The second half of their journey proved even more treacherous than the first. Despite donning yet another of the spare cloaks they had brought, Byuga was consumed by a profound, marrow-deep freezing. From the moment they entered the forest, it felt as though the cold bypassed every layer of fur and fabric, stitching itself directly into his skin. The weight of his own protection—multiple cloaks and double furs—rendered every step a monumental labor. Beyond the cold, a relentless blizzard had taken hold, bringing with it winds that bit like ice-edged steel. The trees were entirely entombed in frost; the guards whispered that beyond this point, only the dark serizes and yellow pines could endure. Beneath these arboreal giants, the travelers navigated a labyrinth of horizontal ice shards that grew in the direction of the wind like jagged spears. In places, thin walls of translucent ice had formed between the trunks. Every moment felt like a threshold to death; Byuga moved in a haze, certain he would collapse and be reclaimed by the white.

  A murmur of dissent rose among the guards, some claiming the kardams had led them into a snare. They had not yet reached the second outpost, and though they followed the prescribed path, the route the kardams had forced upon them—coupled with the dark warnings of a guard who had previously patrolled these sectors—stoked the fires of paranoia. Byuga, however, could think only of the night fires. He spent his days walking toward the memory of warmth, and the moment a flame was struck, he would perch beside it like a stone idol, unmoving. Never in his life had he felt such a sustained, wretched misery. He felt he might as well be dead. It was only much later that he realized he had lost all count of the days.

  On their second day within the woods, the world began to unravel. Men would succumb to sudden bouts of savagery, only to fall into a deathly calm moments later and return to their duties. Bodhi warned that such behavior was unnatural. Then came the sounds: strange whispers and discordant songs that drifted through the trees at night. Each man heard something different—a haunting melody, a sharp whistle, or the voice of a lost loved one calling from the dark. Several men vanished into the night while the rest slept, slipping away into the frozen depths. In response, Kungam doubled the watches and shortened the intervals between shifts. Nerves were frayed to the breaking point.

  Stranger still was the absolute absence of wildlife. The forest, usually home to a variety of hardy beasts, was void of life. When the whispers ceased, the silence was so heavy that a man could hear the frantic thrumming of his own heart. Only the howling wind and the periodic crash of the blizzard broke the stillness. Eventually, conversation died altogether. The company moved in a semi-conscious stupor; even Kungam’s legendary resilience began to crack, his exhaustion etched deeply into the lines of his face. Days before they reached the outpost, Byuga fell from his mysho. A day later, the beast itself collapsed, its strength spent. Unable to bring himself to slay the loyal creature, Byuga watched as they left it behind—a stubborn shadow in the snow that refused to rise. The bahysas had begun to talk to themselves, their gestures erratic and strange.

  A day’s march from the outpost, as dusk began to settle, they found the first corpse. It hung from a tree, its entrails meticulously removed. Yet, the face was fixed in a wide, horrific grin. No one could comprehend it, and no one moved to cut the body down. As they pressed on, more followed—an avenue of the dead. More than half were kardams; the rest were bahysa guards. The sight sent a cold shiver through the group that no fur could block. That night, the camp was a hive of frantic theories. As Balbun recounted the horrors to Byuga, the boy struggled to scrub the images from his mind. Every body had been displayed the same way: hanging, hollowed out, and smiling into the void.

  When they finally reached the outpost, they found only a ghost of a garrison. The "outpost" was little more than a large barracks enclosed by a heavy timber palisade. It was empty of life but saturated with death. The scene was a lake of frozen blood; it coated the walls, the floors, and the fences. Most terrifying were the ribbons of gore that trailed from the doorway and vanished into the treeline. Something had not merely slaughtered the men; it had dragged them into the forest.

  They searched the ruins but found no clues, no explanation for the carnage. The Prince of Gaigon felt a cold dread take root. He was alone at the edge of the world, surrounded by inexplicable horrors. He had imagined glorious skirmishes among the trees, battles where he might die with honor. Instead, he found himself in a state of squalid misery, facing an end in a place that perhaps had no name.

