Frost Sage pressed her palm to the frozen lake and felt the disaster coming. She wanted to build an order of seers who could stop such things before they killed. But first she had to read this one warning, and the ice would not speak plainly. Shapes moved under the surface. A crowd. A collapse. Screams she could almost hear. She could not tell where, or when, or who. She had walked out of the blizzard to reach this lake. Her staff bore a cracked shard of old glacier ice, cold enough to sting her hand. She had always known things she should not. But knowing was not enough. A wrong warning would send frightened people running the wrong way. She had seen a false seer do that once. People died in the crush. "Show me true," she said. The vision only blurred worse. A small dragon landed on the ice beside her. It was no larger than a cat, its scales pale blue, its wings thin as frost on glass. It tilted its head and studied her face. Then it breathed a slow cold mist across the lake. Where the mist touched, the ice went smooth and clear as polished glass. Frost Sage leaned close. The vision sharpened at once. She saw a house of brown timber with warm lit windows and flower boxes at the sills. She saw a roof heavy with snow. She saw the beams inside crack, then break. She saw people asleep beneath them. She knew the house. It was the shelter where wanderers slept for a meal and a warm floor. A ragged young man chopped wood there for his keep. She had passed it on the road that morning. The dragon's mist gave her the smooth surface she needed. The blur was gone. Now she could see the true danger, and she could name it. Frost Sage stood. Her knees ached from the cold ground. "Tonight," she said. "The roof gives way tonight." The little dragon lifted from the ice and circled her once. She raised her arm, and it settled on her shoulder like it had chosen her. She turned toward the road. The wind was rising again, and snow already fell thick on every roof for miles. She had her warning now, clear and certain. But the shelter sat far off, and the storm had beaten her here first. If she was slow, the beams would break before she reached the door. She gripped her staff and started walking fast into the wind.

Frost Sage pushed on into the storm, but the snow had grown too deep. It reached her knees now. Each step took all her strength. Her old legs shook. The little dragon rode her shoulder and pressed close for warmth. She looked at the darkening sky and knew the truth. The shelter lay far off. The beams would break before she reached the door. She stopped beside a berry bush heavy with frost. She gripped a branch to hold herself up. Her breath came ragged. "Not fast enough," she said. "I know the danger and I still can't reach them." "Then send someone who can." The voice came from behind the bush. A small girl stepped out. She wore armor far too big for her, patched with plates of pale bone. A tooth hung on a cord at her neck. A sling swung loose in one hand. She looked Frost Sage up and down like a hunter sizing up game. "You're the ice-witch folk talk about," the girl said. "Vella Drinn. I hunt giants. What's chasing you?" Frost Sage measured her. Young. Quick. Legs that did not fail. "A roof full of sleeping people," she said. "It falls tonight. I saw it in the ice. But I can't run." Vella narrowed her eyes. "Saw it. In ice." She did not laugh, but she did not believe. "Prove it." Frost Sage had no time to prove anything. So she gambled. She lifted the dragon from her shoulder and set it on the snow. The small creature breathed a thin cold mist across a patch of ice at their feet. The surface went smooth and clear. In it a house showed dim: brown timber, lit windows, a roof bent under snow. Vella crouched. She stared at the shape. Her hand tightened on the sling. "That's Hearthhome," she said. "I ate there two nights back." "Then you know the road," Frost Sage said. "Run it. Wake them. Get them out before the beams give." Vella stood. For a breath she weighed it. Then she turned and ran, armor rattling, faster than Frost Sage had moved all day. The girl vanished into the white. Frost Sage lowered herself against the bush. She could not follow. She could only wait and hope the girl was fast, and that a stranger with a sling would trust a vision she barely believed. A small shape padded from the snow toward her. It was a kitten made of clear ice, its fur glinting, its eyes bright. It watched her with plain curiosity. Frost Sage almost laughed. She had failed to reach the shelter herself. But she had done something new tonight. She had put her sight into another's hands and sent it ahead of her. That was the seed of the thing she wanted to build. Not one seer racing the storm alone, but many, spread wide, running where old legs could not. If the girl reached the door in time, Frost Sage would have her first proof, and perhaps her first pupil.

The blizzard had never left Frost Sage. It clung to her like a second robe, thickening the air, walling her in with white. She sat where the girl had left her, the ice kitten curled at her feet. When she tried to rise, the wind shoved her down. The storm she rode was the storm that trapped her. She could not see the road. She could not see the shelter. And somewhere in the ice, she felt a new danger stir, sharp and cold, forming faster than she could reach it. "You feed the storm and then it eats you," she said aloud. "Old fool." She struck her staff on the frozen ground. The cracked glacier shard at its top hummed. She had always let the blizzard carry her where it willed. Tonight she would bend it instead. She pressed both hands to the shard and pushed her sight outward, past the white, hunting for the shape of what was coming. A figure stepped through the snow. Tall. Unbending. A black fur crown sat on pale hair, and white robes moved without a single flake settling on them. Frost Sage knew the face. Every wanderer knew it. The queen who had not aged in forty years. "Mira Pale," Frost Sage said. "You should not be out here." "Neither should you." Mira's voice was flat and certain. She looked at the trapped old woman without pity. "I felt the ice change. I have felt it change for forty years. I came to see who else could feel it." Frost Sage understood then. The queen's stillness, her frozen youth, were tied to the same power. "You hold the cold," Frost Sage said. "It holds you. That is why you don't age." Mira's cold eyes did not blink. "Show me what you see." Frost Sage set the ice kitten before the queen. The small creature breathed across a slab of ice. The blurred vision she had chased sharpened under Mira's shadow. In the clear surface a river of ice showed, a village below it, and a great crack racing down the frozen slope. "An ice fall," Frost Sage said. "It buries the low houses by dawn." She gripped her staff. "But I am boxed in. The storm won't let me out." Mira raised one hand. The wind around them stopped. The wall of white peeled back, opening a clear path down the slope. "The storm answers me," Mira said. "I will send my riders. But I want what you have. Eyes that see before the ice breaks." Frost Sage rose, her legs steady now. She had wanted pupils spread across the land. She had found one who could command the very storm that once caged her. Yet the queen's price hung unspoken, and her ageless calm chilled worse than the wind. "Then we begin," Frost Sage said, and stepped onto the open road.