FROST
Chapter 125: Into The Freezing World

Chapter 125: Into The Freezing World

The winter air clawed through the naked branches outside the Evermore estate, the trees groaning beneath the relentless weight of ice and wind.

Snow battered the windows like silent fists, and the skies above the forest hung heavy with slate-colored clouds, promising more of the same relentless cold.

Inside, the house creaked under winter’s touch. The halls whispered with every gust, as if the walls themselves held secrets too old and too fragile to speak aloud.

The warmth of the hearth in the main rooms did not reach the far corner of the house where a small, quiet room lay preserved in unnatural stillness.

Odette Evermore stood at the threshold, her gloved hand resting lightly against the doorframe, though she could not say why she had wandered there. The room—tucked neatly away behind a forgotten corridor—had not been entered in years as what she knew, and yet something had pulled her here that night, as the snow began to fall more aggressively with a whispering vengeance.

She stepped inside.

Her breath misted instantly, forming soft clouds that curled and vanished as quickly as they came. The cold here was deeper than elsewhere in the house, unnaturally so, like a memory sealed in frost.

And though the room was clean, the furniture polished, the floor swept—clearly someone had maintained it over the years—there was a distinct weight to the air, as if time itself had folded in on this place.

She turned in a slow circle, eyes trailing over the furnishings. A writing desk sat near the frost-glazed window, a vase of dried flowers—peonies, she thought, though she couldn’t recall why—perched solemnly upon it. A wardrobe stood in the corner, closed tight. A bed, neatly made, with a single plush rabbit resting against the pillows, seemed to wait in silence. Everything was arranged with care, with a tenderness she couldn’t place.

And yet, Odette remembered nothing of this room.

She furrowed her brow. There was no name that came to mind, no face, no voice to match the delicate handwriting on the notebook that rested beside the flowers. She could not recall who this space had belonged to, nor why her heart clenched as she stepped further in.

A heaviness sat at the base of her chest, sharp and unrelenting. A grief without a shape. A pain without a reason.

She reached out instinctively and touched the desk, fingers brushing against the smooth surface. The cold sank into her skin. And for a moment—just a flicker—an image danced in the back of her mind. A laugh, light as bells. A pair of silver eyes. Snow falling on dark hair.

But it vanished just as quickly, slipping away like a dream at dawn.

She withdrew her hand.

"I don’t know why I’m here," she murmured to herself, the sound of her voice oddly loud in the stillness. It cracked at the end, brittle and unfamiliar. Her gaze swept the room again, slower this time, searching for something—anything—that might fill the hollow echo rising in her chest.

There was nothing. And yet something was missing.

The thought drifted in unbidden, not as a realization but as a certainty. A part of her life—of herself—had been carved out, leaving behind only the shape of absence. This room, untouched and preserved, bore the outline of a ghost she no longer knew.

She did not remember Silvermist. Neither did anyone else.

Frost had seen to that. The woman who had once lived here had been erased so thoroughly that even love could not recall her. But the room remembered. The walls remembered. And beneath the surface of Odette’s composed exterior, her soul remembered.

She placed her hand to her chest, startled by the ache that bloomed there—sharp and unfamiliar, like a forgotten wound reopening without warning. It wasn’t physical pain, not entirely. It ran deeper, threading through the marrow of her bones, lodging in the quiet corners of her soul that had long gone undisturbed.

Odette stood frozen, her breath hitching in the cold air as the sensation spread, as though something—someone—was calling to her from beyond the veil of memory.

Outside, the wind wailed louder, its voice no longer sounding like mere weather, but a cry. A howl of something ancient. Something that had been waiting.

Far beyond the Evermore estate—past the towering iron gates, over the frostbitten hills and quiet fields shrouded in snow—something stirred in response.

The winter storm grew more violent the farther one traveled from civilization. Blizzards rose like walls, battering against the trees with merciless hands. The sky darkened as if night had bled into day. No eyes could reach the place where the wind was leading—no roads mapped, no voices spoken of it. It was a place untouched by human fear or curiosity. A place even wild beasts did not tread.

There, hidden beyond the sleeping city and cloaked in an enchanted silence, lay a vast, forgotten forest. The trees grew ancient and twisted, their blackened limbs now smothered beneath thick layers of snow. And nestled deep within this virgin woodland was a cave, concealed by thorned, frost-encrusted bushes and the illusion of impassable terrain.

No light shone upon its entrance. No sound escaped it.

But once inside, the air shifted.

Despite the ice clinging to the walls outside, a strange warmth began to seep into the atmosphere as one ventured deeper into the cavern. The passage narrowed into a winding corridor, descending further and further into the earth, as if spiraling toward the heart of something old and restless.

Eventually, the narrow path opened into a vast, cavernous chamber so large the ceiling disappeared into darkness. The warmth here was heavy, stifling even, thick with the scent of scorched iron and something sweetly metallic—like old blood baked into stone.

In the center of that darkness sat a throne.

It was carved from ice, but it did not shimmer or glow. Instead, the frozen structure pulsed with veins of obsidian and veins of crimson, as though something within it still lived and breathed. The throne rose from a dais of black stone, jagged and cruel, more natural formation than crafted seat—like a fang driven into the world itself.

