The Serpent’s Echo

The winds howled as the caravan trudged through the Frostback Pass, each gust a ghost of old wars. The path was narrow, carved between cliffs streaked with ancient runes and ice-slick stone. Their breath came in clouds, and the clink of hooves and gear echoed off the jagged walls like whispers of an army long buried beneath snow.

Kaelin rode at the front, her eyes fixed on the pass ahead. Her armor, still scorched from the last battle, bore dents and gashes like memories written in steel. She didn't wear them for pride. She wore them to remind herself that survival meant more than breath — it meant enduring.

Beside her, Maerlyn leaned forward in her saddle, her fingers curled around her staff. Her dreams had turned darker since the battle at the marsh. She woke in the night with blood in her mouth, her skin clammy, her eyes aching with visions not her own.

But she hadn't spoken of them. Not yet.

Behind them, Rowena walked instead of rode, leading her mare through a section of rocky path too narrow for a mounted climb. Snowflakes caught in her hair, turning her into something half-myth, half-warrior. She felt the eyes of the others — not admiration, not fear. Something more complicated. Something closer to reverence and warning.

Because Rowena had changed.

They all had.

That night, they made camp in a hollow beneath the cliff's edge. Fires were kept low, the light shielded by stones. Few spoke. Most slept with hands on hilts, their dreams too raw to give them peace.

Maerlyn sat apart, wrapped in her cloak, eyes flickering as she stared into the flames. She didn't blink when Kaelin approached.

"You haven't eaten," Kaelin said, sitting beside her.

"There's a taste in my mouth I can't get rid of," Maerlyn murmured. "It's like copper and ash."

Kaelin frowned. "A vision?"

Maerlyn nodded slowly. "Not mine. I think… I'm seeing through her. The Queen."

Kaelin stiffened. "What does she see?"

Maerlyn turned her head. "Us. She dreams of us, too."

In the deepest part of the night, a sound rose through the mountains — not the shriek of wind or the cry of hawks. A low, haunting horn. It echoed off the cliffs, bending in ways that made no sense to the ear. It came from the north.

And with it, something stirred beneath the earth.

Rowena woke first. She grabbed her sword, eyes wide, heart pounding. Something primal screamed within her — an instinct older than blood.

She raced toward the cliff's edge and peered over.

What she saw made her stomach knot.

Dark shapes were winding through the valley far below. Dozens, then hundreds — not soldiers, but things with too many limbs, with faces covered in veils of ice, carrying torches that burned green.

Kaelin joined her, jaw clenched.

"They're moving fast," Rowena muttered. "They'll reach the pass by dawn."

Kaelin's breath clouded the air. "That's not a patrol. That's a procession."

Maerlyn appeared behind them, whispering like the night itself: "They're bringing something. Or someone."

By morning, the snow had stopped falling.

The frost had settled in sheets of crystal across every surface, glittering deceptively in the early light. But beneath that beauty, the mountains were waking. Tremors stirred loose gravel. Crows circled low.

Maerlyn, already on her feet, faced the path northward.

"They're calling it the Echo," she said aloud. "A serpent that lives in silence. Not flesh. Not spirit. Something in between. She woke it from under the ice. And now… it wants a voice."

Kaelin stepped closer. "What does that mean?"

"It's hunting me."

The battle came without a war cry.

Just after the sun crested the mountain rim, the snow at the far end of the pass boiled. Not melted — boiled. Steam hissed up into the sky as shapes burst from beneath it: shrieking, twisted creatures — the same ones they'd faced at the marsh, but faster, and hungrier.

And behind them came a sound — low, harmonic, like a song sung by a thousand bones.

Kaelin roared orders. "Shields! Hold the line at the ravine!"

Rowena and the scouts formed a half-circle near the narrowest throat of the pass. She didn't wait for permission — she led the charge herself, blade in hand, crashing into the first wave of horrors like a storm of vengeance.

Maerlyn took the higher ground, her staff pulsing with a furious white glow. She wove magic thick as snowdrift — barriers of pure force, arcs of fire threaded with gold.

But the creatures were changing.

Every time they died, they didn't fall — they melted into mist, and reformed behind the lines. Regenerating. Recycling.

"They feed off death!" Maerlyn shouted. "We can't kill them like this!"

Kaelin's voice cut through the roar. "Then we trap them!"

They lured the creatures into a canyon split — a natural dead-end where the cliffs leaned in close. Rowena and two dozen riders baited them in, lashing at them, retreating at the last second.

Then Maerlyn stepped forward.

She slammed her staff into the ground and screamed words in a tongue that hadn't been spoken in thousands of years.

The canyon walls shivered.

Stone shifted.

And then — they collapsed.

The avalanche roared down like judgment itself, burying the creatures under tons of ice and shale. The sound rolled through the mountains for minutes. And then… silence.

Real silence.

When the dust settled, they limped back to camp.

They had lost six scouts. Another four wounded. A price paid, but for the moment — they had survived.

Kaelin gathered them at dusk.

"The Queen is testing us. She's pushing us to exhaust ourselves before the true strike."

Maerlyn, pale but upright, spoke next.

"The serpent they spoke of? The Echo? It wasn't with them. This was only a fragment of her power. The real storm is still coming."

Rowena crossed her arms. "Then we ride to it. We stop reacting. We take the fight to her."

Kaelin met her eyes. "Are you ready for that?"

Rowena didn't flinch. "We all are. Or we wouldn't still be alive."

That night, Maerlyn dreamed again.

But this time, she wasn't alone.

She stood in a temple of mirrors, each one showing a version of herself: some triumphant, others broken. One wept blood. Another burned. And one… wore a crown of silver thorns.

She heard a voice — hers, and not hers.

"You are the mirror and the blade. The Queen made you to fall. You chose to rise. That makes you dangerous."

Maerlyn touched the nearest mirror. It cracked.

And in the dark behind it, something smiled.