They rose like pale tombstones against a dying sun, their ridges carved by centuries of storm and silence. Travelers spoke of whispers carried on the wind — words that froze the soul and beckoned the lost toward places they should never tread.

He had not come seeking legend. Only survival.

His cloak hung in tatters, his fingers blackened from frost. Hunger had hollowed his face to bone, yet still he climbed. Each breath was a blade in his chest, each step a defiance of reason. When at last he found the cave — a gash in the mountain’s side — he stumbled into it like a dying man into a grave.

Inside, there was no warmth. Only stillness.

The air shimmered faintly, filled with a brittle cold that bit deeper than the wind outside. The walls glistened with veins of frost that twisted into unfamiliar symbols, glowing faintly with their own pallid light. It was beautiful, and wrong.

He pressed deeper, desperate for shelter, until the cold began to creep through his veins. His heartbeat slowed. His breath faltered. The world tilted.

And then — a voice.

Do not fear the cold, wanderer.”

The sound did not come from behind or before. It came from everywhere — from within the frost, the stone, the marrow of his bones. It was calm. Ancient. Almost kind.

“You are dying,” it murmured, “but death is not yet what waits for you.”

He turned in panic, his eyes searching the darkness. A shimmer stirred near the far wall, like moonlight beneath ice. Slowly, impossibly, it gathered shape — the faint outline of a man wrought from mist and frost, tall and indistinct, his eyes burning with a dim blue fire.

“Who… who are you?” he whispered.

“Kaldreth.”

The name cracked through the air like breaking ice. It echoed in his mind. It sounded very familiar, but yet it did not. 

“Once I was many things,” said the voice. “Now I am only silence. You have found what others feared to seek. And for that… I offer you a choice.”

The wanderer’s breath trembled in his throat. The figure drifted closer, its presence both soothing and suffocating.

 “You crave warmth. Food. Wagherons enough to make men bow at your feet. You wish for the hatred for your kind to go away”

He said nothing. His thoughts came sluggish and slow, like ice breaking on a frozen river.

“Help me,” the voice continued, “and your desires will be yours. All I ask in return… is your hand.”

He didn’t understand. But the cold had reached his heart now, and reason had long fled. He nodded once, too desperate to question.

The cavern shook. Frost surged up from the ground, crawling up his arms in luminous tendrils. The pain was sharp and fleeting — then gone, replaced by a weight, a pulse, a presence not his own.

“It is done,” the voice said. “Do not fear what follows.”

Light burst from the walls — cold, blinding, pure — and then all was still.

When he opened his eyes, he lay at the cave’s mouth. The storm had vanished. The sky above was clear, awash in pale dawn. His pack was full of gold that glowed faintly blue.

On his hand, a mark shimmered like frost beneath the skin.

He did not yet know it was alive.

And deep within the mountain, far beyond sound or sight, something ancient rolled.