Freydis Dahl

Freydris Dahl was once a shieldmaiden of the Northlanders, sworn to protect her fjordside village where the winter sun barely rose and honor was etched in steel and frost. When raiders came on the cold breath of midwinter, she did not wait behind the walls. She stood on the ice-choked shoreline alone, clad in furs and mail, her shield rimmed with hoarfrost, and her axe heavy with purpose. As the tide swelled and steel clashed against her, she did not retreat. One by one, her foes fell, their blood steaming on the snow. The tide rose to her knees, then her waist, then her chest—and still she held the line.   She stood, unyielding, until the sea kissed her chin. Her breath misted in the cold air one final time before the water closed over her head. She did not flail. She did not cry out. In that silence beneath the ice, she felt no fear. Only stillness. Only peace. When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the mortal world but in Aurwynne, the solemn and gleaming realm of the Court of Ice and Snow—a place of frozen beauty, quiet judgment, and eternal winter.   It was not the Frost Prince who greeted her, but Sneachda, the court's towering Frost Giant guardian. The giantess looked upon Freydris and saw not a drowned woman, but a warrior who had given herself completely to the cold. She lifted the shieldmaiden from the frost-slick shallows of The Feywild and carried her, cradled like a fallen comrade, to the palace of ice where the Prince brooded behind frozen glass and unspoken grief. There, Freydris was offered no crown, no oath—only a place among the Court's champions. She accepted with silent reverence.   Now, Freydris moves like a storm’s eye—calm, deadly, resolute. Her breath still clouds in warm rooms, and her skin holds the chill of the fjord even under sun. She speaks little, but when she does, her voice carries the weight of waves against stone. To the Frost Prince, she is a barely noticed, if at all. To Sneachda, she is sister-in-arms. And to the Court of Ice and Snow, she is a living blade of winter, forged in defiance and baptized in tide. Her heart no longer beats for hearth or hall—only for the still silence of snow and the honor of never yielding.