Permafrost Hollows kementári

I couldn't wait for the other thread to finish, so here we go
keeping things vague for now!!
@Siofra Hawthorne !!

The tunnels breathed. Cold air coiled through the passages, carrying the scent of damp stone and distant echoes, the whispers of a place untouched by time. The wraith moved through the dark with measured steps, his pale form ghosting between the jagged walls. Moonlight fractured at the entrance behind him, leaving only the soft glow of frost-kissed eyes to cut through the dim.
He did not come here searching for company, nor expecting revelation; but the mind was an untamed thing, and his thoughts strayed where his will did not. She lingered at the edge of his mind, a figure woven from earth and shadow, a presence not yet named. The memory of her was indistinct, blurred at the edges like mist unraveling at dawn, yet it remained. A brush of warmth against the cold austerity of his world.
Astier exhaled, breath curling against the cavern’s chill. He had wandered far, near the edges of claimed ground, where the wild met the known. A dangerous thing, for others. For him? It was simply another night.
His ears flicked, attuned to the silence; alone, for now. But the tunnels had a way of shifting fate, of drawing the unexpected. The wraith waited, lingering in the hush, thoughts still heavy with the shade of a woman draped in dusk.

I'll also keep things vague!

'You hover on the edge of something that does not belong to you.'

Gently, his words, his appearance, haunted her mind. Siofra was no stranger to the way kingdoms operated and their need for security. To witness herself become the very one she opposed-- an unauthorized loner dancing in the shadows... it seemed almost laughable.

Yes, well, she would be gone soon enough. When the sun peaked above the horizon, Siofra would take her leave.

Under the intimate cover of twilight, the maiden ducked into a rocky crevice, her movement swift, silent. One with the gloom. Delicate beams of moonlight caressed her flank as she weaved through the intricate system of tunnels. The shine of dew resembled fireflies in the midst, and it beckoned her further, further into the gelid depths. With every step, the air seemed to grow thicker, colder, and the fae gradually slowed her pace. Perhaps she'd be safe here within the embrace of darkness.

Or so she thought.

Instinctively, Siofra came to a halt. A silhouette loomed beyond. Its pearl hue seemed...familiar. But not the warm type of familiar that she welcomed. It bore a chill. She allowed her brows to furrow, her coat of umber blended into the humid atmosphere. She would be a fool to try to turn tail. He who was manifested by thought...only one word suited the nameless:

"...Phantom."

A name spoken as a breath in the dark barely stirred the air between them: Phantom. A fitting title indeed; he had been called many names before: ghost, wraith, exile, but never had a single word carried such quiet certainty. It slipped from her lips like a knowing thing, as though she had seen him in the weave of her fate long before their paths truly crossed. His presence here was no accident, nor was hers.
Astier stood still for a moment. The tunnels stretched around them, cold and quiet, the murmur between their breaths heavier than the stone and ice above. Moonlight, pale and distant, brushed along his fur, catching the sharp angles of his form as frost sculpted by an unseen hand.
„And you,” his was low, echoing against the cavern walls, „are still lingering where you do not belong.” There was no true reprimand in his words, no edge of warning like before. The wraith studied her now, the way the dim light played along the curves of her form, how earth and shadow clung to her as a second skin. A foreign beauty.
His head tilted slightly, the ghost of a smirk touched his lips, „You should have left with the sun.” She did not, of course, as she was here, before him. She had slipped into the underbelly of the land, wandering where few dared. Pale gaze lingered, cool and considering; perhaps there was more to her than just another trespasser lost in the dark.

She was standing within the mouth of a serpent. There was no barrier between the two aside from a delicate tension and their curling breaths of grey, and the only shield she carried was her words. What was originally intended to bring security now felt suffocating. However, she had sensitized herself to the subtle details, and found that threat no longer played on the tip of his tongue. The specter's eyes glided over her skin and left a chilling sensation in its wake, but it did not hint at bloodlust. Her saving grace. She wished for it to remain so that night. 

Siofra's gaze refused to sway from the king of glaciers. Something akin to a flame stirred behind her eyes.

