Baekjoseon, Year of the Snake, Fifth Winter
"The warmth of the sun departed without farewell.Time halted in the cracking of ice.And the world, as they once knew it, became a pale grave."
Five winters had passed since the crown prince was born.Five winters without thaw, without reprieve, without sun.Five years of unbroken snow, of days that were no longer days, but pale mirages beneath an ashen sky. And the people of the kingdom, teetering on the edge of madness, had begun to speak of a prince who embodied a calamity. A word that came from the Empire. From the exorcists who crossed the border.
The temple bells had fallen silent. The scholars had ceased to give answers. The monks cast their eyes downward. And the people, little by little, began to write their own religion—one where the sacrifice of the blind child would summon the sun's return.
The migratory birds did not come back.The flowers had become crystal buds crying out for fire—if fire still remained anywhere.In the south, where once the sun had reigned, the fields had fossilized into white grimaces. Villagers dug deep pits hoping to find water beneath the petrified snow. Mothers wrapped their children in rags and prayed to the Great Spirits who no longer answered. Hunger was a silent demon. It slept in their beds and rose with the roosters.
The rice paddies died at the root, drawing in Ming traders who sold their harvests with ruthless greed.The villages emptied.Women buried children wrapped in frozen blankets. And dogs began to gnaw on corpses in the corners. In Seohan, the capital, the walls of the Palace of White Ash were the only ones still standing. But even wood trembles when the people roar.
The people no longer prayed. They cursed.They cursed the heavens, the ministers, the generals... and the child: the Prince of Ice.The one born amid a storm that blanketed even the statues of the Great Spirits.The one who did not cry at birth.The one who brought winter with him.
"It's because of him!" the widows cried, tearing their hair in the square, pointing rigid fingers at the Royal Palace."Cursed be the heir!" bellowed the elders, spit freezing in their beards."Kill him! Kill him, and the sun will return!"
In Baekjoseon, cold was no longer a season. It was punishment.The sky, a shroud of gray clouds that never parted.The wind, an invisible blade that split skin until it bled.The snow fell with the slowness of a lifelong sentence, covering rooftops sagging under the weight of ice, roads leading nowhere, and bodies lying still beneath frost-laced blankets.
The North, however, in the shadow of mountains and imperial walls—where even before winter, the nights had been long but warm—learned to endure. They chewed on leather and dried meat. They burned their own floorboards to survive.
They did not weep.They did not beg.They waited.
For in the lands of the North, shaped by the whispers of imperial reformists, it was said there would be no end to winter until the fire beneath the ice rose again. That the child was a seal. Or a key.
There, in caverns where spiritual energies still danced, the exorcists of Ming—sent by the Emperor—whispered to the ghosts of the past, seeking strength and answers.
But in the heart of the nation, women had lost their faith.They set themselves ablaze before the Royal Palace, screaming the names of sons taken by the cold.The sick died in the streets.Ministers were pelted with burning coal as they rode in palanquins through the Palace of White Ash. Royal soldiers were struck with stones wrapped in rice paper bearing a single word: Traitors.
There were attempts to breach the palace walls.Knives hidden in rice carts.A maid caught with poison in her sleeve.And every night, the people whispered the same thing:"Let the child be sacrificed to the Great Spirits. Let the child die. Let the sun return."
But the sun did not return. Five years had been too long. The people could bear no more.They refused to accept eternal winter.
And behind the pale jade walls of the Palace of White Ash, Queen Consort Yun Min held a sleeping child in arms that no longer knew warmth. Her eyes, like those of the people, brimmed with fear—not for the child she held, but for what he might become if consumed by the hatred of his nation.
Because she knew the unrest would not remain within Baekjoseon.The rumor of the White Eye would soon reach the Emperor's ears.
And so, one night…Grand Councilor Yun, seeing the kingdom on the brink of collapse, chose to act alone.He consulted the sealed tomes, the forgotten names, the lost invocations.And without the king's approval, he sought out a Great Spirit.One who could erase. One who could silence.
On a moonless dusk beneath a cruel gray sky, the councilor crept into the Temple of Truth. There, beneath the symbols of the Silent World, he enacted his plan to save the crown prince—and the nation.
The ritual chamber of the Temple of Truth—a subterranean hall carved from black jade, sealed for generations—opened for him alone.
Grand Councilor Yun, clad in the ceremonial hanbok of white scales embroidered with the inverted phoenix, descended the damp stairs with the gravity of a man stepping into a bottomless abyss. At his side, trembling, walked a young servant, no more than sixteen winters, unaware of the role he was about to play.
