The air was razor-cold.
Corren stood at the edge of the Mirrorchasm, a rift in the glacier that dropped so deep, even the wind refused to enter. Snowflakes hovered above the darkness like they were afraid to fall.
He knelt, brushing snow off an old stone slab carved with a spiral rune — not emberstone, but something older. Something colder.
His shadow curled around it.
Then the stone began to hum.
Corren stepped back as cracks formed along the slab. Faint blue light pulsed from underneath — not firelight, but frostlight.
Then… the ground split.
And the Frozen Gate rose.
It was huge — two towers of jagged crystal, carved with symbols that flickered between ice blue and faint violet.
A blast of cold wind hit Corren like a wall.
Whispers echoed inside his mind:
"Five cannot hold what was once six…""The frost remembers…""…and it is hungry."
He clenched his fists.
Then a figure appeared within the gate — made of silver ice and mist, cloaked in long flowing frost, face hidden behind a broken mirror-mask.
It did not speak.
It only watched.
Then vanished.
Corren didn't flinch. He whispered to the shadows, "It's starting."
He stepped closer to the gate.
It didn't open.
But the symbols on its surface shifted. One of them — a sixth rune — flashed for a heartbeat before fading again.
He drew it in his notebook, and turned to leave.
But something followed him.
A long trail of ice creeping across his own shadow.
🌬️ Meanwhile… high above
Serin flew over the Northern Teeth — sharp mountains of white crystal that howled with unnatural wind.
Suddenly, the air pushed back. Not in anger, but in fear.
Even the wind didn't want her near the Mirrorchasm.
She gripped her staff.
"Corren's there," she said to herself. "And wherever he goes, the darkness goes too."
🔥 At the same time
Kael's skyship broke through cloud cover.
He felt his emberstone pulse faintly.
Not warm.
Not hot.
But dim.
As if the flame inside was… shrinking.
Far away, in the forgotten halls of the frozen deep, the masked figure knelt before an ancient throne of shattered ice.
A single word was carved into the ice:
"VYRN"
The mask whispered…
"Soon."