When Winter Breaks
FLASH RECAP: CHAPTER 2 ️
James awakens the cursed Abyssal Ice, freezing the Archive and branding himself the "Ice-Plague."
Hunted by the city, he’s saved by a nameless beggar who hints at the Ice’s grim legacy.
Reeling from betrayal, James returns home—where his father, Arthur, hides secrets and a vial of Aetherflux Elixir to stall the frost’s decay. As sirens wail, a THUD strikes the door—the hunt isn’t over.
RECAP ENDS -
(The frost had retreated—but not surrendered.)
James sat slouched near the hearth, body slack but breathing easier, the Aetherflux Elixir still glowing faintly in his bloodstream like embers trapped in crystal. The pain had dulled into memory. His fingers no longer pulsed with Ether, but his mind? His mind remained sharp—too sharp.
Arthur Rubenblood watched his son the way a sculptor watches a cracked masterpiece, unwilling to touch it but unable to look away.
“You’ll live,” Arthur said quietly, handing him a fresh wrap for his wrists. “For now.”
James exhaled, his voice a rasp. “How long will it hold?”
“Could be a week. Could be a day,” Arthur replied. “There’s no measure with Abyssal Ice. Only delay.”
James leaned back against the wall, eyes half-lidded. “So I’m a ticking relic.”
“No,” Arthur said gently. “You’re my son.”
A pause.
Then Arthur sat across from him, folding his hands. “There’s something I want you to understand—before whatever comes next.”
James looked up.
“You’ve been holding your grief like it’s a weapon,” Arthur said, voice quiet but steady. “You blame yourself. For what happened. For who you’ve become. But you’ve also blamed Nolan, Cicily, Even me.”
James didn’t answer.
Arthur continued. “What happened back then... it broke more than just your mother. But that wasn’t your siblings’ burden. They were children. They still are. You kept them at arm’s length, and maybe you thought it was protection. But it looked a lot like abandonment.”
James stared at the fire, jaw clenched.
“They still talk about you,” Arthur added. “Even from Fganud. Every letter they sent was signed with hope.”
“I didn’t read them,” James muttered.
“I know,” Arthur said softly. “But they wrote them anyway.”
James closed his eyes. The guilt curled in his chest—not icy, but raw.
“I’ll fix it,” he said, almost inaudibly.
Arthur rose to his feet. “Then start by surviving.”
He turned toward the washbasin shelf. “I’ll get you some water. Elixir’s going to dry your throat out like sandpaper.”
James nodded and leaned forward, slow and aching. His spine still felt like it had been hammered in frost.
And then—
BOOM.
The front door jolted in its frame. Once. Like a battering ram tested with patience.
Arthur froze mid-step. His eyes shot to the door.
James sat upright instinctively, muscles screaming, blood flushing down his arms like warning bells. The frost didn’t surge—but something else did.
Another boom, louder this time, deliberate and certain. Wood creaked in protest.
Arthur moved fast, locking the deadbolt and sliding the old iron rod across the hinges.
James whispered, “Anyone expected?”
“No,” Arthur breathed.
Then came the voice:
“By order of Duke Arron Goldsen, Iron Warden of the Western Seat, this home is hereby commanded to surrender the subject known as James Rubenblood—codenamed the Ice Plague.”
James froze—not out of fear, but something older, heavier.
The Iron Duke.
Arron Goldsen was not a man known for his mercy. His sigil—a shield fused with a broken crown—was branded into every policy that demanded strength over understanding. They called him “the Iron Duke” not for his armour, but for the fact that nothing moved him. Not emotion. Not pleads. Only law.
And now, his hand had reached for James.
Arthur’s lips tightened. “What brought him into this?”
James replied flatly. “His daughter stood next to me at the Archive when it broke. Maybe this is him ‘cleansing the scene.’”
Another voice shouted through the door—colder, more official:
“You have one minute. Comply, or be charged with harbouring an Ether-based threat and resisting Dukedom authority.”
James rose, limbs shaking, back still hunched. But his eyes had changed.
A stillness there. Controlled.
Measured.
Like a blizzard waiting for the signal to start.
Arthur placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything,” James said, voice low. “Yet.”
Another crash at the door.
Then a third voice—cruel, almost amused.
