It was still dark outside the fortress when I walked out. I was in my small form, so the soldiers didn’t recognize me. The patrolling soldiers on watch took a look at me, my hooded black cloak I was wearing and stiffened with their hands on their swords. In a blink, the commander’s eyes caught the white stony skin on my neck and my hands. He held up his fist. And even grabbed a man before he could sound an alarm. He silently saluted and muttered a, my prince, before walking away. His men followed with a similar salute.

  People were always skittish around me. I didn’t understand why. They weren’t like this around Sage, maybe a little around Ilya. But me, they scampered away from me. Didn’t they realize that I was here to help? Well, I guess I was an unknown entity.

  I put those thoughts out of mind and walked towards the training yard. I wasn’t going to train. That would make too much sound, and I didn’t want to wake the sleeping soldiers. Instead, I walked to the hilly mounds the soldiers were supposed to run over and rested my back one.

  The snow drifts touched my skin, and I breathed in the cool air. It was comforting. Not as cold as numbing dark waters, still the snow drifts touched my skin and cooled me. I needed this. I needed to just cool down and not think. My soul trembled. It wanted to reach out and touch the waters. It wanted to submerge itself at let go of the conflicting thoughts and feelings. But by doing that, I would forget about Saha. The way she moved. The way she felt. The way her…

  No. I cleared those thoughts from my mind. I needed to let go. I just breathed. It was a technique from the dark waters. It expunged the unwanted emotions into the cold of the numbing of the dark water. It made a hunter a hunter. It had made him the best of them. Because when he hunted, the predators never knew what hit them.

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  Talk in the cold. Breathe out the heat. It wasn’t the cold of dark waters but cold entered his lungs. Take in the cold. Breathe out the heat. In the next breath the cold grew. Take in the cold. Breathe out the heat. Ice crystals entered my nose, and I let all my wild feeling flow out. With the next breath my emotions calm imperceptibly. Again, and again. I breathed. Until…

  Until a colder side of him awoke. I looked down at myself and snorted. It was me. But different. The way we felt things were the same but different. That side of me went through my most recent memories. And fixated on a particular bit. Where Saha had told him that she had been with other men. I wanted them to die. I wanted to rip them apart. How dare they look at my Saha like that. How dare they kiss her. How dare they…

  The cold touched my mind and calmed me. It called me childish. Yes, they needed to die. But not with rage. But with calm. Because I was the cold. And everyone would die with my hands.

  The strange duality of thoughts put me in a strange haze for a second. And then my eyes sharpened. I knew what this was. I knew what this cold was. But there was something this cold didn’t understand. There was something colder than cold. There was nothingness.

  Predators or the damned as they were called outside the waters hunted with emotions. They wormed their influence in to their prey’s minds. They sowed doubt. They leeched morale. And sometimes even blanket an area with fear. This one was more subtle but insidious. It was attacking a baser instinct of everyone around. Stocking anger at perceived injustices and compelling everyone in the fortress to attack each other. And since the fortress was full of soldiers, the result would be devastating.

  My brain switched to a colder analytical thought but I couldn’t submerge myself into the dark waters. Because whether I liked it or not, a predator had wormed its dark tendrils into my emotions. It had found a crack in my defenses. The source of those cracks was Saha. But I couldn’t blame her. There was only one person to blame, me and my attachment to her. Nevertheless, what I was most afraid of had happened. My souls shield had developed cracks.