gaze shifted. First to Varka’s hand, still hooked into the back of his ragged tunic. Then to the snow. Then to the half-buried glint of starsilver near his bare foot.
Varka sighed. “Nope. None of that.”
The boy went very still. For a moment, they simply looked at each other, the wind hissing between them as it dragged loose snow over the ice in pale ribbons. No words passed between them, but a negotiation unfolded all the same. Varka looked down. The boy looked up. Then, very slowly, the boy’s toes curled toward the shard.
Varka lifted him half an inch off the ground. The boy’s expression did not change, but the sheer offense radiating from him could have thawed half the mountain.
“Yes,” Varka said dryly. “Terrible, I know. A grave injustice.”
The boy stared at him.
Varka stared back.
His toes flexed in the air, searching uselessly for purchase in the snow.
“No,” Varka said again, because he had commanded armies, negotiated with foreign powers, and stared down things that had crawled out of nightmares, yet somehow still found himself clarifying basic weapons policy to a silent child. “You may not have the sharp piece of cursed mountain metal.”
The boy blinked once, slowly.
Varka narrowed his eyes. “Do not look at me as though I am being unreasonable.”
The boy continued looking at him exactly like that.
“Starsilver is not a toy,” Varka said. “Nor is it an acceptable conversational tool.”
He received absolutely no reaction.
Varka sighed through his nose. “You know, most people at least start with hello before they try to stab someone.”
The boy’s gaze flicked, briefly and with unmistakable intent, toward the half-buried shard.
Varka raised him another inch and immediately boy’s stare snapped back to him, colder than the wind. “Yes, yes,” Varka said. “Tyranny. Oppression. You are a political prisoner. I understand.”
For the first time, something changed.
Not much. Not enough to become an expression. But the boy’s eyes sharpened, the blankness behind them tightening into something colder and more aware. Varka caught it immediately: there it was, not blankness or confusion this time, but recognition.
“All right,” he said, slowly lowering him until the boy’s bare feet brushed the snow without quite settling into it. “So you do understand me. Good to know.”
The boy said nothing, but he did not look away.
Varka took the opportunity to study him properly: the rags hanging from shoulders far too small to bear them, the bare skin untouched by the cold, the unnatural stillness in his posture, the thin crimson glow burning beneath dark green irises. He was a child, unmistakably. Small enough to carry under one arm. Young enough that he should have been shivering, crying, or hiding behind someone stronger.
And yet there was nothing helpless in the way he held himself.
Nothing soft, either.
Stranger still, there was no fear. Wariness, yes. Calculation, certainly. A terrible, focused patience that did not belong on a face so young. But not fear. It was as though someone had taught him silence, taught him to cut first and wonder later, taught him that hesitation was a luxury he could not afford. Somehow, impossibly, they had failed to teach him to be afraid.
Varka felt his jaw tighten, but he buried the reaction before it could reach his face.
“Here is what is going to happen,” he said, keeping his voice calm and level. “I am going to set you down, and you are not going to stab me.”
The boy stared at him.
Varka waited.
The boy continued staring, darker and harder this time, as though silence itself had been sharpened into a weapon.
Varka exhaled through his nose. “That was the part where you agreed.”
No agreement came. Of course it didn’t.
Varka glanced briefly toward the starsilver shard, then back to the boy’s face. “Fine. Since we are negotiating in silence, I will take anything that is not immediate violence as a tentative yes.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed by a fraction.
“Good enough.”
Very carefully, Varka lowered him the rest of the way. The instant the boy’s feet touched the snow, every line of his body tightened. Varka kept his grip on the back of the tunic, loose enough not to hurt, firm enough to stop him from bolting.
The boy did not move. For three whole breaths, they remained exactly like that. Then the boy lunged. Not at him, but past him. Varka caught the motion too late by half a heartbeat. Something silver flashed low through the snow, hidden in the sweep of the boy’s hand, and pain opened along Varka’s forearm in a thin, bright line.
He drew back on instinct.
The cut was shallow. Clean. Almost delicate. For one strange second, nothing happened. Then blood welled slowly through the split skin, as though it had needed time to remember what usually followed being opened.
Varka stared at it. Then he looked back at the child.
