I've fought Cravens before—monstrosities cobbled together from a thousand horror novels and every nightmare animal to ever crawl out of a dying dream. I've stared down wolves with too many eyes, serpents that whispered my name from beneath my skin, and shapes that shouldn't have moved at all.

But I had never fought puppets.

Not in this sense.

These weren't stitched-together beasts or illusion-born phantoms. These were people. People who had once been warm. Human. Breathing. People who had sat by hearthfires and shelved tomes of forbidden scripture, whispered oaths into the ink-thick halls of Danatallion's Halls. Now, they were things. Frozen stiff, marionetted by the bitter will that had turned the entire library into a tomb of snow and silence.

Their movements were jerky. Artificial. Each step echoed like the creak of an ancient hinge, too dry and too deliberate. Frost clung to their eyelashes like crystal thorns. Their faces were the worst—expressions frozen not in death, but in pause. No fear. No peace. Just… stillness.

I didn't have my odachi. I had left it behind when I came through the gate…not that I had meant to go through a gate. A mistake, maybe. But I still had my skillcubes—and more importantly, my Arte.

Problem.

None of the books counted as "paper" anymore. Not here. Not now.

They were too far gone. Soaked in frost. Hardened into slabs of brittle ice and ancient ink, their pages stiff as slate. They no longer whispered their secrets to me. No flutter of welcome. No pulse of presence. My Arte thrived on the life of paper. This place was a graveyard.

So, I did the only thing I could. I kept Lunarias in hand at all times. The bow thrummed against my palm like a heartbeat—one of the only warm things left in this realm.

Nock. Aim. Release. Twang.

The arrow of starlight streaked through the freezing mist like a silver comet, embedding itself straight into the forehead of a figure emerging from the shelves. It wore the same ink-stained robes as Falias and Evali. Same gloves. Same insignia over the chest, half-frozen into the fabric. I had seen him once, in passing, when I first stumbled into the library's deeper chambers. A senior Archivist, I think.

The body didn't crumple.

It staggered, lurching forward like a puppet whose strings had frayed and rewoven themselves around ice.

I reached out with my aura. Probing. Feeling.

No heat. No breath. No flicker of soul. No resistance. He was already gone—whatever remained was only muscle and tendon on borrowed will.

Not alive. Not resting.

A puppet.

And worse, a herald.

Because behind him, I felt the cold deepen.

The temperature didn't just drop—it plunged. The hairs on my arms stood upright. My breath frosted mid-exhale. The air thickened, turned to something that rasped when it entered my lungs, something ancient and angry.

The puppet lunged forward, slower now, as if something behind him didn't care about the facade of speed anymore.

I twisted, loosing another arrow—this one tipped with faint pinpricks of light, my newest attempt at applying [The Ruined World]'s toxin into Lunarias. The arrow struck through the puppet's clavicle, bursting into a flurry of void-colored sap that festered and hissed.

Still, the puppet came. Now dragging a halberd behind it, tip scraping ice with a hiss that curdled sound itself.

I narrowed my eyes and called to the ink. Not the books. Not the paper. Not the parchment. But to the shadows that pooled between the frost-covered shelves. The scraps of knowledge never fully written. The half-born thoughts discarded in this place of infinite stories.

The Lexicon answered.

A whisper. A rustle. A paragraph left unsaid.

Three origami insects unfolded from nothing—crickets with wings of constellations, skittering toward the enemy, detaching in midair.

They exploded against the puppet like thorns cracking glass.

It didn't kill it.

But it made it bleed.

Good enough.

"I don't need you to stay dead," I muttered under my breath. "Just need you to stop walking."

I stepped forward, another arrow already in hand, aura wide, catching the trembling signatures of two more puppet-librarians closing in from the right flank.

Behind them, something was stirring the snow.

Something older.

It approached slowly at first.

A deer—no. A stag, massive and regal—its antlers arcing high like frostbitten branches, each one made of translucent crystal that shimmered in the dim glow of the frozen halls. Its body was paneled with shifting plates of ice-glass, its hooves clicking against the brittle floor like temple bells in deep winter. Every step it took made the snow hush. Made the silence deeper.

My bloodline screamed at me.