“We know you’re in there, Iceborn. Surrender and we’ll make the end swift.”
Arthur’s voice sharpened. “They’re trying to provoke you. They want you unstable. Confirm the danger.”
James didn't move. “Let them watch. Let them wonder how calm a storm can look before it hits.”
Outside, metal boots shifted on stone. A rune clacked—someone priming a caster blade.
The firelight inside dimmed slightly, and a faint frost glazed the rim of the window.
Then—
“Ten seconds.” “Last warning.”
Arthur looked at his son—really looked.
Not at the boy who had once cried over broken practice blades or clung to his mother’s cloak. But at the frostbitten figure now standing silently near the coals, his breath steady, his eyes unreadable.
Whatever storm was rising in James—it wasn’t wrath. It was focus.
A deep, bone-forged readiness.
“OPEN THIS DOOR— OR WE BREAK IT DOWN.”
Neither man moved.
Neither answered.
Outside, the Iron Duke’s will waited behind steel.
And inside?
Winter waited with it.
> Across town, the beggar’s flask froze solid in his grip. He grinned.
“About damn time.”
(Not every storm howls. Some fall quiet—until they shatter you from the inside.)
“THREE.”
The door trembled. Frost stretched beneath it like cracks in glass.
“TWO.”
James’ knees gave out.
He didn’t fall.
He sank.
Not onto the wooden floor, but inward—into something bottomless and breathless. It wasn't cold, not at first. It was slow. Heavy. Like being submerged in velvet shadow.
Where am I—what—
“One.”
He wasn't standing anymore. He was watching himself fade.
Arthur caught him, pulling James’ limp weight up and dragging him toward the false shelf behind the fireplace. His breathing was loud now—panicked—but measured. A father trained for war. Not this war, but it didn’t matter.
He slammed the candleholder sideways. The shelf creaked. A chamber opened behind.
Flickering ward-lamps lined the walls downward: the safe room. Sealed decades ago, now humming faintly with anti-detection sigils, null-wards, and a single shield dome calibrated to Arthur’s bloodprint.
He reached the base. James wheezed once. His veins pulsed faintly blue.
“Just a little further,” Arthur said. “It’ll hide you. It’ll hold.”
He turned to push James inside.
But James moved.
A surge of focus shot through James’ chest. His palms flared frost before he realized what he was doing. His body pushed forward, acting without his permission.
Arthur stumbled as James shoved him inside the chamber.
“No—!”
What are we doing? STOP!
James’ arms moved like foreign limbs. Fingers flexed. Power surged. The ice sealed the threshold.
He watched his father’s confused face just before it vanished behind inches of crystalline barricade as he froze the entrance.
{No no—don’t shut him in—he’s the only one who—} – James’ internal POV
James whispered, "Sorry."
One crimson tear fell from his eye.
The ice held.
He turned back toward the door.
CRASH.
The front wall exploded inwards.
The house groaned under pressure as Dukedom Knights stormed in—twenty of them. Gleaming armour. Polished ether-forged alloy with glowing runes etched across reinforced plating.
Each bore a glowing Engine Sigil—markings that pulsed with unique resonance:
- Lightning Serpents curling down forearms
- Fire Suns blazing across chests
- Thorned Vines etched into necks and knuckles
- Wind Currents spiraling like galaxy glyphs
They weren’t just soldiers.
They were contemporary-geared. Stage Five. Adaptable, lethal, precise.
Behind them entered something heavier.
Sir Ryan Flask.
Captain. Tactician. Executioner.
His armour was deep bronze trimmed with graphite, cracked through with molten-red lines—like volcanic seams frozen mid-eruption. His dual Ether sigil coiled around his left pauldron—two symbols layered like tectonic plates.
His Seismic Earth Engine pulsed faintly as he stepped forward.
But the detail that caught every eye—every breath—was the gemstone socket where his left eye should've been. Cracked quartz, glowing from within like compressed magma.
His expression was unreadable. His presence: absolute.
James stood amid the rubble—fists clenched, breath shaking. The frost behind his eyes felt thick now. Like layers of broken mirrors stacking, fragmenting his reflection.
Someone gave the order.
The knights struck.
Inside James
James could see it happening.
His body twisted away from lightning.
