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“Valhir!”

The god-bear twitched in his sleep, but his eyes didn’t open.

It was an old name, and had not been spoken aloud for… how long? What he heard must have been a dream, or an echo of the past. With a snort, he burrowed his head deeper into the thick snow and continued his slumber of ages.

“Valhir, with your name, and with this blood, I call upon you!”

The demi-god’s eyes flicked open.

The voice was half a land away, but sounded as clear as if spoken directly into his ear.

With a low growl, the great bear rose, pushing himself to his feet. An avalanche of snow fell from his titanic form, making the earth rumble. He shook out his fur and turned his heavy head from horizon to horizon, nostrils flaring.

He could taste the blood tribute on the air, and a thrill ran through him. Somewhere, stones had been arranged to form his rune. A sacrifice had been made in his name. He felt the power of worship infusing his limbs.

“Valhir! We call on your fury! Give us your strength! Every death is an offering!”

With the promise of battle, slaughter, and worship, Valhir’s heart pounded in time to the war drums he could feel echoing across the land. He could hear the stamping of feet, the clash of blades, the cries of the dying.

It called to the body he wore. It called to him.

The Volibear reared onto his hind legs and roared to the heavens. The sound reverberated across the icy tundra, touching the soul of every living creature in the Freljord.

Hundreds of miles away, where the sun never rose, a spirit walker woke screaming, clawing at his face with hands twisted into immense talons.

Across the ice floes in a different direction, packs of rimefang wolves threw back their heads and howled, echoing the demi-god’s cry.

And elsewhere, far, far away, a group of tribesmen sitting around fires fell silent, hearts suddenly thundering. Friends eyed friends with hostile expressions. Blood would be spilled.

The Volibear dropped to all fours and surged forward, massive claws ripping up the frozen earth. Snow-covered boulders and trees were smashed out of his path, and the wind whistled through his thick fur as he picked up speed.

When next he paused, sniffing the air, he was hundreds of miles away. He was getting close. The storm clouds of his war-rage darkened the sky overhead.

“Valhir! We kill and die in your name!”

With an earth-shattering impact, the god-bear arrived.

High upon an icy rise, lightning flickering across his ivory fur, he gazed across the battlefield.

Two armies were engaged upon the blood-soaked plain below. The dead and dying were strewn across the snow. One of the forces was vastly outnumbered. They were fighting a losing battle.

The giant bear snorted. Something smelled wrong about the larger of the armies. Its humans were clad in black iron, and fought beneath a red banner. He growled as he realized they were not of the Freljord, but weaklings from a land where the snow no longer held sway. He bared his teeth, and lightning flashed. It struck in the midst of the battle with a deafening crash, sending charred corpses from both sides flying.

“Valhir! Valhir!”

The Volibear focused his fury-reddened gaze on the one who shouted his name. A mortal woman, clad in fur, stared up at him, her face splattered with gore. She raised a pair of bloodied axes to the sky in salute, a savage grin on her face.

Many of the other combatants had ceased fighting, staring at the demi-god in awe and horror, but the Volibear’s attention was fixed on the woman.

This was the one whose heart had called the storm.

“Valhir!” she screamed, thrusting her bloodied axes into the air once more. “With these deaths, we honor you!”

With a last deferent salute, the woman turned back to the fight, hurling herself into her enemy with renewed vigor.

The Volibear turned his gaze upon those the woman fought—the outsiders. The enemy. With a snarl, he charged.

“Vol kau fera!” he roared, making the heavens themselves shake.

He smashed into the enemy like a living battering ram, sending their frail troops flying. Bones crunched. Blood splashed. Voices wailed.

It was over in moments.

In the face of the unstoppable fury of the god-bear, the resolve of the enemy crumbled. The first of them turned to run. It quickly turned into a rout, then to butchery, as the Freljordians—now filled with the savage rage of the Volibear—fell upon the fleeing enemy like wolves, howling as they pursued them across the snow.

The Volibear watched the slaughter in satisfaction, blood dripping from his maw.

The woman that had called him dropped to her knees in reverence and bowed her head.

“Oh, great Valhir!” she cried. “I am Warmother Raetha, the Bloodied Hand. By your intervention, our village is saved!”

It was only then, as the Volibear’s battle-lust began to abate, that he saw the nearby farmsteads and stone houses, and his eyes narrowed. He turned his gaze back upon the kneeling woman.

He loomed over her, easily four times her height, but growing ever larger as his anger returned. His almighty form was crisscrossed with old scars and new battle wounds—all marks he bore proudly. His massive claws dripped with gore. The urge to rip and rend remained strong.

He snarled down at the warmother. “Vol t’svaag dakk skolj.”

She looked up at him in confusion. It was clear the old tongue had been all but forgotten.

“Stand,” he rumbled in the younger, bastardized language she spoke. “A warrior kneels to no one.”

His gaze settled on something further along the valley. A dangerous growl rose from deep within him, heavy with the promise of violence. The woman, Raetha, took a step back, suddenly wary.

“What. Is. This?” he bellowed, the air tingling with electricity as his anger grew.

The woman glanced over her shoulder, confused and uneasy.

“The… The dam?” she asked.

The Volibear’s lips curled back, exposing bloodied fangs. This was his river, and it had flowed free and wild since before the coming of humanity. That mortals dared block it, to hold back its power, was an abomination.

He stomped past the woman, his anger building with every step. By the time he reached the crude structure, his rage was a barely contained maelstrom, and the air around him crackled with power. Warmother Raetha and a collection of others shadowed him at a wary distance.

The god-bear splashed into the shallows below the dam. The water barely reached past his paws, and his anger redoubled. The river should be thundering.

With a roar, he tore down the stones and freed the waters.

Now it thundered, bursting forth in a great churning wave. The power of the river crashed around him.

There was screaming as it surged down across the floodplain. The god-bear watched in satisfaction as the first of the Freljordian’s houses was smashed aside, timbers shattering and stonework collapsing. People ran, clutching younglings, as the waters demolished the entire settlement.

Once all evidence of civilization was gone, the Volibear turned to the Freljordians. They stood aghast, shocked at what he had wrought.

“Today, you are free!”

He could taste fear in the air, but he also felt the awe and reverence of the onlooking mortals.

“Live!” he commanded. “Live wild! Hunt! Kill! Honor the old ways… and the old ways will honor you!”

Warmother Raetha was now standing tall and slowly nodding. This one had the spirit of a true warrior. And in his immortal heart, he knew most of the others would follow her.

The Volibear gave her a nod, and turned to the horizon.

There was much to be done.

“I have never seen the forgotten god. My grandmother told me these tales, but she never saw the forgotten god either—nor did her grandmother before her, or hers before her, a thousand times over. His legends endure only around crackling fires and meals of roasted fish. The further back we trace our ancestors, the truer the tales become.”

The children’s weary faces lift a little higher. Firelight dances on their cheeks, but pain lives in their eyes.

“Gods dwell around us, in the sky, in between clumps of soil, and behind the veil of stars. We need only to seek their favor, to channel their being into our hearts and deeds. For instance, on the sea, it is so cold that your eyeballs might freeze solid in their sockets. No, it’s true! But when sailors rub blubber on their faces and think about the Seal Sister, whose true name is forgotten, they are protected from the icy ocean winds.

“Others, such as Volibear, refuse to allow their own legends to fade, and still stalk this world. He demands sacrifice and forces obedience, much like the Ursine…”

They have all heard tales of the half-bear abominations. Fear makes the children lean closer to the fire.

“Oh yes, little ones—we may speak later of the bearskinned storm-bearer, but the less said about him the better.”

Like grandmother used to say, once they lean closer to the fire, they’re yours.

“Instead, these stories concern the firstborn of the gods…”

Ornn was the firstborn of his brothers and sisters. He leapt into the world, itching for a fight. This was not so easy, however. Trees were weak adversaries, snapping far too easily. Icebergs melted at his touch, running away into the sea.

Frustrated, he punched a mountain. The mountain did not yield. Ornn was pleased by this, so he challenged the land itself to a good-natured brawl.

As Ornn wrestled with the land, he dented and bruised it, shaping all of the Freljord that we know today. He headbutted mountains from the planes, and pounded down deep valleys. When he was tired, Ornn thanked the land for the glorious match. The land responded by opening a fiery pit, showing him its very heart, and he was honored to see it was a reflection of him: a fiery ram. The land had deemed Ornn worthy, and bestowed its secrets to him, gifting him the strength of primordial flame, for fire is the true agent of change.

He looked at the landscape that was the result of his fight and nodded. It would do. After this, Ornn set himself to building tools and weapons.

My ancestors must be smiling, for at this moment, a light snow begins to fall. Gentle flakes settle on the children’s furred hoods, and they stick out their tongues.

“Did you know that there used to be no snow in the Freljord?” I ask them. The children look confused. “It’s true. Our lands have always been the coldest in the entire world, but in the early days there was only bitter, dry air, and no such things as stormclouds…”

It was during the early, cloudless and cold days that Ornn built a house. He made it of the finest lumber. The magnificent home spanned three valleys. Can you imagine that? After completing his majestic Horn Hall, Ornn appraised his work.

“Good,” he said. These were the days before language, so this was a compliment indeed.

Now, his sister Anivia was annoyed. Ornn had felled her favorite perching trees to build his home. So she decided to teach him a lesson.

While Ornn was sleeping, she flew in through his bedroom window. Then, she tickled his nose with one of her feathers, causing him to sneeze a gout of flame that set fire to the bedsheets! The bedsheets set the floor ablaze! Anivia panicked, and flapped her wings to fly away, but this only stoked the fire hotter with the dry Freljord air. Soon, all of Horn Hall was alight.

The fire raged for days, darkening the skies with ash. Of course, Ornn slept through the whole thing. He awoke atop a pile of ashes in a very bad mood, for he had not had a restful sleep. But he did not know what Anivia had done. And to this day, she has never told him the truth.

“I complimented my own handiwork, and look where it got me,” said Ornn, surveying the damage. “Never again will I pat myself on the back. I shall let the quality of the work speak for itself.”

Ornn had one goal in particular for his next home: he did not want it to be flammable. He fashioned himself a spade, a lever, and a fork. With these tools, he could dig for ore, move mighty pillars, and eat the delicious spiced cherries he so enjoyed.

He hammered and shaped chunks of ore until a black mountain stood. Inside was a great forge that channeled the primordial molten flame from deep within the earth. He was pleased with his Hearth-Home—but it was too hot inside to dwell comfortably, even for Ornn.

So he dug a trench from the sea, straight to the mountain. The Seal Sister allowed cold waters to rush through the trench and cool the Hearth-Home. Great plumes of steam rose up. It took three days for the mountain to cool enough for Ornn. In that time, the ocean that fed the river dipped several inches.

By then, so much steam had risen from the waters that the perpetual blue sky was mottled with darkening gray clouds. As these new puffy forms gathered and cooled, they grew heavier and heavier until they burst with snow.

It snowed for a hundred years. This is why the Freljord still has so much snow today.

One of the children frowns at me. “If Ornn did so much for the world, then why is it only you who knows the stories about him?” she asks. The girl is young, but has already seen so much hardship that her hair has several shocks of silver running through it.

“There is one tale that answers this very question,” I reply. “Would you like to hear it?”

The children’s eager faces say it all.

Once, there were Three Sisters who needed Ornn’s help in saving their world. Ornn, however, did not care to help anyone save any world, anywhere. It was for personal reasons, and he did not elaborate on the matter. But this did not stop the Three Sisters journeying many days and nights to ask.

“There are creatures of great and wicked magic that stalk our tribes,” the First Sister said. She had fierceness and war in her eyes. “They want to destroy all things and claim the world for themselves!”

“This sounds like a problem,” Ornn said. He did not look up from his forging.

“Then will you fight with us, and use your strength to slay the monsters?”

Ornn grunted. This grunt meant “no” in such a way as to halt any more discussion. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the First Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.

“These beings watch our every move,” the Second Sister said. There was hope and wisdom in her voice. “I would ask you to take the spade that once dug your mighty river, and use it to dig the deepest trench in all the world. Then we can lure the monsters into the pit ourselves, and solve our own problem.”

Ornn grunted. The sound of this grunt meant “I will dig that hole,” and that everyone should stop talking immediately. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the Second Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.

So Ornn dug them a trench, for a very deep hole can add much to a landscape. Also, he had planned on digging one anyway, and the proposed location was a fine spot. When Ornn was finished with the trench, he left the three sisters with nary a word, for he had already said far too much to them.

“That is one deep hole,” the Second Sister said. “I pray it is deep enough.”

Wind blew up from the freshly dug abyss with an otherworldly howl, as if to say that it was deep enough. If you had heard the abyss’ howl, you would have thought it wise that no one climbed down to measure its depth.

Several years later, the sisters returned. They looked as if the battles with their foes had taken a toll.

This time, the Third Sister spoke. Her icy breath reminded Ornn of the cold and dry days, long ago. “Ornn, Builder of All Things,” she began.

“I did not build all things,” Ornn grumbled. Again, he did not look up from his forging. “Just some of them.”

The Third Sister continued. “We come now to ask you one simple favor. The pit you dug is so deep and so wide that we cannot build even a single bridge across it. Teach me how to build a bridge that can never break, and I will do the work myself.”

Ornn raised an eyebrow. He studied the Third Sister’s eyes. He did not trust her, for she had a scent of magic about her, and magic always makes sturdy things weaker. “There are many able bridge builders. Go and bother them.”

“The other builders cannot make a bridge with the type of stone we have,” the Third Sister replied. “They claim it fell from the sky, and they cannot forge it for all their efforts.” She then presented a chunk of star metal.

If you had seen the star metal, you would think it wise that only Ornn could possibly ever shape this material, for it was almost as stubborn and unyielding as him. Ornn agreed, but he would do the work alone, and required the star metal itself as payment.

The Third Sister gave it to him, and he used it to forge a tool to help build the bridge.

With that tool, and only that tool, Ornn built the bridge. The Second Sister felt bad about the Third Sister’s lie—for they did not need a bridge at all. She asked Ornn what sort of tool it was.

“I used it to hammer,” Ornn said. “So I will call it ‘Hammer.’ I have said enough.”