"I should have," She admitted coolly, her voice lightly reverberating throughout the tunnels. It all was purposeful, meant to control the damage...but certain nonetheless. Only the guilty cower. "I assure you that tomorrow I'll be gone without a trace. We won't have to speak of our meeting..."

The siren stretched tall, her expression unwavering. A touch bold given her position...but she needed something more to incentivize cooperation aside from passive words. It was risky, perhaps interpretable as a threat...but Siofra was willing to take the bet. She gestured towards the direction of which she came, her lips stretching into a light grin.

"...And you won't have to tell your superior that you didn't deal with me when you first had the chance."

The tunnels breathed around them, a slow, steady pulse of the earth’s quiet, and within it, she stood defiant, poised, a dark flame refusing to flicker beneath his gaze. He had expected fear, resistance, perhaps even pleading, but not this. Not the way her voice curled through the cold air, measured and unyielding, not the way she held herself, as if she, too, was carved from something unbreakable.
Pale gaze lingered upon the woman, taking in the fine details; the way the dim glow of the corridors caught in the strands of her fur, the quiet confidence that did not quite mask the careful calculation beneath. A lesser creature might have faltered beneath his scrutiny, but she did not. His interest sharpened;
When the wraith finally spoke, his voice was low, edged with something that was not quite amusement, nor quite warning: „And yet,” he mused, taking an imperceptible step closer, „here you are, still standing before me, unmoved.” His head tilted, slow and deliberate, as though weighing something unseen. Her words carried a challenge beneath their surface, but not one that beckoned violence. No, she was testing something else; perhaps him, perhaps the limits of his patience.
„I wonder, watharil, if you are so eager to leave… why linger at all?” Astier did not give her the answer she sought, nor the threat she might have expected. Instead, he held her olive gaze in the quiet tension of the moment, waiting; wondering if she would offer him more than just the promise of absence.

The sculpted fragment of moonglade refused to fall for her tactics. He took a different route. Siofra gave a flick of her ear, her head subtly tilting at his words.

Danger still loomed like a burning lantern within the mist. But even if the proximity made it feel consuming, it remained contained. Appropriate to work with. The woman's expression read both reserved and attentive as the wraith advanced forth, as though she were witnessing a spectacle from behind the safety of an ice wall. Heavy and domineering, pale eyes cut through the gloom and bore into hers. They whispered of a frigid curiosity. A keen mind. However, the immovable tide wouldn't offer him anything grand. 

"Perhaps to satiate my inner curiosity. To see if the one who emerged from the shadows was more than just a figment of my imagination," she breathed.

A simple answer, sure, but her mannerisms brought the promise of something heartfelt. Siofra allowed her tail to lightly trace the damp walls, measuring her confines. "...After all, the warnings of a ghost hold no weight to me." 

Her gaze intensified. "But...you're certainly real. Still operating in the dark, but real."

The wraith stood still as carved marble. The damp quiet between them thickened, stretched thin like glass, and he let it linger as if silence itself was a tool he wielded with precision. When he moved, it was only to shift slightly, just enough for the cold light to catch along the edge of his profile, casting his expression into shadow and silver.
There was no satisfaction in his stare, no arrogance in her admission. Only that same still scrutiny, a glacier’s gaze; slow, relentless, inevitable. The brush of her tail against stone did not go unnoticed. He saw it for what it was: her way of measuring, of controlling the tension by turning it tactile, tangible. His eyes briefly dipped to the motion, then returned to hers. He had been called ghost before; wraith, shade, words meant to disarm or diminish, to frame his silence as absence. But this one: she saw him, called him real, even as she accused him of shadows.
A breath passed. Then: And yet you stayed, was the unspoken verdict etched into the glint of his eye. Despite the dark, despite the warnings, despite me. But he gave her no mockery in return, only this: „The dark,” Astier murmured, voice soft, but with the edge of something ancient and steady, „is merely the veil before the light.”
He stepped forward once more, a fraction, not enough to invade, but enough to disrupt. „Most turn back when they hear the ghost’s voice,” he continued, „But you followed it. Now that you've found me…” A pause, the corner of his mouth barely twitching. „Will you still choose to listen?” It was not a challenge, not entirely. It was an invitation, a test, a truth wrapped in frost.

