Far across the ice-shrouded seas and storm-beaten cliffs, and far removed from the blackened sands of Zyrion, lay the Continent of the Red Lips—a place sculpted in glaciers and shrouded in legend.
And here the air seared not with heat, but with cold.
The sky was a sickly gray most of the year, the sun a pale coin wedged behind cloudy pane. The ground was harsh and vast, its mountains blackened by veins of ice, its valleys plugged with snowdrifts as tall as houses.
It was a world breathing silence.
Where each step in the snow rang out for miles. Where life had not fought back at the cold—but had grown colder than it.
They were few of the Red Lips, but they were keen of body and of mind. They lived in cities on the cliffs excavated, supported by whale bone and crystal glass quarried beneath the glaciers.
They survived on deep-sea fishing, hunting giant leviathan fish known as Vaerlocs, whose blood contained the weak blue light and whose meat could feed entire villages for weeks. They had trained archers shoot from atop icebergs into the inky waters, with bows stretched taut with glacier wolf sinews.
So the most typical thing about the culture was accuracy—above all else, the accuracy of stillness, breathing in silence, the one perfect shot.
Songs were scarce. Smiles were rarer.
But honor and history? Sacred.
They taught each boy in the arrow's path, teaching him that a single shot in the cold is worth a hundred in the heat.
At the northmost point of the continent lay Saer'Thal, the fortress-city, which was ruled by Queen Aralyra—a contemporary occupant of the throne known as the Red Lips, and heir to the legendary Queen who, by her dying breath ages ago, had imprisoned a sea demigod.
Aralyra's lips were red-stained with grief, her eyes wan with knowledge and loneliness. She was stately, elegant, and powerful—every sentence she uttered was tinged with sacrifice.
By her side stood her second in command, one of few words and darker loyalties—General Maerin, royal advisor and protector of the royal lineage.
Alongside her, the destiny of the nation:
Princess Vael
Fierce. Young. Untried. Her arrows flew like lightning, but her heart was still warm—something dangerous here. Her defiance burned against the coldness of her mother.
"We don't speak warmth," Aralyra once said. "We target. And we shoot."
And so, when a vibration ran through the snowbanks—when the air throbbed as if some primeval drumbeat stirred the ice—Kalaron the Silent Flame arrived in Saer'Thal.
He rode on no animal. He walked.
With each step, resonance flowed through the planet—not so much sound as vibration. Snowflakes quivered in the air, suspended in frequencies low. There were no furs, no sigils, adorning his red and black armor. Only plain metal, molded to vibrate in harmony with his powers.
The closer he came, the more agitated the guards became. Even the ice upon which the keep was founded creaked, chanting low warning hymns.
Kalaron was not just powerful—precision incarnate. He was master of the sound, able to cleave with a whisper, shatter bone with a hum, or freeze a heart with a solitary resonance.
He had earned the moniker "The Silent Flame" not because of any silence— But since when he struck, it was ever in what came after, silence.
Queen Aralyra sat patiently in her ice and bone throne. She heard him coming long before his arrival—not by echo, but by the walls of the fortress tensing themselves in anticipation of the unnatural sounds that followed him.
"You don't belong here," she told him, her tone cold but curious.
"I follow where the path of Lyssara leads me," replied Kalaron.
Speak loudly.
He raised his head. Under the stiffness of his face, his armor quaked silently in small earthquakes, speaking his words in octaves other humans couldn't hear.
I seek Valtherion's daughter. Your people are careful—so you will know if she passed this way. I must get her. There is the King's command. And I don't quit.
His words hung in the air—not boisterous, but heavy. Invisible hands shook the walls, as if struck tuning forks.
Meanwhile…
Deep beneath in the bottom levels of the capital, there disembarked a merchant vessel Korran Uldar—once the Bull of Serenia.
Frostwolf hides surrounded him, unshaven and motionless, as he stared upward toward Saer'Thal's towering glacier walls.
He had arrived to disappear.
Fate had something else in mind.
It was the first sight that met his that was Princess Vaelith's, in the midst of the crowd.
They did not speak. However, the storm was delayed, long enough, for something unspoken to occur between them.