When he was out of sight, the Third Sister walked the length of the bridge, reciting strange incantations across the entire span. This turned the bridge into a crossbar that sealed the beasts below within the abyss. However, Ornn had been right, and the addition of magic ruined the quality of his work. Had the Three Sisters left it well enough alone, it would have lasted forever. Instead, the enchantment would slowly eat away at the masonry. It would take ages, though, so nobody paid it much mind, and the Three Sisters vowed never to speak of Ornn again.

Ornn, meanwhile, realized he did not like people asking him favors, and threw his spade as far to the west as he could. Where it landed, no one knows, and its fate is lost to darkness.

Then he turned east and threw his favorite eating fork as far as he could. It landed in the Great Sea. Some say, later, a mer-king found a powerful trident at the sea-bottom, and still uses it to rule his kingdom.

Ornn was ready to throw his hammer into the night sky, but he could not bear to do it and decided to keep it. Were you to see Ornn and ask him if it is his favorite tool, he would scold you for thinking like a child. But in secret, he favors Hammer above all other things he has made.

“Dawn brings the plumpest berries and the meatiest fish,” I say to the children. “We need to be rested.”

They groan in unison and plead with me for one more story. Just one more story.

“There is only one more story about Ornn left,” I tell them. “We should save it for another night…”

Only when they pledge to do every chore and not complain about being too tired, do I relent.

Everyone knows that you never challenge a troll to a drinking contest, don’t they? Even you little ones know not to make a bet with a troll, for trolls are sneaky and will always win. Also, everyone in the Freljord knows that the uglier a troll is, the luckier and more cunning it can be.

Unfortunately, Ornn did not know any of these things.

Grubgrack the Hideous was the oldest troll-kin in the world. His chest hair was so long, it got tangled up in his gnarled toes. Ugh! He would often trip over it and break his nose, which was bulbous and misshapen from being broken so many times. He only had two good teeth, one bad eye, and one worse eye. Warts and pimples covered his rotund belly. I will not tell you how he smelled. If I did, you would never eat fermented fish stew again.

“Build me a door that will keep my treasure safe from thieves forever,” Grubgrack said to Ornn outside Hearth-Home, “and I will give you ten casks of my trollmead. It’s a family recipe.”

Ornn dismissed his guest, but Grubgrack stuck out his foot to stop the door from closing. Ornn did not want the troll’s bunion-covered toes ruining the paint, so he let the creature go on.

“Let us make a wager,” said the truly un-beautiful troll. “Whoever can finish a cask of trollmead first owes the other a debt.”

“If it will make you go away, okay.” Ornn had never been beaten in a drinking contest. Everyone knew this back then, and now you do, too.

“At least it will be good to have a drink,” Grubrack replied, and his smile warped one of the Hearth-Home’s pillars. While Ornn’s back was turned, the troll slipped a shard of True Ice into a cask and handed it to his challenger.

They toasted in the jovial manner of the Freljord and drank. Ornn found the trollmead watered down, and he did not like it. However, Grubgrack was halfway through his cask. With his own cask still almost at the brim, Ornn tipped his head back further and drank until he thought he would drown.

But Grubgrack slammed his empty cask down and belched, and the fire in the oven turned a sickly green! Ornn coughed and spluttered.

“What is wrong?” Grubgrack teased him. “Are you choking?”

Then Ornn noticed the True Ice in his drink. It was perpetually melting and watering down the trollmead. No matter how much he chugged, the True Ice had replaced it. He smashed the cask with one hand.

“You cheated,” Ornn said. His angry voice set off an earthquake that sunk a few islands.

“Of course! What other advantage would an ugly troll like me have against the mighty Ornn?” In truth, the ugliest trolls have almost all the advantages in the world, but Ornn did not spend much time with ugly trolls, so he wouldn’t know that, but now all of you little ones do. “A deal is a deal,” Grubgrack reminded him.

“My word is as good as Hammer,” Ornn grumbled. “Even if I was cheated.”

So Ornn labored for ten days and built the single best door anyone had ever built. He adorned it with a ram’s head, like his own, and the one at the heart of the Freljord. It was impervious to magic and lock-pickers alike. Grubgrack was so impressed with the quality of the door that he was speechless, which is very rare for a troll.

Ornn fastened the door in front of the troll’s cave, which was on top of the troll’s mountain, and where all the ugliest troll-kin in history had hid their treasure.

With a grunt, Ornn trundled off, leaving Grubgrack admiring his new door.

When he had regained his wits, Grubgrack realized it had been a day since he last counted his gold, and he was growing anxious. But he could find no way to open the door! None at all.

Grubgrack tried brute force. The ram-faced door did not budge. Then, he tried to strip the paint with his foul breath. Again, the door did not budge. Lastly, he tried to pry the hinges from the cave wall but, alas, the door was fixed to the mountain so firmly that the troll only hurt his shoulders trying to shake it loose. He was locked out.

Grubgrack stormed into Ornn’s forge. “What trickery is this?” he shouted. His breath was so bad, the forge fire nearly flickered out.

“There is no trickery,” Ornn replied, stoking the flames back to life. “You told me to build a door that would keep your treasure safe from thieves forever, and I did. This door will stand longer than the mountain it is on. No one can break it. I made it just as you asked.”

“But I cannot get inside!” Grubgrack cried. “And I stole nothing from you!”

“Time is more valuable than gold,” Ornn said. “So you are a thief, and my work is as good as my word.”

Grubgrack tried for years to get back inside for his treasure, but the door never opened for him, and he could not even find the keyhole. With each attempt, the ram-headed door stared back at him, an eternal reminder of the time he cheated Ornn.

And if you listen carefully, up in the mountains, you can hear greedy old Grubgrack’s wails of anguish before any avalanche, even to this day.

The children are fast asleep, snuggled into each other around the fire. I carry them one by one to the orphans’ tent. Our tribe hasn’t much to share, but we are not the Winter’s Claw.

The last child is still awake by the fire. He lies on his side.

“Those stories aren’t real,” he says with the tiniest voice.

It’s the legless boy. We found him half-dead after our own village had been raided. We couldn’t leave him—I couldn’t leave him—so I wrapped his wounds in bandages, and carried him on my shoulders.

“I think they are made up. Or… changed to help us go to sleep.”

“A story is as real as we believe it is,” I tell him, as I settle down next to him.

“There is a god who is good, but he doesn’t care about us.”

I nod slowly. “I can see why you would think that, but it is not true. There is one more story I can tell you. It was the last story my grandmother told me before I blossomed into womanhood. She wanted me to be ready, for it is not like the others. But I think you have seen enough to be ready. What do you think?”

The boy nods. I draw him close to my chest and begin.

Once, long before the splintering of the Freljord, Ornn had a legion of smiths who lived at the base of his mountain. They claimed to worship Ornn, but if you were to ask him, they were misguided, for he would say he had no followers. Still, it is true that they built themselves a little town and that it was filled with folk who wished to make the finest things in all the world.

There were thousands of them. They made tools. They made plows. They made carts and armor and saddles. They built furnaces and homes. They called themselves the Hearthblood, for they never felt the biting cold of the Freljord, and could tolerate the immense heat bubbling beneath their bare feet on the slopes of Hearth-Home. They became the finest craftspeople in the world, and their workmanship was surpassed in quality only by Ornn’s.

Occasionally, he would appraise their work. If he liked what one of the Hearthblood had wrought, he simply said “Passable.” This was a mighty compliment from Ornn, who had learned long ago to let good work speak for itself. Do you remember that tale?

Ornn never admitted that he admired the Hearthblood but, deep inside his chest, his volcanic heart churned with respect for the hardworking people. They did not kneel or offer him sacrificed flesh. They did not turn his words into scriptures and spread them across the land to people who did not want to hear them. Instead, they focused on their work in silence. They were imaginative, resourceful, and hardworking. These Hearthblood folks made Ornn smile, although nobody knew because they couldn’t see the smile underneath his beard.

One day, Volibear came to visit his brother Ornn.

This was no friendly stop, for Ornn and his brother were never friendly, nor had they ever visited one another before. The great bear was going to make war and needed weapons for his army. Ornn saw the army—fierce aberrations, men twisted into other shapes by their efforts to please Volibear. They were simple, and fierce, and quick to anger.

“Give them swords and axes,” Volibear demanded, with wicked intent. “Give them armor, and I will make it worth your while.”

“No,” said Ornn, for he wanted no part in Volibear’s warmongering.

“Fine,” said Volibear. “Have your followers do it instead. I do not care. Do this. I am your brother.”

This irked Ornn so much that his great horns flared with molten heat. “The people in the town below do not follow me. They build for themselves. They are quiet and work hard. That is all.”

But Volibear saw beneath his brother’s words to the fiery heart in his chest. For all his flaws, Volibear was very good at reading others.

“They are a reflection of your own image.”

Ornn’s horns grew red hot, and then white hot. “If I see you again, Volibear, I will beat you within an inch of your life,” he growled. If you had heard this threat, you would think it wise for Volibear to leave and never return.

But Volibear loved fighting, and he was not wise, so he took a piece of armor from the walls of Ornn’s forge.

“If you will not make me what I want, then I will take it.”

With that, Ornn charged at Volibear and smashed him with his horns. It was so powerful a blow, the summit of the mountain shook.

This was exactly what Volibear wanted. For centuries, he had grown jealous of the love the Hearthblood freely gave to his brother. It enraged the war-bear.

They fought for eight days. They fought so hard, the base of the mountain trembled. So fierce was their fighting that molten stone exploded from the peak of Hearth-Home. Lighting strikes barraged the mountainside, and geysers of flame gushed from the cliffs. The skies grew black and red. The blood of the world ran through the highlands as the ground shook. People all over the Freljord saw the results of the battle between Volibear and Ornn.

When the smoke cleared, the mountain had lost its peak. But worse, the Hearthblood were all dead, and their town was nothing but smoldering ruins and a fading memory.

For many centuries, the half-mountain once called Hearth-Home has stood silent. Every now and then, a plume of smoke rises from the crater where the peak once stood. Some say it is Ornn, lighting his furnace to keep the fires under the surface of the world from going out. Others say he is building a great weapon that he will one day unleash.

And there are others still, who believe Ornn was killed by Volibear, for he has not been seen in the Freljord since.

“And so, Ornn’s name and tales have been lost to time and written out of the histories. These few stories, passed on around our meals of roasted fish, are all that remain.”

“That is a sad tale, which means it is the truest,” the legless boy says, looking up at me. There is a tear in his eye. “What do you believe happened to Ornn?”

“I believe when the Great Builder returns,” I tell him, “it will be to remake the world.”

The boy laughs. “I would like to see that day.”

“Maybe you will. Do not weep for the Hearthblood. Weep instead for the stories lost to war and time, for once they were more numerous than the stars. Repeat these tales so our children’s children can still hear our ancestors’ voices, and stoke the fire of the forge in our hearts.”

In my own heart, I can feel my grandmother’s smile.

It warms me. I feel no cold beneath my bare feet.

Across the frozen river, the distant, glowing lights promised warmth and food. Udyr imagined a hearth fire crackling inside one of the city’s homes. Around the fire, bedding furs rested, prickling with warmth.

The loud crack of river ice shook the shaman from his fantasy. Udyr cursed and shivered. The sleet had soaked his furs, and the setting sun already hinted at a dangerous freeze coming. It was going to be difficult to convince Sejuani to change course. He wasn’t looking forward to continuing that conversation, or to rejoining the rest of her army.

In the valley below him, the bulk of Sejuani’s host approached. Through victory, the Winter’s Claw tribe had absorbed dozens of clans and all of the Stone Tooth tribe. Sejuani was a true Warmother now—commanding thousands of blooded warriors, steelclad, mammoth riders, and Iceborn.

Ahead of the main force, the warriors of Sejuani’s vanguard were unpacking yurts to house her bloodsworn and to serve as the command outpost for the army’s scouts. Sejuani’s tent, marked with blue wards and covered in rune-stitched leather, loomed over the center of the encampment.

As Udyr approached, drool slithered down his long jaws, and his teeth gnashed with bottomless hunger. The feeling seemed his own before he spotted a wolfhound trotting past. He snarled at the dog, struggling to regain control of his own jaw and rid himself of the animal’s invading consciousness.

He found Sejuani helping her bloodsworn build a yurt.

Udyr smiled in pride. This was her way. No matter the work, she led from the front. Raising these mammoth-hide tents in the soaked earth was a burdensome task. As Sejuani slammed a tusk-spike into the mud, she stumbled to one knee. Nearby, bloodsworn warriors struggled in the icy rain, with curses echoing hers.

Watching Sejuani pull herself to her feet, Udyr was struck once more by how she’d grown into a heavy-shouldered swagger. He would never be able to think of her as anything but the bone-thin girl he’d met a so many seasons ago; he wasn’t sure he wanted to. She had so desperately needed his guidance then. In perhaps only a few more years, Udyr worried, he would become a useless burden to her.

“The weather ended this discussion, Udyr,” she shouted over the downpour.

“The Vargkin tribe are a few days west of here,” Udyr began. “We could avoid crossing the river, take them by surprise and—” The minds of a dozen passing horses filled Udyr’s head. He felt their frozen muscles tightening as they shivered in the cold. Udyr snapped at the nearest horse, “Shut it! No oats now!”

Taken aback, Sejuani’s bloodsworn exchanged nervous glances. Sejuani gave her men a look of warning. Immediately they returned to work. Even they did not have the right to question her shaman’s strangeness.

Hiding his hands behind his back, Udyr gently took a small spike made of silver from a hidden pouch. He pushed the metal nail against the flesh of his palm. Hardly the relief of meditation, but the metal’s pain cleared his mind, allowing him to focus on speaking like a human.

“The Vargkin are only a six-day march,” Udyr snorted, “no walls around their villages.”

Sejuani let his eyes settle before responding.

“We’re out of time, Udyr.” Sejuani indicated the sagging yurts around her. “We must take that city across the river or freeze!” She gestured to a few of her older warriors nearby, “Most of the long tooths skip meals to feed their young. Yesterday, I helped Orgaii bury her daughter.” Sejuani’s lips, purple from the cold, tightened bitterly. “The child was two summers, but as small and frail as one on its first spring.” She exhaled and looked away before continuing. “I will not be responsible for another child growing too thin to survive the cold.”

