Dark Shard 7. The Shadow That Sows Chill

Time here is forever frozen in the coldest month.

Ice peaks pierced the cooling bodies of the fallen, deliberately slowly, torturously, excruciatingly draining them of the last vestiges of life and hope.

Endless tiers of rows of millions of spikes with bodies on them stretched upwards, outwards, to the very horizon, to the sky.

He walked slowly through the fields of eternal sorrow, trying not to look around. His gaze fixed only on the ground. Ice, stone, the dreary shuffling of worn rough boots. He couldn’t make himself look up. How many familiar faces were there. How much pain he couldn’t bear.

Or could he?

He didn’t come here to fear again, or to cry helplessly, or to scream from the gut-wrenching hatred. No, not for that. He had done all of it countless times.

He came here with a clear purpose. And he would fulfill it, even if it meant he had to lift his gaze, tear apart the remnants of his tattered soul.

The eternal ice shadow had already noticed him, and it wasn’t about to let its new victim go.

His heart skipped several beats, instantly covered in an icy shell of unshed bitterness, impenetrable darkness, and dead hope. From his chest, right from the heart, began to grow an icy spike.

But he didn’t come here to die either.

Falling to his knees, he looked up for the first time. The endless eyes of a dead girl, pierced by icy death, looked straight at him. The corner of her lips moved. She had died long ago, but she wanted to support him. She believed — but he was still dying from the darkness and ice seizing his heart.

A tiny flame burst from the chest of the dead girl, weakly flickering in the piercing icy wind, almost extinguishing, floated towards him and melded into his chest. He felt practically no warmth; the crust of ice and darkness grew thicker, and the spike raised, seizing all his insides without remainder.

He could no longer even kneel and began to fall to the side, life was slipping away with the last icy breath.

He felt warmth. Like a friendly smile, like a kiss under a summer rain, like faith in goodness, like life itself.

Thousands of tiny flames slowly stretched towards him from thousands of the fallen, melding into him, melting the ice, dispelling the darkness.

He slowly rose from his knees and stood tall for the first time and looked at the fallen. Their flames continued reaching out from all sides to him, giving him the strength to overcome this cursed icy place, fulfill his mission, and make their sacrifice not in vain.

He slowly drew his rusty sword from its sheath and pointed it toward the formless, ghastly shadow quivering above the endless mound.

The sword blazed with the brightest flame.

The darkness will fall.