In the distant, frozen wastelands of Antarctica, silence had ruled for longer than any living thing could remember. The land stretched endlessly in every direction — an ocean of white, buried beneath ice and snow so ancient it had forgotten the color of earth. No footprints disturbed its surface. No warmth dared linger.
Then the silence shattered.
The earth groaned as a violent tremor split the frost. Ice cracked like fragile glass, fractures spreading outward in jagged lines faster than any natural force could explain. And from the abyss below — from somewhere impossibly deep — a massive coffin erupted.
It was hewn from black stone darker than the polar night itself. Not marble, not obsidian, but something that seemed to swallow light rather than reflect it — a material that had no name in any living language. Strange markings covered its entire surface.
They were not carved.
They moved.
Ancient symbols twisted and shifted like living veins, pulsing faintly as though the coffin breathed, as though the stone itself was alive and restless and had been waiting for this moment for longer than the ice had been ice. The coffin floated midair — suspended by forces that had no interest in explaining themselves — before slamming back into the earth with a thunderous impact that fractured ice for miles. The shockwave sent columns of snow spiraling into the pale gray sky.
For a long moment, nothing stirred.
Then—
With a low hiss, the lid shifted.
Slowly.
A pitch-black hand emerged, its skin covered in glowing, writhing tattoos that shimmered like captive stars beneath obsidian flesh. The fingers pressed outward and the air recoiled — not with wind but with something that had no meteorological name. The temperature did not drop. It disappeared. A wave of lifeless cold swept outward, colder than the Antarctic wind, colder than the ice — a cold that carried within it the suggestion of absolute stillness.
A figure rose from within.
Humanoid. Naked against the screaming cold. Its body etched entirely in flowing symbols that moved constantly, narrating some unending story beneath the surface. Its eyes were blank — devoid of thought — yet filled with a depth so ancient it felt wrong to behold. Not empty. More like something vast remembering its own name.
It stood without hurry against the wind, tilting its face toward the iron-gray sky. Then its lips trembled, and a murmur escaped — spoken in a tongue long forgotten, shaped by a throat that had not been used in an unknowable length of time.
Far in the distance, a wolf howled.
Then came a terrified scream.
The figure turned. The tattoos flared once — a sharp, synchronized pulse of cold light.
In a single flicker—
It vanished.
…
Not far from where the coffin had split the ice, a young woman in a thick fur coat was losing her fight with the dark.
She had wandered too far from camp — she knew this now, felt it in the sick drop of her stomach and the way her breath came faster with every panicked exhale. The wolves had found her before she found her way back. Seven of them, pale-coated and intelligent in the specific way predators are intelligent when they are not afraid of anything. They circled her slowly, reading her fear, in no particular hurry.
With trembling hands she reached inside her coat and pulled out a red crystal device — an emergency tool, capable of scattering most large predators with a high-frequency pulse. Her fingers found it, gripped it. Then the nearest wolf snapped toward her wrist. She flinched.
The device slipped. It disappeared into the snow with a soft and final thump.
The wolves tightened the circle. Their growls were low. Hungry.
One lunged — the largest, teeth bared, full weight committed—
—and collapsed midair.
The rest froze. Snarls dissolved into whimpers. One by one, the beasts lowered their heads — not in defeat but in something closer to reverence, necks bent toward the snow, bodies curved inward and small.
The girl's breathing hitched.
Because if something could terrify wolves into obedience—
—it was surely no friend to her.
Then she saw him.
The black humanoid stood among the pack, silent, watching her with unsettling curiosity. Snow drifted around him but did not touch him.
In a blink, he appeared before her.
His cold hand pressed gently against her forehead. The tattoos along his arm writhed — pulsing, coiling, as though drawing something unseen from the air between them. For several seconds his blank eyes remained utterly still.
Then—
Clarity flickered within them.
Like something vast remembering its own name.
The girl fainted. Her body fell, but he caught her effortlessly, lifting her as though she weighed nothing. Without haste he carried her to the edge of a distant camp and laid her gently in the snow within sight of the firelight.
His hand rose once more. Invisible threads seemed to weave through the air as fragments of her memory reshaped — old strands severed, new ones stitched seamlessly into place. The terror, the wolves, the cold hand on her forehead — all of it became the soft, formless suggestion of a dream already fading. In its place: the simple and comforting impression that she had wandered too far and collapsed from exhaustion.
When it was done, he stepped back. He lifted his gaze to the sky — its iron clouds, its pale sun hanging low, its strange and unfamiliar quality of light.
"Earth…" he whispered.
And then—
He was gone.
Moments later the girl stirred. Confusion clouded her expression as she pushed herself upright. For reasons she could not explain, she felt safe. Shaking her head, she stumbled toward the faint glow of campfire lights in the distance.
Behind her, the snow wolves fled into the night.
…
At that very same moment the ice split in Antarctica, far away in the Central Region of Arvantis Island, a grand assembly of the Seven Great Families was underway.
The vast hall shimmered beneath crystal chandeliers that threw cold light across a floor polished to a mirror finish. The air smelled of old money and older grudges. Heavy silence occupied the spaces between the assembled family heads — the kind of silence that formed between people who respected each other only because they had no other choice, sharpened over generations into something that passed for civility.
At the foremost seat sat the patriarch of the First Family, his voice steady as he presided over the gathering with the measured calm of a man who had long ago made peace with his own power. Below him, in the second seat of honor, a man clad in a black pearl suit sat with quiet authority — present but not performing it, still in the way of someone who had never needed to announce themselves.
Suddenly—
A faint tremor passed through his body. His fingers stilled upon the armrest. His eyes flickered with a light unseen by ordinary men — there and gone, a candle in a sealed room.
Several family heads glanced toward him. Sensing something. Saying nothing.
The tremor vanished as quickly as it came. A thin smile curved his lips.
Composed.
Untouched.
Only those closest might have caught the whisper that slipped from him — spoken in a tongue unknown to mankind.
"So… it has begun."