My very bones knew what this thing was—some primal echo passed down through ink and blood and the fragments of Demeterra's laws written into my skin. This was not a creature of violence. Not directly. But it was a force. And like all forces, it could crush you without ever meaning to.

I turned to Falias. She was already watching me with unreadable eyes.

We both nodded, wordlessly.

We ducked into one of the narrower hallways—less exposed, less open. Snow fell heavier in here, soft powder blanketing the frost-bitten shelves that had once housed the forbidden epics of the Age of Silence. I pressed my back against the icy stone, my fingers tight on Lunarias, while Falias flattened herself against the opposite wall.

The stag made no move to follow us.

Instead, it walked past—toward the still figure I had just felled. The puppet. The half-living, half-dead marionette whose soul had long since slipped away into some frozen coil.

The stag lowered its head slowly, reverently, until its muzzle nearly touched the body. And then something happened I didn't expect.

The corpse changed.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The whole corpse folded in on itself, warping and twisting until what stood before the beast of winter no longer was a frostbitten thrall, but a single log of firewood.

The stag then bit down on the firewood with it's mouth, before both disappeared in a giant brilliant flash of light.

I stared, unblinking. Then I turned to Falias, my voice sharp with cold.

"Falias. I'm going to ask this once. What tale are we in?"

She didn't flinch. Her eyes pulsed faintly with starlight, the reflection of hidden text racing beneath her irises.

She knows.

"The Tale of Winter," she said, voice thin but certain. "Cailleach's Chord. I had suspicions before, but the white stag confirmed it. That specific creature is one of the heralds."

I was already bracing for worse. "There's more than one?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. Two stags. The White and the Black. That was the White Stag."

"Give me details. Now." I didn't mean to bark the words, but they came out anyway. My fingers were trembling.

Falias met my eyes. "The Cailleach—the Old Woman of Ice—is the spirit at the center of this tale. She is winter. She governs the snow, the frost, the cold seasons. But in the Chord, her will is no longer her own. She is... tethered to the turning of the seasons by two forces: the White Stag and the Black."

She took a breath, and I realized her lips were starting to turn blue. I conjured a flicker of warm light from one of the still-active spellcubes in my satchel and let it float between us. Her voice steadied.

"The White Stag represents renewal. The idea that winter is necessary, but not final. That snow gives way to thaw. It brings firewood to the Cailleach to keep her warm—so she doesn't freeze herself entirely. If she stays warm, she remembers to move on. She lets winter end."

"And the Black?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Her gaze darkened. "The Black Stag represents the eternal frost. The concept of a winter that never ends. A frozen world. A story with no spring. It steals the firewood. It tempts the Cailleach to forget time, to trap herself in stasis. If she stops moving, if she forgets who she is, winter never ends. And the tale never finishes."

"So that corpse," I whispered, glancing toward the empty hallway where the stag had vanished.

"The White Stag gave him to the fire," Falias said. "In the tale, that's how the White pushes back against the Black—turning death into fuel. That's why it bit him. It doesn't devour the dead, it repurposes them. Gives them to the hearth. So the Cailleach remembers what warmth feels like."

I took a step back, slowly lowering Lunarias.

That… was both beautiful and horrifying.

And it meant something else.

"If the White Stag's active, then the Black Stag…"

"Isn't far," Falias finished grimly. "Which means this tale is no longer just nested inside the library. It's overtaking it. Merging with it."

"Danatallion's Halls is being overwritten." I said it out loud, and the words felt heavy, like ink that wouldn't dry. "A tale is… becoming dominant."

Falias nodded. "Yes. And if it finishes its arc, and the Cailleach chooses wrong—if the Black Stag wins—then winter becomes permanent. The library could lock itself in ice… forever."

I reached for the nearest book. Pages wouldn't obey my Arte, still stiff with frost, but I pried the cover open anyway. The title was foreign, ancient. But something about it clicked.

This wasn't just a setting. This wasn't just an encounter.

This was a fight for narrative control.

And the White Stag, beautiful as it was, could not win this tale alone.

"Where is the Cailleach now?" I asked.

Falias hesitated.

And then—

A howl tore through the frozen halls.