And upon it sat a figure.

His hair, once luminous silver, now bore strands of deepening dusk, the color slowly bleeding toward shadow. His long lashes, once pale like moonlight, had darkened like soot. His skin was as pale as ash, yet his very presence emitted an oppressive heat, a contradiction that bent logic to its will.

He leaned lazily against the armrest of his throne, one long-fingered hand curled beneath his jaw, as though in thought or bored anticipation.

His eyes were closed, but shadows swirled around him—tendrils of pure darkness that slithered like smoke and breathed like beasts. They whispered in hushed tongues, in languages long dead and lost to the world above. But he understood every word.

He always did.

Fires floated midair throughout the chamber, flickering in hues of sickly orange and green, their flames dancing like candlelight trapped underwater.

Yet these flames cast no light upon him. Their glow was swallowed before it could ever touch his skin, as though even the fire dared not reveal the truth of what he was becoming.

Then, without sound or warning, the fires quivered. The temperature dropped by a fraction.

And four figures appeared before the throne, cloaked in shadows, dropping silently to one knee in unison.

They knelt without a word, as though summoned by an unspoken command. Their forms were vaguely humanoid, though whether they were elf, demon, or something else entirely was unclear beneath the layers of fabric and aura.

The one at the front—a tall elf with a jagged scar cutting across his cheekbone—lowered his head respectfully. His voice was low, devoid of emotion.

"No signs of her in this realm, my lord."

It was the same elf Professor Cedric and Professor Bramble had once encountered, though his face was now partially obscured by a dark veil. Something about him had shifted since that day. Something darker.

The other three remained silent, still kneeling, heads bowed. Their loyalty was evident not in words but in posture—unmoving, unwavering.

For a long moment, there was no reply. Only the sound of the shadows breathing, twisting in the air like slow, circling vultures.

Then, he stirred.

His eyes opened.

Crimson light pierced the dark, not merely reflecting but emanating, burning through the gloom like molten rubies. And as his lips curved into a slow, deliberate grin, two elongated fangs caught the glow of the fires—white and sharp like polished bone.

"Very well..." he murmured, the words like silk dipped in venom.

His voice carried no anger. No urgency. Only delight. As though the hunt had just begun.

---

Wind roared past her ears as she crashed through the wreckage of a broken spell barrier, rolling to her feet with the fluid grace born only of desperation and instinct.

The ground beneath Silvermist’s boots cracked, scorched with the remnants of their last collision. Her chest heaved, the taste of iron heavy in her mouth. Every bone in her body throbbed from impact, but she couldn’t stop—wouldn’t stop.

Silvershadow stood across from her, untouched by fatigue like an apprentice-born like she is... although Silvermist could already see her fingers trembling as they wrapped around her spear.

Her presence was like a void—soaked in silence, eyes gleaming like twin mirrors of the abyss. Her form flickered with each movement, as if the world itself struggled to hold her in place. She was not just fast—she was unreal from the very beginning. Her speed although slowed, yet Silvermist still had a hard time following it.

Silvermist spat blood to the side, then drew her stance tighter. Her hands pulsed with raw, flickering mana, glowing faintly silver and white-blue, but it felt... wrong. She’s already nearing her limits and yet she did so much as to leave a scratch on Silvershadow’s cheek.

"Is this all the prodigy of Frost has to offer?" Silvershadow’s voice slithered through the air—mocking, inhuman, and echoing too many times for just one throat. "You kept me here for too long and yet you haven’t even taken me down for real! You’re wasting my time, you cretin!"

Silvermist didn’t answer. She had no breath to waste on her. With a sharp cry, she launched herself forward, encased in a prism of glimmering frost. Each step sent jagged spikes erupting from the ground, lashing toward Silvershadow like ice-forged serpents. She aimed high, striking fast, the air around her crackling with concentrated force.

But she moved through her magic like mist—like names carved in water. One moment she stood within her range, and the next, she was behind her, fingers already closing around the nape of her neck.

Silvermist twisted mid-air, her instincts overriding pain as she unleashed a surge of freezing pressure. The explosion of cold hurled them both apart—an eruption of raw force that cracked the ground beneath.

She landed hard, skidding across jagged stone, breath ragged and arms shaking from the effort. Her vision blurred at the edges, but she forced herself to focus—blinking through the haze just in time to see Silvershadow emerge from the mist of frost, standing in the exact same place.

Unmoved. Unshaken.

Still.

Utterly unbothered.

But something was... different.

Silvermist’s gaze narrowed, catching the subtle shift—Silvershadow’s hair, her chestnut brown, had grown lighter. Not from the frost. Not from light. The transformation was unnatural, slow, yet undeniable. Strands of blonde shimmered through her locks like gold bleeding into ink.

A sharp instinct twisted in Silvermist’s chest.

She looked down—her breath hitching.

Her own silver-white hair, the frost-kissed signature this very woman turned her, was darkening.

No. Not just darkening—it was turning to ash. The pure winter hue fading into shadow, as if something within her was being undone.

Her heart pounded in her ears. She looked back up at Silvershadow, who stood motionless, expression unreadable beneath the pale glow of suspended firelight.

"She’s weakening," Silvermist muttered. "I-I’ll win this fight."