“Then attack now.” Udyr said pointing toward the distant city across the river. “Trust in our axes and muscle. Claws and teeth. The old way.”

“The old way is to use the best warriors,” she interrupted. “What clan or tribe do I know stronger than the Ursine? How many of us would die crossing that river without their help? I will not watch my army diminish from hunger, not when I promised my people strength and victory.” She steadied Udyr’s shoulder, “I know you have good reason to fear what they—”

“Ashe’s army is what I fear,” Udyr countered. “New clans bend their knee to your rival’s banner every day. Each moon, the Avarosans absorb whole tribes. You say you want to make the Winter’s Claw stronger? If we work with the Ursine… there will be no thralls. No warriors to be reborn as clan-kith. The Lost Ones won’t stop until they kill every living thing in that town.”

“Our name is Winter’s Claw. They are our kin.” She explained, “I called this war, and we stop when I—”

“The Ursine do not obey!” More than the pain from the silver he held, it was Udyr’s certainty that finally cleared his mind. His voice lowered. “Their bloodlust spreads like a sickness. It will consume us.”

“I have valued your advice my whole life,” Sejuani said, as she considered his words. “But we must overwhelm that city tomorrow,” she concluded.

“You’ve beaten odds worse than this.” Udyr lost his train of thought as the consciousness of boars, horses, wolves, men, and elnük flowed through him. He fought against it, knowing this would be his last chance to change her mind.

“Sejuani,” he said finally, “Kalkia had many failings. She was too prone to compromise, too quick to see defeat. I know how badly your mother failed you. But it was your grandmother who was our tribe’s true coward, afraid of ever looking weak. Afraid of—”

“You will not speak ill of Hejian,” she warned.

“Even Kalkia was smart enough to avoid your grandmother’s mistakes.” As he spoke, Udyr knew he had crossed a line.

“Was it a mistake for Hejian to take me from mother?” Sejuani’s eyes flashed in anger. “Would it be better if I became a southern cow, like my mother? Should I have laid on a throne as she did? My legs open and my belly full of mead? Worthless in a fight, unworthy of ruling.” Sejuani stated coldly. “The only mistake my grandmother made was tolerating my mother’s rule.”

“Hejian raised you for her own ambitions.”

“And I honor her for that.”  Any closeness and deference Sejuani had shown Udyr was gone. “I will call the Lost Ones. You may help negotiate with the Ursine, or you may rot in this storm.”

Udyr’s hopes sank. “Then I should leave,” he said admitting his defeat. “The Hounded Lord wouldn’t be happy to see me.” And Udyr had no desire for that unhappy reunion either.

Sejuani’s face transformed, softening before she gave a cunning smile.

“No,” she grinned. “That’s exactly why I need you with me, old friend.”

Above him, the song-tree’s leaves were the color of blood. Watching a scarlet leaf fall, Udyr realized how badly he’d misunderstood the color red. In his homeland, he had only seen its hue splashed against the white snow. In the Freljord, red was the color of violence. In the Freljord, red was the color of death’s approach. But in truth, it was the color of life. As long as they lived, every man and beast carried it with them.

Udyr opened his eyes.

The light of his meditation candle burned a red spot into his vision. Rain hissed against the weakening flame of his campfire. Wind shook the hut’s sagging leather walls, promising to collapse them before the night ended. On the ground around him, a thin stream of freezing water flowed between the hides of his yurt’s floor. He wasn’t sitting with monks on a hilltop in the foreign lands of Ionia; he was on the edge of Sejuani’s camp.

This is my home, he thought with bitter pride.

It’d been weeks since Udyr had meditated successfully, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it. As his current surroundings came into focus… the voices returned.

The inescapable cacophony knocked the breath from the shaman. The foreign thoughts of nearby elnük, drüvasks, and horses flooded his consciousness with feelings that weren’t his own—a thunderous soundscape only he and the most powerful spirit walkers could hear, and could never truly quiet. The emotions of men came next. They were beasts as much as any other. A thousand scattered thoughts: anger, fear, bitterness, cold—

Udyr couldn’t hear himself screaming. He simply became aware of the rawness in his throat. The voices wouldn’t go away; they never went away. He ripped through his bag searching for the silver nail. The metal burned in his fingers as Udyr found it. He plunged it into his palm again and again. The shock of the metal compounded the pain a thousand-fold—but to quiet the voices, he would give anything. Anything.

Sejuani wondered how much of the army’s supplies she was risking in an attempt to contact the Ursine. Massive bonfires roared with flames three times the height of a man. Around them stood Sejuani’s army, starving and cold, stared at the fires with exhaustion and uncertainty. Dry wood was a commodity that determined life or death in this weather. And there was no guarantee the Lost Ones would come.

The bonfires’ logs had been arranged to match the interlocking triangles of a death knot’s pattern. Piled on top of each other, the wood formed a series of burning towers. Surrounding the fires, tall, ancient iron-stakes were arranged. Forged with the Ursine’s symbols, around each stake was heaped a pile of weapons and bones, like kindling. All was ready. The warriors preparing to channel the oath needed only the Red Blessing to begin the ritual.

She nodded to the bear spirit’s acolyte to begin. He lifted the massive wooden bowl above Sejuani’s oathsingers and poured. The bear’s blood covered them in sticky strings of gore, clinging to the men’s features and chests. Each man then took the bear-claw totem, dragged it across his chest, and snarled in pain as his skin was ripped open.

The final oathsinger, a girl of only ten summers, shivered as the bear spirit’s acolyte attached the traditional shawl of raven feathers around her neck like a collar. Then she joined the choir of warriors around the main fire. Her eyes rolled back as she released a sustained noise from her throat, like wind crying in a storm. Then the other oathsingers began. Each overlapping, several pitches at once, creating an unnatural, guttural dirge which harmonized with the fire’s roar. The sound dug fear into Sejuani’s stomach like an unquenchable hunger.

“Get Udyr,” she commanded a pair of bloodsworn nearby. Hypnotized by the fire, they nodded dumbly, failing even to look away from the ceremony. “Find our shaman!” she barked.

Her voice cut them from the trance, and her guards trudged into the darkness, outside of the firelight’s reach.

She marched from the fire to Bristle, her mount. Sejuani knew, whatever uncertainty she felt, her people needed to feel she was ready to lead them into battle.

She climbed onto her saddle atop the giant mount’s back, an enormous, boar-like drüvask. Its shoulders were twice as tall as her and heavier than a dozen men. When it snorted uneasily, she didn’t need the great shaman’s training to know what it felt.  Ice crackled around its claws as her unease resonated with her soul-bonded steed. She was risking something other than her army’s supplies.

Above Sejuani, the fire’s embers floated toward the sky. Pinpricks of flickering light danced upward and pointed to an approaching storm. Distant lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the wall of ferocious clouds boiling toward her. In the face of this huge maelstrom, she felt as small as a child.

The first lighting bolt smashed into an iron stake with a crack. Sejuani leaned forward in her saddle and ran her fingers through Bristle’s dark, wiry fur. To a horse, or some lesser mount, Sejuani would have lied and uttered soothing words. Instead she whispered, “I don’t like it either. But now everything depends on the great shaman…”

Morning never came.

Churning, black clouds blocked the sun’s return.

Udyr shuddered in the cold. The rains had frozen overnight. The frost on his leggings resisted his every move. His mind twitched and wandered uncontrollably. Too many creatures, too many men, surrounded him, and the clamor of their misery howled in his mind.

Sejuani had arranged her forces in the twin-horn formation at the edge of the woods lining the riverside. The camps and hearthbound warriors stood on the hill behind her frontline troops. Awaiting the arrival of the Ursine tribe, everyone in her host had their weapons drawn and ready. Blooded warriors smashed shields, drums sounded.

This was the way of the Freljord. You proved yourself a friend before either side sheathed arms.

Tiny sparks of static electricity began crackling across the Winter’s Claw’s armor, swords, and axes. Udyr watched as the tribe’s warriors reacted to this alien thing, arcing and jumping across their weapons. He could feel their fear.

At the front of her army, Sejuani threw off her cloak with a flourish. No doubt to remind her tribe that their Warmother was a true Iceborn. Battle was the only warmth she needed; ice magic was in her blood. The army cheered.

Udyr followed her to the edge of the forest. The features of his face stretched, transformed. Fangs formed, became tusks then twisted back into an approximation of his own features. Waves of hair formed and cascaded across his skin, covering him in fur before reversing like waves in an inlet, reacting to some unknown tide. He growled, jabbered, and drooled. Suddenly, Udyr’s eyes widened.

“They’ve come.”

A silence swept over everything.

The first of the Ursine slipped out from between the black forest’s trees without a sound—savages, with their skin stained brown by blood. Their hair matted with filth. Some were naked; others wore bear hides or the rotting remains of clothes.

Next came the beasts, bears mostly, of various sizes and colors. Some breeds Udyr knew, others he’d never seen before. They were spirit walkers trapped in the form of the unrelenting bear. Men who had forgotten they were men.

Then came the monsters.

They were strange amalgamations of bears and other creatures, things of legends, dreams, and folklore. They had all been men once too, but now, so consumed by the true spirit, they had passed beyond what the normal animals looked like. The largest of them, a huge bear-like thing, lumbered out of the forest—where its head should have been, a decayed elk’s skull rested on a mane of black feathers. Eyes glowing with blue fire, it opened its jaws to reveal a child’s face inside its maw. Then the child opened its own mouth too, spewing a foul brown liquid. Other nightmares followed it from the woods, limping, crawling, and shambling forward.

The Ursine assembled in a rough battle line across from Sejuani’s army. They made no gesture to attack, spoke no words. They simply waited.

Udyr’s ragged breaths slowed, his nervous jittering became a hypnotic sway. The pain in his hands dissolved. He recognized a few of the souls across the field from him: pupils, masters, and former oathsingers. Clan shamans he’d known in drink, warriors he’d known in battle. Little of their consciousness remained. Most had forgotten they were men. Some had rended their souls into the raw, singular emotion of the unrelenting bear’s spirit, an unchecked confidence bordering on rage.

A man walked from between the trees, wearing only a great raven-feathered cowl and a bearskin cloak. The Hounded Lord.

“I am Ursine. I come to bring the word of the Volibear,” he announced.

Udyr remembered him from years before. Back then he was Najak, a troubled boy and an untrained spirit walker of great potential. Udyr’s first pupil, now reduced to the voice of the Ursine. Even searching for it, pulling at the magic around him, Udyr could find little sound coming from Najak’s spirit or mind. That boy was gone.

How deeply I failed you, Udyr thought, remembering too late that the Najak could hear his mind as clearly as shouted words.

“Cowardice is your true failure,” the Hounded Lord snarled to answer Udyr’s thought. “You torture yourself by trying to control our gift. Denying its true power.” The wind howled briefly through the ice-covered trees behind him, sounding like ghostly chimes. “Why have you called us, Winter’s Claw?”

“I ask for the strength of the Ursine.” Sejuani intoned. “I ask you fight alongside my host, Hounded Lord.”

The young spirit walker turned his head from Udyr to Sejuani without moving his lifeless eyes. “You ask wrongly. I am only the voice of the Volibear.”

“As his agent, I would take your oath as—”

“I cannot speak for him. I am simply his instrument,” The Hounded Lord interrupted her. He seemed to stare through Sejuani. “Our lord walks with us.”

Udyr felt its power before it appeared. The voices, the spirits in his mind from the men around him, which had endlessly plagued him… began to soften. Even that of Sejuani, standing beside him. The ring of her annoyed impatience faded away. The Volibear had come.

In the forest behind Najak, the great black-leaf trees cracked and shook. Taller than a mammoth, it stepped out of the woods. Walls of muscle, each limb larger than a man, propelled the beast forward. Its broken, ancient armor of dark, metal plates was caked brown by the dried gore of a hundreds of battles. Broken weapons, rusted with age, jutted from its back and shoulders. One half of its face had been stripped of flesh, revealing oily bone, teeth, and horns. From its mouth, an unnatural, black blood dripped. Its four eyes, impossibly ancient, alien, and pitiless, looked over Sejuani and Udyr.

As the bear spirit’s avatar came closer, it was like the quiet at the center of a storm. Udyr’s focus became singular. No sounds were left in his head. No animals. No feelings. Even Udyr’s own thoughts barely whispered. He felt only the Volibear. Its silence felt nothing like a man or animal. The Volibear’s consciousness crushed everything with its purity.

Despite Sejuani’s army outnumbering the Ursine by a hundred to one, her warriors backed away from the Volibear’s approach. Huge war mammoths, veterans of numerous battles against men, trolls, and the skard vastaya, trembled in fear.

Sejuani gasped at the awesome creature before her. She had not considered the possibility that the avatar of the bear spirit would answer her summon personally. Whatever value the Lost Ones offered, their master was worth a thousand times that.

She steeled herself in her saddle and held her ground against the Volibear’s slow advance. Instead of fear, ambition flashed across her face.

Udyr fought against the silence, trying to speak, to remember the stories of his childhood. Some said even the Volibear had been a man once. A great shaman and spirit walker who’d surrendered himself to the bear spirit so completely that it was able to truly manifest through him. But looking at the scale of this monster, he doubted this thing could ever have been a man. When the Volibear stopped in front of Sejuani, lightning crackled across its back.

The Volibear’s question flooded Udyr’s mind. It overwhelmed him. Udyr felt as if the words were bursting from inside his eyes, ripping through his fingertips.

“What battle is worthy of us, warchild?”

The voice reverberated from every Ursine and spirit walker on the field.

Sejuani had watched as the Hounded Lord’s eyes rolled backwards, then darkened to black pools before his head tilted back. Now the slight man spoke with a voice like an avalanche. It was as if a thunderstorm had taken control of his throat and shaped itself into those words. But what turned the Warmother in surprise was hearing Udyr whisper the same question.

