Duskfire Glacier blood in the snow

— his breath fogs thick where it breaks from his ribs, a slow exhale that tastes of iron and age, and it curls between his tusk-bitten teeth as he moves, a black-blooded weight against the pale, the grind of his paws dragging through shallow crust.

blackfell walks the corpse of darukaal, a son raised on violence and veneration both: his head low, eyes red, and the twitch of his tail cutting his path wide along the spine of the western ridge.

he presses into a pillar of ice, shoulder-first, scenting it with the drag of his flank and the scrape of thick ruff. it’s been two nights since the last mark and the wind has thinned it to nothing. he pisses, lifts his leg, snorts once and moves on.

the crownore stops and stares out over the vast silver plain below, past the black rocks and sunken rime, toward the broken teeth of the eastern crags where the ice caves begin.

he drinks in the wind. looking, watching, waiting.

maybe @Jokul or @Morwenna !