They stood at the dock, boots crunching on frost-slicked wood, sails groaning gently in the sea wind. The salt mingled with ice in the air, sharp as steel and twice as bitter. Snow fell in soft spirals, almost peaceful, masking the cold truth beneath.
Ahab stood at the edge, hands clasped behind his back, his coat snapping like a banner of defiance. His eyes were locked on the horizon, where sea met mist and the world seemed to end.
Then, with a voice that cracked through the chill like thunder through fog, he barked, "Prep The Leviathan! We sail before dusk!"
The crew moved like gears in a well-oiled machine, hoisting barrels, checking rigging, grumbling curses and sea shanties in equal measure. Kalindra strode with purpose across the gangplank, her hips swaying like a storm about to crash, shouting orders that made even the laziest deckhands snap to attention.
Even Pecks, the ever-snide parrot, flapped into the air and squawked, "Back to the briny deep, boys! Let's find us some cursed misery!"
Barrels slammed into place. Ropes were tightened. The ice-crusted anchor groaned as it was drawn up from the waters below.
None asked why they were chasing a myth. None questioned the danger or the curse. Because to men like them, the threat of death was a lullaby, and the lure of ancient secrets a song they could never resist.
And above it all, The Leviathan creaked and groaned like a beast long asleep but hungry again.
Ahab turned once more to the map, its lines still burning into his mind. The first clue—etched deep near the edges of Mount Vardegraaf, the Cradle of Storm-ice—awaited.
For twelve days and thirteen nights, The Leviathan carved its path across the glacial tides of the Frost Reign Seas. Beneath its keel, the waters groaned—thick as oil, black as ink, and riddled with floating shards of ancient ice, each larger than the ship herself. The sky above rarely cleared, painted with the bruised colors of a dying storm, and at night, the auroras danced like the last souls fleeing the curse of the north.
On the second day, they passed Aegir's Spine, a stretch of sea scattered with jagged rocks shaped like the vertebrae of some long-dead leviathan. Sea birds refused to fly over it. The fog grew thicker, and the compasses spun, their needles lost like thoughts in madness.
On the fifth night, a rain of black snow fell. The flakes melted not into water but into soot, leaving streaks of ash across the sails and deck. The crew worked in silence, eyes darting to the clouds that never once offered thunder. Only a low hum, deep in the bones of the ship, reminded them the sea here was watching.
By the eighth day, they reached the Dead Mirror, a stretch of ocean so still, the water perfectly reflected the sky—except the reflections moved wrong. Sometimes slower. Sometimes faster. Once, a crewman dropped a bucket and watched its mirrored twin fall upward before vanishing into nothing. They did not speak of it again.
On the ninth day, they glimpsed the Glacial Sirens—not creatures, but formations of twisted icebergs along the horizon, shaped like mourning women with faces frozen in screams. The ship slowed. The winds died. And for six hours, they drifted through the haunted field, the creaking of the ice echoing like whispers between tombstones.
The eleventh night brought the Midnight Maw, a whirlpool that formed without warning beneath a pale full moon. The sea churned with glowing blue veins—like bioluminescent veins under flesh. The Leviathan leaned hard to starboard, sails trembling, ropes snapping, but she held her course. Behind them, the maw closed silently, as though it had never been. Then, on the thirteenth morning, a cry rang from the crow's nest. Land.
They had arrived at the edges of Mount Vardegraaf—a jagged, snow-choked mountain rising from the sea like the fang of an ancient god. Its peak was crowned with a halo of stormclouds, lightning crackling without thunder. Glaciers spilled down its sides like frozen rivers of time, and at its base, a narrow fjord waited, veiled in mist and riddled with sharp, skeletal rocks.
The fjord swallowed them whole. Sailing into the jaws of Mount Vardegraaf's base, The Leviathan slipped between cliff walls that rose like cathedral pillars—etched by wind, time, and something far older. The mist grew thick, curling like fingers across the deck, brushing against cheeks and skin like it was tasting them. The wind stopped. No birds. No waves.
Just the sound of the ship's hull groaning, the creak of ancient ice shifting above, and the faint drip of water from icicles longer than spears.
They dropped anchor in silence. The crew rowed toward the narrow outcropping where the glacier met stone. The frozen shore was treacherous—sharp and slick, carved by time and haunted by memory. The ice underfoot was not merely cold; it was angry. Every step echoed too loud. Every breath misted too slow. Above them, Mount Vardegraaf loomed.
Its cliffs wept slow rivulets of black water, and strange growths of blue moss pulsed faintly beneath the ice. Caverns gaped open in its sides like mouths, and spires of rock curled upward like frozen claws. Wind moaned through the peaks, howling down in tones that mimicked human voices—lost sailors, fallen kings, wailing widows. They climbed.
Three days up the icy spine of the mountain, guided only by the brittle map Faerin's ancestors had scrawled in ink and blood. Ropes froze. Fingers bled. Snow fell in sheets so dense it was like walking inside a dying star.
They passed the Icebound Graves—stone markers jutting from the snow, each bearing weapons fused to them by frost. Knights of the old kingdoms, adventurers, madmen. Their armor glittered beneath the frost like beetle shells, their faces hidden beneath centuries of white silence.
