I fell through a kaleidoscope of shattered reality, my body weightless as the world around me fractured into infinite patterns. Colors I'd never seen before—colors that couldn't exist—swirled and merged, splitting and reforming at impossible angles. The sensation wasn't physical so much as conceptual, like my consciousness was being pulled apart and reassembled with each passing moment.
This is what dying feels like.
But I wasn't dying. Not yet.
The voice had called this a Timer Trial. I'd read about those in the stolen books—the rarest, most dangerous Domain Trial variant. Less than one percent of all trials. Most candidates didn't survive them.
Of course I'd get one of these. Just my fucking luck.
As I fell, memories flashed before me—not in the linear way people describe near-death experiences, but simultaneously, as if all moments of my life were happening at once. My mother's face when she came home after double shifts. Miri's laughter. My father's hand on my shoulder before he left for his final gate clearance.
Then fragments of moments that weren't mine at all: a frozen wasteland stretching endlessly beneath a pale sun; figures huddled around fires that never seemed to warm them.
The kaleidoscope shifted, and suddenly I felt myself being pulled toward one particular fragment. The colors intensified, the patterns accelerating until they blurred into a single point of light that expanded to consume my entire field of vision.
Thirty days. I have thirty days.
The thought anchored me as I plummeted through the blinding light. Thirty days was both an eternity and nothing at all. In the real world, Domain Trials lasted minutes, maybe hours at most. But within the Domain, time stretched and warped. Thirty subjective days might pass in the span of a single night.
The light engulfed me, and for a moment, everything went white.
Then cold. Bone-deep, breath-stealing cold that shocked my system like a plunge into icy water. I gasped, and the air burned my lungs. My eyes flew open to a world of white and gray and pale blue.
"Look who decided to wake up!"
The voice came from directly above me, accompanied by breath that smelled of rotten meat and stale alcohol. I blinked, my vision adjusting to find a bearded face looming over mine—weathered skin cracked by cold, yellowed teeth bared in what might have been a smile.
I tried to sit up, only to discover my hands and feet were bound with rough rope. My body ached from lying on hard wooden planks, and the steady rocking motion told me I was in some kind of vehicle.
A wagon. No—a sleigh.
I turned my head to take in my surroundings. I was in a wooden carriage with runners instead of wheels, pulled by two shaggy horses whose breath formed clouds in the frigid air. Three other men sat around me, all wearing layers of fur and leather that still didn't seem adequate against the cold. Beyond them stretched an endless landscape of snow and ice.
Frostfall.
I'd seen it in the kaleidoscope, but reality was far more brutal than the glimpse I'd caught. The world was locked in perpetual winter, the sky a pale gray that offered neither the promise of sun nor the release of night. In the distance, jagged mountains rose like teeth against the horizon, and between us and them lay a vast plain of snow broken only by the occasional skeletal tree or abandoned structure half-buried in drifts.
"Where..." My voice cracked from disuse and cold. "Where am I?"
The bearded man laughed, nudging his companion. "Hear that, Joran? The slave wants to know where he is!"
"Probably knocked his head when the Reflectors got him," the other man grunted, not bothering to look in my direction. "Or the cold's finally frozen his brain."
I flexed my fingers, trying to restore circulation. My clothes were woefully inadequate—thin fabric that might have been a prisoner's uniform, now torn and crusted with something dark that I hoped wasn't blood. My feet were wrapped in rags that did nothing to keep out the cold.
"Status," I muttered, the word escaping my lips before I could think better of it.
Instantly, ghostly runes appeared in my field of vision, forming a translucent interface that only I could see. But unlike the status screens I'd read about in the books, this one was almost entirely grayed out.
IDENTITY
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NAME: ISAIAH ANGELO
CLASS: [LOCKED]
TITLE: [LOCKED]
TIER: [LOCKED]
ATTRIBUTES
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STRENGTH: F [0]
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INTELLIGENCE: F [0]
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AGILITY: F [0]
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VITALITY: F [0]
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PERCEPTION: F [0]
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ACTIVE ABILITIES
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① [LOCKED]
② [LOCKED]
③ [LOCKED]
PASSIVE ABILITIES
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① [LOCKED]
② [LOCKED]
③ [LOCKED]
ARTIFACTS
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① [NONE]
"No, no, no, this can't be!" I whispered, forgetting my surroundings for a moment.
