The minutes crawled by like hours. The snow was piling up around the horses' hooves, and the men were shivering violently. Even Silas, who never complained, was starting to look green around the gills.
Gage Stone shifted in his saddle, his teeth chattering. "Your Highness, the scouts have been gone for over an hour. If we don't move soon, we'll freeze to death standing here. Maybe we should—"
Alex shot him a look that could have frozen fire. Gage snapped his mouth shut.
Alex's calm was a facade. Inside, his stomach was churning with acid. What if I'm wrong? What if the voice was just a trick of the wind? What if I'm leading my men to their deaths through my own arrogance?
Then, through the curtain of white, two shapes appeared.
They were riding hard, leaning low over their horses' necks. The scouts.
They didn't slow down as they approached the column. They rode straight up to Alex and practically fell off their horses, tumbling into the snow.
"Your Highness!" one of them gasped, his face white with terror, not just from the cold. "You were right! By the gods, you were right!"
Alex grabbed the man by the shoulders, his fingers digging into the scout's wet cloak. "Speak!"
"We went in about three miles," the scout stammered, his whole body shaking. "We stopped to check an overhang. And then... the whole mountain just... moved. The cliff face collapsed. Not where we were standing—but about half a mile ahead. The entire path is buried under a hundred tons of rock and ice. If we had been on that section when it happened..."
The second scout nodded frantically, tears freezing on his cheeks. "We would have been buried alive, my prince. There's no question."
Silence fell over the column. A heavy, stunned silence.
Alex stood very still, processing the information. The Guardian hadn't stopped the mountain from falling. She had warned him. She had shown him where not to be.
It wasn't absolute protection. It was intelligence. And intelligence, he understood, was sometimes more valuable than any shield.
Then, Gage Stone slid off his horse. He hit his knees in the snow, his head bowed. "Forgive me, Your Highness. I doubted you."
One by one, the other soldiers followed. They dropped to their knees in the snow, their heads bowed to the prince who had saved them from certain death. They weren't just looking at a prince anymore. They were looking at a prophet.
Alex looked down at his kneeling men. His face was a mask of calm authority.
"Get up," he commanded, his voice steady. "The pass is blocked. We go around. Move out."
But as he turned to mount his horse, he slipped his hand into his pocket. His fingers were trembling. Not from the cold, but from the sheer, terrifying weight of the truth.
The Guardian was real. And She had just saved his life—not by magic, but by information. She sees what I cannot see, Alex realized. And she warns me. That is enough.
Later that night, they made camp in a sheltered valley. The men were quiet, reverent. They gave Alex a wide berth, as if he were a live wire.
Alex retreated to his tent, closing the flap tightly behind him. He lit a single candle and sat on his bedroll.
He stared at the canvas ceiling, his heart still racing.
"Thank you," he whispered into the dark. "I heard your warning. I don't know who you are, or what you want from me. But... thank you."
He waited. He strained his ears, hoping to hear that annoyed, beautiful voice again.
Nothing.
He wasn't surprised. Gods didn't answer on command. They weren't pets. They were forces of nature, vast and unknowable.
But one thing was certain. This was a relationship now. A transaction. And Alex intended to find out exactly what the terms were.
