The cabin was perfectly warm, heated by the small alchemical lanterns.
"Haah..."
Klaus unbuckled his heavy leather weapon belt, letting his massive Soul Broadsword clatter against the floorboards.
He then kicked off his combat boots, shedding his dark shirt until he was wearing nothing but his trousers.
He walked over to the back corner of the room.
Mirela and Anya were sleeping peacefully on the heavy, salvaged fur mattress.
Since they were already situated in the center, Klaus simply lifted the thick edge of the blankets and slid his massive frame onto the mattress beside them.
The moment his burning hot skin touched the furs, Mirela instinctively reacted in her sleep.
Driven by a subconscious desperate need for his warmth, the demi-human maid shifted closer.
She threw one of her bare, perfectly toned legs directly over his hips, burying her face into his broad chest with her long tail wrapping securely around his ankle.
’So fucking cute...’
Klaus didn’t push her away.
He wrapped a heavy arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him, while Anya remained tucked safely on Mirela’s other side.
Up in his silver hair, the tiny Crimson Sharpshooter shifted comfortably.
"Goodnight, my King," Valeria whispered softly, her ethereal voice barely a breath before she completely curled up and fell asleep directly on top of his head.
Klaus closed his eyes, listening to the armored thud of the upgraded bear pulling them through the snow.
He slept.
...
The next morning, the carriage had come to a complete grinding halt.
Klaus was standing outside in the snow, leaning casually against the thick oak side of the cabin. He had pulled his dark combat shirt and boots back on with his arms crossed over his chest.
The environment had drastically changed overnight.
They were no longer in the open tundra.
The carriage was parked in the middle of a massive, frozen labyrinth. Towering, jagged blocks of solid blue ice, easily fifty feet high, jutted out of the snowpack all around them like a frozen Stonehenge.
The snowstorm was actively kicking up, the wind howling fiercely as thick white powder swirled between the massive ice pillars, drastically cutting down visibility.
The heavy wooden door of the cabin swung open, and Mirela stepped out onto the iron runner.
She didn’t look entirely graceful.
The demi-human maid was painfully holding her ass with one hand with a deep grimace of lingering soreness etched across her beautiful face.
’I didn’t even do anything...’ Klaus thought.
Anya floated out right behind her, the six-year-old Shinigami looking perfectly pristine in her blue clothes.
"Master," Mirela started, her cheeks flushing slightly as she awkwardly shifted her weight. "I... I really need to pee."
"My internal biological reservoir is currently sitting at maximum capacity," Anya added, floating down to the snow. "I also require immediate waste expulsion. I feel an odd and uncomfortable sensation."
Klaus looked at the two of them, raising a silver eyebrow.
"You don’t need to hold it," Klaus said lazily, gesturing to the open snowpack right next to the carriage. "Just go right here... I’ll hit it with a blast of Soul Mana and burn it off instantly. It won’t even smell."
Mirela’s entire face violently exploded into a brilliant incandescent shade of terminal crimson. Her goat ears shot straight up, and her dark tail poofed out wildly behind her.
"NO!" Mirela shrieked, clamping her hands over her face in mortification. "Master! You cannot be serious! I am not squatting in the snow right in front of you! What is wrong with you?!"
Klaus rolled his eyes with a smirk pulling at his lips.
"Why are you acting shy now?" Klaus drawled, leaning his head back against the wood. "I literally had you folded in half like a pretzel. I’ve seen every single inch of you completely, Mirela... Not to brag but I rearranged your guts for three hours. Seeing you pee in the snow isn’t going to scar me."
"T-That is different!" Mirela wailed, her voice cracking as she stomped her boot in the snow, refusing to look at him. "That was... that was intimate! This is just embarrassing!"
"I do not mind," Anya chimed in completely deadpan, moving to pull up the hem of her blue dress right there in the snow. "Biological expulsion is a natural, unavoidable metric of a physical body so there is no logical reason for shame."
"Anya, stop!" Mirela shrieked, lunging forward and grabbing the little Shinigami’s hand before she could flash the entire Winterlands.
Klaus let out a long sigh, shaking his head. Dealing with these two was going to take years off his life.
"Alright, fine. Have it your way," Klaus relented, waving his hand toward the massive towering blocks of blue ice a few yards away. "Go behind those ice blocks over there. You’ll be completely out of my line of sight. Just don’t wander too far into the storm."
"Thank you, Master," Mirela huffed, still completely red in the face.
She grabbed Anya by the hand and practically dragged the little girl through the deep snow, heading straight for the concealment of the massive ice pillars.
"I told you we shouldn’t have drank so much of that melted snow-water last night," Mirela complained under her breath as they disappeared behind the ice. "Now my thighs are burning, my ass hurts, and I have to squat in a blizzard."
Klaus watched them go, a faint smile touching his lips.
He was quickly distracted by a sudden high-pitched argument breaking out directly above his head.
Sparky had materialized out of the carriage, and the chibi Lightning Fairy was currently hovering in the air, glaring absolute daggers at Valeria, who was sitting perfectly comfortably in Klaus’s silver hair.
"Get off his head!" Sparky shrieked, her tiny fists balled up, blue static dancing through her yellow hair. "That’s my spot! I’ve known him longer! You’re just a ghost!"
"I am the Soul Queen, and no, I’ve known my King longer." Valeria replied smugly, crossing her tiny legs and looking down at the fairy with an incredibly bratty sneer. "I manage the internal domain and you are merely an atmospheric battery, Sparky. The King requires my tactical oversight far more than your erratic tantrums. Find your own spot."
"I am going to blast you into spiritual vapor!" Sparky screamed, her hands glowing with plasma.