  They took shelter there, the guards’ desire to retreat palpable. But for Kungam, the mission remained unchanged. The survivors of the outpost had reported that the mysterious light emanated from beyond the forest; therefore, they would cross the forest's edge to find its source. Byuga learned from a guard that no one had ever ventured beyond the Frostspear Mountains. If the light came from there, was his uncle truly leading them into the unknown? Another guard spoke of kardam legends—that their ancestors dwelt in those far reaches. Did the light herald a new, more terrible invasion? Questions without answers hung in the freezing air, and Byuga’s fear grew with every passing hour.

  They continued their march. Dissent flared against Kungam, and for a moment, Byuga feared a mutiny, but the habit of discipline held, and they pressed on. A few days later, the lights appeared in the sky. They manifested as the group made camp on a rocky ridge within the forest. They were magnificent. Through the canopy of yellow pines and dark serizes, they watched the lights coil across the heavens like luminous serpents. They pulsed and faded, shifting through a spectrum of colors before vanishing and reappearing elsewhere. None had seen their like. Balbun noticed Makar watching the display.

  "That is Perdecirel," the kardam said in his broken tongue. The shimlyndvyen knew the legends. He did not speak of them to Byuga, assuming the boy already knew, but he shared his thoughts with Bodhi. The monk remained stoic, but Balbun was a man who respected the old terrors. He had heard of the ancestral home of the gods beyond the Frostspears. If the lights came from there, something had reclaimed that holy ground. Was this the herald of the world's end?

  Two days later, they reached the threshold of the Frostspear Mountains. Standing where the forest failed, Byuga looked up at the peaks beneath the shimmering aurora. They were immense—not in sheer height, for they were modest as mountains go, but in their composition. They were pillars of pure, translucent ice reaching for the stars. Standing at the forest’s edge, Byuga understood how they remained standing: the air was so cold his very cloak became a rigid sheet of ice. He pulled his cowl tight, shielding his face as a wind like a whetted blade whistled through the mountain passes. He did not know how he could possibly survive what lay ahead.

  They camped one last time within the shelter of the trees, knowing the open slopes offered no protection. They cut several young pines for fuel; though the wood was frozen to the core, Bodhi and the other monks used their arts to coax warmth from them. Byuga sat beside Kungam. His uncle looked ancient, his vitality drained by the journey. Byuga placed a hand on his shoulder. His uncle could not speak, but when he laid his hand over Byuga’s, the boy felt a silent promise: they would survive this. Byuga nurtured a hope that they would return to Gaigon together; even if they could no longer play the games of his childhood, they would sit in the sun and simply exist.

  Later, he approached Bodhi. The monk was staring intently into the dark woods. When Byuga touched him, Bodhi started as if from a trance. "The forest plays tricks on me," he whispered, his hands trembling. "I see my mother. She watches me from the shadows."

  Byuga felt his own sanity fraying. The next day, as they threaded through the Frostspear passes, he realized his feet were numb. He could not move his toes. Bodhi worked over him until the blood returned, but the cold was absolute. They watched as snowflakes falling just a meter away turned to transparent ice before hitting the ground. Men fell and did not rise. Every moment, the journey became more impossible. Kungam mentioned that the Shyugan Guards had only reached this far a handful of times in history. Even the kardams feared to cross the Frostspears—a fear Byuga saw mirrored in the faces of their guides. On the second night in the peaks, two kardams attempted to flee. One was cut down; the other managed to slay three guards before vanishing into the white. Hours later, screams echoed through the pass. More men were claiming to see things in the storm. For the first time, Byuga felt a perverse gratitude for his partial blindness and total deafness.

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  On the third morning, they reached a famous ruin known to the kardams as Kropft—"The Fist." It was a massive mountain of ice that had been shattered in the center. Dozens of gargantuan ice shards lay scattered around the base, as if some celestial force had struck the peak and pulverized it. The shards remained where they fell, preserved forever by the eternal frost.

  They took refuge in the caverns beneath the Fist. Looking out toward the plains beyond the Frostspears, Byuga saw spindly structures rising like skeletal fingers. They were trees of ice, bone-white against the landscape. He knew what lay there: the end of the world. Kropft was the final landmark known to either bahysa or kardam.

