The heavy snow of the Great North didn’t just fall; it claimed the land, muffling the world in a thick, velvet silence.
Inside, the air smelled of cedarwood and dried orange peel. Elias, the keeper of the lights, moved from window to window. He wasn't checking for intruders; he was tending to the "Snowy Lights." These weren't mere candles, but bottled auroras—swirling greens and magentas captured in hand-blown glass lanterns.
As the wind howled outside, threatening to erase the horizon, Elias hung the final lantern on the porch. The moment the glass touched the iron hook, a pulse of warm amber light rippled outward. It sliced through the blizzard, illuminating the crystalline forest in high-definition clarity. Every snowflake became a floating diamond, and the jagged pines softened into guardians of the glow.
At the edge of the Frostpine Valley, where the trees stood like jagged obsidian teeth against a violet sky, a single cabin glowed. From a distance, it looked like a fallen star nestled in a drift of powdered sugar. This was the Hearth of Aethelgard—a place that didn't appear on any map, found only by those who had lost their way in the blinding white.