Crack!
A sound like a giant iron bell splitting in half echoed across the white plains of the far Northern Ice Wastes.
Two thousand miles north of Dry-Well City, where the winter snow usually sat ten feet deep all year round, the ground itself was turning black. Strange, jagged veins of purple-black frost were creeping up through the frozen soil from deep underground.
Wherever that black frost touched, the air grew so cold that even the wind seemed to freeze solid and drop to the ground like broken glass.
Inside the great stone hall of Ice-Peak Stronghold, thirty-foot-tall bonfires built from whole resin-soaked pine trees were supposed to burn day and night. Right now, however, the orange flames were shrinking.
Fzzzt!
A thread of eerie black cold seeped up through the stone floor tiles. It touched the bottom of the central fire pit, and within three seconds, a twenty-foot-tall roaring spirit-fire froze into a solid block of pale blue ice!
“My King! The last spirit-fire pit just went out!”
