As Alatar drifted above the valley, his attention snapped to one of the looming peaks. A shape shifted inside the cavern's mouth—slow, deliberate, heavy as continents stirring in their sleep. The air tightened; even the wind seemed to hesitate.
Then it stepped forward.
The creature's body was draped in jagged plates of ice that shimmered like a crown of broken glass. Its form resembled a wolf stretched far beyond natural limits, but the lines of its body bent unnaturally—as though built more from frost and stone than flesh. Its eyes burned faint blue, like twin suns smoldering in glaciers. Each breath it released turned the cliffside to hoarfrost, veins of white cracking outward with every exhale.
Alatar's chest constricted. Power. Pure, sovereign, undeniable. The presence of the beast was enough to grind against his bones, as if gravity itself wished to kneel before it.
And yet, the overlord did not strike. It stilled at the cliff's edge, staring down at him with a predator's poise.
Alatar steadied himself, his gray-marked arms faintly pulsing, instinct whispering for him to flee, to vanish before this sovereign. But something else tethered him—curiosity. Fear, yes, but also fascination. He had seen monsters here, but this was different. This was the throne-bearer of an entire mountain.
Then it happened.
The air vibrated, not from sound, but from something older—a voice that did not need to speak aloud.
"What are you?"
Alatar's eyes widened, heart lurching. It spoke. The beast's voice was not growled or roared—it was an echo in his skull, deep and cold, as though the mountain itself had found words.
"Who are you? You carry no aura. No scent of blood, no rhythm of breath. No thread ties you to the life of this frost."
The words burrowed into him, stripping away the veil of silence he thought protected him.
The overlord leaned closer, its eyes narrowing with an intensity that threatened to freeze him where he floated. "Everything here is born of ice. Even prey sings the frost-song. Yet you… you are nothing. You are not born of this world."
Alatar's thoughts raced, his mouth dry. He had faced the fear of death before, but never this—the sensation of being dissected by presence alone. This thing was ancient, it carried dominion in its very blood. And yet… it was not reckless. The weight in its voice was not simple hostility. It was caution.
Because to it, he was an enigma.
And for the first time, Alatar understood: the danger he represented wasn't only in his weakness or strangeness—it was in the fact that he could not be measured.
He swallowed, forcing himself to speak despite the tremor in his chest. His voice felt small, fragile, against the resonance of the overlord. "I… don't know what I am anymore."
The overlord's breath frosted the air, its cold eyes unblinking. The silence that followed was immense, like the whole mountain listened for his next word.
The beast did not look away. Its glacial eyes remained fixed upon me, heavy as mountains, scanning, stripping me bare. I felt as though every unspoken thought, every shadow of fear, every hidden fragment of my being was turned outward for it to read. My skin prickled with the sensation of being measured, weighed against some ancient scale.
When it spoke again, there was no hesitation—only the voice of one who had never once in its existence needed to doubt its authority.
"I am Ulfrimir, the Hoary King. One of the Thirteen Overlords who bind the crown of this world, Polaris Prime."
The words were carved from pride, from unbending regality, and as they sank into me I realized he had not spoken merely for me. He had spoken to declare himself as truth, as law, as history.
I drew in a careful breath. My own voice seemed brittle, unfit for such a dialogue, but silence felt more dangerous than speech. "Polaris Prime… so that is the name of this place."
The Hoary King's head tilted, the jagged mantle of ice that crowned him glinting under faint light. "You speak as though you are not of it. Yet you stand within it, unclaimed by frost, unsung by the veins of cold. You drift like an echo without a source."
"I am not of this world," I admitted, the words catching on the dryness of my tongue. "I came here… drawn by something. A light. A presence."
Ulfrimir's breath rumbled, and frost veins spread further along the cliff beneath him, spirals of rime etching his weight into the mountain. "The light." His tone neither confirmed nor denied, yet it carried a pause heavy enough to bury the matter in ice.
"Do you know of it?" I pressed, despite the chill crawling up my spine. "It burns ahead, deep in these ranges. Is it the source of the life I've seen here? These beasts—every one of them seems to be… of ice, to breathe it, to command it."
The overlord's gaze hardened. He did not blink. "This world is frost, as flame is flame. All who dwell here are children of its marrow. To ask why they wield ice is to ask why you breathe air."
I nodded slowly, though my heart hammered. "Then… there are others like you? Thirteen, you said. Thirteen overlords. Do you rule this world together?"
A growl, low, rolling like thunder muffled beneath snow, slipped from him—whether irritation or amusement, I could not tell. "We rule nothing. Rule is for those who cage. We are the law of the peaks, the teeth of the valleys. Each overlord is sovereign of their crown, bound not by pact but by balance. Thirteen pillars, and Polaris Prime endures."
The answer chilled me in ways the air could not. Thirteen beings like this—beings whose mere presence carved frost into stone. What place had I here, a stranger with black and gold blood, an intruder without aura or scent?
Still, I could not let go of the question. "And the light? Does it belong to one of you? Is it connected to Polaris Prime's nature?"
Ulfrimir's gaze narrowed. "You hunger for knowledge beyond your station. The light is not mine to speak of." His tone was final, like a door of ice closing and locking from the other side.
I felt my throat tighten. He would not yield that answer. Not to me. Perhaps not to anyone.
Yet, despite the dismissal, I forced another question, softer this time. "Then tell me this: am I a threat to your world?"
The Hoary King lowered his head, bringing those burning glacier-eyes close enough that I could see the reflections of my own trembling form within them. My skin crawled, but I held his gaze.
"You are an enigma. No breath. No life-song. No tether to the frost. Not prey, not kin, not foe. Not yet."
He lingered, as though tasting the truth of his own words, then drew back with the grace of an emperor done with his audience.
"Be wary, stranger. Polaris Prime is not kind to questions left unanswered. Walk your path… but know that the Thirteen are watching."
And with that, Ulfrimir turned, the mantle of ice and power shifting with him, and stepped back into the cavernous maw of his mountain. His presence did not fade quickly. Even as the shadow swallowed him, his weight remained on the world, like a crown pressing against my shoulders.
I floated there, silent, my breath ragged. His words echoed in me—not the warnings, not the mysteries withheld, but the single, undeniable truth he had spoken.
I was nothing here.
An unmeasured thing.
A trespasser in Polaris Prime.
Ulfrimir began to withdraw, the colossal form fading into the cavern's throat, yet his eyes lingered one last time upon me. Something shifted in them—less ice, more depth, as though some ancient current stirred beneath the surface.
His voice rolled back over the frozen cliffs, quieter now but carrying a weight that made every syllable lodge itself deep into me.
"If you would chase the light, enigma, remember this: it blinds those who behold it, but feeds those who close their eyes. Seek not with sight, but with the wound that weeps within you."
The words struck me as nonsense. Blinds? Feeds? A wound? I clenched my jaw, frustration and unease gnawing at me. My forehead still throbbed faintly where the slit of the eye had formed and sealed shut, and his mention of a wound felt like mockery.
I opened my mouth to demand clarity, but Ulfrimir was already gone. The mountain swallowed him whole, leaving only the slow crackle of settling frost and the echo of his riddle.
I hovered there for a long time, replaying the words, searching them for meaning, finding none. They grated against me, each syllable jagged, biting.
And yet… they stuck. Like shards of ice, embedded too deep to ignore.
I whispered them under my breath, half in bitterness, half in awe:
"If you would chase the light… it blinds those who behold it, but feeds those who close their eyes. Seek not with sight, but with the wound that weeps within you."
The frozen tundra stretched on ahead, indifferent to my confusion. And still, somewhere in the distance, the light waited.