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On the night of the new moon, while Ashlynn and Nyrielle danced the night away in the company of close friends and the families they had chosen, ripples of their actions were felt in the farthest flung corners of the Eldritch world.

Far to the west of the Vale of Mists, nestled deep in the Western Shield Mountains, a lone figure stood atop the Summit of the World, the tallest mountain in the Eldritch world.

The air was thin and cold and only a faint breeze blew to ruffle the lone woman’s pure white fur.

Her iridescent horn glittered in the night, reflecting the light of more stars than could be seen from anywhere else in the world, but her deep crimson eyes held no joy at the glittering tapestry in the sky.

There had been a time when Answaen felt that she would never grow tired of seeing the wonders of the heavens stretching out above her as far as the eye could see.

She had carefully dug a cave into the bones of the mountain just half a league from the summit so she could stay up here until the sky began to brighten and the sun threatened to peek above the horizon.

Time, however, had worn away at her sense of wonder. Now, when she looked out toward the horizon, glimpsing the Endless Sea through the gaps between clouds, the only emotion that stirred in her heart was a dull sort of apprehension, a feeling that wasn’t even strong enough to be called worry.

Somewhere out there, the Mother of Tides presided over the Lost Isles, lands that had once been connected to the shield mountains by vast sheets of ice.

Answaen had never seen the Lost Isles, but her Master assured her they existed, even if they had become unreachable long before her older brother united the Seven Peaks in the eastern mountains.

It would have been comforting, she supposed, if the Frost Walkers could still stride across the seas to reach the Lost Isles far to the west. If they could, then Answaen wouldn’t have to wonder if the Mother of Tides still adhered to her promises to keep the seas impassable to the human ships that attempted to navigate around Eldritch lands in search of new lands to conquer.

Perhaps, if she no longer needed to concern herself with watching over the seas, she could find a sense of wonder in the stars again.

For hours, the ancient Frost Walker stood unmoving, feeling the faint wind through her fur and gazing out at the stars, though her mind barely registered anything she might have seen that night.

In her hand, she held a shattered piece of Eternal Ice, marked with runes older than her older brother’s nation and bearing the name ’Ansgar. ’

It had been centuries since she last visited the lands of her birth and when she had, an old woman named Kimsel presided over only a single mountain as the glaciers continued to melt and the nation her brother had once ruled grew ever smaller.

At the time, she’d asked her Master if her brother and the other Blood Guardians could be moved to the Western Shield Mountains to join with their clansmen here, but the Fangs of Death had refused, saying that the Blood Guardians served more than one purpose in the east. At the time, he hadn’t elaborated, but in the past few centuries, Answaen had come to suspect that the arrival of humans in the eastern lands hadn’t been a surprise to her Master.

Now, as she held the shattered crystal of Eternal Ice, she wondered if it was those very humans who were responsible for destroying all that remained of her older brother.

If Shubnalu’s blood magic had failed, the crystal would have turned red, resembling the frozen blood of her brother’s statue, but that hadn’t happened.

Instead, the crystal had broken which could only mean that his horn had been destroyed.

A disturbance in the mountain’s tranquil loneliness pulled Answaen from her brooding contemplation.

The steady whisper of wind across ice was broken by the scrape of metal against stone, and the labored breathing of someone climbing toward her summit sanctuary.

Her crimson eyes shifted from the distant horizon to focus on the world immediately around her, and her nose twitched as she detected the familiar scent of a member of her own clan approaching through the thin mountain air.

It felt like just yesterday that she had given orders for the clan to learn what they could about her older brother’s death, and at the same time, it felt like it had already been years since she descended from the mountain summit to make her demands.

However long it had been, it seemed like there would finally be answers to her questions.

"Immortal, Immortal Ancestor," a ragged breath called from several paces down the summit. There, a young Frost Walker, barely four decades old, struggled to make their way up the frozen steps carved into the ice by Answaen’s sorcery.

Every step seemed to take tremendous effort and they clutched a spear in one hand, driving its sharp point into the snow and ice with each step in order to support themself as they fought to reach the woman standing atop the Summit of the World.

"Immortal Ancestor," the struggling Frost Walker said. "I have, have news. From the east."

"I see," Answaen said, revealing sharp fangs when she spoke.

Raising a finger to her lips, she bit down gently, staining the white fur on her hand dark red as she squeezed out a drop of crimson blood.

"Blood Offering, Gift of Strength," she intoned, forcing a thread of her body’s great strength into the drop of blood before flinging it at the struggling messenger.

Normal blood would have frozen as soon as it was exposed to the frigid temperatures and thin air on the mountain’s summit, but Answaen’s blood sailed through the air completely unaffected by the bitter cold, splattering across the messenger’s glittering purple horn before being completely absorbed by the Frost Walker’s body.

"Ice Palace, form at my will," Answaen said, her iridescent horn shining brilliantly in the night as she compressed the snow atop the mountain into faceted, almost crystalline walls of ice that surrounded herself and the messenger, protecting the weaker Frost Walker from the elements and blocking out the faint sounds of the wind as it danced around the broken, snow covered landscape of the summit.

Atop the summit, the ancient Frost Walker also formed a throne formed of solid ice.

Unconsciously, she patterned it after the one her brother had carved from the ice of the High Pass hundreds of years ago.

As a young girl, she’d once thought that she would sit on that very throne when her older brother chose to step down, but fate had different things in mind for both brother and sister than allowing her to inherit his domain.

The messenger stared in open-mouthed shock at the casual display of power by the Immortal Ancestor. There were legends about her vast powers of sorcery and the world shaping abilities possessed by Frost Walkers with an iridescent horn, but he had never once seen it for himself.

Now that he had, however, he swallowed heavily as a lump formed in his throat while he wondered.... If the legends about the Immortal Ancestor’s transcendent sorcery were true, then, which of the other legends about her... and her ruthlessness, might also be true?

"Speak," Answaen said as she sat atop the throne. By now, her blood sorcery had done its work, infusing strength and vitality into the messenger, allowing them to resist the draining effects of thin air and the cold so bitter that even ordinary Frost Walkers felt the chill.

"Immortal Ancestor," the messenger said, lowering his horn and kneeling in the snow as he faced the woman who had watched over their clan for untold generations while he prayed that she wouldn’t be angered by the news he carried.

"We received a reply from the Great Lord’s men in the High Fen.

The Vale of Mists still stands and humans have not attacked the High Pass.

The men there think that it is impossible for humans to be responsible for destroying," the messenger began to say, only to cut off abruptly when he saw the Immortal Ancestor clutching at the shattered piece of Eternal Ice.

"There, there is other news," the messenger said with a trembling voice. "If the Immortal Ancestor is willing to hear it," he added, lowering his horn even further and refusing to lift his eyes high enough to gaze upon her figure lest he somehow offend the ancient guardian of their clan.

The messenger was well aware of just how precarious his position atop the mountain was.

Being selected to serve the Immortal Ancestor in any capacity was a great honor that many would have traded the lives of their parents for, but it was also a position with many dangers.

After all, the last messenger who had ’wasted her time’ with reports that the Immortal Ancestor considered to be beneath her attention had been hurled off the mountain’s summit, crashing into the frozen rocks below.

Now, as the messenger faced the Immortal Ancestor, armed with news that amounted to little more than rumors, he could only hope that what he had to say wouldn’t displease the Frost Walker vampire.

Or, if it did displease her, that it wasn’t so bad that she chose to kill the messenger for the crime of delivering bad news!