  "What are those?" he asked Balbun as they hurried into the caves. The shimlyndvyen looked haggard, his eyes downcast.

  "Trees," he grunted, his voice rasping. He could barely move his fingers; the cold had stolen the habit of speech from them all. Fingers were turning black; toes were being amputated. Every night, the silence was broken by the screams of a man losing a piece of himself to the frost. Some begged to turn back, but Kungam would not listen. Byuga realized his uncle would either reach the end or find his grave here.

  They huddled around a fire fueled by the last of their dung-cakes. No one spoke. They simply succumbed to exhaustion, listening to the wind whistle through the cave like a flute of bone. Even Byuga, despite his thirst for adventure, felt his faith in his uncle begin to wither.

  The next morning brought a bitter revelation. Half the company was gone, having fled into the night and taken the kardam guides with them. Only a couple of dozen men remained. Makar was the only guide left, likely because he had slept too close to Kungam to escape. The guards pleaded with Shyugan to turn back, but he refused. They would continue on foot, leaving their mounts at the Fist with a few guards who were too weak to continue.

  Balbun and Bodhi were shadows of themselves. Bodhi had fallen into a grim silence, his magic barely sufficing to keep the group from freezing. As they emerged from the Fist, he looked at Byuga and tried to joke: "When we return, I shall sleep for a year."

  Balbun did not smile. His eyes were fixed on the horizon where the blizzard never ceased. Byuga asked Makar about the white trees. "No one knows," Makar replied. "Legend says that once, there was no cold here. The ancients held the frost at bay with spells. There were fertile plains and great cities. Now, everything is buried. Those are the trees, turned to ice by the turning of the world."

  "Were the ancestors of the kardams so powerful?" Byuga asked.

  Makar looked at him with a hard expression, huddled in his stolen furs. "Not kardam. The kardams came with the cold."

  Balbun moved away to end the conversation, and Byuga asked no more. The wind buffeted them, and Bodhi kept a steadying hand on the boy’s back. Before them lay only the wasteland and the frozen trees. Byuga felt a crushing hopelessness. He wanted to scream at the sky, to weep with rage at the pain of every step.

  As darkness fell, they stopped, hearing a sound that cut through the whistle of the storm. The men silenced Byuga when he tried to speak. They heard laughter, whistles, and voices in the dark. They reached a series of ridges covered in frozen trees and strange rock formations and made camp on the lee side of a hill, sheltered from the valley winds.

  "Will we ever go home, Balbun?" Byuga signed in the dim light.

  "I promised your father. We will go back," the old warrior replied, pulling the boy close to share his body heat. They drifted into a fitful sleep as the fires flickered. Then, Kungam approached.

  "Move closer to the fire," he commanded, his lips cracked and bleeding. He looked as though he might collapse at any moment. He turned to Makar. "If we go further, we die. Tell me, where does that light come from?"

  Makar’s face was twisted with unease. "No kardams live here. Beyond the Frostspears, there are no tribes—only the cold and its monsters. You are lucky they have not found you yet."

  "There are no monsters in the cold," Kungam countered. "What is out there? That light was not natural."

  "You know, Shyugan. You know what you are asking. Whether they are there, I do not know. I have been your prisoner for a year."

  Kungam sat by the fire in silence. When Byuga nudged him, Balbun sighed and explained the conversation.

  "What is he talking about?" Byuga asked.

  "A city. Qang-Shuin... the city of the gods. The kardams call it Perdecirel. They say all races once lived there before the cold took the world. Now, they call it the Heart of Winter." Balbun’s eyes betrayed his skepticism, but Byuga saw that his uncle believed. They were on a journey into myth.

  Suddenly, the world went dark. Byuga’s ears rang with a piercing frequency. He saw the men spring to their feet, weapons drawn. He looked at Makar and saw true terror for the first time. The kardam knew what was coming. Byuga called out to his uncle, and Kungam turned.

  "What is this?" Kungam demanded as a sound like a thousand rustling leaves approached. The ground began to vibrate.

  "It is your light!" Makar screamed. "It is coming for you! Let me go!"

  "Not until you tell me what it is!"

