Dead silence.
A suffocating, heavy stillness settled over the line, far more bone-chilling than the mournful howling of the gale.
Following the brief, apocalyptic violence of the collapse, Wind-Wailing Canyon lapsed into an eerie, vacuum-like quiet. Every eye was locked blankly ahead, fixed on the monolithic white fortress stretching across the floor of the trench like a monument to despair.
This natural bulkhead—composed of tens of thousands of tons of compacted glacial powder and studded with blue ice formations as sharp as executioner's axes—did more than sever their physical vector. It acted as a final verdict from fate, instantly snuffs out the fragile embers of hope that had only recently been rekindled in the hearts of the rank and file.
A burly vanguard veteran, his features twisted in fury, lunged forward and brought his heavy steel broadsword down against the barrier with a manic, two-handed strike.
SCREECH—!
The ear-splitting scream of tempered steel grinding against dense, compressed ice detonated within the corridor, a sound so sharp it made the teeth of the onlookers ache.
The edge, forged to shear through iron plate, was violently deflected by the sheer kinetic resistance of the shelf. The rebound left nothing more than a superficial, negligible white scratch on the granite-hard facade.
The warrior's palms ruptured, blood seeping through his gauntlets as his entire arm went completely numb. He stared vacantly at his chipped, ruined blade, then looked up at the towering white wall silently mocking his insignificance. The last vestige of his martial spirit evaporated from his bloodshot eyes.
Thump.
His knees struck the permafrost, kicking up a fine spray of loose crystals.
"It's... it's no use," he mumbled, his voice cracked like dry leather. "We are doomed..."
Like the first symptom of an airborne contagion, his desperate murmurs triggered an immediate, localized panic through the ranks.
"It's over... the throat is sealed..."
"How can we hollow out a mountain with knives?"
"We'll freeze to death in this ditch!"
Despair, more viral than the most virulent plagues of the northern reaches, instantly metastasized through the column, eroding the brittle discipline and reason of the exhausted soldiers. Even Hask's vanguard survivors, who had barely regained an ounce of vitality after their rescue, watched the color drain from their faces once more. No one lifted their head; no one possessed the spiritual energy to offer a contradiction.
"Hold your tongues, all of you!"
A ferocious roar, reminiscent of a wounded apex predator, shattered the panic. Hask's towering form breached the crowd, his single remaining hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist, his eyes burning with a dangerous heat. Yet, as his gaze briefly clipped Colin's silent profile a short distance away, he deliberately checked his momentum.
"Does weeping dissolve the ice?!" Hask barked, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly vibration. "You lose your nerve before you have even laid eyes on the enemy's banners? Is this the caliber of Hask's personal line? Are you cowards fit to be named warriors under the gaze of the Wolf God?!"
The sheer acoustic weight of his rebuke struck the soldiers like a physical blow. Those drowning in their own terror lowered their heads further, their faces burning with shame, yet none dared to articulate a protest.
"Boss..." The burly warrior who had broken first struggled back to his feet, but Hask bypassed him entirely, striding with heavy, deliberate steps toward Colin.
When Hask spoke to the commander, his tone shifted into a register of unyielding, absolute reverence: "Chief! We are burning vital calories and time on a physical impossibility. Excavating this slide is an exercise in futility; by the time a path is cleared, the human vanguard will have turned the exit into a slaughterhouse. Permit us to wheel our mounts and cut our way back through the entrance! I would rather lead my remaining brothers into a terminal charge than let them rot in the dark!"
The raw, suicidal devotion of his declaration ignited a faint spark in the eyes of the surrounding ranks, yet the discipline of the unit held; no one broke formation to cheer. Every eye shifted instinctively toward Colin, awaiting the final adjudication.
"No."
A cool, measured female voice broke the tension. Anna stepped forward rapidly, bowing with meticulous respect before she addressed the commander. Her tone was taut with urgency, yet she maintained a precise, reverent distance: "Chief, while Hask's proposal carries immense honor, it deviates from sound tactical geometry. Our elements are heavily compromised by trauma and physical exhaustion, whereas the tracking force is insulated, rested, and holding the perimeter. The canyon entrance will have been structurally converted into a kill-zone by now. A hasty counter-offensive is simply automated suicide."
She gestured toward a lateral, slightly recessed shelf on the western flank of the obstruction, her words accelerating without losing their analytical precision: "I propose we concentrate our active manpower on this specific coordinate. We do not require a complete clearing of the pass; we merely need to construct a crude, stepped ramp of ice and shale to scale the crest. Chief, I request your directive."
"Scale it?" Hask's head snapped around, his voice rising before he caught Colin's glacial expression and checked his volume. "And what of our non-ambulatory brothers? A ten-meter vertical wall of glare ice is an impossible ascent for men with broken limbs and arrow wounds."
Anna's color faded, her lips pressing into a thin line as the mathematical reality overthrew her solution.
Forward was an impossibility; retreat was a slaughterhouse. The leadership core dissolved into a dense, leaden silence. Every gaze locked onto the ever-silent central figure. No one moved; no one presumed to formulate a decision until Colin broke his silence.