He was not sure what he expected to find there. Panic, perhaps. Horror. Guilt. Some flicker of understanding that he had crossed a line. Instead, the boy was smiling. Not widely. Not warmly. It was a small thing, sharp and fleeting, curling at the edge of his mouth with a kind of silent, vicious delight.
Glee.
Actual glee.
Varka went very still. The boy’s eyes were brighter now, crimson slits burning beneath dark green like embers stirred under ice. He looked not relieved, not triumphant in any ordinary childish sense, but satisfied. As though the world had finally behaved in a way he understood.
A hand reached for him. He cut it. And the hand bled. Simple. Certain. Fair.
Varka looked at the wound again, then at the tiny blade of starsilver pinched between the boy’s fingers. “Well,” he said at last, voice carefully even. “That answers that.”
The boy tilted his head. The smile faded, but the alertness remained.
Varka flexed his injured hand once. Blood slid warm beneath his sleeve, already cooling in the Dragonspine air. “You were waiting for that,” he said softly.
The boy said nothing, but his silence was answer enough.
Varka exhaled.
The humor in him had not vanished, exactly. It rarely did. But it had settled somewhere colder now, beneath the weight of what he was looking at. A barefoot child in the snow. A child with too many knives and too little fear. A child who smiled only after making sure someone else could bleed.
Someone had made this, or tried to at least.
Varka’s grip on the back of the boy’s tunic tightened by the smallest degree which the boy noticed, because of course he did. His smile disappeared entirely, leaving his face blank once more, sealed behind that cold, careful stillness. It was too late though, Varka had already seen what lived beneath it and more importantly, what did not exist there.
Because there was no fear, no guilt and no understanding of mercy except, perhaps, as a mistake other people made.
Varka crouched slightly, bringing himself closer to the boy’s height without releasing him. “Listen carefully,” he said. “You are very fast. Very clever. And clearly far too fond of sharp objects.”
The child’s fingers tightened around the sliver of starsilver.
Varka’s gaze flicked to it, then back to the boy’s face. “But you are also a child, and I am not going to hurt you just because you hurt me.”
The boy stared at him and once again, Varka had the distinct impression that he was being judged. Which, given that he was currently the one bleeding, felt deeply unfair.
“So, let’s try this again,” Varka continued, refusing to dignify the silent accusation in those abyss-touched eyes, “My name is Varka. Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius.”
The boy did not blink.
“I know,” Varka said. “Long title. Very impressive. Terrible for introductions.”
Still nothing. The wind dragged snow between them, whispering over ruined stone and half-buried ice. The boy’s bare feet remained planted in the frost, his small body held perfectly still beneath Varka’s careful grip. Not relaxed. Not safe.
Waiting.
Varka softened his voice. “You do not have to tell me your name,” he said. “But I would like to know what to call you.”
He expected silence. He expected another glare. Another attempt to twist free. Perhaps even another lunge for the nearest sharp object, because apparently that was how this particular conversation had chosen to progress for the most part.
Instead, the boy’s mouth moved. No sound came at first, only the faintest shift of chapped lips, as though the shape of the word had to be remembered before it could be spoken. For a moment, Varka thought the sound that followed was nothing more than the wind scraping over broken stone. Then it came again, quiet and rough, dragged from a throat that sounded as though it had forgotten what words were for.
“...Lohen.”
Varka went very still.
Not because the name was familiar. It wasn’t or at least, not in any way he could immediately place. He had heard thousands of names over the years, from knights and nobles, merchants and mercenaries, diplomats and deserters, and yet this one settled strangely in the air between them.
Lohen.
Small. Rough-edged. Real. A name and not a title, not a designation and not some clan record’s half-buried notation or a convenient label written by people who had never cared whether the child answering to it survived.
Just a simple name.
Varka felt something in his chest tighten. He did not let it show. Instead, he inclined his head, solemn as though receiving an introduction from a foreign dignitary rather than a barefoot child with a knife made of cursed mountain metal. “Lohen,” he repeated, carefully.
The boy’s eyes sharpened. Not quite in alarm, not in anger either, but something close to both, as though hearing the name in another person’s mouth had suddenly made it dangerous.
Varka noticed. Of course he did. So he did not say it again. “Thank you,” he said instead.