Recovering quickly, Sejuani smiled, then answered with a voice both armies could hear. “I will burn the southern farms. I will hunt their children for sport. I will level their stone walls and houses so that none may stand against us again.” She gestured southward. “All that snow touches will be ours. My name will be fear, and our tribe will rule forever.”

For a moment, only the sound of Udyr’s cloak flapping in the wind followed her proclamation. Above her, the black clouds circled like a tempest.

“Ask for our strength,” the voice said.

With every ounce of his will, Udyr reached into his bag. He pulled out his silver nail; the cold heat of the metal numbed his arm. If he could speak before Sejuani made the bargain… if he could make the human words come from his mouth… He had time…

It wasn’t too late.

“I ask for your strength,” Sejuani replied, before her former mentor managed to force himself forward. But shaking and stiff-legged, he then stumbled between her and the great bear spirit.

Udyr dug the silver nail into his hand—he felt nothing as it passed through. No pain, not even the energy of the metal. He opened his mouth to speak but found no words would come. Instead, the Volibear’s consciousness shook him, forcing him to his knees.

“Whom do you offer as sacrifice?” Udyr and the Hounded Lord spoke with the spirit’s voice.

Udyr closed his eyes and pictured the Ionian hill, the red leaves falling around him. That memory of learning meditation, learning to control his powers seemed so hollow now. A faraway land he could never call home and would never see again. Then, Udyr remembered his return to the Freljord, meeting young Sejuani, and the years of watching her grow into a Warmother under his tutelage.

From outside his body, Udyr heard his voice crack in effort. “She makes no pledge to you, bear spirit.” He swallowed as he pushed himself toward the monstrous creature. “We offer only the war and its dead.”

The Volibear roared in anger. The force of its howl pushed Udyr back toward Sejuani as the beast’s spell broke.

Sejuani had hunted ice-wyrms alone. She had tied her hair into a death knot before battle a dozen times in the past and, with those oaths, pledged victory or her own death. She had charged into total darkness and fought trolls blind. But the moment the Volibear’s spell broke, when she looked up at the monstrous thing looming over her, she knew its true horror. Its hair stood. Lighting raged from within its flesh. Its scars glowed. Electricity poured from its mouth, as if it would explode. And Sejuani felt the most intense fear she’d ever known; she had almost pledged herself and her people to the Ursine.

This was the true power of the Volibear.

She looked to her former mentor in awe. Somehow he’d found the strength to stand against this power.

“Do you fear our war, spirit of the great bear!?” Udyr screamed at the monster.

The massive creature roared again, seeming to become less and less like a bear—its flesh seemed to lift away: muscles, fur and flesh floated apart, connected only by the endless lighting crackling inside it. The Volibear moved to attack. Before it could strike, Sejuani rode straight at it, blocking its path to Udyr.

“Will you fight alongside us, bear of storms and wilds?” Udyr shouted. “Or do you fear our war?”

After a long moment, the monster answered.

“We fear nothing.”

Udyr walked through the city’s ruined gates. With what was left of the river city, there would be no warm hearths to rid the cold from the night. The structures around him had been reduced to black skeletons. Only scorched timber and stone chimneys remained above the sharp piles of rubble.

As he headed to the center of the city, Udyr’s footsteps left a pale gray trail in the soot-covered street. Walls of black smoke swept around him, obscuring the streets and razed stone buildings. When an inky cloud swept aside for a moment, it revealed a dozen Winter’s Claw warriors. They’d formed a line around a burning guard tower, surrounding the few survivors and pushing them against the blaze. The remaining town guards desperately, helplessly clawed for an escape but they were met only with axes and death.

Near them, an Ursine butchered the remains of a shopkeeper. It turned its bestial face to look at Udyr. Gore covered its fur as it mindlessly slammed a pair of axes into the man’s long-dead corpse. Without stopping, the Ursine bellowed a roar, and the neighboring warriors closed in on the remaining guards, mercilessly pushing them into the fire.

These were the first survivors Udyr had seen. The Ursine had smashed through the city’s defenses first. Sejuani’s forces followed, but they had matched the Lost Ones’ savagery. Even now, Udyr could feel the cruel, unquestioning certainty of the bear spirit creeping through the thoughts of every creature around him. The power of the Ursine was growing.

Udyr climbed up the rubble of a stairway to a ruined square. Surrounded by tall stone buildings, he found the monster waiting for him. Alone and in the middle of the city, the bear spirit’s avatar impaled corpses on stakes arranged in some unknowable pattern. Black branches and roots grew from the speared bodies around the beast, like worms slowly crawling from the earth. The flesh and fur on the Volibear’s face had healed, its muscles seemed thicker, stronger than before.

The Volibear’s eyes turned to Udyr as the shaman approached. Across its face, a dozen new eyes bloomed, each as dark and cold as a spider’s. Perhaps it smelled the foreign magic on the Winter’s Claw shaman, and now deemed him worthy of examination. Somehow Udyr knew, this time, it spoke to him alone.

“I will be reborn. You cannot stop that, son of man,” the beast said.

Udyr removed his cloak. Then, prepared by his evening meditation, he walked through his forms: the Undying Eagle, the Clever Lynx, the Iron Boar, and a dozen more spirit beasts. He paused when he assumed the aspect of the bear spirit. With perfect control, he matched the shape of the giant beast looming above him. Then, finally, Udyr changed from the bear into its sworn enemy, the spirit of fire, hearth, and forge—the Great Ram.

Udyr wasn’t afraid of the fight he would inevitably have with this creature. He wasn’t afraid of anything. His head was clear. And in this certainty… he knew those were bad signs. The Volibear would consume him as readily as Sejuani. But his resolve did not falter. He had sworn an oath to protect Sejuani, as a father would. No matter the cost.

“You will not take her,” Udyr spat.

Silence was the only answer the beast gave as it turned back to its gruesome task.

Even from a distance, Sejuani could see the mammoth was dying, but like everything in the Freljord, it fought to live with every fiber of its being. Half a dozen spears and twice that many arrows jutted from the colossal beast’s matted hide, its russet hair stiff with frozen blood, but still it wouldn’t die.

Its furious bellows shook the mountainside, and Sejuani kept glancing to the lightning-wreathed summit, fearful of an avalanche.

Or something worse…

Purple lightning flared beyond the mountains, silhouetting the toothed peaks and turning them into serrated fangs ripping open the sky.

She and her Winter’s Claw hunters had stalked the mammoth for a week, driving it toward the shallow canyons of the foothills, but each time it broke through their ring of spears and axes to flee higher up the mountain’s pine-shawled flanks.

Of the ten warriors she had set out with, only seven now remained.

Three less mouths to feed.

Sejuani hated having to think this way, because these were fine hunters and fearsome warriors, but Viljalmr the seer was predicting one of the harshest winters in living memory and the Winter’s Claw’s supplies of food were dwindling fast. The mountain herds of Elnuk they would usually raid had already been driven south to the greener lowlands by their Avarosan drovers, and the fish of the Ice Sea were locked below thick pack ice.

She hauled back on Bristle’s reins, pausing to gather her thoughts. The giant drüvask grunted and shook his head in annoyance, the smell of the mammoth’s blood thick in its nostrils. The mounts of her hunters were wary at being this close to a mammoth, but Bristle was eager for a fight.

“Easy there,” she said, loosening the stiffened scarf from across her mouth and feeling the cold on her skin like a slap in the face. “This is not a fight for tusks, but spears and bows.”

“Good to know even Iceborn can feel this svaaging cold,” said a cloaked figure riding next to her. His voice was muffled by the furs wrapped around his face, and all Sejuani could see were his bloodshot eyes. The rest of his face was hidden behind a leather mask wrought in the shape of a roaring bear, its snout formed by thick, overlapping knotwork.

A low rumble built in Bristle’s throat at the man’s nearness, so Sejuani ran a hand through the coarse, wiry hair of his flanks to calm him.

“I feel it well enough, Urkath,” Sejuani replied, “I just don’t gripe about it.”

Urkath nodded up the mountain and said, “How much higher do you think our quarry will go before it turns and fights?”

Some three hundred yards ahead of them, the mammoth trudged uphill through the snow, its steps labored and a trail of crimson staining the virgin whiteness of the landscape.

“It won’t be long,” said Sejuani. “He’s lost too much blood to reach the summit. He’ll turn before the timberline.”

“How do you know?” asked Urkath.

“I don’t,” admitted Sejuani, “but I’m betting he thinks we won’t follow him if he gets higher.”

“Is he wrong? Any higher and we’ll cross into the realm of He Who Stands.”

Even thinking about the Volibear and the Ursine flooded Sejuani’s mouth with the taste of warm blood and the sensation of lightning in her veins.

Images flashed in her mind, sharp, bright, and painfully real. Memories that weren’t hers, sensations she hadn't felt, woven together as though she’d lived them only moments ago.

Fangs and claws ripping flesh from the bone…

Elongated skulls with cold, blue fire burning in empty eye sockets….

A pact and a living city reduced to blackened skeletons of stone and timber…

Slaughtered corpses hung from the withered branches of death-nourished trees…

“Warmother?” said Urkath.

Sejuani tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come, as though a more ancient, primal part of her soul was looking out through her eyes, the part that once ran with the beasts, knees and palms bloody, skin raw and bare, caked in mud.

Urkath reached out and placed a hand on her fur-swathed arm.

“Warmother?” he said again, more urgent this time.

Her hackles raised at his unwanted touch. Saliva filled her mouth as her lips pulled back, baring her teeth, ready to tear his throat out.

Sejuani closed her fist on the spiked pommel of her saddle, hard.

The pain cleared her head and wrenched her back to the present as she let out a shuddering breath.

“You’ll want to take that hand away,” she said, her eyes flashing a pale winter’s blue and her tone icier than the mountain winds.

Eyes watchful, Urkath snatched his hand back and said, “Apologies, Warmother, but to enter the lands of the Lost Ones without their leave… it’s a death sentence.”

A shadow blotted out the low sun before Sejuani could respond, a towering figure of a man wearing the wide-horned helm favored by warriors of the Lokfar.

The coastal peninsula of Lokfar was one of the harshest, most brutally cold regions of the Freljord, and only those with fire in their blood could endure there.

Its warriors were typically rangy, lean, and stoic.

Shedding blood alongside Olaf the Berserker for many years had taught Sejuani that he was none of those things. Even on foot, he was easily the biggest Freljordian she had ever seen, the equal of the mounted Sejuani and Urkath in height. Some said Olaf’s mother must have lain with a troll to grow so big, but they never said it to his face.

He climbed into the teeth of the oncoming blizzard like a man out for a stroll, his powerfully-muscled body made thicker and broader by the furs and iron plates bound across his chest and arms.

The braids of his beard were frozen into spikes of fiery orange and his pale eyes were alight with the prospect of potentially facing what lay at the top of the mountain.

“A death sentence, you say,” said Olaf, striding past them. “I like the sound of that.”

The mammoth sank to its knees within a spear’s throw of the cliffside timberline.

Its blood soaked the snow, and Sejuani almost felt sorry for the beast, coming so close to the border between this world and the terrible things that dwelled in the storms wracking the summit.

She pushed thoughts of sentiment aside. An animal this size would feed the Winter’s Claw for a week—surviving a day, an hour, or even the span of a breath was a victory in the Freljord.

Sejuani slid from Bristle’s back as her hunters dropped to the snow, unstrapping long, thick-hafted spears from their mounts. She reached over her shoulder and unlaced the thongs securing her mighty flail, Winter’s Wrath.

Steeling herself for the pain, she gripped its leather-wrapped haft and swung it around her body, feeling the deathly cold of the True Ice secured at the end of its thick chain. Pale radiance built behind the blue of her eyes, and she exhaled a breath of aching cold.

The flail was a weapon of great power, but it came with a cost.

Glowing lines of hard, crystalline blue formed under her skin, threading the veins of her forearm and reaching up to her corded bicep.

Urkath drew his great longsword, its hilt worked from the jawbones of a rimefang wolf and its blade sharp enough to cut stone. Olaf unsheathed his mighty axes, their blades glimmering with hoar-frost.

“My edges hunger,” said Olaf, his teeth grinding in anticipation. Blood flecked his lips where he’d chewed the inside of his cheeks.

“We do this right,” said Sejuani. “Together. No heroics.”

Olaf grinned and nodded, his eyes glazing over and his mind already sinking into the blood-mist of the berserker.

Sejuani took a step toward the mammoth, lifting the flail and letting the beast see the glimmering cold of its True Ice.

“Get up,” she ordered. “You are a king of the Freljord. You don’t die on your knees.”

The mammoth glared at her and, taking strength from her words, pushed itself to its feet. It threw back its shaggy, tusked head and loosed a ferocious bray of defiance. The sound echoed over the mountains like the Forge God’s legendary Carnyx, a war-horn whose blast could be heard all around the world.

The sound shook snow from the trees, eclipsing the storm raging at the summit.

The mammoth lowered its head and stamped its huge front legs, each as thick as the ironwood trees ringing the rocks at Ornnkaal. Its head swayed from side to side, displaying its jagged, sword-like tusks, each capable of goring a warrior to death with a single blow.

“We will give you a good death, you have my word,” promised Sejuani.

“A glorious death…” grunted Olaf, the words forced out between bloodied teeth, but Sejuani wasn’t sure whose death he meant.

The Winter’s Claw hunters spread out, weapons at the ready. The warriors with the spears flanked the mammoth left and right as Sejuani, Olaf, and Urkath stood before it, meeting its challenge head-on.

With a bellow of rage, the mortally wounded beast charged.

Its speed was ferocious, far faster than should have been possible.

It churned the snow, throwing up great chunks of black rock and bloody ice.

Sejuani and Urkath dove to the side, but Olaf leapt to meet the beast with a bellow to rival that of his foe. His ax struck the mammoth in the center of its head, but bit only a finger breadth before skidding from the thick bone of its skull. With a dismissive flick of its trunk, the mammoth tossed the berserker over its back. Olaf landed hard on the rocks behind, dangerously close to the sheer drop of the cliffs. He came to his feet with a delighted, lunatic laugh.

Sejuani rolled to her feet and swung Winter’s Wrath in a wide, two-handed sweep.

The flail’s True Ice smashed into the mammoth’s back knee.

