FROST HEART : I Bleed for You.

“Let the Sun grant you warmth, and let the Blade grant you peace. For to bleed for Solaria is a glory that shall never cease.”

— The Solarian Oath of Vanguard Allegiance

❅❅❅

Cold.

That was the first thing that registered through the static in his mind. A biting, merciless cold that turned his breath into ragged plumes of white.

He stumbled, his boot wedging against a hidden root beneath the heavy snow. The forest floor tilted violently as he slammed into the rough bark of an ancient pine, his gloved fingers clawing at the frozen wood just to keep himself upright.

Everything was a blur, as if spinning in fractured pieces. He drew in a deep breath desperately to anchor his senses.

Green pine needles flashed against the blinding white. The lingering metallic scent of his own blood pooling beneath his Vanguard armor.

Move, his mind snarled in a desperate attempt to escape, a fading echo of the elite soldier he used to be. Press onward!

However his mobility was turning stiff. The poison in his veins was a slow freezing fire, fighting to paralyze his unmatched strength. Yet, he was a legend; the First Vanguard of the Sun. He wielded the heavy broadsword with a distinct sun-burst cross-guard that had cut through a hundred battlefields. He refused to go down like a slaughtered animal.

Heavens… Why? Everything seemed indefectible. Just moments ago we secured that victory... then... when did things go weary?

He heard footsteps pressing close behind his trail.

With a guttural snarl, he forced his body around. Relying entirely on the sound, he swung the massive blade blindly into the shadows. The steel clashed against steel, the impact parried a lethal thrust, the vibration jarring up his trembling arms.

Then came a strike from behind.

Swish-- snap

A blade pierced cleanly through his back, biting deep through the leather into his flesh. He was like a cornered beast, staggering along on borrowed time.

Refusing to fall without a final strike, he forced his failing body, his sun-burst blade slashing a wild arc that bit cleanly into his assailant.

“Argh! Why must you still resist, Vanguard!”

He received a clear blow to his face. The view of the forest erupted into a hazy distortion. Blood sprayed across the pristine white snow laying out a lucid crimson.

He fell heavily to his knees, the shift in his perspective drastic as he gazed downward at his own trembling hands pressed into the freezing earth, the dark blood staining the white drifts around his fingers.

Step by step, the figure walked out of the shadows. His failing eyes could not capture a face, only the distinct yet pristine elegance of royal winter cloaks and the gilded sword hilt that was encrusted with imperial sapphires that clearly belonged to a blade of high royalty.

The figure’s fingers tightly grasped a glowing, crystalline Artifact. It was the one they had just seized. The reason he endeavored such carnage through the shadows was now pulsing with an ethereal light against the snow.

“Alas, the golden child of this triumph... shall be me.” a voice smooth yet venomous at the same time declared from above.

“Hahaha... was this... what it was all about, for that piece of relic.”

The words bubbled up from his throat. The betrayal shattered him far more than the steel. He had bled for the throne. He had given his entire youth to the King who had raised him from nothing. And here was a shadow of that very throne, stealing the glory and leaving him to rot in a nameless forest.

“Why… after everything I have gave?!” his voice cracked against the wind, tears pooling around the corners of his eyes.

“Why…YOU DARE ASK WHY!?” The figure seized him by the hair, jerking his head back as he hissed into his ear, “You are the reason I lost-... No, we lost him that day.”

“?!!”

“And, mark well your station, Vanguard. One must not cast eyes upon that which does not belong to them."

He shoved the dying man with utter disgust, walking away to a nearby tree to immediately dust his hands off.

Cough-cough, coug-h...

He tried to stand, to lift his blade one last time, but his strength vanished completely. The legendary sword slipped from his fingers, plunging into the snow.

He could only watch as another figure approached him from the front. The silhouette loomed over him, slowly raising a sword.

He caught the flash of movement through the blur, a particular stance of the heavy-shouldered frame, was deeply familiar. It was a stance he had trained beside for a thousand hours, a shadow he would recognize anywhere. But his mind, shattered by anguish and poison, tried to violently reject the image.

A violent numbness seized his mind. It blurred the faces into a featureless shape. He refused to see what his eyes screamed at him to believe.

Plunge.

The final blow struck him dead-center through his chest.

He gasped, the physical pain instantly giving way to a profound emptiness. He wanted to weep. The steel hurt, but the realization of who held the blade, hurt infinitely more.

Blood rushed out as the blade withdrew. He who once used to leave his enemies stranded, lay stray on the crimson patch of snow.

Tears fell through the dirt and blood on his face, but no sound escaped his throat. His heart wrenched painfully, causing him to place his hand on his chest, his thoughts trapped in a loop of unvoiced questions.

The poison disrupting the body’s vital signals, forcing him to draw deep breath.

“I...neve- er wished to... take an- anything from anyone... .”

“I deem that’s enough,” a second voice drifted down, muffled as if underwater. It was a voice he knew, but it felt miles away.

“Let us depart, the time granted is already out of grasp.”

Footsteps crunched against the freezing crust, fading away into the quiet of the woods, carrying away that victory artifact with them.

"But should we not bury him at least?” a familiar voice pleaded with a strained tone, carrying the warmth his foggy mind desperately rejected.

“There’s no need for that. The snow shall take heed of it,” the smooth cadence cut him off, cold and absolute.

“I pray to you... forgive me, pardon me... and pardon us, if you can!”

A final whisper drifted back over the wind, shaking with guilt. The warm liquid kept gushing out his mouth, the frost tangling along with deride. Then, just like that, the quiet had returned.

Everything was done. Everyone was gone.

Cold.

It felt so impossibly cold this time. A delirious smile touched his bloodied lips. His mind that was slipping entirely, drifting far beyond the reaches of sanity.

“Is this the cold you tried to warn me of?” he whispered to the empty air.

He lay on his side, completely exhausted, his thoughts tethering from reality. His vision narrowing to a tiny tunnel. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He could not control his own body at all.

Everything had fallen into utter ruin in just a few moments.

Is this really how it ends? Is this how I shall depart?

He wanted to scream his lungs raw to tear away the agony, but the weight was simply too grand for a mortal soul, who’s stripped utterly bare.

The winter storm was casting its white shroud over him. It was indeed the harsh, unforgiving winter he had always heard tales of.

At least the sky decided to throw me a proper farewell.

He blinked slowly, trying to take in the frozen scenery one last time. But through the haze of his final seconds, the curtain of falling snow parted for a fraction of a heartbeat. He saw a distinct figure standing a few paces away, approaching him from the deeper perimeter of the trees. He couldn’t make out a face, a frame, or a weapon.

The shadow kept drawing closer, and closer. Even as everything else dissolved into darkness, all his dying mind could latch onto was a color.

A pair of eyes, burning through the winter storm with an otherworldly, magnificent luminescence of a deep, striking violet shot through with rings of liquid gold.

It was the last moment he could latch onto before the dark took him completely.