Far from the scorched dunes of Zyrion, across frozen oceans and wind-lashed cliffs, lay the Continent of the Red Lips—a realm carved from glaciers and shadowed by myth.
Here, the air burned not with heat, but cold.
The skies remained a pale grey for most of the year, the sun appearing like a dim coin trapped behind clouded glass. The land was jagged and vast, its mountains black with ice veins, its valleys choked with snowdrifts as tall as houses.
This was a land that breathed silence.
Where each step on the snow echoed for miles. Where life had learned not to fight the cold—but to become colder than it.
The people of the Red Lips were not many, but they were sharp, both in mind and body. They lived in carved cliffside settlements, reinforced with whale-bone supports and crystal glass mined from beneath the glaciers.
Their economy thrived on deep-sea fishing, particularly hunting massive leviathan fish known as Vaerlocs, whose blood glowed faintly blue and whose meat could feed entire villages for weeks. Skilled archers fired from atop icebergs into the black waters, their bows strung with tendon from glacier wolves.
But what defined the culture more than anything was precision—the art of stillness, of calm breath, of the one perfect shot.
Songs were rare. Smiles rarer.
But honor and history? Sacred.
Each child was trained in the way of the arrow, taught that one shot from the cold is worth a hundred in the heat.
At the highest peak of the continent, nestled within the fortress-city of Saer'Thal, ruled Queen Aralyra—the current bearer of the Red Lips crown, and daughter of the legendary Queen who had once imprisoned a sea demigod with her final breath.
Aralyra's lips were stained crimson in mourning, her eyes pale with wisdom and solitude. She was tall, elegant, and terrifying—every word she spoke carried the weight of sacrifice.
Beside her stood her right hand, a woman of fewer words and darker thoughts—General Maerin, chief strategist and protector of the royal line.
And beside her, the future of the land:
Princess Vaelith.
Fierce. Young. Untested. Her arrows struck like lightning, but her heart was still warm—something considered dangerous in these lands. Her defiance sparked against her mother's cold.
"We do not speak warmth," Aralyra once said. "We aim. And we release."
And so, when a vibration pulsed through the snowdrifts—when the air trembled as if some ancient drumbeat stirred beneath the ice—Kalaron the Silent Flame arrived in Saer'Thal.
He rode no beast. He walked.
Each step rippled sound through the ground—not noise, but resonance. The snowflakes shivered midair, caught in subtle frequencies. His black and red armor bore no furs, no symbols. Only smooth metal, forged to vibrate in harmony with his power.
The closer he came, the more uneasy the guards became. Even the ice beneath the fortress groaned, singing low hymns of warning.
Kalaron was not just strong—he was precision given form. The master of sound, able to slice with a whisper, to shatter bone with a hum, or silence a heart with a single vibration.
He had earned the title "The Silent Flame" not because he was quiet—
But because when he struck, it was always in the moment after silence.
Queen Aralyra awaited him in her throne of ice and bone. She heard his footsteps long before he arrived—not by echo, but by the resistance of the fortress walls to the unnatural sounds he carried with him.
"You do not belong here," she said, voice cool but curious.
"I belong wherever the trail of Lyssara leads," Kalaron replied.
"Speak plainly."
He raised his head. Behind the stillness of his expression, vibrations danced across his armor, quietly echoing his words in octaves unheard by human ears.
"I seek the daughter of Valtherion. Your people are precise—so you must know if she passed through here. I must find her. The King wills it. And I do not stop."
His words hung in the air—not loud, but heavy. The walls hummed, like tuning forks struck by unseen hands.
Meanwhile…
Far below, in the lower quarters of the capital, Korran Uldar—once known as the Bull of Serenia—stepped off a merchant vessel.
Cloaked in frostwolf fur, unshaven and silent, he looked up at the great glacier walls of Saer'Thal.
He had come to disappear.
But fate had other plans.
For the first eyes that met his were those of Princess Vaelith, from across the crowd.
They did not speak.
But the storm paused, just long enough, for something unspoken to pass between them.