Not a wolf. Not an animal. Something older. Something like ice cracking for the first time in centuries. It wasn't the sound of a beast—it was the sound of history breaking.

And beneath it, something thundered across the halls.

Antlers.

But not white.

Black.

***

"He's in a Gate," Barbatos barked, voice sharp as broken glass. "That much we can all agree on."

The tea room, once a haven of calm, felt hollow. Shadows clung to the corners like lingering doubts. A single chair sat pulled back at the head of the table—his chair—still angled as if he'd return any moment. His teacup remained untouched, the surface cold, a rim of frost crystallizing at its edges. Several ledgers lay open but unfinished, ink trails stopped mid-thought. Everything else in the room—the air, the silence—was waiting.

"But which Gate," she continued, pacing tightly, her feathers ruffling with restrained ire, "is the question none of us can answer. I've contacted every whisper broker, mage-clerk, and archivist in my reach. All dead ends. All useless."

"I tried my channels too," Ranah muttered, arms crossed and oil-stained fingers drumming against her sleeve. "Even the Runebreakers of Bast said it was like chasing a shadow in fog. No signature. No echo. No official Walker authorization. Just a Gate that swallowed its tracks."

"But not before bleeding Cold," Barbatos growled. "Stillness. Ice. Not just mana-aspect residue. These were metaphysical signatures. Concepts, not just elements."

"Which narrows it to… three known realms?" Cordelia asked quietly, her fingers still trembling as she clutched a single petal tight between thumb and forefinger. "And none of them friendly."

"Or four," Gin added, far too cheerfully from his corner, lounging with one boot up on the windowsill. His bells jingled softly as he tilted his head. "You're forgetting the possibility that it's not a realm, but a story."

Fractal shivered. "A what?"

Gin's smile turned crescent-shaped. "Stories are older than realms, child. Older than Dominus. Some of them sleep. Some of them wait. And some… pick favorites."

Cordelia turned to him, sharp-eyed. "He's missing. You're lounging. What aren't you saying?"

"I'm saying," Gin purred, "that Alexander has me. He's fine."

"That dissuades us more." Cordelia didn't miss a beat. "You're the embodiment of 'cruelty is kindness.' For all we know, he's under your thumb again."

"I swear," Gin said, straightening ever so slightly, his voice momentarily robbed of whimsy, "on the words of an Archon: in this case, I am not responsible."

A beat. A stillness. That vow was not something to be spoken lightly. Even the walls of the estate seemed to groan under the weight of it.

Ten, V, and Fractal all stilled, heads dipping. They understood the implication.

"So… he's not in one of your traps," Ria said, voice unnervingly dry. "Just somewhere worse."

"And no trail to follow," Ranah murmured. "Nothing left but a feeling."

"A feeling of silence and snow," Barbatos added.

Then—

"Perhaps I could assist?" came a new voice, smooth and melodic, cutting through the tension like a well-honed blade.

Leraje entered with quiet poise, green cloak dusted with pine pollen, and a bow slung across his back. His eyes shimmered like spring foliage turned cold.

Gin beamed. "Leraje! How are the children?"

An arrow blurred through the room, whistling past Gin's ear and embedding in the wall.

"You filthy cat," Leraje hissed, striding forward. "You know exactly how they are, you murdering swine. And you were the arbiter the kingdoms sent to babysit him?! Do you think this is a joke?"

Gin pouted. "No! That was last week."

"Enough," Barbatos snapped, intercepting Leraje before he could grab Gin by the neck. "You're here. That means something. You found something?"

Leraje breathed out slowly, smoothing his cloak. "I… can't say."

Cordelia's lips parted. "What do you mean you can't?"

"I mean," Leraje said, eyes meeting Barbatos's, "that you already know. So do I. And like Gin, I'm not permitted to speak it aloud."

Barbatos's breath caught in her throat. There it was—that sense. The way her instincts tensed, how her wings ruffled. Her tail swished. A memory not yet formed. Her gaze flicked toward the cold rim of Alexander's teacup.

"You're serious," she said softly. "It's that place."

Leraje inclined his head.

Cordelia swallowed hard. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I," Fractal murmured.

Gin chuckled again, this time darker. "Did you know… it gets rather lonely in winter?"

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