The Northern Frozen Wastes had endured ten thousand winters in undisturbed, crystal-clear solitude. Vast expanses of ancient frozen ground stretched toward the northern horizon beneath towering glaciers that glowed with pale sapphire soft glow under the cold polar sun. Here, giant frost-bears hibernated deep within cavernous snowdrifts, and solitary frost-cranes glided between jagged crags of blue ice, their cries echoing across a kingdom of pure silence.
At mid-morning on the second day after the gray stain appeared across the stars, that silence deepened into something unnatural.
There were no thunderous sky detonations. There were no streaks of fiery orange star-fire, no billowing plumes of white smoke, and no bone-shaking blast waves rattling the mountain peaks. High in the stratosphere, the ancient gold-and-vermilion boundary runes that guarded the realm’s outer high sky—arrays laid down during the ancient era by the founding ancestors—didn’t flare or resist.
The falling objects simply slipped through the defensive magic charms as if the golden enchantments were nothing more than empty moonlight.
They dropped like hail carved from frozen gray soot. Jagged, uneven crystal-clear shards, ranging in size from small pebbles to jagged slabs the size of banquet tables, tumbled silently through the biting arctic winds. They possessed no luster, reflecting neither the sunlight nor the pale glitter of the surrounding snow. Their surfaces drank the light, appearing as flat, two-space-folding tears cut into the fabric of the visual world.
