Cold was not a sensation.
It was a law.
In this frozen realm, frost did not bite the skin—it judged. Every step was a trial, every breath a reminder that the world owed nothing to the living.
Siegfried moved forward.
The snow rose to his knees, compact, ancient, hard as crushed stone. The wind swept across the white plain in long, howling gusts, carving frozen dunes that looked like waves locked in their final surge.
Above him, the sky was nothing more than a ceiling of pale steel.
No sun.
No stars.
Only a diffuse, cold, impersonal light.
The Kingdom of Ice did not wish to be admired.
It wished to be survived.
Siegfried tightened the fur cloak around his shoulders. It already bore the scars of the journey—burns from frost, pale cracks, old blood frozen into the fibers. His armor, simple yet sturdy, creaked with every movement.
He was not a god.
Not yet a legend.
He was a man walking toward his death.
And he knew it.
The dragon lived in the north.
Everyone knew that.
No one went there.
The scattered villages buried in the ice spoke of it in hushed tones, as if it could hear through the storms.
A gigantic dragon.
Ancient.
Immortal.
A being whose breath froze rivers and whose roar brought mountains down.
It had many names.
None of them survived long in the mouths of those who spoke them.
Siegfried did not need a name.
He needed it dead.
He reached a ridge of ice and stopped.
Before him stretched a vast valley, carved like a scar into the world. The ground was blackened, vitrified in places, as if an ancient heat had once fought the cold… and lost.
At the center of the valley, something colossal lay still.
A mountain.
No.
Something alive.
Siegfried felt his stomach tighten.
The dragon was there.
Even motionless, even asleep, its presence crushed the space around it. Its body coiled for hundreds of meters, covered in dark scales with bluish reflections. Thick, overlapping plates, etched with ancient fractures, as though time itself had tried—and failed—to wear it down.
Its wings, folded against its body, resembled twin cliffs of black ice.
Its head rested against the ground, snout buried in the snow, yet even so… it was larger than a house.
With every breath, the valley trembled.
Frost formed and shattered in rhythm.
Siegfried placed a hand on the hilt of his sword.
He felt fear.
Not panic.
Lucid fear.
The kind that tells you: you are not meant to win.
He descended into the valley.
Every step echoed too loudly.
Every crunch of snow felt like blasphemy.
The dragon opened one eye.
Only one.
An immense eye of deep blue, threaded with pale veins of light. A gaze ancient, heavy with centuries of vigilance, hunger, and solitude.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
— Another one, a voice murmured.
It did not come from its mouth.
It resonated directly within Siegfried's mind.
— Another who believes courage is enough.
Siegfried stopped at a safe distance.
He lifted his head, standing straight despite the crushing weight of that presence.
"I did not come to believe," he said.
"I came to act."
The dragon watched the man in silence.
Then it laughed.
A slow, deep laugh that made the ice vibrate and triggered distant avalanches.
— You are all the same, it said.
— You call your ignorance destiny.
Siegfried clenched his teeth.
"You devour these lands.
You doom those who live here.
I'm not asking you to understand."
He drew his sword.
The blade was simple. Not divine. Not enchanted.
But it was straight.
And held by a steady hand.
"I am here to kill you."
The dragon slowly closed its eye.
— Then come closer, human.
The battle began without signal.
The dragon rose.
The valley shook. Snow exploded beneath its titanic mass. Icy winds burst from its unfurling wings, hurling Siegfried backward. He rolled across the ground, stopping himself by driving his sword into the ice.
A breath.
Not fire.
Pure cold.
A wave of absolute frost swept the valley. Wherever it passed, ice thickened, hardening into something nearly transparent, sharp as diamond.
Siegfried dove behind a rocky outcrop. The cold gnawed at his skin, trying to freeze his muscles, his blood, his will.
He forced himself to move.
To run.
To climb.
He leapt onto the dragon's flank and struck with all his strength. The blade slid across the scales in a shower of frozen sparks.
No wound.
The dragon roared and shook its body.
Siegfried was flung into the air.
He crashed down hard, breath ripped from his lungs, the world spinning.
— You are not the first, the voice said.
— You will not be the last.
Siegfried spat blood.
Then he smiled.
"Maybe."
He rose, staggering.
"But I'm mad enough to try something different."
He ran straight toward the dragon's maw.
The creature's gaze locked onto him.
For an instant, something flickered in its eye.
Curiosity.
Then the dragon opened its jaws.
A chasm of fangs, frost, and death.
Siegfried jumped.
He vanished into the frozen darkness.
Inside, the cold was absolute.
But the dragon's heart… burned.
Not with heat.
With rage.
With memories.
With invisible chains.
Siegfried drove his sword again and again, screaming, striking not flesh, but what lay beneath. What resisted. What refused to die.
The dragon screamed.
A cry that split the sky.
The valley exploded in a storm of ice and light.
Then…
Silence.
When the storm settled, the dragon lay still.
Dead.
Siegfried emerged from the carcass, covered in dark blood and frost. He collapsed to his knees in the snow, gasping.
Around him, the Kingdom of Ice felt… different.
Less hostile.
As if it recognized something.
Siegfried looked up at the dragon's body.
He did not yet know.
He could not yet know…
That this dragon was not an end.
But a beginning.