In the snow-covered Aisin borderlands, amidst a range of pure white mountains.
Somber clouds hung overhead, with faint white light peeking through the layers.
Snowflakes drifted down. At the peak of a snowy mountain, a tall, white tower was faintly visible, stretching toward the heavens and piercing the clouds.
The tower's exterior was as smooth as a mirror, without a single impurity, as if it were pieced together from round, white crystal mirrors a hundred meters wide.
Through its outer layer, one could faintly make out a spiral, frozen staircase inside, extending from the bottom all the way to the upper half of the tower.
Not far from the tower, two figures were slowly and steadily approaching across a frozen ice lake.
Here, with no sign of human life for over ten kilometers in any direction, the temperature had dropped to over sixty degrees below zero.
Without thermal gear, an ordinary person wouldn't last ten minutes before freezing into a human popsicle.