It faltered, stumbling as the limb buckled beneath it.

The beast crashed to the ground and skidded to a halt, trying to push itself to its feet on a back leg that wouldn’t work. Sejuani’s warriors closed in, ramming their spears into its flanks with the grim, pitiless precision of hunters who had done this many times before.

Thrust the blade, twist the haft, withdraw to a safe distance.

The mammoth roared and surged upright as iron spearheads pierced its body, fresh blood staining the snow. A successful hunt had little to do with glory or honor; it was about exhausting the prey, wounding it and wearing it down until it couldn’t fight back.

Then came the killing.

One of her warriors slipped in the snow, and the mammoth jerked to the side, stamping down with one mighty foreleg. The man’s scream was cut off as he was crushed to gory red paste beneath its massive foot.

The other hunters backed off, chests heaving, looking for an opening to strike again.

The mammoth swung its lethal tusks from side to side, turning on the spot and backing toward the edge of the cliff. Sejauni moved left, keeping the head of her flail in motion. Urkath circled right, sword held high at his shoulder.

Sejuani resisted turning her head as she heard Olaf’s ululating battle cry.

He charged headfirst at the mammoth, his ax flashing silver in the waning light.

The beast lowered its head, tusks ready to gore the berserker to death.

Olaf was deep in the blood-mist, a state of mind that turned him into a ferocious killing machine, a living avatar of death. The mammoth swung its head up and Olaf leapt into the air to grip one of the slashing tusks with his free hand. Using the momentum of the beast’s movement, he swung up and over its head to land on the mammoth’s shaggy back.

His ax hacked down, like a woodsman chopping at a stubborn tree-root.

The mammoth reared up, shaking its body to dislodge the berserker, but Olaf had ridden wilder monsters than this. He gripped a handful of its long hair and laid a flurry of blows upon the mammoth’s back. Seeing his chance, Urkath charged toward the beast, sword raised to cut its exposed throat.

Its trunk lashed around his waist like a tentacle of the boneless creatures that sometimes washed up from the deep ocean on Yadulsk’s shores. The mammoth lifted Urkath into the air before slamming him down on a jutting black rock.

Sejuani heard his spine shatter even over his scream of agony.

Twice more it smashed him against the rock before hurling his body aside.

Urkath’s bloody remains fell to the snow, his body shattered, his arms and legs hideously twisted. Sejuani screamed and sprinted forward as Olaf continued to chop through the beast’s thick hide to its spine.

The beast’s eyes were maddened with pain and fury, but still it saw her coming.

It bellowed and thrust its tusks at her, almost too fast to avoid.

Almost…

Sejuani dropped to the snow and slid beneath the mammoth’s belly on her back. Holding the haft of Winter’s Wrath in one hand, she screamed as she took hold of the chained shard of True Ice in her fist.

The pain was unbearable, as if she’d thrust her hand deep into a fire.

She slammed the shard up into the mammoth’s chest, turning her head from the flaring burst of blue-white fire as it punched deep into its body.

Sejuani slid out from under the mammoth and sprang to her feet. The chained True Ice fell from her numbed hand. Her fingers were black and clawed with frostbite.

The mammoth staggered, its mighty heart freezing in its chest, the blood in its veins turning to ice. Its eyes misted with the white of a blizzard and it staggered like a drunk as it fought to stay upright.

“Olaf, get off!” yelled Sejuani. “Olaf!”

Her voice was hard and commanding, a voice to be obeyed. It penetrated the blood-mist wreathing Olaf’s mind, and he vaulted from the mammoth’s back.

He landed next to her, chest heaving, eyes wide and his ax blade soaked in blood.

Sejuani wanted to speak, but the pain was too great. That was good, she hoped, it meant the hand wasn’t beyond saving. Her fingers throbbed in agony, and she thrust them deep within her furs, doing her best to hide the pain.

The mammoth staggered and swayed, dragging its back leg as its blood grew ever more sluggish and cold. Her hunters closed in, spears poised, but Sejuani halted them with a word. The hunt was over. The beast had its back to the cliff, nowhere to go.

Though the mammoth knew it was beaten, it lifted its head proudly.

It had fought to the last, and Sejuani held her weapon high, honoring its spirit.

The great beast stared her down, caring nothing for the gesture.

Instead, it stepped back and over the cliff.

Sejuani ran to the cliff’s edge and sank to her knees, watching as the mammoth fell thousands of feet down the mountain before landing on a wide expanse of heavy snow.

“Svaag!” swore Sejuani, balling her fists in the snow, heedless of the pain.

Olaf stood over her, leaning dangerously far out over the cliff.

“Ach, we’ll just climb down to carve it up,” he said with a shrug. “The beast saved us the bother of dragging its carcass off the mountain.”

Sejuani sighed, about to agree with him, when she heard a distant cracking sound. A sound babes in arms were taught to recognize.

The sound of breaking ice.

A network of angular black lines spread out from where the mammoth had landed and Sejuani realized the wide expanse of white wasn’t a stretch of tundra at all. It was the frozen surface of a mountain tarn, a lake pool formed in a deep hollow.

The ice splintered into jagged segments and Sejuani watched with a sick sense of horrified inevitability as the mammoth’s body slid beneath the frigid black waters, far beyond their reach.

“Svaaaaaaag!”

Defying all Sejuani’s understanding of the human body, Urkath yet lived.

His ribs were smashed and his spine was splintered into fragments, but he still drew breath as Sejuani and Olaf squatted next to him. Incredibly, he’d managed to prop himself up against the very rock that had destroyed his spine, drawing short, hiked breaths.

“Wolf calls me home…” he said with a pained grin, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Lamb would never think to come for you, Urkath,” said Sejuani, taking his hand. “We are Winter’s Claw. We don’t go meekly into the beyond.”

Urkath nodded. “My sword?”

Olaf pressed Urkath’s weapon into his palm and closed the man’s fingers around its grip.

“The tale of your death will be told at the hearthfires for many seasons,” said the berserker, a melancholic edge in his voice. “I envy you that.”

Urkath coughed a mouthful of blood and said, “I’d gladly… swap fates with you, big man.”

“No,” said Olaf sadly. “I do not think that you would.”

Urkath turned his head, the light fading from his eyes, and said, “The gods… they show me a fine sight… as I die…”

Sejuani followed his gaze to the top of the mountain, where a vivid borealis of crimson and amber had driven away the lightning, a swathe of light painting the night sky that was as beautiful and magical as it was strange.

She saw Urkath’s bloodstained mask lying in the snow and slid it over his now lifeless face.

“Wolf will be here soon,” whispered Sejuani. “Give the old bastard a scare for me.”

They left Urkath there, at the border between the realm of mortals and the Lost Ones.

His body belonged to the Freljord now and his spirit would roam the frozen winds until the cold, atavistic soul of the land found a use for it.

Their mood was grim as they descended the mountain.

To stay on the hunt any longer would be pointless. As it was, they had only scraps to sustain them back to the Winter’s Claw encampment, two days’ travel westward.

Exhausted and with hunger gnawing at her belly, Sejuani swayed in Bristle’s saddle, her frozen hand tingling beneath her furs.

Olaf kept pace with her on foot, keeping his own counsel, his mood dark.

Night closed in as they reached the foot of the mountains and camped in the lee of a titanic menhir. It had once been part of a great stone circle higher up the mountain, but had toppled in a long-ago earthquake. The smooth stone surface was carved with ancient symbols no one could read, and a pair of frozen skeletons lay entwined at its far end, a frosted blade lying within their bones.

Lovers or bitter enemies, who could say?

Dawn brought fresh snows and colder winds coming off the high peaks, as though the mountain itself sought to drive them from its slopes. Their route home took them past the remains of a village that had once stood where the road turned to the mountain pass. Its structures were ghostly tombs now, its inhabitants dead or long gone.

Nightfall on the second day saw them come within sight of the Winter’s Claw encampment.

A few guttering torches marked its edge, and Sejuani’s heart sank to see how few they were now. Not so very long ago, when she had first marshaled her followers, they numbered in the thousands, but hunger and the harshness of recent seasons had forced her to scatter her host.

“How do you fare?” asked Olaf as they trudged toward the beacons of light, the first words he had said since coming off the mountain.

“At last, he speaks,” said Sejuani, irritated at his sullenness.

“Ach, don’t mind me,” said Olaf. “Each time the blood-mist takes me I hope it will be the last time. That I will finally die in glory. And every time it fades, I am sad that I know I am one step closer to dying at peace.”

Sejuani shrugged. “Have no fear, Olaf. With enemies all around us, I promise you days of blood and battle, nights of death and fury.”

Olaf grinned, and his grim countenance vanished like snow before the summer.

“You swear it?”

“I swear it,” promised Sejuani. “But to answer your first question, Viljalmr will take it as an ill-omen that the tribe’s leader returns with nothing to show for her hunt.”

“A pox on his kind,” spat Olaf. “Seers only ever speak in riddles and deliver naught but grim portents. I’d sooner trust a southerner.”

Sensing an opening, Sejuani asked, “Are you ever going to tell me why you went south?”

“No,” said the berserker. “I don’t think I will. Some tales are best left in the past.”

Sejuani ran the stiff brush through Bristle’s fur, letting the anger burning within her after the meeting in the tented longhouse flow from her with every hard sweep. As she’d feared, the seer, Viljalmr, had found great woe in her having returned without meat for curing. Circling the firepit, his cloak of raven feathers glistening in the orange light of the flames, he told the assembled claw-leaders that the coming winter would be the grimmest any of them had known.

Olaf had openly mocked the man, telling him a child could see the same thing.

The other hunting claws had met with little more success—Svalyek’s claw had taken six elnuk from an Avarosan drover who’d waited too long to lead his herd to greener pastures, and Heffnar’s group had found and killed a small pod of horned seals trapped on land after the ocean floes had frozen to the edge of the land.

It wasn’t nearly enough, but it would keep the tribe’s bellies full for a few days.

Fear made the tribe’s blood run hot, and shouting voices clamored to know what she would do, how she planned to keep her people alive until the spring muster. Sejuani had no answer, and angry voices echoed long into the night with ill-formed thoughts on how they should survive.

Some said they should march south to Ornnkaal Rocks and make peace with the Avarosans, but they were quickly shouted down by Gunnak, the most bellicose of Sejuani’s war-leaders. Beating his tattooed chest with his ax, he demanded they take their claws and carve a red path as deep as they could into Avarosan lands to earn a glorious death.

Sejuani had to admit, despite its suicidal futility, the idea of riding into the southern lowlands with blades unsheathed greatly appealed to her. Others said they should try another hunt. After all, wasn’t there still light and food enough to mount one more expedition?

Heads nodded at that suggestion until Hunt-leader Varruki explained there was barely enough food to sustain the hunters, and that everyone would be frozen and starved before they returned.

Quieter speakers said maybe they should disperse the tribe, each family making their own way into the wilds. Smaller groups would be easier to feed after all…

Sejuani had quashed such talk straight away.

She knew it was going to be hard enough to get the full tribe back together in the spring months as it was. Breaking up even further would only tempt each smaller group to turn from the Winter’s Claw to try and forge a new life in the south.

In the Freljord, community was life, and to separate further was to die. No one could endure alone, and only by the combined will of the tribe, even one as harsh and unforgiving as the Winter’s Claw, was survival even possible.

Besides, going south meant a life lived as a prisoner of the fields, of homes built from stone, of tending flocks. That was not the Winter’s Claw way, and would never be their way.

Sejuani would rather die with the blood running hot in her veins and a blade in her hand than stooped and worn down by years of grubbing in the dirt for seeds.

In the end, Viljalmr had marched straight up to her, a brazen threat to her authority.

How were the Winter’s Claw to survive?

Once, she would have struck him down for such open defiance, but his question was fair and everyone gathered in the tent knew it.

Her people needed a leader who could make life and death decisions without fear, so she told the assembled leaders they would have her answer when dawn’s light clawed over the mountains.

Now, brushing the thick hair running down Bristle’s back, she felt the raging storm within her mind finally calming. Grooming the giant beast always soothed Sejuani’s emotions, reminding her of a time when things had been simpler, though part of her knew that life had never been simpler, not really.

She thought back to when she’d brought Ashe to the Winter’s Claw after finding her alone and in exile on the ice. She smiled, remembering how her childhood friend had mistaken Sejuani for one of the Ursine.

Her strokes grew harder as she thought of how Ashe had betrayed them and turned her back on Sejuani during the raid on the Ebrataal. That was the moment Sejuani had known for sure there was no chance of the Winter’s Claw ever making peace with the Avarosan.

Bristle grunted in annoyance, stamping his hoofs in irritation.

“Careful, lass, the beast’s getting unsettled,” said a voice from behind.

Sejuani spun, reaching for the knife at her hip.

A shape lay at the corner of the corral, small and useless looking, like a bundle of rags.

She released her grip on the knife, shocked to see who had spoken.

Lying in a makeshift bed of straw was a wretched old man who should have been left out on the ice to die many years ago. His legs were stumps that ended just above the knee, and his sightless eyes were mottled white like a gull’s egg.

His name was Kriek and he’d once been the seer of Olgavanna’s tribe, farmers and builders who’d refused the call to Sejuani’s banner. So she had sent Urkath’s war-claw to wipe them out and take their herds, their furs, their iron, and their salt. The survivors fled up the slopes of a mountain whose summit seethed with the red rock that flows.

When Urkath returned, it was with Kriek on his back and he’d seemed confused when Sejuani demanded to know why he’d brought them a useless mouth to feed. Urkath claimed the Ursine had driven them from the mountain, speaking of blade-pierced titans draped in bloodied fur and horns, gaping skulls, and fists that hurled fire.

He’d simply said that the mountain had told him to bring the blind man, before dumping him unceremoniously at the edge of the village. Sejuani had given orders that no one feed the seer, that he be left behind for the Freljord to take. But here he was, many months and leagues from that battle, alive and, more confusingly, somehow still with the Winter’s Claw.

“Word is you glimpsed the realm of the Lost Ones on the mountain,” said Kriek. “Don’t envy you that, lass. I saw them once, back when you drove us into Hearth-Home.”

