DORIAN
The tundra sprawled out before them like a vast, desolate canvas, blindingly white beneath the flat light of the Deepfrost sky. The cold was absolute, a force that pressed against the edges of his fur-lined coat and clawed through the gaps in his gloves. The skyship that had delivered them from Stormbreak loomed behind them, its dark hull already frosting over as it waited for its next orders. Dorian didn’t spare it a glance. His focus was on the world ahead, barren and untouched, waiting to be rewritten.
Halo’s frozen skin would crack beneath their will. He could already imagine it: the infection spreading like veins through ice, carving rivers of purple where white once dominated. The tundra, stripped of its defiance, would kneel, its vast horizons darkened with creeping void and the promises of power. A small smile tugged at his lips, faint as the sun’s reluctant glow. His breath fogged before him, curling and dissipating into the empty air like the last resistance of a world that didn’t yet know it had lost. The wind’s howl seemed less like a threat now and more like a dirge, an anthem for a land that had been resilient for too long.
His gloved hand reached out, fingers flexing slowly as though testing the weight of the very air. "This will become something far greater," he murmured, his voice low and intimate, lost almost immediately to the roar of the tundra. Then, as though compelled by a private thought, he turned to Dahlia, his blue eyes gleaming with something rare—an edge of warmth beneath the cold calculation. "I’m glad you’re here for this," he said, the faintest smile curling at his lips.
Halo’s frozen skin would crack beneath their will. He could already imagine it: the infection spreading like veins through ice, carving rivers of purple where white once dominated. The tundra, stripped of its defiance, would kneel, its vast horizons darkened with creeping void and the promises of power. A small smile tugged at his lips, faint as the sun’s reluctant glow. His breath fogged before him, curling and dissipating into the empty air like the last resistance of a world that didn’t yet know it had lost. The wind’s howl seemed less like a threat now and more like a dirge, an anthem for a land that had been resilient for too long.
His gloved hand reached out, fingers flexing slowly as though testing the weight of the very air. "This will become something far greater," he murmured, his voice low and intimate, lost almost immediately to the roar of the tundra. Then, as though compelled by a private thought, he turned to Dahlia, his blue eyes gleaming with something rare—an edge of warmth beneath the cold calculation. "I’m glad you’re here for this," he said, the faintest smile curling at his lips.