His words continued to come both smooth and purposefully. The night swallowed his majority, but there was a shift within the titan's demeanor, and perhaps he saw it within her too: if she truly desired to escape, she would have done so. Siofra had nothing to lose. However, another step forth ignited something within...

Under the intimacy of silence, she would display her first shell of a warning: a sharp narrow of her eyes. A muted encouragement to proceed with caution if he so wished to draw near. A barrier still remained. However, the flash would vanish as swiftly as it came, drifting in the air and settling into something equally heavy without the edge. An unexpected, hushed rift within the conversation followed:

"...You are crafted well."  It was less of flattery and more so a vocal note to herself. A comment on his polished presentation, both speech and appearance alike. Commanding, worthy of attention... but not loud. Befitting of power. She knew too little of the stranger to say she approved, but he had yet to disappoint her. And so she'd dance with the specter.

Slowly, Siofra dared to sever the thread of eye contact. “The night is young," she exhaled; her own form of acceptance to his cold invitation. She crossed to the opposing side of the tunnels, fully blanketing herself in the shade. 

"And what of you, Baron? Am I interrupting your duties?" A faintly mischievous gaze rested upon his wintery figure, tracing the shadows that divided his face. "...Or were you waiting for a nosey trespasser to slip into the caves?"

I love where this is going omg

The specter stood poised in the hush between her words, his silhouette still as the stone that birthed these tunnels. Her sharp glance had not gone unnoticed; it was catalogued, measured, respected. A warning, yes, but not one laced with fear. It was the sort of barrier he had encountered in creatures still capable of striking, of defending what little they had left. That kind of flame was never off-putting to him. In truth, it often intrigued him.
Her compliment (or observation) slid over him like frost on iron. No preen of ego followed, he had been crafted well, perhaps. But not by choice. His silence acknowledged her words without confirming or denying them. Then she drifted into the dark, and only then did Astier allow a shift.
The wraith followed; not with his paws, but with his eyes, trailing her passage through the shade like a falcon might trace the arc of a crow in flight. He did not chase her into the gloom; he did not need to. The watharil had chosen to linger. That was enough. 
At her question, his head turned slightly, just enough for the sharp angles of his face to catch the dim silver cast of light. „If you were interrupting,” came the low reply, „you’d have been dealt with.”
But there was no weight behind it; no true threat. If anything, his tone bordered on dry amusement, cloaked in glacial calm. „I’ve been called many things, trespasser included.” A pause. His breath curled like smoke in the cold. „But I am not often surprised.”
A beat passed, and then; 
„Tonight, I am.”
It was a rare admittance. Not a surrender of power, but a flicker of truth offered like the edge of a blade; reflective, deliberate, and razor-thin. He remained in the half-light, but his presence stretched toward her like shadow chasing shadow.
„Perhaps the night is more generous than I expected.”

SAME

'...You'd have been dealt with'

The words bore no animosity. Something...lighter stirred beneath his numbing tone-- but it didn't quite cross the line of humor.  At this, Siofra raised her brow, a grin threatening to stretch across her features. No response was given other than a quiet look of amusement...perhaps it lasted a touch longer than she intended. He did not follow her footsteps, no, but that piercing gaze remained... and the siren allowed the attention to fall upon her in all of its haunting pressure.

Although her thoughts rested with the man, her body continued to stir, and her mind no longer reigned over it. The rising moon had placed a force upon her feet that had grown too heavy to withstand. Slowly, she allowed a portion of her exhaustion to guide her haunches to the frigid floor. A light exhale sounded from parted lips, her shoulders pressed against the damp wall. And yet, despite the fatigue, her curiosity stood unwavering, further fueled by a pause within his speech.

An admission...but not one cloaked in weakness. No part of him outwardly spoke of softness.  Siofra tipped her head to back to fall upon the stone, tresses of umber cascading over her shoulders. A moment of thought briefly trapped her.

...Fuissetis potentes in regno meo.

