The midnight hour in the Glacial Crown was not marked by the chiming of bells, but by a shift in the sapphire light. Every night, at the peak of the dark, the bioluminescent spirits within the ice dimmed to a deep, bruised violet, as if the mountain itself were exhaling. It was the time of the "Deep Freeze," when the Northern Seals pulsed at their highest frequency, turning the palace into a graveyard of sound and heat.
In the High Spire, Vera sat in the center of her crystalline bath, her body submerged in the swirling, nitrogen-infused water. Arkon's "purification" was supposed to numb her mind, to smooth out the jagged edges of her Western humanity until she was nothing but a conduit for the Heart of Boreas.
But Arkon had made a fundamental mistake. He treated Vera like a goddess who needed to be polished. He had forgotten that beneath the "Catalyst," she was still a Thief.
