The mountains stretched endlessly, each peak like a jagged crown of frost biting into the pale heavens. The light I sought shimmered faintly beyond them, always ahead, never nearer. My strengthened sight made it seem deceptively close, but the truth was clear: the distance was vast, and this frozen land was far from barren.
I drifted forward, sometimes flying above the crags, other times lowering myself to walk along frozen ridges, needing the grounding of my feet against the snow. With each step, the world revealed itself in fragments, strange and alien pieces of life stitched into the fabric of ice.
The first were the crystal-winged insects, fluttering in small swarms between jutting icicles. Their wings refracted the pale light into fractured rainbows, but their bodies were translucent, hollow yet alive. When I paused to watch, they hissed—a high-pitched, glassy sound—and scattered like shards blown by the wind.
"Even here… life finds a way to exist," I whispered, though the sight unsettled me. These weren't creatures of warmth or soil. They were shaped for this land of silence and frost.
Farther along the ridges, I came across ice-serpents, slithering through cracks in the glaciers. Their scales glittered white-blue, nearly invisible against the terrain, save for the faint mist escaping their jaws. They were patient hunters. I saw one strike—snapping up a smaller beast, a rabbit-like thing with six legs and crystal antlers—and drag it into the fissures without a sound. Efficient. Cold.
The ecosystem here was brutal. No hesitation, no waste. Every creature was honed for survival in this endless freeze.
And yet… it felt alive, vibrant in its own ruthless way.
As I floated onward, my thoughts strayed. Were any of them sapient? Could intelligence have taken root in such merciless conditions? On Earth, humanity built its cradle in fertile soil, near rivers, under sunlight. Here, there was no soil, no warmth, no comfort—only death in the form of beauty.
I searched for signs: tools, shelters, patterns in the snow that might speak of thought or craft. But there was nothing. No evidence of will beyond survival.
Perhaps it was arrogant to think sapience would mirror my own. Perhaps something thought differently here, in ways I couldn't recognize. But if so, I couldn't see it. And for now, that answer remained elusive.
I continued.
Days—though time was hard to measure without the sun—seemed to pass as I traversed the ranges. I found herds of thick-coated creatures, their tusks curved like crescents of ice, moving slowly across valleys in search of frozen moss. I glimpsed flocks of pale birds whose wings trailed streams of frost with every beat, their cries echoing like broken glass.
All of them avoided me. Some fled at my presence, others simply turned their gaze away as if I didn't matter. None approached. None tested me. It was as though they knew I did not belong.
And the light… it still pulsed, distant, unwavering.
I pulled my cloak tighter—not for warmth, but for comfort. "If there are thinking beings here," I murmured, voice soft against the howl of the wind, "then they are hiding well."
The thought lingered in my chest as I rose higher again, floating above a canyon where jagged ice spears jutted upward like teeth. Below, shadows moved, another species unknown to me. But I did not descend. Not this time.
There was too much here to catalog, too much I did not yet understand. I could lose myself forever studying the strange life of this world.
But the light… the light was calling.
And for reasons I could not name, I felt its pull tightening with every step closer.
Alatar drifted higher, cloak whipping in the icy currents, his shadow stretched thin across the jagged spires below. He had learned to temper his curiosity with caution—every valley, every ridge held life, and none of it was gentle.
The more he watched, the clearer a pattern emerged. Every creature, whether colossal or minuscule, seemed to wield the element of ice in some form. The crystal-winged insects had their glassy hiss that froze the tips of branches. The six-legged rabbits expelled bursts of frost when fleeing predators. Even the serpent-things, lurking in their glacial cracks, exhaled cold mist that hung heavy in the air.
It was not coincidence.
"Is it the light?" he wondered aloud, eyes narrowing at the distant glow that beckoned him beyond the mountains. "Does it birth them into this nature? Or is this simply the truth of this world—everything shaped from ice, everything given its power?"
The thought unsettled him. On Earth, nature spread itself across balances—creatures adapted to fire, forest, sea, sky. But here, all paths converged into one element. No diversity. No alternatives. Just… cold. It was as though the very law of existence bent to frost alone.
He moved onward, and the scale of the world's denizens only deepened.
Beneath him roamed behemoths, their steps slow but thunderous, each footfall cracking the glaciers. Their hides were armored in crystalline plates, their tusks the length of trees. Mist rolled from their nostrils, freezing the ground in jagged spires as they passed.
But scattered among them were creatures no larger than mice—white-furred things darting between the snowdrifts, their tiny tails leaving frozen streaks where they brushed the ground. Even they carried the mark of the world's dominion: when startled, they exhaled shards of frost like splinters of glass.
Every size. Every form. From the smallest to the titanic. All bound by the same law.
Then, as his gaze traced the jagged ridges, he saw them.
In some peaks—those sheer walls of ice and stone that towered above all others—there was movement. A heavy shadow turning slowly within a cavern's maw. A ripple across a ridge of frost that suggested something vast lying dormant beneath it. A glare—faint, but unmistakable—watching from the hollow of a distant cliff.
Alatar's breath caught.
These were not the roaming herds or hungry predators of the lowlands. No. These were overlords, the sovereigns of their territories. Their presence radiated the same suffocating weight he had felt from the leader of the ice-bears—the sort of creatures whose authority was not questioned by anything that lived nearby.
Even from afar, the air around them seemed heavier. Like the world bent beneath their weight.
Alatar stilled himself, floating quietly in the air, trying not to disturb the silence. His heart pressed uneasily against his chest. The closer he drew to the light, the more certain he became: he was not walking through wilderness. He was walking through a land of thrones, each peak crowned by its ruler, each valley governed by blood and frost.
And yet… not one of them looked at him.
Not yet.
He clenched his fists, gray markings along his arms faintly shimmering as if restless. "So this world breeds monarchs from its own bones," he whispered, half in awe, half in fear. "If even the smallest creatures here carry the frost, what will those… things in the peaks bring forth if they stir?"
Still, he pushed forward. Always toward the light.