The forest was a cathedral of ice. Pillars of ancient pine groaned under the weight of winter's fist, their branches clawing at a sky choked with stars. Tae Mu-Ryong's breath hung in the air like a ghost, silver and fleeting. He clutched his brother Yun's hand tighter, the boy's fingers brittle as bird bones in his grip. Behind them, their mother Seo Hwa staggered, her breaths shallow and wet.
Run. Don't look back.
But the past chased them anyway.
Memory Fragment:
Tae stood in the Glacial Palace's courtyard, his father's Frostblade gleaming in his hands. "A Mu-Ryong does not fear the cold," Jin Mu-Ryong had said, his voice echoing off the ice-carved walls. "We are its masters." Tae had swung the blade, and frost had spiderwebbed across the training dummies, beautiful and lethal. Lian had clapped from the sidelines, her laughter ringing like wind
chimes. Yun, barely five, had tried to mimic the stance, toppling into a snowdrift.
Now, the cold mastered them.
Lian stumbled, her boot catching on a root. She bit down on her cry, but the whimper that escaped was worse. Tae whirled, scanning the skeletal trees. Shadows pooled between the trunks, thick and hungry.
"They're close," Seo Hwa rasped. Blood seeped through the makeshift bandages at her side, black and sluggish, as if the wound itself were freezing.
Yun's small frame shuddered. "The sun… it's looking at us again."
Tae followed his brother's gaze. Above the treeline, the moon hung fat and full—but in the corner of his vision, it twisted. A blotch of darkness seeped across its face, ink spreading through water.
The black sun.
"Don't stare," Tae snapped, yanking Yun forward. The vision had plagued his brother since the massacre, growing stronger each night. "It's not real."
But the lie tasted like ash.
The first whistle cut through the night—high, mocking, a blade dragged across glass.
"Little dragons~"
Lian froze. "No. Not them."
Figures emerged from the shadows, their leather armor stained crimson. The sigil on their pauldrons—a grinning skull with serrated teeth—glowed faintly in the moonlight.
Crimson Teeth.
Bear, a hulking brute with a missing eye, kicked a half-frozen corpse onto the path. The man's Mu-Ryong insignia was still visible beneath the frost. "Look what we found," he rumbled. "More traitor filth."
Viper, her neck coiled with serpent tattoos, crouched to meet Yun's gaze. "Your father died crying, boy. Should I show you how he sounded?" Her voice shifted, warping into Jin Mu-Ryong's baritone: "Please—mercy!"
Yun screamed.
Tae lunged, but Mantis was faster. A wire snapped around his throat, yanking him off his feet. "Pathetic," the wiry assassin hissed. "The great White Dragons, reduced to this."
Viper herded them toward a frozen river, its surface veined with cracks. "Remember this place, Lian?" She twirled Lian's stolen hairpin—a jade fox gifted on her tenth birthday. "You skated here with my daughter. Now let's see you dance."
She slammed her boot into the ice.
Yun plummeted first, the black water swallowing his scream. Lian dove after him, her hands scrabbling for purchase. Tae thrashed against Mantis's wire, blood trickling down his neck.
Bear tossed a dagger onto the ice. "Fetch, little dragon!"
Lian's fingers closed around the hilt—just as the current dragged Yun under.
Memory Fragment:
Lian at twelve, poring over battle maps in the Glacial Palace. "The Crimson Teeth are allies," she'd insisted. "Their scouts patrol the southern passes." Her father had smiled, ruffling her hair. "Trust is a blade, daughter. Never hand it to another."
Now, that blade cut deep.
Seo Hwa moved like a storm.
The kitchen knife—still smeared with turnip peelings—found Bear's thigh. He roared, backhanding her into the snow.
"Run!" she screamed.
But the children couldn't. Mantis's wire sawed into Tae's throat; Viper pressed a blade to Lian's jugular.
Then Seo Hwa did the unthinkable.
She tore open her robes, revealing the wound beneath—a festering gash where a Black Tide blade had struck. Frost crawled from its edges, black and glistening.
"You want the Mu-Ryong's power?" she spat. "Take it."
Her hand plunged into the wound. When it emerged, it clutched a shard of pulsating black ice—the Frostborn Core, the source of their bloodline's strength.
The Crimson Teeth recoiled. "Madwoman!" Viper hissed.
Seo Hwa slammed the core into the river.
The world screamed.
Ice erupted—not white, but black, jagged and alive. It impaled Bear mid-laugh, his blood freezing before it hit the ground. Mantis's wire snapped as Tae fell, gasping.
"Go," Seo Hwa whispered, her skin cracking like porcelain. "To the ruins. Don't look back."
Then the river swallowed her whole.
The ground split with a sound like breaking bones.
Yun's Rimefire Eyes blazed as they fell, the darkness peeling away to reveal walls lined with corpses—hundreds of Yus, frozen mid-scream. "No," he whimpered. "No, no, no—"
Above, Viper's laughter echoed. "You think this pit can save you? I'll skin you al—"
The crunch cut her off. Tae looked up to see her body twitching, a spire of black ice jutting from her chest. The ice pulsed, draining her blood like sap from a tree. Then it moved, retracting into the dark.
They landed in a cavern of black ice, its walls throbbing like a heartbeat. Skeletons littered the floor—not refugees, but Mu-Ryong clansmen, their insignias still intact. At the chamber's heart
stood a doorway. No—a wound.
Tae's Frostblade shard vibrated in his pocket. "Feed me," it whispered.
Mantis crawled from the shadows, his face a mask of blood. "You're weak," he spat. "Just like your—"
Tae plunged the shard into his chest.
The man's scream died as frost devoured him, his body collapsing into a husk. The blade warmed—just for a moment—and power surged through Tae. Then the cold bit back.
His hand blackened, fingers snapping off like twigs.
The doorway breathed.
Yun pressed his palms to the ice. "It's not a gate. It's an eye."
The black sun swelled in the void beyond, its edges dripping like tar. Something pressed against the veil—not a shape, but a presence, vast and ravenous.
"At last," it crooned, the voice syrup-thick. "My little keys."
Lian gripped Tae's maimed hand. "We can't stay here."
But the hunters' corpses began to twitch. Viper rose first, her hollowed-out chest blooming with black ice. "Join us," she rasped.
Tae faced the wound. The Frostblade shard hummed, its hunger mirroring his own.
"Feed me," it begged.
He stepped through.
The wound in the world pulsed, its edges fraying like rotting cloth as Tae vanished into the dark. For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then—
Yun screamed.
Not in fear. Not in pain.
In ecstasy.
Lian turned, her breath catching. Her brother's small body hovered inches above the ice, his Rimefire Eyes blazing like twin black suns. Frost spiraled from his fingertips, devouring the cavern walls, the corpses, the very air. The reanimated hunters shrieked as their bodies shattered, their stolen ice retreating like cowed dogs before a storm.
"Yun…?" Lian whispered.
His head snapped toward her, too fast, too fluid. When he spoke, his voice was a chorus—a thousand whispers scraping against bone.
"We are awake."
Above them, the ice split. The night sky peeled back, revealing the black sun in full, its pupil dilating hungrily. The ground trembled as something colossal shifted beneath the mountain—a presence uncoiling, ancient and ravenous.
And from the wound Tae had crossed, a single word echoed, warped and wet, in their mother's voice:
"Run."
But it was too late.
The Frostborn Watcher had found its keys.