For days, the world beneath her had been blue. Then, a change. A faint gray began to vein the dark water, spreading like frost. They grew into floes, then coalesced into solid ice. The air, even filtered through her mana, developed a sharper, cleaner bite.
'North,' Serena realized. Her flight had carried her toward a pole. The observation brought a grim flicker of hope. If there was no temperate land, there would at least be glaciers, maybe even continental shelves—something solid and stationary to break this endless ocean.
The cold intensified. It became a physical presence, a dense, still force that seemed to press the very light from the sky. The days, or the periods of gloomy twilight—shortened, then vanished altogether.
Slowing down, she flew through long black nights, the only illumination coming from above: countless stars and vast, shimmering curtains of aurora that danced in silent, ethereal greens and violets. Their light painted the ice below in ghostly strokes, revealing a landscape of profound, sparkling beauty.
Then, she saw it.
A darkness beneath the aurora's glow. The start of a solid, unyielding mass against the jumble of sea ice. Land.
The surge of relief was so powerful it disrupted her focus. Her perfectly maintained mana field flickered, and a brutal gust of wind screamed through a temporary gap, buffeting her. She wrestled control back, heart hammering against her ribs.
'Land.' She aimed for the coast, a stark, rocky shore illuminated by undulating celestial light.
A new problem, born of her speed and inexperience, presented itself. She had spent days learning to go fast. She had never practiced slowing down.
Deceleration was not the reverse of acceleration. It required a careful, inverted application of force, a gradual bleeding of momentum to avoid catastrophic G-forces. She understood the theory in a flash from her own memories and Virgil's archive, but her execution was clumsy. She poured mana forward, creating a wall of resisting force.
It was like hitting a sudden, thick fluid. Her body was wrenched violently against the harness of her own power. The shore rushed up, far too fast.
"Fuck—"
She had aimed for a coastal shelf, a gentle entry on the ground. Instead, she saw a snow-dusted cliff face streaked with black rock.
With a desperate wrench of will, she exerted mana downward, aiming for altitude.
She cleared the cliff edge by meters and plowed into the permafrost of a frozen tundra beyond.
The impact was not an explosion, but a deep, seismic crunch. A shockwave of force radiated out from her point of contact, fracturing the iron-hard wall of mass for fifty meters in every direction.
A plume of snow, dirt, and shattered ice bloomed into the auroral night, settling with a slow, silent finality. It was the equivalent of a small building being thrown onto a mountain.
Serena fell to the ground in front of the self-made crater, the breath knocked from her lungs. Her mana shell had somewhat held, dispersing the force enough to prevent disintegration, but every synapse in her body rang with the violent transfer of energy.
After a moment, she pushed herself up, assessing.
No internal damage. However, the pristine, silent wilderness around her was now scarred with her chaotic signature. Immediately, she enhanced her listening.
No cries of pain. No sounds of wildlife fleeing. The profound silence had reasserted itself, deeper now. If there had been animals, they had long since fled the epicenter of the crash.
'Humans', she thought, straightening herself. 'I need to find humans.'
.
.
.
What followed were months of solitary exploration, days gradually turning brighter. She moved through a landscape that felt both ancient and utterly new. Vast, wind-scoured plains of snow gave way to frozen lakes, smooth as black glass under the aurora.
She climbed ridges where the wind howled and descended into valleys so still and pristine they seemed untouched since the dawn of time. She saw few trees and animals, mainly hardy, ground-clinging lichen, shrubs, and moss. Once, she came across a lone Arctic fox, a ghost of white against white. It paused to watch her with black, intelligent eyes before melting away. The ecology was stark, brutal, and beautiful—with isolation, silence, and a cold so profound it felt holy.
She was tracing a valley when movement caught her enhanced sight. Figures, small and bundled against the cold, moving with purpose from a distance.
'People?'
Her pulse quickened. She changed course, moving to intercept them at a gentle angle, not wanting to startle them. Walking up to them, she saw them freeze as they caught sight of her.
Four of them, clad in heavy furs, with long rifles slung over their shoulders. Their faces, framed by fur hoods, were etched with windburn and astonishment.
She opened her mouth to speak, to offer a gesture of peace—her form stark.
What she heard instead was a burst of frantic language. Instinctively, she released mana with the intent to understand them. A very simple translation spell, though it only worked from her side. The words by themselves were unknown, but the essence, translated through the magic, was unmistakable. It was a rapid-fire, terrified debate:
"—a spirit of the ice?"
"—look at her, no clothes! A ghost!"
"—a monster from the deep!"
"—madwoman? A cursed pervert?"
"—doesn't matter! Run!"
Before she could take another step, they turned and fled with the practiced speed of those who knew the tundra was home to things best avoided.
Serena stood, stunned, as their figures disappeared over the horizon. She looked down at herself—unclothed, standing completely unfazed in a killing cold.
'Of course.' To them, she was an anomaly, perhaps even an omen. A naked omen. 'Right. Clothes. Or at least, the appearance of them.'
After scanning her surroundings, she knelt. She gathered snow and the hard, dark soil beneath it using magic. Then, she called on a sliver of power to transform it. Easily, the mixture fused, darkened, and smoothed—flowing up and over her body like a second skin, forming a simple and crude pair of underwear. It was cold against her, but it was coverage. It would've been better if she could cover more, but she didn't know how to turn it into fibre. It was probably possible with his powers, but Virgil, being royalty, never learned to make his own clothes. Maybe she should one day.
'He seldom showed interest in complex transmutation.'
She had to find them again, to at least explain. She couldn't let that be her first and only legacy here. She closely and stealthily followed their trail, a faint disturbance on the snow.