At the center of the chamber, five iron braziers burned with blue flames, fed by petrified salt and pine branches from the North. The air reeked of dried blood, old iron, and consecrated ash. Around the ritual circle, five masks of sacred beasts—Rainbow Dragon, Azure Tiger, White Serpent, Golden Tortoise, and Silver Crane—watched silently from above, witnesses to the judgment about to unfold.
Yun stepped into the circle's center, where the floor was made of carved crystal etched with ancient inscriptions that glowed faintly with his breath. Beneath the jealous gaze of the night, he closed his eyes to ignite his jujeong, forming a seal with the fingers of one hand. Then, in a deep voice, he chanted the sacred words from the Book of Spiritual Moons, a chant only one with enough spiritual cultivation could utter:
"Wise spirit, beast of justice, guardian of balance between man and divine, good and evil…Awaken from your slumber, and open your eyes to mortal corruption."
The young servant tried to step back, but Yun grabbed his arm.With the calm of one who had killed before, he unsheathed the ceremonial dagger: a curved obsidian blade, forged with the bone of an exorcist and etched with imperial runes.
"Forgive me, child," Yun whispered, without the slightest tremor."The future depends on this. Yi Hwan must reign—at any cost."
The blade pierced the boy's chest in a single motion.The body fell forward. Blood spilled into the center of the crystal circle, staining the runes and lighting the stone with an impossible red glow. There was no scream—only the dull thud of the body hitting the ground.
The air cracked.A fissure opened in the floor with a sound that did not belong to the physical world.Blue smoke spiraled upward, and from it emerged the silhouette of the Haetae.
Majestic. Terrifying.
Its body was that of a giant lion clad in armored scales. Its limbs, thick as pillars, left dark marks wherever they stepped. A single silver horn curved from its forehead, and its eyes burned like hellfire—a perfect balance between the fire of judgment and the yoke of punishment. Its mane floated like white smoke, whispering in forgotten tongues.
The Haetae sniffed the air.It looked at the smoldering corpse.Then turned its head toward the councilor.
"Who lies in this land?" it roared, without opening its mouth.The voice rang inside Yun's skull like a broken bell.
"The people," he replied solemnly."They have forgotten their duty, their faith, their history. They curse the heir and the winter, when both are needed to preserve the peace between worlds."
"And what do you offer?" thundered the Haetae, stepping closer. Each footfall cracked the floor.
"I offer my soul… and their memories. Erase them.Erase the sun from their dreams.Erase spring from their prayers and the omen of calamity.Let them remember only snow, cold, and the heir who will bring the Dawn's Sun."
The Haetae did not answer.It raised its gaze to the temple's ceiling—carved from stone—and roared with the force of a fierce and destructive storm.
The sound surged underground, racing through the Royal Palace, across fields and villages, forests and coasts. And in that moment, as if a frost had touched their hearts, men and women—children and elders, wherever they were—forgot the warmth of the sun.Newborns in the shadows no longer cried for what they had never known.Scholars ceased speaking of the past.
And so, with a single sacrifice and a summoned beast, history was rewritten.
Yun collapsed to his knees, trembling—not from fear, but from what he knew he had just done: bound an entire nation to eternal winter. But he also knew the price was small if it meant keeping Chaos at bay.
And the Haetae, like a ghost, vanished into a flurry of black and white ash, leaving behind only a fleeting echo that tingled on the winter breeze until it faded:"I will return for you."
***
Grand Councilor Yun Daechang climbed the Temple of Truth's stairs, shoulders hunched beneath the weight of what he had done. In the frozen air, the scent of the last spring still drifted, a veil between this world and the next.
The sacred creature had fulfilled its purpose: the people's memory had dissolved like ink in water.
Outside, the world was white and silent.
Until a voice broke it.
"You have woven forgetting like one who stitches a shroud," someone said, from the frost-laced mist of dawn.
The councilor looked up.
A hooded figure stood in the path, where frostbound cherry trees still bore their sleeping blossoms. The face was hidden in shadow. The robe black as night, as if swallowing light.A single ember glowed beneath the sleeve: a thread of fire, half extinguished.
"Who are you?" Daechang asked, voice tight.
"It is not me you should fear," the figure replied."The winter you sealed… will melt.And when it does, there will be no refuge for you.Not in the palace halls, nor in the cracks of time."
Daechang frowned. He stepped forward—But the figure was gone.
A gust of wind scattered the frost on the ground.Only a single smoldering footprint remained in the snow.
Yun Daechang stood frozen.For a moment, the cold did not seem to come from outside—but from deep within his own chest.
It can't be... He is...