"What can't be?" The bearded man leaned closer, his foul breath making me recoil. "The fact that you're headed to the Hearthhome mines? Or that we found you half-dead in the snow?" He chuckled. "Count yourself lucky, boy. Most who encounter the Reflectors don't live to tell the tale."
I forced myself to focus. Domain Trials always provided tools for survival—aspects, abilities, something to work with. But my status screen showed nothing. Everything locked or zeroed out. I was as powerless here as I was in the real world.
A Timer Trial with no abilities. Fucking perfect.
"How long until we reach... wherever we're going?" I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.
The third man, who had been silent until now, spoke up. "Three days to Hearthhome, if the weather holds and the wolves don't get us." He was older than the others, with a face like tanned leather and eyes that had seen too much. "You'd best hope we make it. The alternatives aren't pretty."
I nodded, processing this information. Three days. That left twenty-seven to figure out how to reach this Temple of Echoes and complete the trial. But first, I needed to understand what I was dealing with.
"These Reflectors," I said carefully. "What are they?"
The men exchanged glances.
"New to Frostfall, aren't you?" Joran said. "Reflectors are what happen when men stay out in the deep cold too long. They become... something else. Mirror-skinned hunters that steal your warmth with a touch."
"They don't eat flesh," the bearded man added, his voice dropping. "They feed on heat itself. Leave nothing but frozen corpses with faces locked in terror."
The older man made a warding gesture. "Enough talk of them. Words draw attention in this land."
I fell silent, watching the landscape scroll by. The sleigh followed what might have been a road, though it was impossible to tell beneath the snow. Occasionally we passed structures—abandoned farmhouses, crumbling watchtowers, the skeletal remains of what might have been a village. Everything was half-buried in snow, as if the winter had been trying to erase all evidence of human existence for centuries.
In the distance, something howled—a sound too deep and resonant to be a normal wolf.
The men tensed, hands moving to weapons concealed beneath their furs.
"Ice wolves," Joran muttered. "Getting bolder."
"They're hungry," said the older man. "Winter's been longer this year."
The bearded man snorted. "Winter's been longer every year since the curse began."
I filed this information away. A curse. Something that made the winters progressively worse. And at the center of my trial was the Temple of Echoes, which presumably had something to do with breaking this curse.
Standard fantasy setup. The dying land needs a hero. Except I wasn't a hero—I was a seventeen-year-old slum rat with no special training and apparently no special abilities either.
I tested my bonds discreetly. The rope was crude but effective, tight enough to prevent escape but not so tight as to cut off circulation. These men knew what they were doing. Slave traders, most likely, given the way they talked about me.
"How much will I fetch at the mines?" I asked, keeping my tone conversational.
The bearded man laughed again. "Skinny thing like you? Not much. But enough to make the trip worthwhile."
"The overseer pays by the head, not the muscle," Joran added. "Lucky for you."
The older man studied me with narrowed eyes. "You talk like you're educated. Where are you from, boy?"
I hesitated, unsure how to answer. The truth—that I was from another world entirely—seemed unwise. But I needed information, and these men were my only source at the moment.
"I don't remember," I said finally. "Everything before waking up here is... hazy."
The men exchanged glances again, this time with something like pity.
"Reflector touch will do that," the older man said. "Steals memories along with warmth sometimes. They found you wandering half-frozen on the plains, babbling nonsense."
"Who did?"
"Hearthhome patrol," said Joran. "They thought you might be one of their missing villagers, but no one recognized you. So they sold you to us instead."
"Generous of them," I muttered.
The bearded man grinned. "That's Frostfall for you. Everyone's got to survive somehow."
I turned away, ostensibly to look at the landscape but really to hide my expression as I processed what I'd learned. I was a prisoner, captured in a frozen wasteland, being transported to mines where I'd likely work until I died—all while a timer counted down the days until my real body either awakened or died back in New Vein.
