The snowstorm thinned as Ashura crossed the last ridge. Beyond it stretched a valley that didn't belong to this world.
The Frosthorn Domain.
It wasn't built so much as grown—a city carved into living glaciers, spiraling towers of translucent ice connected by bridges that glimmered like veins of moonlight. Blue fire burned in crystal lanterns, illuminating streets where the cold itself seemed alive.
Even the wind sang differently here, carrying the hum of mana older than the continents.
Ashura stopped on a cliff overlooking it all, coat snapping in the updraft.
"So this is the heart of Thryndal," he murmured. "Looks like a paradise for corpses."
He started down the frozen path. The temperature sank until even sound felt heavy, but the cold didn't touch him. Purple sparks trailed his boots; wherever he stepped, frost turned to mist.
The guards at the outer gate—dozens of Frosthorn Sentinels, their armor layered with runic frost—raised their spears but didn't dare attack. Narev's word had reached them. Still, their eyes followed him, wary, resentful, curious.
Ashura met their gaze once and smirked. "If looks could kill, I'd have been dead before I was born."
The doors of the main hall opened with a low groan of shifting ice. Inside, light filtered through the crystalline walls, scattering into rainbows across the floor. The air was thick with a tranquil, almost divine energy.
At the far end sat Vynara, the Matriarch of the Frosthorn.
She didn't need to speak to command attention.
Her hair flowed like liquid silver, her skin pale as moonlight, her eyes the color of frozen lakes. She wore robes woven from mana threads, the kind that shimmered between form and formlessness.
She radiated power—but not the savage kind. This was an ancient, patient strength. The kind that could wait out centuries for the world to break itself.
Ashura walked straight toward her, his pace unhurried. When he stopped, he didn't kneel.
"So you're the one who wanted to see me," he said simply. "Let's get to it. I don't like wasting time."
The guards stiffened, but Vynara raised one hand. The hall fell silent. Her voice was soft, clear as chimes in a storm.
"You walk into my domain, mortal, bathed in the wrath of thunder and the scent of divinity. You strike my kin and melt the ice of the gods… yet you stand unscathed."
She leaned forward slightly. "Tell me, what are you?"
Ashura smiled faintly. "Someone who doesn't take orders from frost queens."
That earned him a whisper of laughter from her—low, almost human.
"Confidence. Or defiance. I can never tell them apart in your kind."
Her gaze sharpened. "But your soul carries something else. The mark of a forgotten power. A god's taint."
He shrugged. "Call it what you want. It's mine now."
Vynara studied him for a long moment, as if reading the truth beneath his skin. The air grew colder, the walls pulsing with energy. "You carry lightning that does not belong to this plane. It reeks of the Nameless One. Do you even understand what burns in your veins?"
Ashura met her eyes without flinching. "Enough to know I can burn this hall down if I wanted."
The silence that followed was heavy, electric. Then Vynara smiled again—slow, almost indulgent.
"Arrogance suits you, Ashura Bellet. But the storm you bear… it is not yours to master yet. The Nameless One's power comes at a price."
Ashura's eyes narrowed. "And what do you know about the Nameless One?"
The matriarch rose. The frost beneath her feet bloomed like living ice, forming steps as she descended from her throne. "More than you imagine. Long before mortals learned to name their gods, he walked these lands. When the heavens rebelled against The One, he stood between light and void. His wrath shattered the firmament."
She stopped a few steps away from him, close enough that he could feel the cold radiating from her aura. "You wield the fragment of that wrath. But fragments can consume as easily as they empower."
Ashura tilted his head, eyes flickering violet. "So you're warning me?"
"No," she said softly. "I am testing you."
The floor cracked open.
Spears of ice erupted upward, forming a circle around them. The temperature dropped to a point where even magic strained to move. Ashura raised an eyebrow.
"Guess we're skipping tea."
"Prove to me that the storm within you belongs to you," Vynara said, her voice echoing across the hall. "Or I'll claim it myself."
Ashura sighed, his hand drifting to the hilt of his blade.
"You frost people really don't know how to relax."
The next second, thunder exploded.
A circle of amethyst lightning rippled outward, shattering the nearest ice pillars. Vynara didn't flinch—her own aura surged in reply, blue and white streams coiling around her like celestial frost serpents.
The hall became a storm of light and ice, each movement measured, divine.
Ashura grinned through the chaos. "Now this… this feels like home."