"The Dawn that Rose from Fire"

Day 21 of Novel November- Alenyah reaches The Lake of Glass

Chapter 12

As they travelled the next morning, the trees began to blessedly thin. Something had shifted within their party. Before, Althea had often kept close to Berin or Tavren, shy around the larger warriorlike Stoneborn.Her feet kicked merrily in the stirrups as she teased them, soft laughter drifting between the pines. Berin, usually half-buried in his notebooks, spent more time sharing trivia and odd stories from his readings-tales of animals long gone from these woods, of the way the land had breathed before the corruption.

Alenyah found herself… settling. Not quite relaxed, but closer than she’d felt in years.

Foxran was not always eyeing her with suspicion, but actually bestowed blinding white smiles in her direction. Seth showed her how to better clean her weapon and a more efficient way to attach her buckler to Valka’s saddle, a gesture of trust.

As for Kaelen, Alenyah didn’t know what to make of him. He was less aloof, more willing to share information about the Crags. The glowworms brightened the ceilings where torches could not be lit. As a child, he and the other children had to be warned off sampling random cave mushrooms, although some were truly a delicacy.

She heard him laugh. A deep, resonant sound that seemed to come from his diaphragm and echo straight through the trees. When he did, he’d throw his head back, exposing the thick column of his throat, eyes squeezed shut as though he trusted the world not to strike him in that unguarded moment.

And he was… touchy. Affectionate. Easily so.

Whenever Valka wandered close in the evenings, Kaelen had somehow become the designated belly-rubber. The Fylgja would collapse at his feet the moment he sat down, rolling shamelessly into the curve of his massive arm.

“Traitor,” Alenyah muttered each time. But Valka just thumped her tail harder—especially when Kaelen grinned in response.

Alenyah wasn’t sure what was changing between them. Only that something was. But it was with Kaelen that she felt the change the most. It wasn’t sudden. Nothing with him ever was. It was in the small things. He rode closer than before. Not crowding her, not hovering, just near enough that she felt the steady pull of his presence like a warm ember at her back. When she shifted her reins or adjusted her seat, he mirrored the movement without seeming to think about it, as though some part of him was attuned to her space.

And he spoke to her. Not out of necessity, not to question her abilities or challenge her judgment, but simply… to speak. To share. To listen.

Sometimes he would tell stories of his childhood in the Crags-gruff little half-memories of climbing competitions, lively festivals, the pride his mother had taken in teaching him to care for his long hair. Other times, he asked gentle questions about the Reach, questions that weren’t about usefulness or strategy, but about her.

What had she missed most?

What had her home sounded like?

Who had she been before the Fall?

And then there were the touches. Light. Unthinking. And devastating in their ease. A hand at her elbow when she stepped over a fallen log. A steadying palm at her waist when she mounted Valka a bit too quickly. The way his fingers brushed her braid aside when checking a scrape at her temple, his touch shockingly soft for someone built like a fortress.

She told herself it was practical. He was practical. Stoneborn were practical. It didn’t explain why her breath always caught first. Yet beneath all those small, dangerous softenings lay the truth that kept her spine taut whenever Kaelen drew too close.

She still believed his father had killed her mother. And Kaelen, steadfast and immovable as the mountains that birthed him, believed just as fiercely in his father’s innocence. It was the one thing they could never quite talk around. It lived between them like a seam of iron in the earth: cold, unyielding, impossible to carve through without breaking something.

The past didn’t change simply because Kaelen was kind. And kindness didn’t erase blood.

She almost let herself imagine a world where she could take his offered warmth without feeling she was betraying the memory of the woman who had sung her lullabies and taught her the Song. But she could not, would not let herself forget. And she would never forgive.

When they left the treeline, and the forest receded into a green smudge, two mountains rose before them. Impossibly massive, and surrounded by the beginning of the ranges they would have to cross, Alenyah thought of them as two large sentinels guarding these lands against the terrors in the wastes. These mountain ranges were what kept the south protected for so long, separate from corruption.