They crossed the Singing Bridge, a narrow stretch of ice spanning two cliffs. As they walked, the wind beneath it made the ice hum—each step a different note. A morbid melody born of weight and death. One crewman looked down into the abyss and swore he saw faces in the chasm staring back.
By the fifth day, they reached the first waypoint—a half-buried shrine built into the mountain, swallowed by snow and time. Symbols carved in a forgotten tongue shimmered faintly in the dark, reacting to their presence. One of the glyphs pulsed red when touched, melting a doorway open into the heart of the glacier. Inside, a frozen world awaited.
Walls of living ice reflected not their bodies, but their fears—each man seeing something different in the mirrored frost. The air was thicker. Colder. Reality felt thinner. Whispers swirled around them, like voices trapped in the crystal.
A tunnel spiraled down. Torches flickered. Their breath became fog, their limbs moved heavy, their hearts thundered louder than their steps.
Deeper into the glacial tomb, The Leviathan crew descended, each step echoing like a heartbeat in the hollows of a dead god.
The spiral tunnel led into an immense glacier crypt, a cathedral of frozen sorrow, where colossal statues of ancient kings stood entombed in clear ice. Their eyes hollow. Their mouths agape in silent agony. Snow coated their crowns, and icicles hung like fangs from their beards. Beneath their feet sprawled shattered weapons and broken shields, locked in ice as if mid-battle had frozen in time. The walls were alive.
Veins of blue frost pulsed in the ice, crawling like serpents under glass. They twisted in patterns—runes perhaps—leading to the Veinheart, a frozen orb half-buried in the center of the crypt. It pulsed like a dying star, casting faint light across the vault. Etched on its surface were symbols not found on any known tongue, old even by the standards of myth.
And then came the whispers. Not from the frost. From within it. Ahab clenched his jaw, gripping the hilt of his sword as the frost-hymn clawed into his mind—images of burning ships, of Kalindra weeping blood, of his crew crucified on spires of ice. Visions of a throne of snow where a skeletal king sat crowned in thorns.
Each man fell to his knees. Except Faerin. The old scholar staggered forward, touched the Veinheart with a trembling hand. The orb cracked. A burst of icy wind howled through the crypt, extinguishing all torches. And something stirred. The floor split open.
A subterranean river, frozen solid, lay beneath—a glacier river long buried. Inside it, the frozen remains of beasts unknown to modern world: serpents with feathered fins, bears with three jaws, and humanoid creatures with elongated limbs, staring blankly through frost with open mouths as if dying mid-scream.
They followed the river. Sliding on ice. Dragging gear. Shivering not from cold, but from the realization—they were walking on a burial stream. A path carved by ancient civilizations who drowned their sins in ice. The deeper they went, the older it became.
Structures emerged from the frost. Archways. Staircases. Obelisks etched with warnings. Cities swallowed by avalanches, where buildings tilted under tons of snow. They passed through the Howling Choir, a wind tunnel that sang with the voice of every traveler who died here. Echoes twisted into maddened laughs, sobs, and roars.
They passed the Witch's Veil, a fogged glacier field said to be cursed. The mist within did not obey time. Some emerged feeling younger. Others older. One man aged decades in minutes. Another lost his voice forever. No fire stayed lit long. No compass worked. No god answered their prayers.
And yet, onward they trudged—toward the second clue etched in Faerin's map. Toward a ruin deep beneath the Crown of Ice, the northernmost summit of the Frost Reign Regions, where even stars seemed to fear looking down.
Ahab gathered them beneath a jagged overhang of glacial stone, a wind-shielded hollow in the blizzard's maw. Their makeshift campfire sputtered, barely more than a flickering glow among frostbitten faces and shivering limbs. They sat in a ragged circle, cloaked in furs stiff with frost, breath misting like phantoms around them.
He stared into the embers for a long time, jaw clenched, boots soaked from the trek through black ice rivers and whispering ruins. The flames reflected in his tired eyes—eyes no longer full of ambition, but rimmed with quiet loathing.
"For what?" Ahab muttered, finally.
No one replied. He looked around at them—at Kalindra, once fierce and fire-eyed, now silent, her lips pale, hands trembling beneath layers of hide. At Faerin, his skin sallow, map stained and cracked from the cold. At the crew, men who once roared with laughter on the sea, now dull-eyed and hollowed by exhaustion.
"All this," Ahab said, his voice cutting through the silence like a dull blade. "Weeks... in this frozen abyss. Cursed rivers. Ghost cities. Starving wolves in the snow. And what do we hold in our hands?" He opened his gloved palms, empty, trembling. "Nothing."
Snowflakes fell between the gaps in their circle, hissing softly as they met the meager flame.
"I believed in something," he growled. "A prophecy. Gold. Glory. A cure. Something. Anything."
He kicked the fire, sending a spray of sparks into the air. Kalindra flinched. "But it's all ice. Lies frozen into stories. Myths born in madness."
The silence stretched, heavy. Even Pecks, the parrot, who had never shut up once in his squawking life, said nothing. He merely turned his head and looked at Ahab with one beady, unblinking eye.
"I dragged us all here chasing wind in a blizzard," Ahab muttered, softer now. "We found veins of the past, sure. Frozen gods, dead kings, cursed tombs... But not a single answer. Not one key to the frost's damn curse."