The Shard of Frostmere

The bells of Valdrenn did not ring for the dead. They rang for the living, and when they began their low, rolling toll across the slate rooftops, every citizen understood what it meant. The western watchtower had fallen silent, and smoke rose in a dark column against the late afternoon sky. The city had long known it stood on borrowed time. Valdrenn lay at the edge of the Ashen Expanse where caravans brought trade, rumor, and sometimes war. Today, war had arrived without caravan or herald.

Mira Thalen stood in the market square as merchants overturned tables in panic and families scattered. She did not run. The pressure beneath her skin had been building for days, a restless hum along her nerves like wind trapped in bone. She felt it now more strongly than ever. Something had shifted in the fabric of the world.

Three streets away, inside a narrow stone house wrapped in climbing ivy long turned gray with dust, Kaelor Drenn felt it too. He stood before a table covered in etched discs of bronze and stone, each inscribed with concentric circles of elemental script. Air was marked in pale silver lines, Fire in thin veins of red crystal, Earth in dark green inlays, Water in smooth blue enamel, and Spirit in faint violet etchings that seemed to move if watched too long. The five elements formed the foundation of all magic in Primoria. When woven correctly, they shaped reality itself. When broken, they shattered it.

The western gate exploded inward before Mira reached his door.

Not shattered by siege engines, but undone by weaving.

From the smoke stepped soldiers in black angular armor, their visors smooth and mirrored. At their center walked a woman in crimson robes whose presence bent attention toward her like heat above desert stone. Her name was Serathine Vael, though few living in Valdrenn knew it. Fewer still would survive to remember it.

High Captain Corven Hale rallied his archers along the inner wall. Arrows lifted and fell in disciplined volleys. Serathine raised one hand and began to weave. Those with the Sight saw it instantly. Threads of Fire flared red between her fingers, drawn upward from the burning timbers. Air braided through it in pale silver spirals, feeding the flame with precision. A narrow band of Earth anchored the structure of the spell, preventing it from collapsing outward. Finally, Spirit laced through the center, violet and steady, binding the elements into unified intent. Water was absent; this was destruction, not preservation.

The weave completed.

The ground beneath the archers ruptured as Fire and Air forced upward through stone. Earth fractured outward in controlled lines. Men were lifted in a bloom of flame that did not spread randomly but moved with directed hunger. The wall did not crumble; it was unmade in precise geometric collapse.

Inside the city, Kaelor stepped into the street just as Mira reached him. His amber eyes tracked the rising columns of woven energy in the distance. “She’s here,” he said quietly.

Mira swallowed. “You knew she would come.”

“I knew the seal was weakening.” He pressed a bronze disc into her hands. The artifact thrummed faintly. Around its edge the five elements were etched in equal proportion. “If Valdrenn falls, this must reach Frostmere Pass. The anchor there still holds.”

They turned the corner and came face to face with three of the black-armored soldiers. These were not mundane fighters. Even before they moved, Mira saw faint strands of Spirit coiling around their gauntlets, pre-woven enchantments stabilizing their bodies against shock and pain. Kaelor inhaled and began his own weaving. Air gathered first, silver strands pulling from the atmosphere around him. Water rose in translucent blue arcs from the city well behind them. He braided the two tightly, cooling and compressing the air into razor currents. Earth formed a stabilizing lattice at the base while Spirit bound the configuration. Fire flickered lightly through the edges, not for burning but for expansion at release.

He thrust his hand forward. The compressed current tore through the street in a screaming arc, slicing armor seams and hurling two soldiers backward. The third advanced without hesitation. Mira moved instinctively, her own weaving clumsy but powerful. Fire leapt to her fingers without coaxing. Air tangled through it too quickly. She tried to bind it with Earth as Kaelor had taught her, but Spirit surged instead, overwhelming structure. The result was explosive rather than precise. The soldier’s armor glowed white and cracked as uncontrolled Fire detonated outward.

At the far end of the avenue Serathine watched, mildly amused. “The Keeper still teaches,” she murmured. She stepped forward and began to weave again, slower this time, deliberately visible. Air spiraled high and wide, visible to any caster with Sight. Fire coiled through it like a living serpent. Earth formed thin stabilizing filaments beneath her feet. Spirit wove through all of it in perfect balance. Finally Water slid into the pattern, not to extinguish but to contain. The five elements moved in flawless harmony.

Kaelor felt the structure forming and understood too late. “Down!” he shouted.

Serathine released the weave. The sky itself darkened as Air compressed overhead, Fire ignited within it, and Earth locked the pressure downward. Water prevented dissipation. Spirit unified the catastrophic design. The street buckled as the spell descended in a column of controlled annihilation.

Kaelor counter-wove desperately. Earth surged upward in jagged shields while Water layered cooling barriers through them. Air dispersed some of the downward pressure, Fire met Fire in clashing arcs, and Spirit strained to maintain coherence. The collision lit the avenue brighter than noon. Windows shattered across Valdrenn.

Mira felt something inside her tear open.

The elements did not come to her separately now. They flooded her awareness simultaneously. Air whispered along her skin. Fire burned behind her eyes. Earth grounded her feet into the stone. Water cooled the panic in her chest. Spirit bound them into clarity. She lifted both hands and began to weave consciously for the first time. She braided Air and Fire tightly, tempered them with Water, anchored with Earth, and sealed with Spirit. The resulting surge did not explode wildly. It moved as a focused wave.

Serathine staggered one step.

Interest replaced amusement in her expression. “Ah,” she said softly. “So he found another anchor.”

She extended two fingers. Crimson strands of Spirit shot along the ground, dragging Earth upward into binding chains reinforced by Fire. Kaelor intercepted with a glyph of pure Spirit etched against stone, fracturing her weave before it reached Mira. The backlash lifted him from his feet and hurled him against a wall.

“Run,” he gasped, pressing the bronze disc into her palm once more.

The ground opened beneath Mira as he split Earth and guided Water through the fracture to form a temporary passage. She fell into darkness as the street sealed above her.

Valdrenn burned until dawn.

Three days later Mira reached the lower slopes of Frostmere Pass. The bronze disc pulsed more strongly here. The air itself felt structured, as though an ancient weave lay beneath the mountains anchoring something vast and terrible.

A figure stepped from the rocks above her path, longbow slung over his shoulder. He was young, perhaps thirty winters, with green eyes sharp as pine needles. He studied her without hostility but with caution. “You’re carrying something loud,” he said quietly.

Mira blinked. “You can see it?”

He nodded. “Spirit’s bleeding off it in violet ribbons. Fire and Air are knotted tight at the core. Whatever it is, it’s not meant to travel.”

She swayed from exhaustion. He caught her before she fell. “Name’s Rovan,” he said. “And unless I’m mistaken, you’re being tracked.”

Far below, on the distant plains, faint threads of red Fire and silver Air flickered in disciplined patterns. Serathine’s hunters were weaving search spells, visible to any with Sight.

Mira steadied herself and looked toward the mountain pass where ancient stone pillars stood half-buried in snow. Between them shimmered a faint curtain of pale blue Water and steady green Earth, the last intact anchor Kaelor had spoken of.

“They can’t reach that,” she said.

Rovan glanced at the horizon and then back at her. “Then we’d better reach it first.”

Together they climbed into Frostmere, the five elements stirring in the mountain air as if aware that something older than kingdoms was about to be tested. Far to the south, Serathine watched the peaks through strands of woven Air and smiled with patient certainty. The game had begun, and in Primoria, the elements always answered those bold enough to command them.