Duskfire Glacier We Light the Way

rolled a starter but figured it works more if we start rolling in your post!

The wind scours the glacier like a living thing, sharp with salt and snow, but it does not touch him. Astier moves through the pale like smoke, silent, lean, precise, his gait measured against the drag of the cold. The slope creaks beneath his weight, brittle with frost, but he glides along it as if the land belonged to him.
He does not call out; not at first. Only when he nears does his voice break the hush, low and even, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest: „Round two.” No edge to it. No challenge barked in bravado. Just the calm certainty of one who does not forget. His eyes find Faust’s shape through the gloom, solid, set, a mountain of muscle and force, but Astier doesn't falter. The mark of their last spar still stings beneath his fur, a phantom echo beneath the skin. It is not shame that brings him back, nor spite; only resolve.
He stops just a few strides away, frost cracking faintly beneath his paws. His breath curls up, ghostlike, into the stillness between them. „I learn quickest when it hurts,” he says after a pause, gaze cold but lit. „You taught me well.” A beat, a shift of weight. „But I’m not done learning.” And this time, he does bare his teeth; just slightly.