Sejuani put aside her irritation long enough to say, “You didn’t see anything. You’re blind.”

Kriek nodded and said, “Oh, I seen them, better’n any true-shotted archer ever did. White and gold in the clouds, lightning for blood, and voices of thunder. I saw, I did.”

Sejuani peered into the milky whiteness of his gaze.

“Those eyes haven’t seen anything in many a year.”

“True,” said Kriek. “World went white for me on my tenth winter, but some things are best seen without eyes, lass!”

Sejuani tapped the flat of her blade against Kriek’s neck and said, “Call me lass again and I’ll slit your throat right now.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right, you’re no lass, you’re Warmother, ain’t ya? You remember that next time some seer tries to tell you what to do,” laughed Kriek, waving a filthy, gnawed hand at her. “But listen, you know warriors who lose a hand or leg’ll swear they can still feel the cold in ‘em? Same for my eyes. Now I see more’n I ever did before, more’n I ever wished to see. Things you’d gouge your own eyes out with that knife if y’saw the half of them.”

“You don’t know the things I’ve seen,” said Sejuani.

“That’s right,” said Kriek, leaning in. “Ever since that night you and your spirit walker made offerings to the Lost Ones… You sang the oaths, you burned the wood in the death knot, and offered up the weapons and bone, so what do you see? Days of blood and battle, nights of death and fury?”

Just thinking of the slaughter at the city by the river filled Sejuani with a hunger for raw meat, a thirst for marrow sucked from splintered bone.

She shook her head free of the sensations and said, “How are you alive? I told my people not to feed you, to leave you behind.”

“Old Ornn fed me,” said Kriek. “At Hearth-Home, just before your killers came out of the smoke. Lifted me up like a babe and nourished me with a mouthful of broth from his great cauldron. That he did, yes!”

Sejuani sighed. Kriek was clearly mad, but she was more irritated that someone in the Winter’s Claw had clearly been feeding this old fool when their own were going hungry. She went to rise, but the old man’s hand shot out and took her wrist in a powerful grip.

“On my honor, not a scrap of food has passed my lips since your dead man brought me down the mountain,” said Kriek, his lifeless white eyes boring right into her, as though something else stared out from behind them, something infinitely older and wiser. “Never took no food. Nor water, neither! Ornn’s great cauldron seen to that! No company that sups from it ever leaves unsatisfied. One mouthful and your belly don’t growl for a whole turn of the seasons!”

“Ornn’s Cauldron?” scoffed Sejuani. “That’s just a legend. Wishful thinking. It’s one of the lost tales to tell to children.”

“And where d’you think them tales come from but truth!” snapped Kriek. lifting the furs covering his body. “This look like wishful thinking to you?”

Sejuani let out an involuntary gasp at the sight of Kriek’s torso, his flesh ruddy and pink, his belly full and soft with fat. Sejuani was ivory pale, her wrists too slender, the flesh pulled tight over her frame, pressing against the bones for want of meat and fat and fish.

“How…?” said Sejuani.

“I told ya,” said Kriek. “The Great Cauldron of Ornn. Lost Ones stole it from Hearth-Home for spite’s sake. Said Ornn was too soft on mortals, that if they could fill their bellies any time they wanted, they’d get spoiled and weak! So they killed his followers and took it to their mountain, high up where its power now paints the sky with blood-red light. Ornn’s crafty, y’see. His magic’s too wyrd-cunning to stay hidden forever. Even the Lost Ones can’t keep power like that out of sight! Ask that spirit walker friend of yours. If he still remembers he’s a man, he’ll hear the truth of what I say!”

Sejuani shook her head. “Udyr’s gone. He walked into the blizzard. Said he needed time away from the spirits looking to get inside him. Said he needed to find a way to strengthen his will.”

“Then it’s all on you, Warmother,” said Kriek. “What’s it to be? The old ways? Frozen on your knees or your blood soaking warm southern soil? Or maybe try and take back what the Lost Ones stole? You’ve faced them before, so what’s one more time, eh?”

The old man’s story was lunacy, wasn’t it? How could she possibly convince her people to march into the mountain realm of the Ursine on the word of a madman?

The Freljord was a place of dark mystery, where legends walked the ice, and its magic was there in every breath. Some whispered that Ashe had fought her way to the legendary bow of Avarosa, and Sejuani’s own Iceborn powers were proof that magic was woven into the very fabric of the landscape… but still…?

“Why would you help me?” asked Sejuani. “My warriors slew your tribe.”

“Don’t you understand yet, Warmother?” said Kriek, the timbre of his voice deepening, becoming low and melodic. “We are all one tribe and it is long past time you understood that. You think too small, like a fighter only seeing the foe in front of them. You must think like a Warmother, like a queen! There is a season for fighting, a season for leading, and, aye, one for dying. But a time is coming when the sons and daughters of the Freljord must stand together or you will all die, one by one. And the first step on that road is staying alive. Tell me you hear me, daughter of Kalkia.”

Sejuani nodded and said, “I hear you.”

Sejuani left Kriek and Bristle in the corral. First light was breaking over the mountains, and she paused to savor the coming of a new day.

The orange glow of the dying hearthfire was visible within the tented longhouse, where her people waited to hear what she had decided.

Olaf squatted by its entrance, running a glittering whetstone over the blade of one of his enormous axes. He looked up and his eyes narrowed.

“You have the look of someone chewing a nettle,” he said.

“I know what we have to do, but no one’s going to like it.”

Olaf shrugged. “They don’t need to like it. You’re Warmother. You tell them what to do and they do it. That’s how this works.”

“I’ll want you at my side,” said Sejuani.

Olaf rose to his full, towering height, hooking his ax over his shoulder.

“No,” said Sejuani. “Blade out.”

Olaf nodded slowly and said, “You going to tell me your plan before we go in?”

“Remember how I promised you days of blood and battle, nights of death and fury?”

“Aye, Warmother, I do!” said Olaf, his smile as wide as the horizon.

“We’re going back up the mountain,” said Sejuani. “To the realm of the Ursine to steal the Great Cauldron of Ornn from the Volibear.”

“You’re right, they’re not going to like it,” said Olaf. “But I love it!”

Ornn’s name was once spoken throughout the lands that would one day become known as the Freljord. It was widely held that he was the firstborn of the old demi-gods, who had shaped the land itself, and brought forth the first snows.

More than any other of his kind, Ornn was said to value privacy, solitude, and focus. Beneath a dormant volcano that bore scars from some ancient eruption, he labored day and night, forging whatever his heart desired. The results were priceless tools destined for feats of legend—the lucky few who have stumbled upon these relics note their bewilderingly high quality. Some even claim that Braum’s shield was made by Ornn thousands of years ago, and remains as sturdy as the day it was finished.

No one can be sure, however, for none can find the forge-god to ask him. Almost all the tales of Ornn’s deeds and accomplishments have been excised from history by his enemies, and the slow march of time.

The few that remain are remembered by the handful of tribes who can trace their lineage back to a single culture of blacksmiths, architects, and brewmasters. This long-lost populace was known as the Hearthblood, apprentices who journeyed from all corners of Valoran, and gathered on the slopes of Hearth-Home to follow Ornn’s example.

Despite this imitative form of worship, Ornn never considered himself their patron. He would only give them curt nods or frowns when they offered up their work, and yet the Hearthblood accepted this and were determined to hone their skills. As a result, they came to create the finest tools, design the sturdiest structures, and brew the tastiest ales the world had ever beheld. They believed Ornn secretly approved of their perseverance, and the fact that they were always looking to better themselves in their craft.

But, in one catastrophic night, all the Hearthblood had accomplished was destroyed when Ornn battled with his brother Volibear at the mountain’s peak, for reasons no mortal could comprehend. The resultant cataclysm was a storm of fire and ash and lightning so intensely violent that it was seen ten horizons away.

When the dust settled, Hearth-Home was a smoldering caldera, and the Hearthblood were reduced to scattered bones and cinders.

Though he would never admit it, Ornn was devastated. Through the Hearthblood he had glimpsed the sweeping potential of mortal life, only to see it all lost beneath the indiscriminate wrath of his immortal struggle. Wracked with guilt, he retreated to the isolation of his foundry, and buried himself in his work for an age.

Now, perhaps he senses that the world is on the cusp of a new era. Some of his siblings appear to have taken physical form once more, their cults of followers growing restless and aggressive. The Freljord itself is fractured and leaderless, and ancient horrors are lurking in the shadows, waiting for any opportunity to strike…

In the wars to come, and in their aftermath, Ornn knows that the Freljord—and the rest of Runeterra—will have need of a good blacksmith.

The Ice Witch does not sleep in her citadel. She sleeps anywhere, and everywhere, and nowhere. Sometimes all at once.

The cavernous place where she now chooses to lay her body down for a few hours could hold a thousand fortresses. A veritable sea of True Ice stretches from underground horizon to underground horizon. They are not the horizons of the tumultuous world above, but closer—much closer—to an entirely different kind of madness.

She visits this place often, and always by herself, but she is never alone.

Some called them monsters. Some called them gods. Regardless, the vast shadows that slumber beneath the icy blanket can only dream. Lissandra checks in dutifully. Makes sure their bedding is comfortable.

The Watchers must not awaken.

She lost her eyes long ago, so it is her mind that traces their sleeping forms. What she sees has always chilled her beyond the concerns of flesh and bone, so that she no longer shivers at the touch of ice against her skin.

When she is down here, her blindness is a blessing. It is horror enough to feel their presence. To walk in their dreams. To know what it is they desire for this world.

And so, she must keep them dreaming.

One of them has begun to stir. Lissandra sensed it with the last new moon, hoping against hope that it would settle itself once more—but now its abyssal intelligence squirms against the others, growing ever more restless.

She removes her helm. Her ceremonial robes fall around her ankles, and she pads out across the frozen emptiness beyond.

Lissandra splays her fingers across the ice. Her hair hangs over her face, hiding the lines of age, and the scarred ruin of her empty eyes. She learned long ago the secret ways to walk in dreams, to traverse the impossible distances of this harsh land in moments, back and forth a hundred times before each new dawn. Sometimes, she forgets where her physical body is.

Her mind drifts down, now, through the barrier. She muses briefly at the thickness of the True Ice. To place the entire burden of faith upon glass is pure folly, and yet there is no other choice.

On the other side, the Watcher is all teeth and darkness and chittering, frustrated anticipation.

It is bigger than a mountain. Is it one of the small ones? Lissandra hopes so. She has never dared probe the defenses of the largest—the ones that seem able to devour gravity and time itself, eaters of not only worlds, but entire planes of reality. They make her feel very small and insignificant, like a single mote of frost in a blizzard.

She focuses on the great and terrible creature before her.

Its dream becomes hers.

Another Lissandra waits for her there, in the dreamscape. This ageless being towers behind a black sun, the strands of her hair floating into the heavens, her eyes whole, crystal-blue, and shining all with the celestial energies of the world’s final dawn.

She is beautiful. She is a goddess. She is struggling to press the sun down below the horizon.

The fiery black orb fights back, trying to rise again. It burns the goddess’ fingers.

She sees long un-shadows falling over mountains blanketed with frozen ashes. This land is a mockery of the Freljord, devoid of all life and magic…

Life. Life is the key. The living souls of the Freljord, this icy land that Lissandra once offered in sacrifice to the beasts below. She leads the stirring Watcher away from its own dark thoughts, as gently as she can, and tries to soothe it with the dreams of others.

The tribe is split across three camps. It is this way because the Iceborn warmother decrees it so. To hedge against an assassin’s blade, she says, so that none will know in which tent she slumbers.

Glacier underfoot, stars overhead, the priest marks his observations on a fold of cured elnük skin by candlelight, upon an icy outcropping. His hand is steady and bold. He must send his notes each night to the Frostguard Citadel.

He wonders, does power mask paranoia? Does—

He sees his breath, and knows that he is not alone. Shame constricts his throat. Dutifully, he reaches for a strip of cloth to honor Lissandra, greatest of the Three. After all the oaths he spoke, only her gaze could ever bring such a chill to his heart.

“Do not bind your eyes,” she says, emerging from the night’s shadow. Her voice is steady and cold.

“Forgive me,” he says. “I am late. My reports are—”

“It is not your words I seek. You are dreaming. I need you to listen. Listen to the ice.”

The Frost Priest’s eyes widen at what he hears. The ice hungers.

No. Not the ice. Something… beneath it?

“What does it mean?” he asks, but Lissandra is gone.

The priest awakens. He ruminates on the dream. He pledged to serve, freeze, and bleed blindly. He reaches for the strip of cloth, and binds his eyes.

Before dawn breaks, he is miles away from the warmother and her three camps.

And Lissandra drifts away into another’s dream.

Seven ice-hawks take flight across a blue sky, scattering the frost from their feathers. The dismal fang of a mountain looms over a beach of rounded gray stones, descending into the shallows of the sea.

The little girl—no one remembers her name but her—walks alone.

She picks up a crab. It’s black, with square eyes swiveling atop its head. She holds it carefully, its legs tickling the palm of her hand.

She looks up to see a chunk of ice floating in the dark water, carried to land on near-frozen tides. It bumps onto the rocky shore and begins to melt. Inch by inch, it shrinks away to reveal the form of a woman curled in a cradle of ice, a thing born of winter.

The girl drops the crab.

Lissandra arises from the breaking waves like a—

“WITCH!” the girl shrieks. A gale of ice and snow and searing cold bursts from her mouth.

The witch vanishes, and only the little girl crying a blizzard remains.

She wakes with a start beside a dying fire, surrounded by other sleeping children. They are the ones orphaned upon the Freljord’s reddening snow. A stern-looking woman watches over them, an axe strapped to her back. They all know she would die for them.

An ember pops from the hearth, landing in the shabby furs at the girl’s feet.

She touches it with her finger. It freezes solid in an instant.

Already walking into another dream, Lissandra knows to watch this child. She is Iceborn. Perhaps a new weapon for the war to come.

Or a new enemy.

High up in the mountains, it is not the deep cold that has laid this poor traveler low.

It is his own ignorance.

