The descent from Eagle's Watch felt like stepping off the edge of the known world and falling into a frozen purgatory. As the Blood-Moon Pack moved further north, the rugged mountains of the interior gave way to a vast, desolate tundra—a flat, white expanse of permafrost that stretched endlessly toward the horizon. Above us, the sky remained a bruised magenta, but the crimson ring of the moon had grown larger, casting a bloody sheen over the snow that made it look as though the earth itself were weeping.
The air was no longer just cold; it was predatory. It was a dry, brittle frost that sought out the moisture in our eyes and the warmth in our marrow. Even the iron-roots, the ancient behemoths that had guarded the valley, dared not grow here. The only things that broke the horizon were the "Ice-Spires"—massive, jagged pillars of blue ice that had been thrust upward by the tectonic shifts of the mountain's collapse.