"...You say you've been called many things," she echoed softly from her position. "But what is your true title?" Who are you really?

The wraiths gaze shifted slightly, his expression as impervious as ever, though something in the air seemed to still around him; an unspoken pause that allowed her question to settle into the space between them. The words drifted through his mind, and for a fleeting moment, something deeper seemed to stir beneath the frost of his composure.
His posture remained unchanged, the same cold elegance in the way he stood, untouched by her proximity or her gaze. His eyes, however, seemed to trace the curve of her form as she settled against the stone, watching her with that same quiet, measuring intensity. There was no hint of impatience in him; he was, after all, the very embodiment of patience.
„My true title?” he echoed, the words lingering with an odd weight, though his tone remained even. „Titles are fleeting. They are what others assign, what others believe they can control. But the truth?” He shifted slightly, just enough to let his voice lower, a subtle sharpening in the cold steel of his words. „The truth is always… harder to define.”
A beat passed before he continued, his eyes momentarily flicking to the dark corners of the cave as if his thoughts wandered before returning to her again. „I am Astier. The Wraith of the Spires,” he said, the words both an answer and a non-answer, the name wrapped in the weight of something ancient. „But what that truly means…” His gaze darkened, just enough to be felt. „That depends on who you ask, and how they wish to see me.”
The silence that followed was thick, but not uncomfortable. He allowed the weight of his words to rest on her, as if daring her to challenge what he had said. Then, almost as an afterthought, his voice softened just a touch. „And you? What title do you wear, siren?” He gave no indication of being truly curious, but the question hung there, a counterpoint to her own.

kinda long, my apologies ;v;

" Astier, the Wraith of the Spires," the woman murmured the words under her breath, unblinking, as though she were peering through him. It sounded...foreign. Bestowed by thought. And as he stood unmoving, expressing sparingly, the title seemed far from unfit.

...Interesting.

She shifted in her position, breathing no more than a few words into the night air, "You may call me Siofra." 

It came hollow yet sure. As though she were presenting a blade that had once been wielded by a warrior, but now was weathered and dulled. Whether they were rooted in family or outward society, she had no right to claim her former titles. They would lie within the depths of her mind, buried, awaiting the potential day that they would be equipped once more. But that day did not loom within the horizon. It was just as he, Astier, had said.

Titles were fleeting. Up for interpretation.

However, within Siofra's mannerisms, it was still clear that she clung to the ghost of honor. Perhaps out of denial, perhaps out of a flickering authentic pride. It remained her, woven into the fibers of her being. The quiet stubbornness could not be removed from the veins. It kept her afloat. Even now as she sat in the lair of the unreadable. And it was because he was unreadable, and because she was stubborn, that she felt compelled to have a particularly gnawing question answered...

  Siofra gave a quiet hum, leaning in from the void. A subtle spark danced in her eye. Silently, she gestured with her tail for the wraith to come forth fully into the light. It was no command. It was a request, an invitation.

no worries <3

Her voice reached him like a flicker of warmth brushing frostbitten stone; soft, measured, deliberate. The title, foreign on her tongue yet strangely fitting, was met only with the faintest tilt of his head. A flicker of acknowledgment passed through his eyes; something between a sigh of wind and a drawn blade. He had not given her the name. She had found it on her own.
And then: Siofra.
It was not adorned, nor given with pomp. But it rang with something old. Worn, yes, but not broken. There was steel there, buried beneath the weariness. A name not given up, not entirely. Astier stepped forward at last, slow and silent. The pale of his form emerged from the shadows like mist curling through starlight. The light kissed his chest, the cool fire in his gaze. No smile came; only that lingering, pointed stillness that suggested he had seen many things come and go… but her name, unlike so many, he intended to remember.
„I will.” His voice was low, gravel-soft, as if shaped by the mountain wind itself. And then, a pause; „That name still bears weight.” He left the rest unsaid; but the ghost of it lingered in the air between them, where silence spoke louder than any title.
And when he stepped fully into the light she offered, he did not bow, did not yield; but something in him… softened. A fraction, a flicker, a specter, seen.