"You can try, battery," Valeria taunted, patting Klaus’s silver hair like a prized pet.
Klaus sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Before he could reach up and flick both of them into the snowbank, his entire body went rigidly still.
The argument above his head faded into white noise.
Klaus’s glowing silver eyes snapped to the left, peering directly into the thick, swirling white powder of the snowstorm.
His divine radar had just pinged with overwhelming clarity.
It wasn’t the heavy primal signature of a Winterlands abomination nor was it a wolf, a bear, or a snow-crawler.
It was a soul. A completely mortal, fragile, human soul, and it was advancing rapidly toward their position.
Klaus didn’t draw his sword, but his muscles coiled tight, ready for violence. He stepped away from the carriage with his gaze locking onto the shifting white veil of the blizzard.
"Quiet," Klaus ordered sharply.
Sparky and Valeria instantly stopped bickering. The authority in his voice commanded immediate obedience.
Through the howling wind and the blinding snow, a silhouette slowly emerged from the whiteout.
It was a woman.
As she stumbled closer, the details became horrifyingly clear.
She had long, striking light blue hair that whipped wildly around her face.
She was wearing what used to be high-end insulated leather armor, but it was currently shredded beyond recognition.
Her physical state was a disaster too.
The entire left side of her face and the left half of her body were violently frozen.
A thick layer of dark blue ice had crystallized over her skin, creeping up her neck and locking her left arm tight against her side.
She looked like she had been caught in the epicenter of a catastrophic frost spell and she took one agonizing step forward with her right eye completely glazed over with pain.
She looked directly at Klaus, her frozen blue-tinted lips parting as she reached her right hand out toward him.
"H-help..." she pleaded, her voice a broken, hollow, desperate rasp that was barely audible over the wind.
She didn’t take another step as her knees violently buckled.
Her body completely gave out, pitching forward into the deep snow.
As she collapsed face-first onto the frozen ground, the angle of her fall finally revealed her back to Klaus’s line of sight.
Klaus’s eyes narrowed into dangerous, lethal slits.
Sticking directly out of the center of the woman’s back, driven deeply between her shoulder blades, was the shattered shaft of a massive enchanted ice spear.
Blood had pooled around the entry wound, instantly freezing into a dark, crimson ring against her torn armor.
She wasn’t just freezing to death... she had been hunted and whoever threw that spear was definitely right behind her.
Klaus raised an eyebrow, his glowing silver eyes narrowing slightly as he raised a single hand. He gave a lazy, dismissive flick of his wrist.
FWOOSH!
A sharp gust of pure Soul Mana rippled through the cold air, completely blowing away the thick swirling veil of white snowstorm mist.
As the air cleared, the figures standing behind the collapsed, bleeding woman were fully revealed.
There were roughly fifteen people gathered in a loose semicircle among the towering blocks of blue ice.
Every single one of them was draped in heavy black cloaks adorned with jagged, bone-white sigils.
It was the Death Cult.
The fanatics who worshiped the ancient Death God had been the ones hunting this light-blue-haired woman down through the freezing labyrinth.
One of the cloaked figures stepped forward, pulling back her hood to reveal a pale gaunt face with sunken eyes and a twisted manic grin.
She didn’t possess the overwhelming suffocating aura of the Heir of Death since her soul presence was far too small, flickering like a tiny pathetic candle compared to a true powerhouse.
"Kekekekeke!"
The woman cackled, a shrill grating sound that vibrated unpleasantly against the surrounding ice walls.
The rest of the cultists joined in, a chorus of unhinged, raspy chuckles filling the snowy clearing.
"Look what we have here!" the woman rasped, bowing with theatrical flourish. "Allow me to introduce myself, absolute one! I am Meoni Hand, a newly appointed Bishop of the glorious Death Cult! I have seen the magnificent, blinding light of our Lord’s teachings and devoted my entire flesh and spirit to reviving the true God of Death... the rightful ruler of reality and the ancient twin brother of the Original Soul King!"
She lifted her head, her unblinking fanatic gaze locking directly onto Klaus’s silver eyes.
"We tracked the residual spiritual waves of your awakening, Lord," Meoni Hand declared, extending her open arms toward him in a grand gesture of invitation. "Now that you have claimed the throne of the Soul King, surely you must crave absolute dominance? Join us! Stand alongside the revival of our Lord, and together we shall claim ultimate glory!"
Behind her, one of the black-cloaked cultists casually stepped over the collapsed woman lying face-down in the snow.
The cultist reached down, grabbing the shattered shaft of the heavy ice spear protruding from between her shoulder blades, and gave it a brutal sickening twist.
CRUNCH! SQUELCH!
The blue-haired woman let out a wet, choked whimper, her body twitching uselessly against the snowpack as dark blood pooled around the entry wound.
Klaus didn’t even blink. He looked past the dying woman on the ground, fixing his deadpan gaze directly on Meoni Hand’s eager face.
"Not interested..." Klaus said bluntly, his deep voice completely flat.
Meoni Hand’s manic grin faltered for a fraction of a second, but she quickly cleared her throat, letting out another raspy cackle as she took two steps closer.
"Ah, but you do not understand the boundless perks of our sacred covenant, divine one!" Meoni Hand promised, leaning forward with a filthy conspiratorial wink. "If you join our crusade, the Cult will provide you with everything your mortal blood desires! An unlimited supply of women! Rare, exquisite, noble maidens! Panties of every silk and style! You will be permitted to use their bodies however you see fit, whenever you want... to breed them, knock them up, and fill our ranks with powerful, blooded offspring! What say you?!"