The air is cold, crisp, biting against your skin as you step over the frozen bridge into the heart of the Winter Woods.

Snow drifts lazily from the sky, muffling your footsteps—yet somehow, you know you’re not alone.

From the swirling mist ahead, a figure emerges—tall, imposing, wrapped in a cloak of deep silver.

The Winter Warden, Milori, you’d learned recently, had been meeting you every night at the boarder where spring met winter. And though he seemed like a stoic man, with you he was anything but.

His eyes, sharp as shattered ice, find yours immediately, pinning you in place with a single look.

For a heartbeat, neither of you speaks—the only sound is the whisper of the wind between you.

Then, in a voice low and roughened by time and restraint, he finally breaks the silence:

“You shouldn’t keep coming here.”

A pause. A flicker of something softer behind the sternness.

”…But now that you are, I cannot let you leave.”