Frozen Throne

The frost arrived with an unnatural stillness. In Middnehal’s southern valleys, farmers paused their work to look at the sky, now dimmed as though the sun itself were retreating. Crops withered in the fields, their stalks curling and blackening under a thin sheen of frost that grew thicker by the hour.   Halda, the village healer, noticed it first in the forest. She had gone to gather feverfew and birch bark when she saw the trees glistening with a strange, crystalline sheen. The frost clung to the leaves like spider silk, intricate and shimmering in the weak sunlight. But it was the air that unsettled her most too quiet, too cold.   At the edge of the clearing, a figure stirred. Halda froze, her breath caught in her throat. It was barely more than a shadow, antlers rising above its head like frost covered branches. The Hrimskugga.   “Halda, come!” shouted Eirik from the village gate, breaking her trance.   Halda turned to find the elder standing there, a hand raised in urgency. When she looked back, the shadow was gone, leaving only the frost curling over the underbrush.     By the end of the first year, the frost was no longer a mere annoyance but an enemy that crept into homes and hearths. Halda’s visions grew more vivid, showing not just frost but destruction: great glaciers swallowing towns, rivers freezing so swiftly they exploded, and mountains shattering into pieces.   The villagers began to rely on her for guidance, but her warnings were unwelcome. “The frost is alive,” she said one evening, her voice steady despite the chill. “It is not a season to outlast it is a force that must be reckoned with.”   Kael, the hunter, scoffed from his place near the hearth. “Your riddles won’t feed us, Halda. We need solutions, not stories.”   “Her stories are all we have,” Eirik interjected, his voice heavy with weariness. “The gods have abandoned us. Perhaps they’ve left us her instead.”   The tension was palpable. Food stores were dwindling, and raiders had begun to move south, driven by hunger and desperation. Halda, sitting in the corner with her herbs, kept silent, knowing that no words could prepare them for what was coming.     When the third winter arrived, the frost became more than a physical force. The sky itself seemed to bow under its weight. The stars, once steady and distant, began to pulse with a strange blue light.   Halda stood outside her hut one night, staring at the heavens. The fissures appeared slowly, faint lines of light that spread like cracks in glass. She felt the cold deepen, as if the fractures above were leaking frost into the world below.   The next day, travelers arrived from the north, their faces gaunt with frostbite. “The sea has frozen,” they said, their voices trembling. “The longships are trapped in the ice. And there are... shapes... moving across the fjords.”   “What shapes?” Halda asked, her heart pounding.   “They are giants,” one of the men whispered. “Or something worse. Cloaked in frost and crowned with antlers. They walk where no living thing should.”   Halda’s visions of the Hrimskugga came rushing back. She knew then that the frost was no accident, no ordinary winter. It was an awakening.   The Ice Brothers were no mere legend. In the deep north, beneath frozen earth they had waited, imprisoned since the god king Volnen trapped. Their names were etched in forgotten runes: Hrimvaldr, the Frost King; Fjornir, the Herald of Cold; and Isdyr, the Silent Warden.   Hrimvaldr was the first to rise. His coming was marked by a sound like glaciers breaking, a low, resonant roar that echoed across the land. He walked through the frozen forests, a towering figure cloaked in ice and shadow, his breath forming storms of frost. Entire villages were swallowed in his wake, their people frozen where they stood, their faces locked in expressions of terror.   Halda heard the stories from the survivors who stumbled into the village. She listened intently, her mind racing. The frost was not natural, and neither was its source.   “They are reclaiming the world,” she told Eirik that night. “The frost belongs to them, and we are intruders in their realm.”   The Jörmunrift opened suddenly, a chasm that split the earth in two. It began as a single fissure, a thin line of blue light that grew wider with each passing hour. By the time Halda and the villagers reached it, the rift stretched as far as the eye could see, its depths glowing with a cold, unearthly light.   “It’s the Frost Throne,” Halda said, her voice barely audible over the howling winds. “The source of their power.”   “What do we do?” Kael asked, his earlier bravado replaced by fear.   Halda held up the shard of glowing ice she had taken from the warrior’s remains. “We descend. If we do not face them, there will be no world left to save.”     The descent was a journey into another world. The walls of the rift were lined with frostfire, its cold flames casting strange shadows. The air grew thinner, colder, until it felt like every breath burned their lungs.   At the bottom, they found the Frost Throne a massive seat carved from ice, glowing with a blue light so bright it hurt to look at. Fjornir, the Herald of Cold, sat upon it, his antlered crown glinting in the light. His presence was overwhelming, the air around him thick with frost that froze even the ground at their feet.   “You come to challenge us?” Fjornir rumbled, his voice shaking the cavern. “You are children playing with fire, in a realm of endless frost.”   Halda stepped forward, the shard in her hand pulsing faintly. “This frost is not yours to claim,” she said. “It is time for you to return to your prison.”   Fjornir laughed, a sound like ice splintering. “There is no prison strong enough to hold us. The frost is eternal, and so are we.”   The battle was fierce and desperate. Halda and her companions struck at Fjornir with weapons blessed by rune carved fire, but his icy skin turned their blows aside. Each strike from his frost covered hands sent shockwaves through the cavern, cracking the walls and floor.   Halda gripped the shard tightly, her mind racing. She knew it was the key, but how? Then she saw it the Frost Throne itself pulsed with the same light as the shard. The throne was his anchor, the source of his power.   With a cry, she plunged the shard into the heart of the throne. A blinding light erupted, and Fjornir roared in pain, his form dissolving into mist. The cavern trembled as waves of warmth spread outward, melting the frost and breaking the throne apart.     The warmth spread across Middenhal, sealing the fractures in the sky and melting the ice that had claimed so much of the land. The Jörmunrift closed slowly, its glow fading until only silence remained.   Halda returned to the village, weary but alive. The frost had been halted, but she knew it was not truly defeated. The Ice Brothers were eternal, and the balance they had disrupted would remain fragile.   As the villagers rebuilt their homes, Halda stood at the edge of the forest, her gaze fixed on the horizon. The frost would return one day, but she would be ready. For now, the world had been saved.And that was enough.