The Pale Thorn Pact – Part 1

The wind whispered down the mountain pass like it carried secrets. Cold ones. Ones that lingered in your bones long after the snow stopped falling. Vaelin rode in silence, his dark cloak trailing behind him like a shadow unbroken by time. The trail before them twisted through a stretch of pale, frozen forest where even the trees looked afraid—limbs heavy with snow, branches bent low as though bowing beneath unseen weight.

Beside him, Elira guided her mare with practiced ease, eyes scanning the frosted ridgelines. Her breath plumed before her like smoke from a dying fire. She didn’t speak, not yet. Vaelin hadn’t said more than a dozen words since they’d left the baroness’s estate, and she knew better than to push. When his past returned to haunt him, it always walked softly at first—quiet footsteps that eventually turned into blood.

The air grew colder the farther they climbed into the Frosted Spires. The range rose like jagged monuments to something ancient and cruel. Stories said the gods carved these peaks with frozen breath during the Shattering Wars, burying armies beneath avalanches and trapping warlocks in glacial tombs. But the Frosted Spires were not just old—they were watching. That’s how it felt, at least, to anyone foolish or brave enough to tread their paths.

They had come at the request of Baroness Elarine Valar, matriarch of a southern noble house now invested in northern ore. Her holdings clung to the Spires’ lower slopes like ivy desperate for purchase. Four nights ago, her captain of the guard had been murdered. Slain in his sleep with not a cry uttered nor a single guard stirred. The cut was clean, the body positioned with care. Ritualistic. Precise. A ghost’s touch.

And Vaelin had recognized it immediately.

Elira had seen the way his jaw tightened as he examined the corpse, how his hand hovered over the wound like it was his own. The dagger found buried in the captain’s throat was thin and blackened to a matte finish—curved slightly at the base, the hilt wrapped in greased cord. A blade designed for silence. Concealment. Speed. Vaelin had trained with one just like it, long ago.

That night, he hadn’t slept. Elira had awoken in the small hours to find him standing by the window of their quarters, snow reflecting in his eyes, the weapon lying across his open palms like a confession.

Back then, he’d only said, “This shouldn’t exist anymore.”

And now, three days later, they rode north into the mountains to find who had brought his ghosts back to life.

Their arrival at the baroness’s manor had been met with both hospitality and tension. Elarine Valar had the poise of someone raised on court politics and the steel of someone who survived them. She received them from a chair carved of red ironwood, draped in wolf pelts, with a hearth roaring behind her like a caged beast. Her hair was obsidian, her eyes flinty, and her tone sharp enough to bleed.

“I expected warriors,” she said, lifting a wineglass as they entered. “Instead I get a ghost and his shadow.”

Elira’s eyes narrowed, but Vaelin raised a hand, silently diffusing the storm before it gathered. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet and hoarse, like something pulled from the bottom of a well.

“You sent for help. We came.”

“Help, yes,” Elarine said, sipping her wine. “But I asked for the best. The ones who catch phantoms. I didn’t expect the phantom himself.”

Vaelin said nothing. Elira stepped forward, voice cool. “Do you always insult the people trying to keep you alive?”

The baroness only smiled. “No. Only when they look like they might be the ones to kill me.”

The accusation hung between them like a dagger suspended by thread. Elarine gestured to a servant, who brought out a small black pouch—the one found at the scene of the murder. She opened it with a flick and poured the contents onto a silver dish: shavings of dried root, stained red at the edges. Deathroot. Refined.

“The blade was laced with this,” she said. “The old killer’s mark. This isn’t just murder—it’s theater. It’s calling out to someone. I think that someone is you.”

Vaelin stared at the crimson flakes for a long time. His fingers curled at his sides.

Elarine leaned back in her chair, eyes gleaming like a knife just before the thrust. “I don’t care about your history. I care about survival. Whoever this killer is, they’re sending messages. I don’t want to be next.”

She waved them away like flies from fruit. “Go into your mountains. Find your monster. Then kill it.”

Outside, the wind had thickened, snow falling in spirals across the high ridges. Elira pulled her hood tighter and caught up to Vaelin where he stood beside their horses, staring at the peaks.

“You didn’t deny it,” she said quietly.

He didn’t look at her. “Would it have mattered if I had?”

She stepped closer, close enough for their shoulders to brush. “It matters to me.”

He exhaled, a slow and tired breath. “That dagger was Circle steel. The kill was made with silence magic—layered in precisely. And the use of deathroot… it’s not just old habit. It’s signature work.”

Her brow furrowed. “Yours?”

“No.” He looked up toward the mountains. “Worse. Someone who trained under the same masters… or someone who trained after. The Nightblade Circle was meant to die with the old regime. We burned the sanctums, scattered the survivors. But this… it’s not just survival. It’s evolution.”

The horses shifted nervously as a gust swept through the pass, carrying with it a low, almost imperceptible hum. Magic—barely there, like the echo of a bell rung ages ago.

Elira whispered, “We’re being watched.”

“I know.”

That night they made camp near the mouth of a narrow canyon, sheltered beneath an overhang of ice-smoothed stone. Vaelin didn’t sleep again. He sat before the fire, sharpening his blades until the metal sang. Elira lay with her back to the flames, but her eyes never truly closed.

By morning, the wind had stilled. They moved deeper into the Spires, following signs only a Nightblade would notice—tiny etchings on stones, the placement of bent branches, snow piles disturbed in ways no animal would bother with. Trails made for those who didn’t want to be found, but who knew someone would come looking anyway.

Near dusk, they found the shrine.

Half-buried beneath a drift, it jutted from the ground like a black tooth. Obsidian carved with spiraling symbols. Not gods. Not even human. The markings were old Circle code—encryptions used for assassin rendezvous during the Shattering.

Inside, the air was dry and bitter. The remains of a fire lay cold in the center of the chamber. Ash arranged in a perfect spiral, with a single thorn placed upright in its center.

Elira crouched beside it, drawing in a breath. “This was deliberate. Ritual work.”

Vaelin stared at the spiral for a long moment. “No. This is message work. It's how they mark initiation.”

“Who?” she asked.

He looked at her then. Not past her. Not through her. At her.

“The Pale Thorns,” he said. “A splinter of the Circle. Forbidden. They used poison magic—mixed it with temporal bending. Time blurring. I thought they were wiped out.”

“Clearly,” Elira said, rising slowly, “someone survived.”

Vaelin stepped back from the spiral, eyes distant. “Not just survived. They’ve rebuilt. Which means… someone is teaching them.”

“And we’re walking into their hands.”

A long silence passed between them. Snowflakes danced in through the entrance, slow and delicate, like time itself had begun to falter.

Vaelin didn’t flinch.

“I have to see how deep this goes.”

Elira stepped beside him and reached out. Not to stop him. Not to pull him back. But simply to anchor him.

“Then I go with you.”

He nodded, barely. But when their fingers brushed, he didn’t pull away.

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All Parts of the Series

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 1

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 2

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 3

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 4

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 5