Outside, the land lay buried beneath snow. The cold wind blew harshly, howling across the white expanse, but its bite could not reach the family gathered inside their home. Warmth filled the walls, shielding them from winter's rage.
Yet within the house, the atmosphere was not one of joy as it had been before. Around the stone table, everyone sat in silence, a heavy solemnity pressing down on them. Neil sat between his parents, his small hands resting on his knees, glancing at his grandfather, who seemed lost in thought.
Grandpa Eldrin's gaze drifted into the distance, as if staring at memories far older than the boy could imagine. At his side, Grandma sat close, her hand gently resting on his arm, steadying him. For a long while he remained quiet, but then, as though waking from the weight of his own past, Eldrin finally spoke.
"Let me start with the beginning…" His voice was deep, carrying both sorrow and strength.
" A long time ago, we did not live here. We lived in the Eastern Continent, under the rule of the Solara Kingdom. That kingdom governed not only the East, but also the West, the North, the South, and the Central Continent, where the great capital stood. Back then, the land was blessed. It was sunny every day, whether it was night or day. The warmth never faded. Compared to this frozen place, it felt like heaven itself."
His eyes clouded as his tone grew heavier.
"But then… the world began to break down—or at least, it looked that way. A crack in space itself appeared over the capital of Solara. At first, many were afraid, but there were also those who were eager, even excited, to explore it. Yet nothing happened. A year passed. Then two. Then three. The rift remained, unmoving.
People grew careless. They lowered their guard. Some even treated it as a place to visit, a spectacle rather than a threat."
Eldrin clenched his hands together.
"But at the end of the third year, everything changed. That day marked the beginning of the end. From the rift… the Corpse Womb emerged. No one was prepared for what was to come.
Everyone who was near it died. But death… death was not the resting place for them."
Neil shivered as his grandfather's words weighed down on the room.
"In less than a week, the news spread—the capital had fallen. And only then did people begin to understand what we were facing."
Eldrin's voice grew grim, as if speaking the words gave life to old horrors.
"The Corpse Womb… a monster that looked like a mass of flesh. Its body was poisonous, its stench unbearable. It spread roots into the land, devouring everything, absorbing mana from its surroundings. Anything living it consumed, it replicated. Out of its flesh-like body it created clones, embedding mana crystals inside them to give them energy to move."
He paused, his jaw tight, before continuing.
"These clones came to be known as the Dead. They were twisted corpses of people and animals. Their bodies were highly poisonous, and they attacked any living thing they saw.
One by one, everything began to fall. After the capital, the North Continent was the first to collapse. And then the West followed. It wasn't that they didn't resist—they fought with everything they had. But it was useless. There were simply too many of those monsters."
Eldrin's voice lowered, heavy and grim.
"Once attacked by the Dead, even a scratch was enough to poison you. If bitten, death was certain in time. That was their terror. But it wasn't just the poison. They felt no pain. They did not stop. They would keep attacking endlessly, unless the mana crystal inside their body was destroyed. Nothing else could bring them down."
A silence followed, broken only by the faint whistling of the wind against the house.
"It did not take long," Eldrin went on, "for the continents to fall, one after another. Humanity was on the brink."
Then, faintly, his tone shifted, as though holding onto a thread of hope.
"But by chance—or perhaps because the goddess of the world could not bear to watch humanity vanish—we found their weakness. Extreme climates. Too much cold or too much heat, and their bodies would collapse. The mana nerves connected to their crystals would shatter or break, leaving them incapable of moving.
That discovery gave us hope. People began to flee—some to burning rocky mountains, others into the snow-covered highlands."
He looked at his grandchildren, his eyes reflecting years of hardship.
"That was when your grandmother and I came to the Aethelgard Mountains—a land of eternal snow, its topography rich with cliffs, valleys, and frozen rivers. At that time, the Duke of the Eastern Continent had started to established a refugee camp there. We joined it. And for the first time in years, we felt safe. The monsters could no longer threaten us in the cold."
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"A year later, we had our first son. Time passed. Life moved on. But as the years went by, new troubles arose. Scarcity of food. Scarcity of resources. And as the population grew, the problems deepened. It was not just our family, but every family in the shelter."
His eyes narrowed slightly, recalling the struggles of decades.
" forty-seven years after the disaster, the Duke and the high council of the camp passed a bill. Each family would be given an area—a radius of one kilometer—to establish their own village. They could use the resources within that boundary, but not from another's land. If they wished to, they had to pay a tax to that village. And in turn, every village had to pay tax to the refugee camp each year."
Eldrin's voice softened, though his words were firm.
"That is why, even though it is only our family in this place, we call it a village—not a mere family farmland. Because we are part of that decree, part of the structure of survival."
He let out a long breath, as though finally laying down a weight he had carried too long.
"And so, with our whole family, we moved to this place. Together, we named it… Frostlake Village."
The room fell quiet. The wind outside howled on, but inside, the firelight flickered against faces that bore the marks of sorrow, struggle, and hope.