The boy stared at him and Varka had the distinct impression that gratitude was not a language the child had much experience with. Either that, or he had decided Varka was using it incorrectly and was now silently considering whether another stabbing would clarify matters. Given the evidence so far, Varka could not rule it out.
He glanced down at the sliver of starsilver still clenched in the boy’s hand. “Now, since we have successfully reached the stage of introductions without anyone losing a limb, I am going to ask for that.”
Lohen’s grip tightened around the shard, because of course.
Varka sighed. “Yes. I thought you might feel that way.”
Lohen shifted his weight by the smallest fraction, bare toes pressing into the snow. His shoulders settled lower. His chin dipped. Every part of him seemed to gather itself inward, not in surrender, but in preparation. A practiced kind of patience no child should have.
Varka’s expression softened despite himself. “Easy.”
The word did not calm him. If anything, Lohen’s stare went colder, as though softness itself was an insult he had learned not to trust.
Varka changed tactics. “I am not taking it because I want you defenseless. I am taking it because you have already proven you know exactly what to do with it.”
Lohen blinked once, slowly, yes, but Varka suspected it was the closest thing he would get to an argument.
“Yes,” Varka said dryly. “That was a compliment. Unfortunately, it does not help your case.”
The boy’s gaze flicked to the wound on Varka’s forearm. Then back to his face. For the first time since Varka had found him, something almost like uncertainty disturbed the blankness of his expression. It was faint. Easily missed. A hairline fracture in stone.
Varka held his breath without meaning to.
Lohen looked at the blood again. Not with delight this time, but definitely not with guilt either. His face was too still for that. However there was attention there; a quiet, intent study, as if he were trying to understand why the cut had not changed the shape of the world in the way he expected.
He had hurt Varka, but Varka had not struck him back. The facts did not fit together and Varka could almost see him turning them over in his head, as though he was searching for the hidden edge.
So every so carefully Varka released the back of the boy’s tunic. Lohen froze. The starsilver sliver rose half an inch, but Varka did not move. The wind hissed between them. Snow gathered along the hem of Lohen’s rags, clung to the tangled mint-green tufts of hair that Varka had, in a moment of regrettable underestimation, mistaken for rabbit fur.
For one heartbeat, then two, neither of them breathed. Then Varka turned his palm upward. Empty. “I am going to wrap my arm, and you are going to stand there and try not to stab me while I do it.”
Lohen stared.
Varka raised an eyebrow. “That is the plan, at least, but I realize you may have notes.”
No response.
“Though so. Try to keep them non-lethal.”
Very slowly, Varka reached into the inner pocket of his coat with his uninjured hand. Lohen’s eyes tracked every movement. The starsilver did not lower, but it did not fly at him either, which Varka chose to count as monumental progress.
He drew out a strip of clean cloth and Lohen stared at it as though it were another weapon. Varka almost smiled. Almost, until he remembered the way the boy had smiled at blood and found he could not.
He wound the cloth around his forearm with practiced ease, pulling it tight with his teeth and tying it off one-handed. The cut wasn’t deep, if anything it was more of an insult than injury, but it still stung fiercely in the cold. The blood had warmed his sleeve before the mountain began stealing that warmth away too. Lohen watched the entire process without blinking. When Varka finished, he flexed his fingers once.
“There. See? Still attached. Both the arm and my patience. Though the latter has endured considerable testing.”
Lohen stayed silent and Varka accepted this as a sign that his sense of humor had once again failed to charm his audience. A pity. He had been told, on very rare occasions, that he was funny. Usually by people who wanted something, but in his mind it still counted.
He lowered his hand, then nodded toward the starsilver. “You can keep holding it for now. But you do not throw it. You do not cut me with it. You do not cut yourself with it. And if another person comes near, you do not cut them either unless I tell you there is danger.”
The boy stared at him. A beat passed. Then Varka reconsidered. “Actually,” he said, “do not cut them even if I tell you there is danger. Leave that part to me.”
Lohen’s expression did not change, but his fingers shifted around the blade. They did not loosen, not exactly; they adjusted, as though he was listening. Good. That was at least something.
Varka straightened slowly, towering over him again despite his best efforts to make himself less imposing and Lohen’s chin tilted up to follow the motion. The crimson beneath his pupils glowed faintly in the shifting snowlight. Too old. Too empty. Too sharp.
