Despite the blazing hearth, the cold lingered. It seeped everywhere, beneath cloaks, into every breath… down to the bone.

  The shiver that ran through Markab had nothing to do with the snow piling against the stained glass, nor with the storm swelling above Windhelm. It was another kind of cold… the kind that settles in when things begin to go wrong, slowly, subtly, before they finally break.

  The Council Chamber smelled of cold wax, dried ink, damp parchment, leather worn raw by frost. Maps sprawled across the long table, pinned down with daggers, creased by too many nervous hands.

  Around it, Stormcloak officers murmured in small clusters. Short, clipped sentences, far removed from the comfortable hum of an ordinary meeting. Markab took a seat apart, saying nothing, pulling off her still-damp gloves. The wool clung to her fingers for a moment, and an involuntary shiver slipped through her.

  Behind the door, Ulfric and Galmar’s low voices rumbled in a hurried, anxious exchange. One last, heavy conversation before the battle of words and nerves.

  The chamber thrummed with contained agitation. Every commander had been recalled since the disaster at Helgen. Markab had known these faces for so long. Their strengths and their weaknesses. Their blind spots. They were all gathered around the same table, yet for the first time, she had the impression that none of them truly believed in the war they were fighting anymore.

  Bjorn, massive as bedrock, whose laughter once made the walls tremble, yet did nothing to dispel his doubts. Hildegund, upright and loyal, always pressing forward, even when the storm froze her to the skin. Eirikr, outwardly impassive, calm to the point of unease, and yet crushed by what he saw coming. Kjorn, whose mere presence reassured recruits and unsettled veterans alike; a living bulwark, fractured despite himself.

  And Yrsarald… after dismissing a captain, he looked up. His gaze met Markab’s. No gesture passed between them, but they understood each other without a word. This war had veered off course, abruptly, and they both knew what was coming bore no resemblance to an ordinary conflict.

  Unease had become palpable when, from the corner of her eye, Markab noticed Thraìn approaching at a brisk pace, his face set. She crossed her arms and leaned slightly toward him.

  “Urgent matters?”

  “Yes…” he breathed.

  “Can it wait until tonight?”

  A brief silence, then…

  “For some of it, yes.”

  She swept the room with her gaze, weighing the chaos to come. Nothing here would be resolved quickly. Or cleanly.

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  “Then see Vagn about what can’t wait.”

  She felt the assent more than she saw it. Thraìn withdrew at once, without a sound.

  Not long after, Ulfric and Galmar crossed the threshold. The murmuring cut off instantly. Gazes hardened, and an attentive silence swelled between the walls. The commanders straightened instinctively.

  The cold did not move. It sank deeper into the stone.

  Ulfric stepped toward the map and circled the table, observing them all. That peculiar way of taking in the whole assembly while still singling out each individual. Every trace of cynicism or hesitation crushed, smothered. His expression was closed, resolute. He pointed to the south of the map.

  “Helgen is not a setback. It is a turning point.”

  He let the words fall, heavy and precise.

  “We were struck where we believed ourselves safe. Our allies doubt. Our enemies prepare. And the skies are now just as dangerous as the ground beneath our feet.”

  He paused, sweeping the room with a dark gaze, letting the realization settle in. For most of them, a dragon was still little more than a forgotten myth.

  “We no longer have the luxury of being wrong. Or of hesitating. Not now. Not ever again.”

  His hands came down on the table, as if to anchor each word there, to lock them into their minds.

  “So no lies. No false hopes. We speak plainly, and we decide clearly. Skyrim needs certainty… not fear.”

  The council dragged on far longer than Markab would have wished. Voices rose, clashed, fell away. Routes were traced, crossed out, redrawn. Names surfaced again and again; exposed villages, weak garrisons, slow messengers.

  Each decision seemed to call for another, more dangerous still. Behind every moved marker, Markab felt the same invisible thread tightening, stretching closer to breaking. Skyrim was already too scattered, too torn apart, to withstand another blow.

  The council did not address the matter of dragons. Not openly, at least. Burning and obvious, it nonetheless hovered in the shadows and silences, shaping every decision and every troop movement. Markab let them decide, the memory of the burial mound still vivid in her mind.

  When the Council Chamber finally began to empty, several hours later, Markab did not remain within its walls. The other commanders lingered, still exchanging low voices, as if words alone might hold the inevitable at bay. She no longer had the need for it. Nor the strength.

  She left the room without looking back, keenly aware of a pair of steel-hard eyes following her.

  The cold welcomed her again in the palace corridors, unchanged, patient. It seemed almost honest, compared to the fragile certainties that had just been traded around the table.

  Her steps carried her instinctively toward higher, quieter floors; a calm she had sorely lacked these past days. Quarters had been assigned to her in the west wing of the palace decades earlier. Too spacious to be merely a study. Too personal to be a ceremonial suite. An ordered chaos: parchments, maps, vials, fragments of artifacts, forbidden books. And, set apart, a dark wooden chaise, grey wool, wolf pelt folded with care. Untouched.

  A discreet knock, familiar and unmistakable, sounded against the heavy wooden panel. Markab invited Thraìn in without lifting her gaze. The Captain of the Guard strode in as she let her cloak and gloves fall onto a chair. Turning, she saw one of his lieutenants enter behind him, slower, arms full of parchments.

  “There are still urgent matters,” Thraìn announced.

  He directed Vagn to place the stack of reports on a clear corner of the table. Beyond the dulled stained glass and the dark walls of the Palace of the Kings, the blizzard was beginning to hurl its first gusts. Markab reached for the carafe of wine.

  The night would be long.