Yet all good things pass, and so it had been here. She could see the snow capped peaks pushing into the clouds. There was no easy way to traverse besides the valley sunk between the peaks, which would branch up into Ashfall Pass, over which they could descend into the beginnings of the true North. However, these were not her lands, but the lands of that Hollow King.

She slowed her pace more and more the closer they approached. The wind became colder and sharper, almost cutting in intensity as it whistled off the peaks and descended miles down upon them in the lands below. The grass crunched with frost, and they bundled against the wind. Luckily, there were trees here unlike on the plains outside the Vale, so they had coverage and fuel for fires. At night, Valka would lay down near the fire, and they would all crowd the warmth of the hound. She clearly enjoyed the attention, and her tail would thump the ground, spraying mist onto the nearest unfortunate soul.

The valley between the peaks loomed ahead, the path narrowing as the slopes rose like walls on either side. The grasses were thin here, frost-crusted and brittle, and she noticed the way the trees clung stubbornly to life in sheltered hollows. Even nature resisted the cold’s full embrace.

Foxran and Tavren scouted ahead, careful not to disturb the wind-carried whispers of the peaks. Seth and Berin stayed near the rear, their movements measured, always watching. Althea, flushed with exertion, kept close to Berin, laughing quietly when his careful instructions didn’t work as planned.



Alenyah’s eyes drifted upward at the looming heights, her mind echoing with the hum of the Song, faint but insistent. She could feel the mountains’ resonance, old and vast, pushing back against her presence. Even as she tried to steady herself, the cold and the sheer scale of the peaks pressed down. They were magnificent, and terrifying.

But it was not the mountains that truly frightened her. They crested the last ridge before they would descend into the valley. Althea gasped in wonderment, while Alenyah’s hands curled tightly into fists.

Before them stretched now a forested valley but a loch, long and extending almost out of view. The water was frozen, and the sheen reflected on the surface was almost mirror like.

“What is this place?” Althea asked. Berin cleared his throat.

“They call this place, the Lake of Glass.”

“Why?”

“It has never unfrozen, at least the surface.”

“I think this place is beautiful.” Althea continued. Foxran scoffed. “It is also-” he paused for dramatic effect. “Extremely EXPOSED.”

Seth agreed, “There’s no easy way to skirt the bank. It pushes right up against the rock walls, so you have to cross the middle.”

“It’s the entry into the dominion of the Hollow King,” Berin said, almost ceremoniously.

“Stop calling him that!” Alenyah finally snapped. He glanced at her in surprise. “He’s no king.” She said in disgust. “And his men are nothing more than monsters, not subjects. He does not deserve any reverence or respect.”

The Fey’ri threw her arm out, gesturing at the majesty around them. “This is no man’s kingdom.”



The ice reflected the sky, a perfect, unforgiving mirror. Alenyah knew that beneath that flawless surface lay unknown currents, hidden dangers, and perhaps echoes of corruption long buried. Every instinct told her that crossing it would change them. She did not yet know if it would be for better or worse.

Kaelen surveyed the loch before them before deciding, “We’ll cross at night. Less exposure, and hopefully not much of a moon.” He glanced at Valka. “I hope she can see in the dark.”

“Can’t you?” Alenyah quipped at the Stoneborn.

He smirked. “I can. But I don’t think you, Althea, or Berin will fare as well.”

Kaelen’s amber eyes scanned the horizon again before settling on her. “We’ll need to be steady. No sudden movements, no splintering the surface. One misstep, and we could lose more than just horses.”

Tavren dismounted, planting their sturdy books with a crunch.

“We’d better get some sleep now,” they announced. “If we are to push all night to get across. I don’t want to think what will be able to sense us if we are still on the ice when the sun rises.”

Althea shuddered. As they settled, Valka curled up, tail sweeping over her nose to protect it from the cold. Alenyah snuggled into her side, covering them both with her cloak, and they slept together until the light faded.