Varka looked past him, toward the wind-scoured slope and the jagged ruins half-buried beyond. No tracks led clearly from the boy’s hiding place. The storm had swallowed everything, but someone had been here once. Supplies had vanished here. Activity, Eula’s report had said. Old activity. Not recent. And yet here stood a child who looked as though the mountain itself had forgotten to kill him.
“Lohen,” Varka said, and the boy’s eyes sharpened immediately at the sound of his name, as though even that small claim of familiarity was something to be weighed, measured, and perhaps punished. Varka softened his voice before continuing. “I need to know if there are others here on the mountain. No names. No explanations. Just other people. Children. Adults. Anyone.”
The boy remained silent beneath the falling snow, as still as the ruined stone around them, until his gaze shifted. It was slight, almost nothing, but Varka caught it all the same: a quick flick of dark green eyes toward the half-buried ruins in the distance, where broken stone jutted from the snow like the bones of something long dead. For one sharp, terrible moment, Varka thought he had his answer.
Then Lohen shook his head and Varka’s stomach immediately sank. Alone, then. The child had been alone all this time. “All right,” he said quietly.
Lohen’s eyes returned to him at once, wary of the change in his tone. Of course he noticed it. Of course he noticed everything.
Varka looked toward the ruins again. The mountain seemed silent, but Dragonspine was never truly silent. Ice cracked somewhere deep beneath the snow. Wind moved through broken corridors with a voice almost like breath. Far below, where the land dropped toward Wyrmrest Valley, something groaned in the frozen dark.
He had come searching for traces of a dead clan: old crimes, hidden records, Abyssal activity buried beneath decades of missing supplies and unanswered questions. Instead, he had found a single child, barefoot in cursed snow, alone on a mountain that should have killed him long before Varka ever arrived.
His jaw tightened before he could stop it, and he forced the ugly feeling down before it could make its way across his face.
Once he was certain it did not show, he turned back to Lohen, only to find that in the brief moment his attention had wandered, the boy had edged one bare foot closer to the buried glint of another starsilver shard.
Varka closed his eyes for half a second. “Lohen.”
The boy paused.
Varka opened his eyes and pointed at the shard. “No.”
Lohen looked at the shard. Then at Varka. Then, very deliberately, back at the shard. Varka sighed and offered a silent prayer to Barbatos, which was arguably useless, given that Barbatos was most likely at Angel’s Share getting completely wasted and therefore unlikely to intervene in a diplomatic crisis involving a feral child and cursed mountain metal.
“We have been over this,” Varka said, watching as the boy’s bare toes curled through the snow, inching toward the silver glint with all the subtlety of a fox pretending it had not noticed an open henhouse. “Do not make me pick you up again.”
Lohen’s gaze snapped back to him, sharp with silent offense.
Varka nodded gravely. “Yes. Exactly. A terrible fate. Best avoided by not reaching for the sharp thing.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The wind hissed around them, dragging loose snow over the ice in pale ribbons. Lohen’s expression remained blank, but every line of him radiated bitter consideration, as though he were weighing the value of armed defiance against the indignity of being lifted by the back of his tunic.
At last, inch by reluctant inch, his foot withdrew from the shard.
Varka allowed himself one small breath of relief. “Good. Excellent. Look at that. Diplomacy.”
Lohen looked deeply unimpressed.
“Wounded diplomacy,” Varka corrected, glancing at his bandaged arm. “But diplomacy nonetheless.”
Then, because apparently defiance was not merely part of the child’s personality but the foundation upon which his entire existence had been built, Lohen reached behind his own back and pulled out a knife from the back of his ragged tunic.
For one brief, profoundly weary moment, Varka simply stared.
The blade was curved, slender, and wickedly elegant, shaped almost like a feather. Its edge had been honed to an obsessive sharpness, catching the pale light with a cold, clean gleam. The handle was decorative, inlaid with careful detail that had no place on a tool meant for desperate survival. It was pretty. Delicate. Almost ornamental.
Absolutely, unquestionably not made for a child and yet there it was, gripped with unsettling familiarity in Lohen’s small hand.
Varka closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. “Of course,” he said muttered. “Of course you had a real one.”