Behind them, three Lux Knights maintained formation. She recognized Xar’s dark pelt and predatory grace, but the other two were strangers. All of them moved with the same eerie efficiency, unbothered by conditions that would kill a human in minutes.
The fortress had disappeared behind them almost immediately, swallowed by white chaos. Elsa had tried to track their direction, memorize landmarks, but the storm erased everything. No sun to navigate by. No stars. Just endless white and the dark shapes of trees that all looked identical.
“How much further?” She had to shout over the wind.
Sylas glanced back, his cyan eyes cutting through the snow. “Another mile. Maybe two. Depends on the drifts.”
Two miles. In this. With her human endurance and his species’ casual indifference to cold that would give her hypothermia.
She gritted her teeth and kept walking.
The terrain rose beneath her boots, subtle at first, then more pronounced. Uphill. The wind hit harder here, less blocked by trees, and Elsa’s lungs burned with every breath.
Her navigator’s brain kicked in despite the conditions. They were climbing the outer ridge—she could feel it in the slope, in the way the wind patterns shifted. The crash site had been in a valley. To reach it from this angle, they’d crest this ridge and descend the opposite side.
“We should angle northeast,” she called out. “Cut the distance by a third if we’re heading to the crater.”
Sylas stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into him. He turned, snow clinging to his fur, expression unreadable. “How do you know that?”
“The slope. Wind direction. We’re climbing the eastern ridge—I remember the terrain from the crash.” Elsa pointed through the storm, hoping she had the angle right. “The crater is northwest from here. If we keep going straight, we’ll overshoot.”
The Lux Knights exchanged glances. Xar’s green eyes narrowed with something between suspicion and curiosity.
Sylas studied her for a long moment. Then he altered course, angling in the direction she’d indicated.
Trusting her.
Or testing her.
Either way, it was progress.
They climbed in silence after that, the storm’s roar drowning any attempt at conversation. Elsa focused on breathing, on putting one foot in front of the other, on not thinking about how tired she was or how her muscles screamed or how every exposed inch of skin had gone numb.
The ridge crested. Below, through gaps in the blowing snow, she caught glimpses of the valley.
The crater.
Her escape pod, half-buried in frozen earth, its hull cracked open like an egg. Smoke had long since stopped rising from the wreck, but the scar it had left in the landscape remained—awound of twisted metal and scorched ground that didn’t belong in this frozen wilderness.
“There.” Elsa pointed. “That’s it.”
Sylas’s gaze followed her gesture. “The core?”
“Navigation systems are in the bow section. That’s where the power integration would be.” She traced the wreckage with her eyes, mapping internal layouts onto external damage. “If it survived the impact, it’s in the forward compartment. Starboard side.”
“Show me.” Not a request.
They descended into the valley, the slope treacherous with ice hidden beneath fresh snow. Elsa slipped twice. The second time, Sylas caught her before she could fall, his massive paw closing around her arm with surprising gentleness.
He released her immediately, as if the contact burned.
The wreckage loomed larger as they approached. Elsa’s chest tightened, memories flooding back. The alarms. The captain’s voice. The sickening lurch as atmosphere tore apart around them. The moment of impact that had stolen consciousness and nearly her life.
She’d survived this. Somehow.
The pod’s interior was a disaster. Seats torn from their moorings, control panels shattered, supplies scattered across frozen metal. Sylas had to crouch to fit through the breach in the hull, his bulk filling the narrow space.
Elsa squeezed past him, muscle memory guiding her to the navigation station. Or what was left of it.