He hunches in a shallow cave. He hums because he can no longer sing the songs of his youth to comfort himself. He cannot bear to inhale the icy air. His beard, white with frost and frozen snot, makes it painful to open his lips, now blue and cracked. He cannot feel his legs, nor his hands. He no longer shivers. He is too far gone.

He has surrendered. The freeze will take his heart, and then it will be over.

It’s not the end he desired. But he feels warm. Free.

“To the fair lands! To the sunshine!” The lyrics slide dully around his brain. Instead of snow and ice, he sees green pastures. He can feel the summer breeze in his hair.

Lissandra approaches the man from the back of the shallow cave. She can see the death in his fingers and toes, spreading slowly. He will not awaken again. This will be his final dream.

She places a hand on his shoulder. No one should have to be alone in their final moments.

“Your people are waiting for you, friend,” she whispers. “Lay down in the long grass. I will watch over you while you rest.”

He looks up at her. He smiles, and nods. He looks younger.

Then he closes his eyes, and drifts away.

Lissandra remains on the edge of his dream, until the dream is no more.

War cries and death screams drag Lissandra south. She can smell blood and fire on the wind, and the sharp tang of angry steel. Grass grows here, where the thaw happens. It is not a sunny pasture, but it is the closest thing that most tribes of the Freljord will ever know.

The dream spins, and distorts. Her knees feel like they will buckle, if that would have any meaning. She steadies herself against the upright timbers of a burning hut.

The flames do nothing. They are not real.

A shadow falls over her.

“Long have I waited for this day, witch!”

Surprisingly, it is one of the Avarosans—a great red-haired brute, his neck bulging with strained arteries. He hefts a notched sword over his head. The bloodlust is plain in his eyes, as he imagines victories he will never see in his lifetime.

Nonetheless, he is ready to deliver the final, cleaving blow to his sworn enemy.

Lissandra has lost count of how many times she has died in someone else’s dream. Each time, a piece of her drifts away, never to return.

No. Not again. Not this time.

Great claws of ice close around her to form a shield, entombing her. The warrior’s blade does not even chip the surface. He staggers back, roaring defiantly as he—

Let him awaken, and believe himself the hero who drove off the Ice Witch. It was only a dream. The Avarosan tribes will fall… just like the treacherous harridan from whom they took their name.

And Lissandra has more pressing concerns.

The eye of the storm is most ferocious in the Freljord.

The gale roars. Lightning flashes. Even snowflakes can draw blood.

Lissandra finds the spirit walker channeling this elemental fury. His trance is much like a dream—a bridge between worlds. The storm is a prayer, a direct line to the Ursine’s demi-god master.

Lissandra would spit. That hateful creature is one of the few memories she could not purge from the Freljord, no matter how hard she tried.

Lightning strikes the shaman multiple times. A toothy maw stretches his jawline. Fingernails blacken into claws. It is neither man nor bear, but something else entirely. All its life will be much like a dream. No sleep. No joy. Only the storm. Lissandra edges closer, looking for anything she can use in the roiling madness.

Then the shaman’s frightful gaze snaps to her, and she finds herself face to face with an avatar of the Volibear himself.

Without thought, Lissandra lashes out with cleaving spikes of True Ice pulled from the earth around them. She tries to snare the creature’s limbs, to slow it for even just—

Dark blood stains the snow. Thunder rolls around the distant peaks. The twisted shaman falls to his knees, his body torn between the shape of what he was, and what he might have become. It is a kindness, really, for his mind is still mostly his own.

Other eyes shine out from the storm. These shapechangers are not the threat they once were. They are a battle for another time.

For now, their delirium will serve well enough.

Lissandra warily circles the Watcher beneath the ice. She can see her own tiny body on the surface above them—her pale, corpse-like flesh is almost as white as freshly driven snow.

The beast is barely aware of her presence. It is like some monstrous, mewling newborn.

In the dreams of the Watchers, there is nothing.

And more nothing. And more nothing. A horizon of nothing, framed by mountains of nothing. Above all that nothing? A sky of nothing, with dense clouds of nothing.

In the face of all of that nothing, Lissandra fights to remain… something.

The abyss yawns around her. She watches the black sun devour her avatar, but no matter how much it pulls into its maw, there is always more for it to eat.

She screams, and explodes into dark fractals that divide into billions of Lissandras—every one of them screaming. Against all the nothing, the sound is barely even a whisper, and yet even that is enough to rattle the dream to its very foundations…

Her barely conscious body traces glyphs on the surface of the True Ice barrier. It is an old spell, born of a fire now long extinguished. She scrawls in spasms and convulsions. Her movements are desperate, jerking, clumsy.

Only a shred of her spirit remains in her body.

And then, in a rush, most of her returns. She vomits watery bile onto the ice, and curls up as it freezes around her.

Below, the writhing shadow sleeps again. It dreams of eating her for a little while longer, and that dream buys it the only measure of peace its kind ever seem to desire.

Peace. It is something Lissandra never experiences. Not anymore.

She dresses herself, and returns to ascend the worn steps. The Frostguard await her leadership and guidance. She will find no peace in this life.

That is a small price to pay, to keep the beasts slumbering.

Dreaming.

Gnawing.

Blistering winds lash the orphaned Iceborn’s cheeks almost bloody. Her nose went numb an hour ago—or was it two? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, because whenever she closes her eyes, she sees the witch.

Silhouetted against the never-setting sun, the woman rides a beast of ice, bone, and dark magic, and dazzles in a gown of freshly-fallen snow. The horned helm that covers her eyes gives the impression of her head rising out into the stars.

Parched black lips part to offer horrific prophecies.

“Reathe, I see you.”

The Ice Witch has never failed to make a dramatic entrance into Reathe’s dreams.

“The darkness grins,” she continues, “and says to me ‘Ice and lies make desperate tools’. I implore my hand to curl into a fist! To pluck out the ever-watchful eye! To impale it upon a spike of ice! Before the wind howls its song only to the widening abyss…”

Reathe’s eyelashes have frozen shut. Now, it hurts to tear them apart. But she must. The longer they’re stuck together, the harder it will be to break them open.

She cries out, and feels hot blood trickle down her cheek. She fogs a piece of ice with her breath, and rubs it until she can see her reflection. The split in the corner of her eyelid is not too bad.

But in that reflection, she sees she is not alone in her sheltered cave.

An emaciated man shivers at the entrance, with early morning light casting its blue tint over his face. Then Reathe realizes this is no fanciful illusion. The man’s skin is blue, and translucent. His movements are haggard and stiff, as though he’s trying to reawaken his failing joints.

“It’s cold,” said the haggardly man. “I knew this as I lay dying.”

Reathe skitters backward on her palms and heels, away from him. “I have no food,” she calls out, hating the fear in her own voice. “Little shelter. There is nothing for you to take from me.”

The man tilts his head.

“I am of no hunger. No shelter shields me. I saw this cave, and you… as her frost clouded my eyes. Our paths are like rivers meeting. I knew this as I lay dying.”

“Died often, have you?”

“Just the once was enough.”

“You…” Reathe hesitates, unsure of herself in that moment. “You saw the witch, too?”

“No. But I hear the witch in my veins… in every moment, with every beat of my once-still heart.”

He holds out his blackened hand to her.

“There are others, little Iceborn. Others we must meet. And there are many miles to tread in each other’s company.”

“And you knew all this as you lay dying?”

“Death reveals much, little Iceborn.”

Reathe stands slowly. Warily. “Who are you?” she asks.

“I am no one anymore. I am but a passenger in my own body. My name is frozen over. But you may call me… Shamble, and I shall call you…?”

“Reathe, of the Narrow-Foot Clan.”

“Then come, Reathe, Iceborn of Narrow-Foot. The others are near.”

She does not move. “And who are they?”

The spires of the Frostguard Citadel rise from the frozen landscape. Waves of magical aurorae—greens, and pinks, and blues—dance in a sky that is almost always night. The stars twinkle eternally here, in the coldest and cleanest air.

Few know how to find this hidden fortress. There are many in this world who would raise an army, and raze it to the ground. Those who do find the citadel rarely leave on their own terms.

Even so, five weary figures trudge down from the rocky mountain pass, through the hidden wound in the very fabric of the Freljord.

They seek the Ice Witch. Like so many others through the centuries, they each met Lissandra in their dreams… but now they each feel something else, deep inside.

Something beneath the ice. Something dark, and empty.

Hungry.

Gnawing.

No one knew who lit the fire, but we saw the plume of smoke from far away.

The Winter’s Claw had driven our tribe north, where the land was so harsh that even our warmother Olgavanna shivered through the first night. Our elnuk herd died on the second. At least we had food for the third.

But even that feast was a memory as we climbed the mountain with no peak. Legless Kriek called it “the Half-Mountain of Old Ornn.” Our shaman had lost his mind, but Olgavanna bade us carry the fool. He had convinced her that our survival lay at the source of that mysterious smoke. The rest of us believed we were marching to our doom.

The slopes of the half-mountain were a tortured landscape of black stone. We found the ruins of a forgotten city shown on no map—now just a maze of charred foundations. Kriek, perched atop Boarin’s shoulders, insisted it was once named Hearth-Home.

Dark clouds to the east flashed lightning and winds carried the stench of wet fur and sweet decay. Our scouts did not return. We all knew what this meant, but none of us wished to utter the word “Ursine” aloud.

We climbed until we stood at the edge of a vast crater. Then, Kriek saw the fire. This was odd, because Legless Kriek was also blind.

In the center of that basin was the source of the smoke venting into the sky. Olgavanna reasoned that at least the steep crater walls offered respite from the howling winds, and so we descended into what would likely be our grave. The smoldering terrain proved difficult to navigate, but any halt would mean to bow our heads and accept slaughter.

Then we saw the furnace. The domed structure was the only one that looked hand-made. It was crafted like the head of a great ram, with tufts of goat-grass in the spaces between the smooth flagstones. In the ram’s mouth was a flame so bright, we could find it with our eyes closed.

We huddled around it for warmth while Olgavanna laid out the plans for our last stand. It was better to die on our feet, than shivering and huddled in the cold. Most of us were farmers, builders, menders, and few were skilled in combat like the other tribes. We cared for our elderly, our sick, and our children. Now we were far from the aid of the Avarosans—but war craves only blood and bones.

We could only ever stand a chance against the Winter’s Claw. If the Ursine struck first, our defense would be terrifyingly short. That hideous legion of half-bear abominations would overwhelm us.

And soon enough, we heard their battle-growls growing louder, along with the clamor of their footsteps. We smelled their stench. Hundreds descended the cliffs, like shadows twisting down the basalt slopes. We fashioned spears from our stretchers, and sharpened our carving knives on the flint. We would minister the Rite of the Lamb to our elderly and wounded, and the rest of us would dance with the Wolf. It would all be over by morning.

No one saw who stoked the fire, but it grew so hot that we needed to back away. Then the furnace spoke, its voice like crackling logs.

“Volibear is near,” it said. “Seek shelter now.”

“There is no shelter to seek,” Olgavanna replied to the fire in the forge. We knew not in whose presence we stood. “Enemies are at our heels. The Ursine are flanking us.”

“The Ursine…” and the forge grew hotter at these words, “…will be stopped. The other problems are your own.” The goat-grass caught fire. The flagstones grew red hot around the edges, then toward their centers. Steam sizzled from the cracks.

Some shed their clothes to seek reprieve as the temperature rose. Others fainted. The next wave of blistering heat dropped us all to our knees, gasping for air. “I never thought I’d see the day!” cried Kriek, weeping tears of joy.

Stone began to drip like candlewax. Masonry flowed down the base of the structure. The domed top of the forge melted inward, pulling the rest of the outer shell into a molten pool.

A flash of orange light blinded us, briefly silhouetting a humanoid figure. Then, a geyser of flame spouted into the air, drops of molten rock hardened on the ground at our feet. Where the massive forge had stood, there was now a hulking beast, its form blurred by waves of heat. There it was, the forgotten legend Kriek always told us about—Old Ornn, as tall as three frost pines. The ancient forge-master cooled rapidly into fur and form, lava dribbling down his chin and hardening into a braided beard. His eyes were glaring embers. In one hand he carried a hammer, in the other he hefted an anvil with equal ease.

We gathered behind our warmother. Olgavanna gripped Fellswaig, her true-ice axe, and approached Ornn. “If the Ursine are your foes, we will fight by your side,” she said. Then, in a gesture unbecoming of an iceborn warmother, she bent the knee and laid her weapon at Ornn’s feet. Fellswaig’s true-ice melted, revealing an ordinary bronze and iron axe beneath.

I had never seen true-ice melt. No one had ever seen true-ice melt. We felt it wise to join Olgavanna in her kneeling.

Ornn grunted. “Stand up. Kneeling is death.” He looked to the gathering thunderstorm swirling overhead. “I will deal with the Ursine. Do not follow me.”

He lumbered toward the advancing horde, who charged forward with vicious speed. We could see his fire reflected in their large eyes. Boarin hoisted the old shaman higher onto his shoulders. “Old Ornn swinging his hammer, he pounds valleys from mountains,” the legless fool half-sung.

We watched in stunned silence as the creature stood alone against the Ursine. With a roar, he brought his hammer down onto the ground, and a fissure cracked toward the advancing army, stopping just short of their vanguard. Spouts of lava and sulfur jetted into the sky, hardened fire rained down on the half-bear warriors.

Whatever Old Ornn was, he fought with the hot blood of the earth.

Behind the Ursine, giant chunks of slag broke through the ground, cutting off their retreat. Ornn charged and smashed them with more swings of his hammer. Still, they attacked with the viciousness of ten berserkers each.

But we knew when Ornn reached their rearguard, for there was a deafening explosion—the slag wall shattered, and Ursine flew through the air in contorted arcs of burning flesh and fur.

The sky darkened with ash. Columns of smoke rose to clash with the menacing thunderclouds, and bolts of lightning lanced through the haze. The world grew eerily still as the Thousand-Pierced Bear itself took to the battlefield. We could see its telltale shape: spears, swords, tusks, all were stuck in its hide. Lightning followed in its wake.

And it laughed.

