The mountain wind howled like a wounded beast as Ais stood on the precipice of the northernmost cliff, her cape whipping around her slender frame like a banner torn by battle. The cold bit into her skin, but she did not flinch. She had grown used to it—no, she had become one with it. Yet beneath her frosted exterior, something else stirred. Something warm. Something ancient.
Behind her, the Temple of Scales loomed like a broken spine against the pale sky, its obsidian spires swallowed by ice and memory. Within it lay lessons that would haunt her dreams for months. Trials that had left scars not only on her body but on her spirit. But she had passed. She had endured. She had faced illusions that preyed upon her deepest regrets and horrors that twisted the truth into unbearable visions. She had screamed in silence, bled in stillness, and walked alone through echoes of her past.
And now, she was no longer alone.
Kain and Mireya stood a few paces behind her. The former, a quiet warrior of the Emerald Wastes, bore the weight of silence with grace. His twin swords were sheathed but never out of reach, and the faded brands on his arms told stories he never voiced. His gaze carried the wisdom of battles won and lost, of friends buried and honor paid in blood. Mireya, on the other hand, shimmered like moonlight caught in motion. Her voice could charm fire into dancing or ice into cracking. A sky-sorceress of the forgotten winged folk, her very presence seemed to defy gravity. Her wings, once severed in exile, now flickered like auroras against the bleakness around them.
"We can't stay here much longer," Kain said, voice low, steady. "Storm's closing in. The winds are turning unnatural."
Ais didn't move. Her eyes remained fixed on the valley below—a black scar carved through the snow-laden land. The Frostdeep Rift.
"It's not the storm we should fear," she said quietly. "It's what's waiting in the depths."
Mireya stepped closer, pulling her feathered shawl tighter. "You believe the rumors then? That the Rift still burns beneath all this ice?"
Ais turned finally, her golden and blue eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. "I don't believe. I know."
A Kingdom in Ruin
The descent into the Rift was more treacherous than they'd anticipated. Cracks in the frozen ground spewed mist and fumes like the breath of sleeping dragons. The air grew thick with tension, with the knowledge that they stepped where none dared go. As they moved lower, warmth began to rise unnaturally from the fissures. The snow no longer fell; it hissed into vapor before it could land.
Ais led the way, her footsteps precise, instinctual. She knew this path—not from memory, but from something deeper. A pull within her blood. A tether that bound her to this place. Her fingers occasionally grazed stone walls that shimmered with frostfire glyphs, as if her very touch awakened them from long slumber.
"I've read about this chasm," Mireya whispered, her fingers tracing the ancient runes carved into the stone walls. "Long ago, it was the site of the Pyrefrost Accord. A meeting place of fire and ice. It shouldn't exist anymore. It was supposed to have collapsed after—"
"After my birth," Ais finished, her voice flat.
Kain's brow furrowed. "What are you saying?"
She turned to face them, her eyes more storm than sky now. "This place broke when I came into the world. The balance was undone. Fire and ice were never meant to exist in the same vessel. Yet… here I am."
The silence that followed was not awkward—it was reverent, edged with awe and fear.
The Heart of the Rift
As they moved deeper, strange structures emerged—half-melted towers buried in permafrost, bridges that glowed with buried flame. The hallways twisted impossibly, defying logic, as if the elements themselves had been at war and forgotten who they once served. Ais led them into what looked like a grand hall now overrun by crystalized ash and steam.
At its center stood a pedestal, cracked and humming faintly. Upon it rested a circlet forged of obsidian and emberglass, pulsing with an unnatural rhythm.
Ais approached it, her breath shallow.
"This is it," Mireya said, stepping forward. "The Embercrown. One of the three Regalia of the Twin Powers. They say only one born of both elements can wield it."
Without hesitation, Ais reached out. The metal sizzled as it touched her skin, and for a heartbeat, the entire hall was drowned in light.
She saw visions.
A throne of flame, a river of frost. Screaming voices. Betrayals yet to come. A great dragon, half-ice and half-fire, chained in a mountain. A woman with burning eyes holding a shattered sword. A city swallowed by a tidal wave of frozen flame.
Then, darkness.
When the light faded, the crown rested on her head. And Ais stood taller.
More than a queen in exile.
Now, a beacon of wrath and hope.
Ashes of a Forgotten War
They camped that night within the ruined hall, building a fire from dry stonewood and old kindling found in a collapsed storeroom. Kain took first watch, his eyes never leaving the icy entryway. Mireya slept, her magic cocooning her in a faint aura.
Ais sat apart, fingers tracing the crown now secured to her belt. It throbbed with warmth that was both comforting and terrifying.
She remembered the vision. The dragon. The chains.
And a voice—deep, ancient—whispering: "The First Flame sleeps beneath your feet. Wake it, and the world burns. Leave it, and the frost will never end."
She didn't yet know what it meant. Only that her journey had just shifted from reclaiming a throne to deciding the fate of the very balance of the realm. She could feel the pressure of destiny forming like ice against her spine, and fire within her chest refusing to be quenched.
In the morning, the sky was black.
Smoke.
Kain saw it first, rising from the horizon in thick, greasy plumes. A village was burning.
They ran. Through snow and steam. Over creaking bridges and across frozen ravines. When they reached the edge of the forest, the sight froze them in place.
An outpost. Once part of the Northern Watch. Now charred and broken. Bodies littered the snow, twisted in agony.
Among the wreckage stood a woman, cloaked in crimson, her hands aflame. The fire did not consume her—it danced around her as if it obeyed her very breath. Her hair, a cascade of red and gold, flickered like the embers of a dying sun.
When she turned, her eyes met Ais's.
Not anger. Not fear.
Recognition.
And then the woman smiled.
"Sister," she said.