What had I made?

The world slowed as I pulled my thoughts inward, stretching the moment until every breath, every flicker of movement, hung in stillness. Time moved like oil through water. I stared down at the child in my arms, skin and hair white as ash-fall, eyes burning with a light no mortal ever carried. Blue, deep and cold and bright as sunlit ice. Not reanimated. Not dead. And not fully alive.

I listened. The boy's heart beat steady in his chest, soft and fast. His lungs pulled air. His eyes moved. But he did not cry. Did not tremble. He only stared back at me, the glow in his gaze holding something distant and ancient, though he had been alive for less than a minute. I felt no weight of command over him, no strings to pull as I did with the wights. There was a link, yes—some tether, faint and strange—but it was not dominance. Not control.

If I reached through that thread, I could touch his thoughts. I could lean against them, shape them maybe, if I forced it or if I wanted to. But he was no puppet. There was will in him. I saw it in how his eyes moved past me to the roof, to the beams, to the light slanting in from the doorway. I, perhaps, had great sway and influence over his mind, but no direct control. Curious. He turned his head, slow and deliberate, and looked toward the woman on the pallet.

Kuva's hand twitched in the straw, reaching for the empty space beside her. She did not speak. One of the women sobbed behind me, muffled and shaking. The others had gone still. No one moved. No one dared. The moment was as baffling to them as it was to me. The People had seen me, on numerous occasions, force the dead to serve me in undeath as reanimated revenants, but this… this was giving life where there was none. This was something I've never done before–something I didn't know I could even do, to be honest, though I had an inkling of a feeling that there were a lot of things I could do if I really stretched the full breadth of my capabilities, truly test myself with experimentations.

The child stirred in my arms. His tiny fingers curled into a loose fist, then relaxed. No cold rolled off him. No wind or frost or ice. But there was something else—something older. A fragment of me. Not a copy, not a shadow. Something passed down. A piece of the greater whole made small.

He blinked, once, slow and unblinking after. I watched him breathe. Watched his chest rise and fall with perfect rhythm. Not a wight. Not a revenant. Something new. A soul caught between two doors.

The moment held.

I watched the child breathe and knew he belonged to this world now, but not entirely. He was no longer of Kuva alone. He carried a part of me—no great shard of will or memory, but something deeper. Older. A sliver of the storm. A quiet fragment of death and winter and stillness drawn from the edge of all things. He would walk among the living, but never fully be one of them.

In time, I thought, he would learn what that sliver could do. Cold would answer him. Darkness would follow his steps. Perhaps he would speak to the dead as I did, call them up from their sleep and bind them with breath and will. Not through instruction. He would not need to be taught. What lived in him would rise on its own, as slow and certain as the seasons.

I wondered if he would hunger. If his flesh would need warmth, milk, grain, water. Or if the stillness in his bones would be enough. If the wind through dead trees and the moon over frost would keep him fed. He was not warm. I could feel the cold on his skin, just below the surface, like something waiting to be let out. He would not grow old. Of that I was sure. Death had passed him over once, and it would not return. Not for him. Not ever.

Time resumed.

The breath of the women returned. The air stirred. Somewhere outside, a child called to another. The wind moved through the thatching above, and the day crept forward once more. I turned to Kuva, who sat upright now, arms outstretched. Her face was pale, her hair clinging damp to her brow. I lowered the boy into her arms.

She winced as she touched him, as though the cold of his skin bit through the joy. Still, she held him close. Her fingers trembled. The other women leaned near, watching, saying nothing. Their eyes shone wide in the dimness of the hut, catching the blue glow of the boy's gaze.

I knelt beside her, the floor groaning under my weight. She looked at me over the child's head.

I signed with one hand, slow and clear: Does he already have a name?

Kuva looked down. The boy's tiny hand had curled into her collar. She opened her mouth, then closed it. The fire crackled low behind us. Dust moved in the light from the door. She did not answer yet. She only held the child close, as the storm within him breathed slow and cold against her chest. I waited. We all did.

The naming of a child was not a thing done lightly among the People. No name was ever rushed. And no name was ever given alone.

Every person born to the tribe bore two names. One spoken and shared, worn like a cloak among neighbors. The other was kept close. A name whispered only between mother and child, between lovers at night, between the dying and those who stayed to watch the end. The true name. The name that would never leave the lips of a stranger.

After a long moment, Kuva smiled. It came slowly, stretched tight across her face like a thread drawn taut. She lifted the child with both hands, his pale form rising in the dimness. The fire behind her threw the boy's shadow tall against the wall.

She turned to face me, her hair falling across one eye. Her mouth moved, and when she spoke, her voice carried with it the tremble of something deeper.

"His name shall be Thell," she said. "The white star that serves the Lion of Night. The first of the blessed—first of the White Walkers."