Caught flame between open palms.
Froze projectiles mid-flight.
But he wasn’t doing any of it.
He was watching—caged behind his own eyes.
What the hell am I doing?
He tried to move his arms. Nothing.
Tried to yell. His lips stayed frozen.
Stop fighting them! Stop—what if you kill someone? This isn’t me—
But the body didn’t listen. It reacted. Block. Freeze. Dismantle.
I don’t want this. I never wanted this—
A knight with obsidian armour launched a sonic destabilizer. James’ arm snapped up, countering with a pulse of frost that shattered the shockwave.
The ice hit like intent.
I’m not thinking—I’m just... surviving? No. This is different. This is rage. I never—
Another knight came flying in—root-knotted whips sweeping low.
James’ foot moved first—dragging a frost line that caught the whip mid-arc, freezing it solid. A clean snap followed. The knight rolled back, stunned.
Please. Don’t hurt them. I can’t—
A new voice sliced through his thoughts.
Not his own.
Not friendly.
You’re the storm now. Stay still, little host. Let the cold clean. Let me show them why you were chosen.
James recoiled—inside himself.
No. I won’t let this take me—
But his body? It was already moving.
Already winning.
Already gone.
Outside
Knights fell one by one.
Plasma blades froze at the hilt. Flame orbs shattered like glass under ice-breath. Kinetic barriers were countered by blade-thin frostlines slipping through microscopic gaps.
Their formations collapsed. Their nerves frayed. Their Sigils flickered red with heat strain.
And still, James advanced—silent, glowing faintly blue under his skin.
One knight screamed, “Fall back—fall back!”
Too late.
With a gesture, James sent a wall of frost spiraling like a frozen typhoon. Three knights were hurled against what was left of the bookshelf.
Sir Ryan had seen enough.
He stepped forward, gauntlets crackling with seismic tension.
Each stride left a shallow crater.
His gemstone eye flared.
“I gave you your chance,” he said.
He slammed his fists into the ground—sigils roaring awake.
“Seismic Earth Thorn!”
The ground split.
The air convulsed.
From beneath James, the floor buckled—
And then the thorn rose.
A twenty-foot earth spear, twisted and jagged like roots grown from ancient hate. It shot upward with fatal precision.
Inside James
That’ll kill me.
He stared at the incoming spire from inside his body.
And did nothing.
Move, MOVE!
His limbs screamed to respond—but the storm within tightened.
Do you WANT to die now? After all this? Is that what you—
But then—
Flash.
A blur.
Heat. Speed.
And then—CRACK.
Pain exploded through the back of James’ neck.
His vision snapped white.
Time folded.
One heartbeat before unconsciousness...
He saw him.
The beggar.
Not tattered.
Not lost.
Just...
Watching him.
Holding something invisible behind his eyes.
James' body dropped.
His breath caught once—then slowed.
And with his last flickering moment of thought, he whispered—
"Why... why you too...?"
Silence.
Sir Ryan lowered his fists. The thorn crumbled mid-rise.
The knights stood stunned—some still half-frozen, others barely standing.
James lay unconscious, curled loosely, frost twitching across his cheekbone.
Standing over him—
The beggar.
He cracked his flask, tilted his head, and muttered, “Well. That got loud.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”
The beggar crouched beside James. Touched his forehead. Sighed.
“Lucky the kid dropped when he did. Few more seconds and half of you’d be statues.”
He looked up. “You’re welcome.”
“You’re interfering with a command operation,” Ryan snapped. “That was a live combat field.”
The beggar lifted James like he weighed nothing and tossed the boy to Ryan’s feet.
“There. Now he’s your problem.”
He turned to leave.
“Stop,” Ryan ordered. “State your name. Rank. Purpose.”
The beggar paused.
“I don’t give names to men still shaking.”
Then—
vanished.
Not through Ether. Not with light.
He simply wasn’t there anymore.
Where he’d stood, frost lingered one second too long. Even the shadows took time to melt.
The knights looked around, dumbfounded.
“Sir…” one whispered. “There’s no trace.”
Another: “No energy signature. No spatial fold. He just…”
“Gone,” Ryan said, voice cold. He bent, hoisting James’ unconscious body over his shoulder.