It wasn't mockery. Wasn't pity. The words that left his lips were genuine, and while she couldn't quite accept it wholly as it came, she respected it no less.  "It is but a fragment of what it once was," Siofra murmured calmly, rising upright. The sound of rotating stones beneath her feet echoed gently throughout the depths.

The wraith accepted her invitation, and something eased. It was caught within the web of her gaze. She would not let the dark steal any details. Fully brushed by moonlight, the wintery figure now carried a new sense of familiarity. Quiet and unwavering. Siofra had tried to weave answers using hints within their conversation...only to fall short. If she could not provoke admittance, she herself would sacrifice preservation and pull it out. The woman ducked into the light, her steps steady.

Alert, she approached him, head tilted in thought. Tell me… "...Do you trust me, Astier?" Siofra halted a few paces away, her voice rolling though the night. Aggression and judgement did not stain her words. It bordered light fascination.  "I could be here with ill intent, giving you nothing but lies to mask a motive." her brow raised.

"...Why let me stay?”

Astier did not flinch when she stepped forward, nor when her voice broke the hush between them. Still as a snow-laden tree beneath moonlight, he listened. Measured her words. Let them settle like falling ash on still water. Her question was not sharp, but it cut. He held her gaze in silence, the pale of his eyes unreadable, icy, distant, but not unkind. There was no anger in him, no suspicion sharp enough to draw blood. Only thought, quiet and vast.
„…If you meant harm,” he began at last, voice low and steady, „you've had time enough to strike.” The Wraith could have brought her down with ease, if that had been his intent. But this was not such a moment. He didn’t soften the edges, didn’t offer comfort in his tone.
His gaze drifted from her face to the space beyond, over stone and darkness and the hush of wind through narrow corridors. Then back to her, lingering this time: „You ask why I let you stay,” he continued, slow and deliberate, „but I haven’t turned you away.”
A pause. His head tilted just slightly, something faintly amused or intrigued crossing his features, gone just as fast. „I suppose I want to see what you'll do with that choice.” Not trust, not quite, but something adjacent. Something that, if handled carefully, might one day be mistaken for it.

The specter did not dismiss her words. He took them, measured them, and gave just enough to address. The lack of a vibrant reaction didn't stem from an absent mind but rather the opposite: a mind in total control. Siofra stirred...and then a quiet laugh rose, fleeting, inoffensive, like the beat of a bird's wings. The sound of one who saw no use in pressing further. There was no need. The outcome would be the same. Her thoughts solidified into words, mild, yet sure: "Sicut montes isti es: non cedis." Her ear flicked, head raising before adding faintly, "Honest man."

The spark within her eye was now extinguished by the sea of moonlight. Not quite tender...but her guard had lowered. The exhaustion that crowned the woman's head now commanded her to retreat back into the valley, and she finally chose to answer the call. Her gaze turned from the frosted warrior a moment after her shoulders, and she slid back into the dark like a serpent carved by shadows.

Her luck was not abundant. But perhaps his case was different. Siofra would give one last glance into the tunnels, her eyes highlighted by moonlight. Before vanishing into the night, she would leave her company with an aged, familiar blessing from her past:

"...May Anahera light your path, Astier."

exit <3

The Wraith did not follow her gaze, nor call after her retreat. He remained still, the carved figure of a sentinel left behind by time and frost. The flicker of her blessing trailed behind her like smoke, and for a moment, it lingered in the hollows of his chest; where warmth did not dwell, but memory sometimes stirred. His breath rolled into the night, cold and quiet.
„Light rarely finds what has long walked in shadow,” he murmured, too soft for any but the wind to carry. Then Astier moved; not hurried, not loud, he turned with the slow, deliberate grace of something ancient and inevitable. His paws disturbed no snow as he slipped back toward the glacier, cloak of silence draped upon his shoulders, the cold embracing him as its own.
Whatever thoughts lingered behind his starlit gaze, he gave them to the mountains. Let the heights keep them. Let the frost remember. And thus, Astier vanished, drawn once more to the places where only ghosts and winds converse.

fade!