The cold bit at her as she ran. Her feet pounded the stone, her white breath slashed the air, but she didnât stop. She never did.
Arya raced through the halls like a shadowâagile, desperateâdodging fallen columns, leaping over debris, ducking beneath splintered beams. Ice cracks climbed the walls and ceiling around her, but she never looked back.
Her legs were pure fury, her heart a war drum. The sound of ice chasing her was deafening: cracks, bursts, and a freezing wind that seemed to want to flay her skin. But she kept going. Always forward.
Suddenly, the ground beneath her trembled. First like a whisper. Then like the world itself splitting in two. The walls groaned, dust and frost rained from the ceiling. Arya slipped for a moment, braced a hand against the wall, and kept runningâfaster still.
Then she saw it. The cave. A black rock arch at the end of the corridor, its mouth open like a sleeping dragonâs, with the sound of the sea crashing on stone beyond. The same cave sheâd once escaped through as a child, when everything was different. Now, that cave was her only salvation.
Salty breeze brushed her cheekâcold and dampâlike a promise she could almost touch. The roar of the sea mixed with her heartbeat. Arya gripped her dagger tighter and leaned forward, pouring everything she had left into each stride.
Shadows seemed to pull back, the blue of the ice was behind her, and the gray light of the sea waited at the end.
But then she felt it. A lightânot blue, not whiteâbut a voracious green igniting behind her. The roar of wildfire erupted like thunderâdeep and cruelâfilling the corridor with a monstrous glow.
The heat hit her first like a gust that tore the air from her lungs, then like a wall that lifted her off the ground. Pain came instantlyâin lashes. Her back blistered, clothes scorched and shredded, her hair burned in smoky, salty tufts.
She felt the skin on her shoulder crack under the fire, the sleeve of her coat stick to her flesh before disintegrating. Her scream tore outârough and briefâlost in the roar of the flames and the sea.
The dagger fell, clanging once on stone before vanishing into the dark. She felt her body fly toward the caveâs mouth, beyond, toward the sea. Between the roar of fire and crashing waves, darkness wrapped around her, and there was nothing more.
Only the taste of salt on her lips.