They stood in the ruins of the Rubenblood home. The ice hadn’t melted. The walls still hummed with aftershock.
Ryan glanced at James again—at the boy whose eyes had held the weight of a tempest.
“What… are you?”
Winter didn’t answer.
It never does.
(There is a kind of cold that doesn’t freeze flesh—it strips identity.)
James floated in nothing.
At least... it felt like nothing.
Dark. Quiet. Weightless.
But beneath the silence, something scraped. Not metal. Not stone. Something colder. Sharper. Like winter given claws.
It pressed against him—not his skin, but his sense of self. Peeling away things he hadn’t realized were even there.
Laughter. Fear. Names.
It showed him a version of himself without warmth—without memory. Without James.
Was this the Engine?
Or the curse?
Or both?
He reached for something—his hands moved, but his arms didn’t.
Move.
His voice didn’t echo here. It barely existed.
Get up—
But the ice inside wasn’t screaming.
It was listening.
Waiting.
THWACK.
Pain shattered the silence.
James lurched forward with a gasp, the ringing in his skull sharper than metal teeth.
A knight stepped back, gauntleted fist streaked faint red. “Woke him.”
James blinked. Reality crashed in like a frozen tide.
The chamber around him stretched wide and sharp—vaulted obsidian arches, golden inlays, banners stitched with snarling lions and broken coin crests. The floor gleamed like black ice. Shadows clung to the walls like they were listening.
This wasn’t a courtroom.
This was a stage for sentencing gods.
At the highest dais—seated on a throne of blackened steel veined with shimmering coinmetal—sat the man who ruled the West Dukedom and its vast economic empire:
Duke Aaron Goldsen.
Golden hair, sharply styled. Mustache groomed, beard angular like sculpted iron. His black tunic bore the embossed crest of the Duchy’s lion haloed by Ether rings. His shoulders were broad, his posture regal—but there was something primal beneath it.
He didn’t sit like a noble.
He sat like a creature trained to stalk.
But it wasn’t just his presence—it was his legacy.
For Aaron Goldsen was one of the Four Grandmaster-Geared Knights of the Kingdom of Nautilus. Beyond Advanced. Beyond elite. A man who could rival divisions alone. His Ether mark—never revealed—was said to run so deep into his soulthread that even nullification failed to erase his pulse from the air.
A single wrong breath in his court could be fatal.
A few stairs below the throne stood another man—no less dangerous, but in a very different way.
Minister Regal Chambers.
Grey hair, skin pale as a snow-parchment, posture snake-slick. He smiled like someone who didn’t need to win—because he’d already watched you lose in his head a dozen times.
He held a scroll. Carefully. Almost lovingly.
And when he spoke, his voice was soaked in triumph too smooth to look like gloating.
“James Rubenblood. Former Academy aspirant. Unlawful host of a forbidden Engine. Rogue candidate of disavowed lineage.”
He cleared his throat theatrically.
“By decree of the Ministry of Internal Stability and the sovereign authority of His Grace, Duke Goldsen himself, the verdict is read as follows…”
James didn’t struggle. He couldn't—not with the binding glyphs still clamped around his ribs and shoulders. His pulse stuttered. The air felt staged.
This isn’t just judgment. It’s execution dressed as theater.
Chambers continued:
“For high Ether contamination, disruption of Archive systems, endangerment of protected citizens and unlawful manipulation of ancestral relics, you are hereby sentenced to irreversible dissolution.” “Your Engine shall be severed. Your mind scorched. Your body, burned. You will not return.”
His eyes gleamed as he lowered the scroll.
“Your mother was a mistake the system tolerated once. We will not repeat it.”
James didn't react. Couldn’t speak.
But inside? The frost twitched.
Faint. Slow. Not ready yet.
Just listening.
Waiting.
Goldsen still hadn’t said a word.
He watched like a blade watches a neck. No disgust. No hate. Just finality.
Then—finally—he raised a single finger.
One of the attending knights straightened.
The Duke’s voice was deep.
Calm.
Inevitable.
“Begin the rites.”
James lowered his eyes.
The room dimmed.
And the ice within him whispered—
Will the Abyssal Ice die today?
Or was this the moment… it learned how?
“***When Winter Breaks,
Mercy forgets its Name***”
End of Chapter 3
