As the carriage pulled through the final mountain pass, a fortress loomed through the swirling blizzard.
This was Xulthas castle, a grand, sprawling structure that looked like a shard of the moon fallen into a frozen wasteland.
As the snow flakes fell, the twins stepped out onto the permafrost. They both shivered as the cold bit through their fine silks like a thousand tiny needles.
They had grown up in the Capital, a place of humid sulfur vents and eternal twilight heat. This crucial soul-sucking cold was a foreign enemy to them.
Xulthas stepped out of his carriage. Immediately, a group of pale-faced maids swarmed him, wrapping a thick floor-length fur cloak of midnight-blue around his shoulders. While the twins shivered due to the cold Xulthas didn't look bothered by the weather, if anything, the frost seemed to sharpen his facial features.