The Separation of Forces
Then, Colin moved.
He slowly elevated his chin, his deep sapphire eyes resembling twin pools of sub-zero water. His gaze swept across Hask's suppressed frustration and Anna's clinical anxiety, before finally extending down the long, dark, twisting trench they had just traversed. His expression was a portrait of absolute, unshakeable authority—a presence so heavy that those who met his eyes instinctively lowered their gaze, unable to sustain the pressure.
"Your calculations are fundamentally flawed," Colin stated. His voice remained level, yet it carried the dense, crushing weight of a freezing lake. The sheer atmospheric pressure of his tone caused every officer to hold their breath, their spines curving in a submissive gesture of absolute attention.
"An advance is an illusion. A retreat is an illusion."
With those few words, the strategic debate was terminated. Not a single voice rose to contest the assessment; even the howling of the gale seemed to lose its teeth in his presence.
Colin raised a single gauntleted hand, his index finger pinning the vertical wall of ice: "The timing of this slide was too clinical. It is a masterfully executed surgical cut—dropping the shelf to sever our vector without expending the mass required to crush our core. This was not a statistical anomaly of the terrain; it was an engineered closure."
A faint, mocking smile touched his lips, the sudden intensity of his gaze causing the ambient air to feel distinctively sharper, heavier with intent: "The hunters are idling at the gates, waiting for the isolation to erode our discipline. They are waiting for us to exhaust our physical reserves against the stone before they reel in the net."
The revelation went through the command staff like an injection of river ice, yet the absolute discipline Colin commanded prevented any outward panic. Only Anna, after a beat of rigid silence, bowed deeply and asked: "Chief... what is our counter-movement?"
"They have assembled an audience for a performance," Colin turned his torso, the deep sapphire of his eyes suddenly igniting with a cold, manic martial fire. The raw killing intent rolling off his frame felt strong enough to crystallize the moisture in the air. "Then we shall provide them with a final act that takes their breath away permanently."
"Acknowledge my directive: Split the column."
"I will personally lead the Twelve Wolf Guards and fifty of our most functional outriders back down the throat of the canyon to break their perimeter."
Hask and Anna bowed in near-perfect synchronicity to receive the command. Though the operational insanity of the move shocked them, neither permitted a single doubt to cross their lips. They stood rigid, waiting for their specific deployments.
"Hask!"
Colin's eyes fixed onto the giant vanguard commander, devoid of warmth, carrying the absolute weight of a sovereign decree: "You will retain command of the remaining Wolf Riders and the wounded. You will maintain an active, high-visibility effort to clear this barrier."
"By your command!" Hask struck his chest plate with his functional fist, the impact producing a dull, metallic clang against his fractured armor. "While blood pumps through my heart, this coordinate will not be yielded!"
"Anna!"
"Present!"
"You will secure Hask's flank. Stabilize the psychological state of the rank and file, manage the distribution and insulation of the casualties, and exercise localized autonomy should the operational parameters shift—but the core vector must not be altered."
"Understood! It shall be executed precisely!"
Colin gave a curt nod, then pivoted his torso toward the twelve silent, statue-like figures of his personal guard and the fifty selected light cavalrymen who had already shifted their mounts into an aggressive alignment. With every sweep of his eyes, the corresponding warriors inclined their heads in absolute deference, their breathing shallow, their minds locked onto his intent.
"Twelve Wolf Guards!"
"Here!" The response was a singular, terrifying chord of absolute loyalty that reverberated off the obsidian walls.
"Fifty outriders!"
"Here!" The collective roar shook the frost from the stone, a sound saturated with an absolute readiness for termination.
"Strip your secondary baggage," Colin commanded, his voice slicing through the wind like a saber. "Select your prime mounts, hone your edges, and follow me into the brush. We are hunting."
"Understood!"
Without a single redundant gesture or a heartbeat of hesitation, the sixty-two elite lances stripped their gear, falling into formation behind Colin like an extension of his own shadow. Their eyes remained anchored to the small of his back, ready to follow his line into the mouth of a furnace if commanded.
Colin cast one final, heavy glance at Hask—a look that held a microscopic grain of conditional trust, overwhelmed by an absolute, unyielding authority: "Hold this ground."
"I swear it upon my blood!"
Colin's hand snapped down, his voice a sharp, absolute decree: "Move out."
Sixty-two dark silhouettes detached from the main body, dissolving into the deep shadows lining the obsidian flanks of the canyon. They surged back toward the mouth of the abyss, moving against the wind like a pack of phantoms. Not a single harness piece jingled; there was only the raw aroma of impending slaughter and absolute devotion trailing behind them in the cold.
The gale continued its long, mournful lament against the stone, but the soldiers at the wall no longer had ears for the myth. Colin had drawn the line across the ice, and his sapphire eyes had become the solitary compass of the legion. Even if that path led through an ocean of fire, their only duty was to follow without question.
The desperate counter-hunt had officially commenced, and every soul within the stone walls understood that the final ledger would be written by the hand of the iron-eyed man leading them into the dark.