But there was something else nagging at me. The men had mentioned a curse, and the trial instructions had mentioned claiming the Heart of Winter from the Temple of Echoes. There had to be a connection.
"This curse," I said, turning back to them. "What do you know about it?"
The mood in the sleigh shifted instantly. The bearded man's smile vanished, and Joran's hand moved to the hilt of a knife at his belt. Only the older man's expression remained unchanged, his eyes calculating as he studied me.
"Why would you ask about that?" he said quietly.
I shrugged as best I could while bound. "Just curious. If I'm going to live here, I should know what I'm dealing with."
"You're not going to live here," the bearded man said flatly. "You're going to die in the mines, like all the rest."
"Enough, Hask," the older man said. He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving my face. "The curse is simple enough. Winter never ends. Gets colder each year. Started when the last king went mad and did something terrible at the Temple of Echoes, high in the Sorrow Range."
My pulse quickened. "The Temple of Echoes? What's that?"
"A place no one in their right mind goes near," Joran cut in. "Home to the Winter King and his court of frozen dead."
"Some say he was once a great wizard who sought immortality," the older man continued. "Others say he was always a demon, just wearing human skin for a time. Either way, he sits on a throne of ice now, drawing the life from the land to sustain himself."
"And no one's tried to stop him?" I asked.
The three men laughed, though there was no humor in it.
"Many have tried," the older man said. "None have returned."
"The Knights of the Eternal Flame gave it their best shot about ten years back," Hask added. "Whole order wiped out. Now there's just a handful left, barely enough to patrol the trade routes."
I nodded slowly, pieces falling into place. My trial wasn't just about surviving thirty days in this frozen hell—it was about reaching the Temple of Echoes and somehow defeating or bypassing the Winter King to claim the Heart of Winter, whatever that was.
With no abilities. No weapons. No allies. Starting as a slave bound for the mines.
The Spell creates trials, not executions, I reminded myself. There has to be a way through this.
"You ask a lot of questions for a slave," Joran observed, his eyes narrowed.
I met his gaze steadily. "Knowledge is the only thing they can't take from you."
The older man chuckled at that. "Smart boy. Too smart for the mines, maybe." He studied me thoughtfully. "What can you do besides talk?"
I considered my answer carefully. I needed these men to see me as valuable, or at least interesting enough to keep alive. But I also couldn't promise skills I didn't have.
"I'm observant," I said finally. "I notice things others miss. Patterns, weaknesses, opportunities." This wasn't a lie—it was how I'd survived in the Depths. "I can read and write, if that matters here."
"It doesn't," Hask snorted.
"It might," the older man countered. "Hearthhome's overseer can't read. Relies on his wife for all correspondence. A literate slave might fetch more than mine work."
Hope flickered briefly. If I could avoid the mines, I might have a better chance of escape.
"What's your name, boy?" the older man asked.
"Isaiah," I replied, seeing no reason to lie about that.
"I'm Torsten," he said. "The loud one is Hask, and the suspicious one is Joran. We're not slavers by trade—just opportunists. Times are hard."
"They always are," I said, earning a grunt of agreement from Hask.
The sleigh crested a small rise, giving me a better view of what lay ahead. The plains stretched on, but now I could make out what looked like pillars of smoke rising in the distance—settlements, perhaps. And beyond them, the mountains loomed larger, their peaks lost in low clouds.
Somewhere in those mountains was the Temple of Echoes. My destination. My only chance of survival.
I settled back against the wooden planks, ignoring the cold that seeped through my thin clothes, and began to plan. First, I needed to survive the journey to Hearthhome. Then I needed to avoid being sent to the mines. Then escape. Then somehow cross a monster-infested wasteland and climb a mountain range to find a temple guarded by a being powerful enough to hold an entire land in eternal winter.
All in less than thirty days.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. But then, my whole life had been a series of impossible situations that I'd somehow survived. This was just another one. A bigger one, with higher stakes and longer odds, but still—just another game to play.
And if there was one thing I knew how to do, it was play games where the deck was stacked against me.