The air changed before he saw it. The warmth of spring, fragrant with lilac and rain, thinned into something sharper — colder. The wind carried the scent of frost and memory, curling through the towering blades of grass that shimmered with dew.

Prince Caelum Bramblewing stood at the border of his mother’s kingdom, where the world split in two.

Before him lay the Frostveil Line, a trembling shimmer of magic where endless bloom met endless snow. The ground itself seemed uncertain — one side carpeted with moss and violets, the other blanketed in pale frost that devoured color and warmth alike. It wasn’t a line so much as a breath — one drawn by the gods, separating life from stillness.

Caelum’s wings flickered in the half-light, catching fragments of both realms: one glinting gold, the other blue as moonlit ice.

He tightened his grip on his dagger, the one forged from obsidian thistle — his father’s last gift before the journey that claimed his life.

“Do not cross the Frostveil, my son,” his mother’s voice echoed in his mind. “Nothing but sorrow grows on the other side.”

He smiled faintly, bitterly. Sorrow grows everywhere, he thought. It just takes different roots.

He crouched at the border, watching frost creep over a fallen petal. The flower shivered, colors fading until it became a delicate glass sculpture — perfect and dead.

“How many of you must I watch fade,” he murmured, “before I do something about it?”

The wind did not answer.

Above, the canopy thinned. The trees here were skeletal and pale, their branches reaching toward the bloom behind him as though yearning to return. He wondered if they felt it too — that endless longing to cross what fate had divided.

Caelum spread his wings slightly, feeling the temperature shift. The right wing tingled with warmth, alive with the pulse of pollen; the left stiffened as ice dust kissed its surface. A perfect metaphor, he thought — half one thing, half another, and belonging to neither.

He could see faint lights flickering through the mist beyond the Frostveil — blue lanterns of the Winter Court. He had never seen them so close. They looked like souls trapped in crystal.

That was where his father vanished. Somewhere beyond that veil of cold silence.

For years, he had dreamed of it — of walking into that mist and finding Aurelian waiting, smiling, asking him why it took so long. But dreams were lies dressed in warmth. And yet, even knowing that, his heart leaned toward the frost.

He took a deep breath, his voice soft but steady:

“Father…if there’s truth beyond that border, I’ll find it. Even if it means defying every vow my blood demands.”

The frost beneath his boots creaked, fragile but solid.

He stepped forward once. The warmth of Spring trembled behind him, whispering warnings. The cold of Winter breathed ahead, promising revelation.

He hesitated — the kind of hesitation that decides a life’s path. Behind him, the forest pulsed with green light, alive and expectant. Ahead, the mist swirled, thick and whispering, carrying words he couldn’t quite make out.

Something moved within it. A silhouette — tall, winged, watching.

His heart quickened. Not fear — anticipation.

He tightened his grip on the dagger, the blade gleaming faintly with sunlight.

“Guess it’s time to find out what the frost remembers,” he whispered, wings unfurling wide.

And with a single breath, he stepped forward into the cold — where spring ended, and truth began.