Chapter 83: Scars on the Ice
The artificial blizzard raged for precisely forty-seven minutes. From the ridge, it was a surreal sight: a single, boiling pillar of white fury anchored to the mountain's base, while the rest of the glacier lay under a calm, cruel grey sky. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the wind died. The spinning ice crystals lost their will, falling in a sudden, silent curtain of glittering dust.
The dais was revealed, transformed. It was shrouded in a thick, pristine layer of fine snow, like a cake iced by a madman. The figures on it were stumbling statues, coated white, shaking and hacking in the brutal cold that lingered like a curse. The prisoners were barely visible, huddled mounds. Alaric's forces milled in disarray, trying to regroup, to scrape ice from weapons and eyes.
