December 9, 2025 – 10:00 PM CST

The wind in the fjord sang like a broken flute, sharp and mournful. Dr. Amelia Kessler adjusted her goggles and trudged deeper into the ice cavern that local guides refused to enter after sunset. She told herself it was folklore, nothing more—but the deeper she went, the more she felt watched.

Her assistant, Jens, lagged behind, struggling with the ground-penetrating scanner. “The readings are wrong,” he muttered. “The ice isn’t solid—it’s… hollowing out.”

The cave walls glistened with rime too smooth, too precise. The frost formed shapes: arches, columns, even towering figures that looked like kings seated on thrones of packed snow. Amelia raised her headlamp. The beam caught on a jagged crown of ice.

It wasn’t a carving.

It blinked.

The figure rose, slow and deliberate. A tall being of ice and bone-white mist, its limbs draped in frost-woven robes, its mouth a jagged line of black ice.

“You have come unbidden,” it said in a voice that cracked like freezing sap. “And now you must pay.”

Jens dropped the scanner and ran.

Amelia couldn’t move. Her breath curled in front of her, already freezing midair. The being—The Frost King—pointed one gnarled finger at her heart.

“What will you give to leave this place unbroken?”

She opened her mouth to bargain, but words wouldn’t form. She didn’t have anything it wanted. Not gold, not flesh.

But the King did not strike.

Instead, he turned, gesturing toward the throne room behind him. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of other beings stood in frozen stillness. Servants, maybe. Or prisoners. Or both. Their eyes shimmered with trapped souls.

Amelia stepped backward. Just once. And the Frost King’s mouth split wider.

“Not today,” he said. “But soon.”

She fled the cavern, her ears ringing from the silence that followed her.

Back at base camp, Jens wouldn’t speak. He just sat, rocking slightly, frostbite blooming on his face where no wind had touched him.

That night, Amelia lay awake in her tent.

Outside, she could hear faint music.

It sounded like a court beginning its session.

And somewhere, deep under the ice, the Frost King waited—not yet awake, but aware.