The sky above Frostholm never truly brightened, even on the most forgiving mornings. The town lived under a permanent curtain of pale clouds, a hush that felt almost respectful. For weeks, scouts reported the city as "silent," "unchanged," "weirdly pristine." As if the air itself were holding its breath.
At first light, it stopped holding anything at all.
A crack split the horizon—thin as a hairline fracture on glass—and every bird for a hundred kilometers burst upward at once. The tremor that followed was not the rumbling of the earth but the deep, resonant thud of something ancient waking.
Then Frostholm bloomed.
Blue light erupted from the center of the city in a jagged sphere, expanding faster than sound. It was no flame; it was a pulse, a shockwave of condensed cold, a dragon's breath carved into magic. The world flickered white-blue-white, the color of dying stars, and the ground howled as the shockwave raced outward in every direction.
In Reflynne—hundreds of kilometers south—the explosion arrived as a sudden snap in the air. Citizens felt their lungs tighten before their minds even understood what was happening. Frost crept across the canals like sprinting serpents. Windows shattered into powder, lanterns snuffed out mid-flicker, and boats capsized as frozen water bent upward in violent, unnatural shapes.
The partial freeze hit the market first.
A mother carrying vegetables froze mid-step, breath crystallizing in front of her lips before she collapsed sideways. A fisherman slumped against a wall, eyes wide, coated in a sheen of biting blue ice. Several children playing along the canal screamed at the sight of their own skin paling, veins turning bright silver beneath the flesh.
Panic tore through the city.
"Move! Keep moving! Get indoors, now!" shouted an adventurer, his voice cracking under the cold burning his throat.
Another screamed, "Healers! We need healers on the east canal!"
Reflynne had weathered wars. It had survived Valerian assassins, rogue beasts, and magical anomalies. But none of those felt like this. This was foreign. Evolving. Alive.
And unnatural cold was far crueler than fire.
Across the canal, the purification squad was already sprinting. Yoshiya was at the head of the pack, coat thrown over one shoulder, hair swept by the freezing wind.
"Clear a path!" he shouted.
He knelt beside the first victim—a dwarven courier whose arms had blistered with pale frost. Yoshiya pressed both palms on the dwarf's chest, fingers trembling but steady. Light—not warm, but cleansing—poured out from his hands and sank into the man's skin. The frost shivered, hissed, then evaporated in radiant motes.
The dwarf gasped back to life, coughing out shards of ice.
"That's one," Yoshiya whispered, already turning to the next.
His mana burned like wildfire under his skin. Purification magic wasn't meant to be used this quickly, this repeatedly. But he could feel the freeze spreading. Standing still meant watching people die.
He moved victim to victim, healer to healer, no rest, no pause. Light burst from his palms again and again, each time weaker, each time shakier. Sweat froze along his jawline. His breath turned ragged.
A young woman collapsed beside him. Her hand brushed his as she fell, and her skin was almost solid. Almost already gone.
He grabbed her shoulder and forced power through his arms. Purifying light flared violently, bright enough to force nearby adventurers to shield their eyes. The ice shattered in a halo around her—but so did Yoshiya's control. His vision blurred into streaks.
His knee hit the ground.
"Yoshiya!" someone shouted. It might've been Kenji. Or Lia. Or the world itself.
He didn't know. He didn't hear. His heartbeat was smashing like a war drum inside a frozen cathedral.
Mana drained. Muscles screaming. Consciousness thinning.
Still—he pushed himself upright. He had to. There were still cries in the distance. Still frost crawling across the tiles. Still people freezing in real time.
He wiped his mouth. His glove came away stained with bright red.
"No… not now," he muttered, voice hoarse. "Not until they're safe."
He stood again.
Another pulse hit Reflynne. Smaller, but sharper. This one spread across rooftops in spiderweb patterns of blue veins. The temperature dropped another five degrees in seconds.
Adventurers swore. Civilians ran. A bridge cracked apart.
From the command spire, guild officers shouted orders through magicked horns.
"All purification squads to Outer Ring Three!"
"All mages reinforce barrier lines!"
"Healers prioritize children and elderly!"
And above it all, Lia's voice—steady, commanding—cut through the chaos.
"Keep the teams moving! Don't bunch up! This is evolving—treat every wave as worse than the last!"
She had seen plagues. She had seen war. But this—this felt like nature rewritten.
A trembling junior mage approached her. "Commander… we've identified the energy signature. It's… similar to Winter's Kiss, but—"
"It's not the same," Lia said quietly.
She already knew. The shockwave wasn't random. It was deliberate. It was waking up.
Her gaze drifted toward the northern horizon, where the blue glow still pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of some distant beast.
Frostholm was supposed to be a dead city.
Yet the ground still trembled, as if something beneath was shifting, stretching.
Breathing.
A cold realization crawled up Lia's spine, as sharp as the ice creeping across the canals.
Winter's Kiss had changed.
It had adapted.
It had grown teeth.
"Send word to Korvath," she said. "And to Iroko. Something new has awakened."
The last shockwave rippled gently across the city—almost calm. A warning instead of a strike.
Reflynne shivered in unison.
The sky dimmed.
The wind stilled.
And the world understood:
The Dragon of Frostholm had breathed…
and it was only exhaling for the first time.