The flight to the Frozen Sea was a journey through a world that had lost its color.
From the back of Argentis, the silver-furred drake, the North looked like an unfinished sketch. The vibrant magentas of the Eclipse and the gold-red hues of the Hallowed awakening had been bleached away by the encroaching Grey Erase. Below us, the tundra was no longer white; it was a dull, powdery charcoal. The forests we passed were silent, the trees standing like skeletal fingers clutching at a sky that had turned the color of a bruised pearl.
I sat rigid, my hands gripping the drake's silver mane. I didn't feel the biting wind that whipped my hair into a frenzy. I didn't feel the rhythmic heave of the beast's lungs. The sapphire frost in my veins had created a barrier of absolute zero around my skin. To the world, I was a statue of living ice. To myself, I was a hollow vessel, a bell waiting for a hammer to strike.
Elara… please.