  "We do not know! It is the Winter! Go see for yourself!" Makar tried to shove past, but a guard brought him down with a lash around his neck. Kungam ran to the crest of the hill, and Byuga followed.

  When they reached the top, Byuga felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. Beneath the twin moons, a vast, impossible multitude stretched to the horizon. They were kardams, thousands upon thousands of them, but they were wrong. Waves of crimson light, like the halo of a dying fire, emanated from their bodies. Their eyes glowed a baleful red. They stood in a state of passive aggression, a sea of a hundred thousand crimson orbs in the white dark.

  But they were not the worst of it. Walking among the kardam ranks were monsters. Figures with unnaturally long limbs, hybrids of man and beast, shapeless horrors, and creatures with faces so grotesque they defied description. They moved with a slow, deliberate gait. A flash of lightning illuminated the nightmare army, and Byuga felt the breath leave his lungs. They were lost.

  Kungam screamed a command. He grabbed Byuga by the collar and threw him toward Balbun. They began to run toward Bodhi as the guards scrambled to extinguish the fires. The blizzard intensified, the snow cutting into their skin like glass.

  Suddenly, a vortex of white wind erupted in their midst. In the darkness of the dying fire, something appeared. The force of its arrival knocked Byuga off his feet. He was thrown over the crest of the hill, tumbling down the rocky slope. He crashed into a snowdrift, bruised and bleeding, his ears still ringing. He scrambled up, only to recoil in horror. The vanguard of the monster army was mere paces away.

  He reached for his whip, but he knew it was futile. As he turned to run, something snagged his back. He was being dragged.

  Then, a new wind. A whip hissed through the air over his head. Balbun had leapt from the ridge, his lash singing. Whatever had held Byuga let go, and the boy scrambled upward. Balbun stood over him, his whip a blur of motion. Byuga had never seen the shimlyndvyen fight with such lethal fluidity.

  The creatures were surrounding them. A soundless shriek tore through the air—or perhaps it was a sound Byuga could only feel in his bones—as Balbun winced in agony. The blizzard became a wall of white, blinding them instantly. They stumbled toward where the hill had been, Balbun supporting the boy.

  Finally, they found level ground. Makar appeared out of the storm, swinging a strange axe. He had been wounded but had found Balbun and Byuga. He led them through the chaos until they collided with Kungam and Bodhi. His uncle was badly hurt, leaning on the monk. Bodhi held a sword awkwardly in one hand, while a ball of magical fire pulsed in the other.

  They stood back-to-back, shielding Byuga in the center. The blizzard abruptly ceased. They were in the center of their former camp, surrounded. The red-eyed kardams watched them with a terrifying stillness. Between them, the monsters breathed in a low, rhythmic growl. Byuga saw the bodies of the other guards—some torn apart, some partially devoured. He buried his face in Balbun’s fur, sobbing silently, trying to swallow the terror.

  The ranks of the kardams parted. Several figures drifted forward, floating above the snow. As they approached, the air grew so cold it felt stationary. These were the witches—the Daughters of Winter. They were bone-white, as if carved from crystalline snow. Their eyes were spectra of shifting red light, and their white hair drifted in the air as if they were submerged in water.

  They descended upon the fallen guards. Without regard for gravity, they leaned over the corpses and whispered into their cold ears, then breathed a pale mist into their mouths.

  One by one, the dead guards began to twitch. Their skin cracked with the sound of breaking ice; their limbs elongated and twisted. They were being remade into the very monsters that surrounded them. Byuga watched his companions' eyes widen in horror. One of the ice women—larger than the others—stopped and looked directly at them. She wore a smile that made the throat go dry and the soul shiver.

  As the corpses finished their transformation, Balbun turned to the group, his voice a hollow rasp. "Bodhi, burn us," he said. "Let us be ash before we become those things."

  Bodhi swallowed, his hand trembling so violently he could not raise his fire. Kungam dropped his weapons and sank to his knees, closing his eyes in resignation. Byuga knew it was over.

  Then, from beyond the ridges, a new light dawned. A strange sensation washed over him—a warmth that defied the logic of the place. Before he succumbed to unconsciousness, he saw the monsters recoil. The last thing he felt were hands catching him as he fell.