They say the North sings when a true heir is born.
The winds hush. The storms break. The frost stills — as if the land itself is listening.
On the night Caelen Glaciem came into the world, the snow did not fall. It hovered.
Suspended in the air like diamonds in stasis, shimmering in the moonlight. A full frost eclipse crowned the sky above Winterspire, the ancestral seat of House Glaciem, and the breath of every living soul in the fortress froze mid-chest.
Even the wolves did not howl.
Lady Elenysa's screams echoed through the stone halls like the cracking of a glacier. Beside her, Duke Renivar stood with gloved hands clenched and eyes hard as froststeel. He had seen war. He had felled men by the dozens. But never had his heart thundered so violently as it did now, waiting to see if the boy would breathe.
And when he did, the snow fell again.
But not as it had before. It whispered.
The maesters would call it a coincidence. The priests would call it a curse. But the North knew what it meant. Every blade of grass and stone beneath the frost knew: Winter had chosen again.
The babe did not cry. His skin was warm, but his breath misted like smoke in the cold air. In his half-closed eyes, a pale gleam pulsed — not quite blue, not quite silver. And when the midwife reached to swaddle him, her fingers recoiled from the chill radiating from his skin.
A mark. A gift. A sentence.
Renivar took the boy in his arms. Not gently. Not cruelly. As if he were a blade to be tempered."You'll need to be more than strong," he whispered to the child. "You'll need to be ice itself."
The name was carved in stone by sunrise. Caelen of House Glaciem, firstborn son. Heir to the Winter Throne. The last of his line.
And far to the south — beyond the kingdoms, beyond the sea — a fire whispered to its disciples: "The storm sleeps… but not for long."