Duskfire Glacier Bathe yourself, in the light

meant for @Kaelith

the frost bit sharp this morning.
it clung to the trees in sheets, kissed the earth with pale silence. faust moved through it like a shadow, deliberate and unhurried, the kind of stillness that came only from control—of self, of breath, of the cold things men learned to carry.
he hadn’t seen kaelith since dawn the day prior. not unusual, perhaps, but enough to turn the weight in faust’s chest. the boy was growing—too fast, maybe. taller, stronger, with something restless boiling beneath his skin that faust remembered too well. it wasn’t the worry of a vanished pup that stirred him to walk these miles. it was the knowing. the sense that something had shifted. kaelith was not just a son of darukaal. he was his brother.
and faust had made promises. to his family, to his dead. to himself.
his breath curled around his muzzle as he paused at a ridge, scanning the timberline below. hare tracks. fox. no sign of a wolf’s weight. the trees offered nothing, but faust kept moving, muscles coiled beneath thick black fur.
he would find him.