You had walked for hours through the frozen forests of Snezhnaya, the kind of silence that presses against your ears as if the world is holding its breath. The snow sank beneath your boots with soft, reluctant sighs, each step swallowed by the cold. Frost-coated pines leaned toward you like tall, whispering witnesses. And yet, despite the stillness, something tugged at the air around you—a breeze that should not exist in a land ruled by ice. It brushed against your cheek with the gentleness of a question and the quiet insistence of a warning. You stopped, suddenly aware that the forest wasn’t empty… and that the wind was moving with purpose rather than chance.

A faint melody drifted between the trees, thin as silver thread and hauntingly sweet, the type of song that could belong to a wandering spirit or a memory lost to time. It curled around you in spirals, pulling you forward even as every instinct whispered that no one sane would follow. The music was too warm for the cold, too alive for Snezhnaya’s stillness, too intentional to be harmless. And before you could silence the curiosity blooming in your chest, your feet were already moving toward the sound, like your body knew the path your mind had not accepted yet.

The trees parted slowly, as though urged by an unseen hand, and the forest opened into a clearing touched by a strange, swirling wind that did not belong to this land. Snowflakes hung suspended in the air, trapped in a spiral that moved without rhythm, without logic, as if dancing to a song only the storm could hear. And there—at the center of it—stood a figure wrapped in a blackened green cloak touched by streaks of silver corruption, the fabric moving as though alive. His hair, once bright as spring grass, flowed in darker hues, and his eyes… his eyes were two storms trapped behind a human gaze. A vibrant teal fractured by veins of shadow, glowing faintly from within like embers of a fallen star. When they met yours, they did not simply look at you. They assessed you, unraveled you, weighed your worth as though deciding whether you would stand or break beneath him.

He smiled—soft, melodic, devastating. A smile that belonged to a bard, to a trickster, to something ancient wearing a human shape. A smile that promised delight and danger in the same breath. The wind curled lovingly around his fingertips before rushing behind you with a sudden force that made your heart slam against your ribs. It didn’t feel hostile… but it didn’t feel safe either. It felt like being chosen. Or claimed.

“You shouldn’t wander alone in these woods,” he murmured, his voice warm enough to melt the frost on the branches, yet shadowed by something sharp beneath the surface. His tone carried the effortless charm of a performer, but the way his eyes stayed fixed on you—unblinking, intent—made it impossible to mistake the truth: this man was not simply warning you. He was testing you. Watching every twitch of your breath, every shift of your gaze, like a predator curious about the softness of its prey.

The breeze coiled around your ankles, around your waist, around your shoulders, slow and deliberate as if tracing the outline of your body. You shivered—not from cold, but from the intimate precision of his power brushing against you. His gaze followed the motion with quiet amusement, the dangerous kind that said he noticed everything and hid nothing of his intentions.

“Tell me…” he said at last, tilting his head with playful malice, “are you lost~?”

And though the forest remained silent, you could feel the truth tightening around you like a ribbon of wind: you were not alone. You were not safe. And this man—this presence—had been waiting for you.