Eira Frostwatch pressed her thumb against the frost that laced her own wrist. The pattern never melted. It had marked every woman in her line, a cold band that pulled tight whenever an outsider offered kindness. Her mother died believing the curse kept them safe. Eira wanted it gone. But she could not break what she did not understand, and no living elf remembered how the frost first bound her blood. She searched her home through the night. The tree that housed her family rose in pale branches, its windows glowing against the snow. She opened every drawer, every carved chest. She found letters, seed charts, a cracked flute. Nothing about the curse. Her ancestors had kept the origin buried on purpose. By dawn her hands shook with cold and failure. A knock struck the icy door. Eira froze. No one visited this deep in the drifts. She opened it to a wood elf, russet-haired, leaves tangled in his hair. A great antlered elk stood behind him, breath steaming. He smiled like they were already friends. "You're the one carrying the frost curse," he said. "I came a long way to help you break it." "Then you wasted your journey." The band at her wrist tightened, aching, warning her. She gripped the door. "I help myself. Go home." "I'm Theron Leafwhisper." He did not move. "My people keep records of old magic. Bindings, bloodlines. I think I know where yours began." Eira studied him. Trust came hard to her, harder since the frost punished every warm face. But she had searched all night and found nothing. He offered the one thing she lacked. "Show me," she said. Theron unrolled a strip of bark from his pack. Lines wound across it in faded sap-ink. "A snow elf traded her heart's warmth for protection, long ago. She feared an outsider who had betrayed her. The spell froze that fear into every daughter." He traced a knot at the center. "This is the anchor. Break the anchor, break the curse." Eira leaned close. The record named no anchor's location, only a shape: a creature of living frost that carried the spell's first breath. She knew that shape. She had seen it once as a child, circling the high peaks. "An ice phoenix," she whispered. "The curse rides in the bird." The frost at her wrist surged. Pain drove her to one knee. The band had never bitten so hard. The curse knew she had found its root, and it fought back. Theron reached to steady her. She caught his wrist before he touched her skin. "Don't," she gasped. "If you help me, the frost will try to kill us both." She pulled herself upright. She finally knew the enemy. Now she had to climb the peaks and face a creature of living ice, with a stranger she had no reason to trust.