The answering blare of the horn shook our insides. Lava bled from the black cliffs, rivers of fire flowed down the slopes, rushing toward the valley basin, and formed a surging wave. Bolts of lightning stabbed back at the cliffs, to cauterize the wounds in the rock, and a thick, caustic fog blanketed the entire caldera. We saw only blue-white bolts and hellish crimson explosions filtered by the thick vapor. The heat from below the ground scorched the soles of our boots.

Then we saw that surging wave of flame form into a great stampeding ram. Ornn charged at the molten beast, catching the thing he had named as Volibear between his shoulder and the lava-ram.

The force of the explosion toppled us all. The legless shaman was thrown a hundred paces from Boarin’s shoulders, laughing the whole time.

We waited all night for the great cataclysm to overtake us, but it never came. We only heard the roars of the Thousand-Pierced Bear, and the gruff bellowing of the forge ram.

When the pall lifted in the late morning, we saw that the slopes around us were covered in chunks of hissing scree, and unnatural columns of crusted basalt rose at odd angles from the ground.

As we realized what stood before us, we recoiled in horror and awe. The Ursine were frozen in stone, their faces petrified masks of agony.

We did not see any sign of Ornn, nor Volibear. We had no time to look, either. The hunting horns of the Winter’s Claw announced their approach. We picked up our weapons and dug in our heels. What remained of our clothes were scorched tatters of cloth, but our skin no longer prickled with cold.

Olgavanna’s hair had been singed away, her muscular back branded with heat. Her once true-ice axe was bronze and iron, as naked as we were. She had never looked stronger.

Our blood boiled. Our stomachs growled. We were raw and blistered, bare and exposed. We smeared our chests with ash in the shape of a hammer, and ram horns upon our faces.

We sang and chanted in the memory of last night, with the words of mad old Kriek.

We knew who lit the fire. The Winter’s Claw would know, too.

“Mom… can I ask you a question?”

“What’s wrong, Nunu? There’s something crinkling your nose, and I don’t think the elkyr can be blamed… well, this time. No offense, Kona!”

“Haha, elkyr smell like doocicles! But… we always make ‘em pull our carts anyway. I don’t wanna leave, mom. I like that village. I found a warhorn in the mud!”

“Then come close, my little grimaceling, and I will remind you. There is a reason the Notai must leave as the snows settle. An adventure that winter’s mother has entrusted to us.”

“You mean Anivia?”

“Mhmm. They say she is a phoenix, with icicles instead of feathers—her wings borne on frigid wind, brrrrrr! But we Notai know, it is hope that carries Anivia, and that she is not a guardian of our realm, as the Avarosans say. She is freedom. She is the spirit that fills you as you follow your passion, no matter how mean the world is. Do you know what passion is, Nunu?”

“Is it when the barbarian kisses the warmother?”

“Hmm, sometimes, and sometimes the warmother kisses the barbarian. But if I had to name it, I would call passion… the feeling of one last celebration as winter hits, the warmth inside even better because the first snows are falling. The dancing, the singing, a lyre in my hands, shivering even as I burn with this—this thing I try to name! This is what Anivia has tasked us with carrying across the Freljord. This is what gives her wind on her migration! Some villages see us as untrustworthy traders, others fear us for the ice that announces our arrival, the winter that can mean life or death. But to them all, we bring song, we bring togetherness, we link each village with our spirit. Can you imagine what a gift this is, Nunu? To know what we know because caravan carts have rattled it into our bones. Life is an endless string of opportunity for songs...”

“Like these?”

“Yes, like my song strands. Each string is a song, each knot in the string a note, and each note a place we’ve been while following Anivia. Like this one. This is the droning murmur of pilgrims, gathered beneath the statue of Avarosa at Rakelstake—a frozen lake that glitters like a jewel too massive for anyone to own. But the Avarosans have built a monument beside it, and say they own it anyway. They live their lives as if they are statues. Warmothers, Iceborn, they do not move, they fear the world that exists outside of Avarosa’s shadow. But to others, they have already moved too much…”

“The Winter’s Claw. They hate Avarosinians.”

“Avarosans. But the song binds them together, like this. This is the sound of the chains tying wolfships to Glaserport, and the Winter’s Claw to the past. The old ways. Blood in the snow. They live their lives on shattered ice. They think it is their might that cracks a path to sea, the wolfships prowling through… but it is not strong to cling to chains, and to demand that others carry them as well.”

“I ‘member the wolfships, mom. They were made out of wood. Not wolves! The Winter’s Claw don’t know how to name things.”

“Some things, Nunu, should not be named. Like the Frostguard Citadel, above the Howling Abyss. All those secrets… secrets of my own, of the warmth I have found… They preach there the words of the Three Sisters, but I think secrets are their true faith. How can you rescue someone from something they don’t know? That only this howled dirge remembers, rising from the Abyss. What the Frostguard guard against.”

“Are they heroes, like in the songs? I want to be a hero, too!”

“Listen to these notes, Nunu. They are the fortress at Frosthorn Peak and the crypts beneath. They are quiet. Empty. Whatever the Iceborn fought against has been forgotten. And now, with nothing else to fight, they use their power to rule. Avarosans, Winter’s Claw, Frostguard, they are the same. They use statues, chains, secrets, to push men down onto their knees. But you… When I look out onto the road, I see your future, Nunu. The joy you will bring to so many, as you have brought me. As winter’s mother wills it, and as she sends her winds to carry you, I will send love. You are my heart-song, Nunu. What notes should we add next? Where should love take us?”

“We’re probably going to another village. But this one won’t have warhorns...”

“No, Nunu. There is always more out there, you only need to imagine it! We could travel to a bridge that once spanned the sky! Only it collapsed in a forgotten age, and most of it lies hidden behind the clouds. But, can you hear that? Someone is step, step, stepping along its edge. We could pass into the tombs of creatures who ruled the Freljord before humans, find the mist that freezes in mid-air, giving ancient dreams shape. What is that in front of you, Nunu? Can you catch a dream on your tongue? Or find glacial tunnels that branch, as if tracing the shape of a world-tree that our ancestors destroyed, and buried in ice. All these things you can find, if only you look. You can go anywhere you can imagine.”

“Could we go to the top of the whole wide world, so I could play my warhorn? I bet then even Avarosa would hear it, and she’d come back!”

“We can go there right now, Nunu, if you tell me all about it. What would you see? What is the story in your heart?”

“I know how it starts! Once upon a time, there was a boy named Nunu, and Layka, his mom… and she was beautiful, and they lived in a caravan, and… they were trying to think of where to go next.”

“And what did they decide, Nunu?”

“They decided they could go anywhere together! And so their caravan flew off into the sky when Kona grew wings out of her butt, and flapped harder than Anivia! And the two of them were warm, and safe, even though snow was falling. What’s that feeling, mom? Like a hug, only…”

“It’s home. It’s home, my little hero. And that is where we will always be, no matter where we go. It is how we know, though the cold comes with us, though it can be hard and demand hope… it will never be winter, Nunu, if you love the person beside you.”

Most mortals live and die knowing only a single plane of reality—the material realm. However, this view reflects just half of existence. Running parallel is the spirit realm, invisible to many and just as vibrant and full of life. Yet deep in the frozen tundra of the Freljord, there is a vastaya who lives in a blended world of her own...

Aurora was born in the secluded village of Aamu, home to the Bryni tribe, and spent her youth playing with critters no one else could see while exploring a world no one else could appreciate. Though she was happy, she felt isolated from the rest of Aamu. Even her parents didn’t understand her, believing Aurora’s “friends” were merely imaginary.

The only Bryni who wholeheartedly embraced Aurora was her great aunt Havu, who always entertained her stories, fostered her passions, and encouraged her to celebrate her individuality. So Aurora learned to be herself and revel in her own company.

As Aurora grew older, she realized something: Her invisible friends were not imaginary, but spirits. The beautiful, vibrant world she lived in was completely unique, for only her eyes could pierce through the veil between the realm of mortals and spirits.

She meticulously documented this intertwined world, studying Aamu's spirits in hopes of helping others understand the realms as she saw them.

Over time, more and more spirits appeared in Aamu, including ones who felt… different. Lost and wild, they had become "wayward" when the balance between realms was disturbed by mortal affairs. But after investigating this phenomenon, Aurora discovered she could help these spirits return home by getting to the root of their pain.

This was difficult work, but in it, Aurora found her life's purpose.

She knew that continuing her research meant she had to explore the world outside of Aamu. Though the idea of change made her nervous, the prospect of expanding her knowledge inspired Aurora to leave her home behind.

It was during her travels that she encountered a wayward spirit who took the form of a monstrous, twisted elk. He was feral and afraid, lashing out with bloodstained antlers. Aurora was determined to calm him down, and though it took time, she earned his trust. But this spirit was unlike the others—with every attempt to help him, Aurora failed. Undeterred, she convinced the afflicted elk to travel with her, using her powers to tuck him away in the spirit realm as she worked to unravel his mystery.

Having come across a number of spirit walkers as she traversed the Freljord, Aurora sought their advice, believing their ability to channel spirits may shed some light on what plagued her wayward companion. However, they too were at a loss, suggesting she find Udyr, the tundra’s most powerful spirit walker.

Udyr needed just one look to recognize the immense power of Aurora's spirit friend, but the fearsome elk was too lost to commune with. Instead, he encouraged her to ask the demigods for answers.

Aurora decided to first search for the Great Ram, Ornn. She traveled far through ice and snow to study the artifacts of his followers, the Hearthblood, hoping to learn where they had worshiped him. Only through her persistent research was she at last able to discern the location of Hearth-Home—but where once stood a grand settlement was nothing but ruin and rubble.

Aurora knew this was not as it appeared. Using her ability to open a doorway between realms, she stepped inside and was met with the great hall of Ornn's forge, alive with roaring fire.

Ornn was not receptive to his new visitor—but in time, he realized that she, like him, valued solitude and quiet. As he grew to trust her, Ornn finally shared the name of Aurora’s companion: Haestryr. One of Ornn's siblings, Hestrelk, as he was once commonly called, was originally a powerful demigod, but with the waning worship of the Old Gods, many demigods had lost their identities and become distorted shadows of who they once were.

This revelation about her wayward friend brought Aurora one step closer to helping him find his way home, but there was still a long journey ahead of her.

From Ornn, she learned about Ysjarn, the cryophoenix who guides and protects the land while enduring an eternal cycle of birth, life, and death. And, though painful, Ornn also spoke of his brother Valhir, whose relentless storm rages against the Freljord in his desperation to quench the Vorrijaard's bloodlust with the rains of war.

Believing these demigods hold the key to Hestrelk’s recovery, Aurora has left Hearth-Home and now traverses through the material and spirit realms of her frozen homeland in unwavering pursuit of their knowledge.

Anivia is an ancient Freljordian demi-god who represents the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth, intrinsically associated with the changing seasons. To those who venerate her, she is the elemental soul of the Freljord—a symbol of hope, and a sacred catalyst of change.

Stories passed down through the ages often tell of how she rewards those who are kind and humble. On the rare occasion a mortal glimpses her—or at least claims to—she is described as a noble spirit-bird of ice, with glittering wings that span the heavens, and a piercing cry that can be heard over even the fiercest storm.

The songs of the nomadic Notai tribe tell how Anivia’s birth first brought snow into the world. When she burst from her giant egg of ice, tiny pieces of it were hurled into the sky, and it has fallen as snow ever since. And, according to the sagas of the Mourncrow tribe, the frigid winds that scour the Freljord originate from the first beats of her wings.

Indeed, the full power of winter is Anivia’s to command, and to those who seek to desecrate her homeland, she is a bitter foe. When roused to anger, she can cleave fortresses and mountains, and her screech can summon blizzards cold enough to shatter steel.

One of the most enduring and respected beliefs is that Anivia’s greatest gift to the Freljord was the creation of True Ice. Infused with elemental magic, this unmelting substance is pure and potent, and the greatest seers and ice-mages have long strived to use shards of True Ice to amplify their might, while weapons that have even a tiny sliver forged into them are deadly beyond belief.

When mortals first arrived in the Freljord, Anivia welcomed them. Seeing that they could not withstand the cold, she guided them to secluded valleys where they could shelter, become established, and slowly harden themselves against the elements. She nurtured and watched over them for those first precarious centuries—and they, in turn, worshipped her.

Anivia hoped that these newly arrived tribes would remain unified in defending the Freljord from outsiders… but slowly, infighting and blood-feuds became all too common, making an invasion inevitable. According to legend, a greedy southern king marched his warriors up through the mountains, seeking to claim dominion over the northlands and shackle their wild magic for himself. So enraged was Anivia at the outsiders’ hubris and disrespect that she blasted them with a snowstorm that lasted a century and a day. Scattered standing stones can still be seen on the Scouring Plain, which the locals claim are all that remain of that ancient army.

Other tales include the Avarosan legend of Ulla Shatter-Spear, an Iceborn warmother who was favored by Anivia for saving a young hawk from a rimefang wolf. Across her lifetime, the Cryophoenix protected Ulla from harm, and when she finally fell in battle, having witnessed almost a hundred winters, it is said that Anivia welcomed her with wings spread wide.

If all these legends are true, then Anivia must have witnessed the rise and fall of countless mortal civilizations. While there are still some dwindling remnants of those earlier times, most have long been forgotten, and buried beneath millennia of ice.

But death cannot touch Anivia herself. The sagas speak of how she has been struck down and slain a handful of times throughout history, though she is always reborn—for as long as the Freljord exists, her soul is immortal. While it may be hundreds or even thousands of years before she rises again, each rebirth coincides with the dawning of a new era. Thus, her appearance, while regarded as a wondrous blessing, is often the harbinger of something terrible on the horizon.

Once, it is said, she sacrificed herself against a march of towering Balestriders. Anvia knew she could not slay these colossal creatures, and so she plunged into the ice beneath their feet, shattering her own body in order to entomb them.

Recently, some claim Anivia has hatched from the egg once more, and that she has appeared before the new leader of the Avarosans—the Warmother Ashe. In her, perhaps Anivia sees one who may be able to finally reunite the Freljord.

Yet if the Cryophoenix has indeed returned, as more and more shamans and spirit walkers proclaim, then it must be asked: what great threat has she come to face?