The snow no longer whispered.
It stared- silent, unblinking- as the army of the North gathered around the figure sprawled amidst red and white.

She did not move.
She did not flinch.
She simply watched them.

A girl, barely drifting through what remained of herself- sat drenched in her own blood.
Unarmed. Unmoving. Unbothered.

The flicker of frost in her breath the only sign that life still clung to her.

“Is she a barbarian?” one soldier muttered, hand tightening on his hilt.

“She doesn’t look more than sixteen… seventeen maybe,” another said, unsure if it was worry or suspicion in his voice.

“She’s half-dead. Should we kill her?”

“Leave her.”

“She might be dangerous.”

They whispered, but none stepped forward.

And then-
Silence.

Because he was there.
The Duke of the North.

Kaeliath Vireon Claudian.

He sat atop his midnight stallion, unmoving. His pale eyes weren’t even on her- just fixed ahead,
as if even death bored him now.
His presence was vast. Cold. Like the storm that had just passed.

The soldiers waited, silent. One word, and she would be gone.
But the Duke said nothing.

She didn’t ask for mercy.
She didn’t speak.
She felt no fear.

Not of them.
Not of death.
Not even of him.

She just sat there, hollowed out by something deeper than pain, waiting for the end she'd already accepted.

Then- he turned away.

The men exhaled.

“Let’s move,” someone said.
Boots shifted in the snow. Relief set in. They began to pass her.

But then-

“Take her.”

The Duke’s voice. Calm. Final.

They froze. Eyes turned.

No one questioned him.
No one ever did.

One soldier stepped forward, slow, wary- unsure if she’d lash out, scream, beg.

She didn’t.

She didn’t even seem to hear them.

But as those two words reached her- Take her -something gave way.

Her body collapsed.

It wasn’t weakness. It was surrender.
Not to them.
To something deeper.

A voice she'd been waiting for-
A command her bones obeyed before her mind even caught up.

Because that's what she knew..
Because it was the only thing she knew.

She didn't question it. She never had.
Obedience- that was all she knew.

And then—darkness.

--

They didn’t speak much of her after that. Not at first.

She was taken to the barracks, barely alive. The physicians tended her wounds,
not knowing her name, her story, her purpose.

Days passed. Maybe a week. She didn’t wake.

Eventually, she was forgotten. Just another shadow tucked into a room meant for dying.

Until-

“She’s alive,” said the old physician, almost surprised, standing before the Duke.

The Duke didn’t look up from the maps laid out across the table. “Is she.”

“Steady pulse. She’ll live. Somehow.
It's almost a miracle.”

No thanks. No concern.

But curiosity?

Yes.

Later that night, the fire cracked low in his quarters.
The moon cut silver scars into the snow outside.
The Duke stood at the window, eyes sharp, still.

“What kind of creature,” he thought, “survives that?”

A girl.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Silent.
Unflinching.

A ghost in human skin.

Some said he only took her because he was young. Just twenty-one—
as if youth was an excuse.
As if that made him less brutal.

Others whispered worse-
That she was a monster. Or a spy.
Left to die and now brought back for reasons no one could trust.

Some laughed.
Some feared.

“She didn’t even flinch,” a soldier muttered again.
“She should have been dead” said another.

And maybe, in some way- she already was.

But in the North, death came in many forms.
And sometimes, it took more strength to survive than to die.

The Duke didn’t go to her right away.

But when he did-
It wasn’t out of mercy.
It wasn’t duty.

It was something else.

Something colder.
Something quieter.
Something dangerously close to curiosity,
not about her, but about the impossible thing she had done—
Survive.

And whatever she was-
She would either serve the crown,
Or rot beneath it..