Her eyes shimmered in the firelight. They held a brightness, but not the gentle kind. Her gaze flared wild, like something caught between awe and madness. Around her, the other women shifted, uncertain. One made a sign of protection. Another stared at the child as if seeing something distant in his face.

I raised a brow. Kuva had always been eccentric. That was the word the People used. Eccentric. She spoke often of dreams and visions, of shadowed paths and far-off signs. She said the trees whispered names to her while she slept. Said the wind showed her where the lost things lay. She'd wake in the night with a start and tell stories about stars that moved, about wolves that wore crowns and rivers that flowed backward into time.

Most days, no one minded her ways. She was kind with the children and quick with her hands. Her baskets were tight and well-shaped, her knots strong. When she wasn't chasing riddles, she kept to her work and hummed to herself. And the tribe, like most tribes, had long since learned to let such things be. She never harmed anyone, never caused unrest. So they listened when she spoke, even if they did not understand.

Her dreams, she said, came from a place beyond the world. They showed her things yet to be. But when she described them, her voice turned strange and distant. She gave names to people who hadn't been born, places that didn't exist. And none of it ever made much sense. Not to the rest of us. Still, no one held it against her. There were worse things than dreams.

So when she found a husband, a quiet man named Viti, the People were glad. He was patient and plain-spoken. A leatherworker with strong arms and few words. He let her talk and wandered with her in the woods, and he smiled when she sang. That was enough.

Now she sat with their child in her arms, whispering prophecy and speaking of stars. Thell. The name echoed through the hut. The first of the White Walkers.

I looked at the boy again. His eyes still glowed with that steady blue light. He did not blink. His breath still came as frost. There was no warmth in him.

But he lived. And his name had been given. The first of the White Walkers, eh? Had to admit, that title was rather catchy and, if I do say so myself, fitting.

Absently, I looked inward once more, just to review my connection with the boy. As I did, however, I noticed… something else–something faint and distant, but present all the same. What was this?

—-

Zalir stood in a wide chamber sealed by heavy doors. Frost covered the walls, veins of cold twisting over metal and stone. Overhead, a trio of dim lights flickered, casting long shadows across the floor. Malcador observed from behind a reinforced window, staff resting at his side. He spoke into the chamber through a vox link, voice calm.

Zalir raised a hand. The new flesh he wore caught the faint glow and shimmered like frozen glass. He narrowed his eyes and breathed in. No steam left his lips, for he had no need of breath. The air around him thickened, sinking into a hush.

A thin gust of cold spread from his palm. At first, it drifted like a fragile mist, swirling with no clear direction. Then it gathered speed, lashing out in an arc that glazed the floor in frost. He tried to mold it, to shape the ice into a spiral or a thin coil, but it fractured and fell to shards. In the glass behind him, the reflection of his pale face showed no change. He let out a tight exhalation, though there was no breath behind it.

Malcador pressed the vox switch. "Again," he said.

Zalir nodded. He steadied himself, adjusting his stance. Rivulets of icy air curled along his arms, humming in time with the faint glow beneath his skin. He drew on that cold inside him, the same emptiness that had remade him. Frigid wind swirled around his feet. He tried once more to shape it with careful gestures, but each attempt brought only scattered frost that fell in uneven spikes. A small crackling sound echoed as the ice shattered into lumps on the floor.

He paused, glanced at the window. Malcador said nothing. Zalir inhaled, though the movement was just habit. The next surge was more forceful. The temperature plummeted, the chamber's walls groaning under the sudden frost. In a great sweep of his arm, Zalir conjured a blast of air that whipped across the room. A swirl of ice and wind battered the far wall, leaving it heavily encrusted. The floor and ceiling shook, drifting flakes of frost onto his shoulders. He stood there, hand extended, an unintentional storm swirling at his command.

Through the vox link, Malcador's voice sounded neutral. "Large-scale conjuration appears simpler for you. Now focus. Attempt again on a smaller scale."

Zalir turned, raising his other hand. His fingers trembled slightly, not from fear or exhaustion, but from the raw power he was wrestling. A faint glow pulsed along his forearm, veins of icy light. He tried to let out only a wisp of frost, no more than a breath of chill. For an instant, the cold flared in his palm, coalescing into a pale glow. Then it tore loose, a scattered burst that laced across the tiles in ragged streaks.

Zalir lowered his arms. The ice on the floor crackled, drifting apart. The attempt at fine control had again slipped away. He straightened, turned to face Malcador's gaze behind the window. A hush filled the chamber. Thin motes of frost twirled in the air like sparks.

Malcador switched on the vox. "Very well, enough of that. Let us test your reanimation powers next."

As he turned, Zalir felt a sudden… shift within himself, as though a pair of eyes that'd long since been turned away were suddenly now fixed upon him.

AN: Chapter 21 is out on (Pat)reon!