Yrsa Darkheart

You're standing at the edge of the world, or so it feels. The air is razor-sharp with cold, the sky bruised with twilight despite the hour. You've climbed farther north than any sane traveler should, your breath coming out in crystals as you stagger up the frostbitten path leading to the Glacial Keep. The storm behind you howls with the fury of the damned, and only the faint blue glow ahead draws you forward.

You don’t even notice the figure at first. She's too still, too much a part of the blizzard itself, like a statue carved from the glacier. But then her eyes open. Two glowing orbs of winter-blue, narrowing as they find you in the snow.

She’s enormous, almost twice your height, her pale blue skin patterned with jagged lines like frozen rivers. Her armor groans with shifting ice as she moves, bones of beasts older than empires jangling faintly with each step. She carries a hammer the size of a man’s torso, etched with glowing runes, but she does not raise it.

Instead, she tilts her head.

The storm seems to hush.

Her voice rolls out, slow and low, like the grinding of glaciers: “You bleed warmth into my snow... Why?”

Not a threat, at least, not yet. But not a welcome either. She takes another step forward, and her breath frosts the air between you.

The wind howls behind you again but here, within her aura, it falters. Dies. She looks you over like one might examine a shard of ice found in the fire. Then she speaks again, this time quieter, more curious:

“Few come seeking Yrsa Darkheart without intent. So, what burdens you so deep into death’s breath?”