Chapter 1282: Smoke Beneath the Ice
Ethan lay sprawled across her broad dragon back, hands laced behind his head, watching white clouds drift lazily overhead.
The temperature around them kept dropping.
Even his breath was starting to fog.
"Where are we even flying to?" Ethan lifted his head. "Why does it feel like it’s getting colder by the second?"
Ahead, a massive iceberg emerged between the clouds.
A snow-white mountain rose straight into the sky, its peak wrapped in thick layers of cloud and glowing haze. Weak sunlight hit the ice and scattered at different angles, throwing off bands of color.
Red, blue, violet, and gold slid slowly along the ridgeline like living light.
Icy mist floated between the slopes, making the whole mountain look almost too quiet under the open sky.
Calling it a once-in-a-lifetime view wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
Queen Elowen raised a hand.
An ice-crystal shield unfolded around them. Snowy-white patterns bloomed across its surface—like layers of snowflakes frozen mid-blossom—set into the clear ice as decoration.
When the freezing wind slammed into the barrier, it split and streamed off to both sides.
The people on Seraphina’s back felt the temperature stabilize again.
Only Seraphina remained exposed.
But her hide was thick enough that the cold didn’t affect her flight at all.
Elira had already recovered from her earlier fainting spell.
The curious little troublemaker was sprawled at the edge of the dragon’s back, craning her neck to peer down. Behind her, her Divine Sovereign Moth wings opened slightly, and the colorful markings lit up along the veins.
The way she kept inching around made it obvious what she was thinking.
She wanted to fly down and take a look for herself.
Ethan caught the movement and pushed himself up, walking over behind her.
Elira had just slid one leg over the edge, ready to beat her wings—
when a pair of arms wrapped around her waist.
Ethan yanked her straight back.
Elira froze.
She turned stiffly, looking up at Ethan right behind her.
Her Divine Sovereign Moth wings "politely" folded themselves away, pressed tight against her back like they’d never had any ideas.
"Master." Elira pointed down below. "There’s a village!"
Her tone was dead serious.
"Really. Look—those chimneys are smoking like crazy! The smoke’s going so high!"
Ethan followed her finger and looked down.
In the endless ice and snow, there really was a cluster of buildings.
The houses were packed near the base of the mountain. Dark columns of smoke rose from within the village, and from up here it almost looked like people had lit fires to keep warm.
But after a few seconds, Ethan’s expression sank.
No.
That smoke wasn’t rising smoothly from chimneys.
Firelight flickered between the buildings. Black smoke boiled up from different places, not just rooftops. Some of the structures had already collapsed, and in the ruins there were still flashes of light—leftover glow from energy explosions.
This wasn’t cooking smoke.
It was war smoke.
Ethan raised a hand and patted Seraphina’s back.
Seraphina immediately understood.
Her huge body banked in midair. She pulled her wings back and dove toward the village at high speed.
The wind tore along her scales and split to either side. The iceberg and the village swelled rapidly in their vision. Everyone on her back lowered their bodies, and Queen Elowen kept the shield steady to block the brutal airflow of the dive.
To avoid her sheer size crushing anyone, Seraphina forced a hard brake as they neared the ground.
Her wings snapped fully forward.
A cushion of air formed beneath them, whipping up massive sheets of snow.
Then she dismissed her dragon form.
That enormous body shrank in an instant—scales, tail, and wings breaking into motes of light. Seraphina returned to human shape, and the "dragon back" everyone had been riding vanished.
They all dropped immediately.
Andona spread ten pairs of golden wings.
Light Force unfurled from between the feathers, catching each of them. Their fall slowed, then eased into a controlled descent until they landed smoothly at the edge of the village.
Blinding gold light washed over the snow and the broken houses.
The villagers hiding inside noticed them too.
A half-closed wooden door creaked open.
An old man who looked like the village chief stumbled out.
His heavy clothes were caked with ash and dust. He planted a wooden cane into the snow again and again, barely keeping his weak body upright as he tottered forward.
He stepped over ruins and through drifts, trembling as he made his way to Ethan.
The moment Ethan saw the cane in the old man’s hand, a chill crawled up his spine.
He’d only just climbed out from under the shadow of that bizarre scepter in the Golden Kingdom. Seeing something long and narrow that could strike the ground like that—his body tensed before his mind could talk it down.
No white lightning appeared.
Ethan only lowered his head and coughed twice.
"Cough. Cough."
It wasn’t loud, but in the quiet snowfield it carried unnervingly far.
The old man jerked to a stop.
He looked at Ethan, then at the figures behind him, each giving off a different kind of pressure. Andona still hadn’t fully retracted her golden wings. A faint holy radiance lingered around Seraphina. And the Phoenix Queen Ignara’s flames lit the nearby snow with a wavering glow.
Clearly, the old man took those two coughs as a warning.
His cane lifted out of the snow. His knees buckled, and he dropped straight down.
"We don’t have anything left!" he blurted, head bowed. His aged body shook violently, his words breaking apart. "Food... livestock... anything you can take—there’s nothing. Nothing left."
He raised his deeply wrinkled face.
"The only thing still here... is this old body."
After that, he gripped the cane and slammed it down hard.
Thump!
Several small heads immediately ducked back behind the wrecked houses.
The kids clearly knew what that knock meant. They bent low and slipped through the shadows between buildings, trying not to make the snow crunch.
One of them ran too fast and stepped onto a plank that had been burned brittle by fire.
Crack!
The board snapped down the middle.
The child dropped straight through with a cascade of snow, tumbling into a cellar below. A moment later came the sounds of collisions—and a muffled, pained cry.
In the dead-silent snowfield, everyone heard it.
The old man stayed kneeling, his face turning even paler.
Ethan looked at him, then at the collapsed plank, and could only shake his head.
They’d hidden pretty well.
Just... unbelievably bad luck.
He let the tension go and stepped forward, taking the old man by the arm.
"Get up first."
The old man didn’t dare lift his head.
Not until Ethan hauled him out of the snow and explained that they weren’t enemies here to loot the village did the old man’s rigid posture finally start to soften.
After some back-and-forth, Ethan finally got the full story.
This region—locked under wind and snow year-round—was known to the outside world as Frostreach, the Land of Extreme Ice.
Put simply: it was a brutally cold place.
For generations, the people of Frostreach had lived under the protection of a guardian deity. It controlled the cold winds and the snow, keeping worse disasters away from the village and allowing the residents to survive the deadly climate.
But not long ago, something changed.
The guardian stopped protecting its people.
Snow turned into attacks. Winds smashed homes apart. The power that had once shielded the village began raining down on everyone living here, without discrimination.
The villagers had no way to fight back.
All they could do was hide in cellars and wait for each assault to end.
When the old man saw Ethan and the others descend from the sky—and saw the terrifying strength they’d displayed—he naturally assumed they were servants sent by the guardian.
After the child was rescued from the cellar, and after it became clear these outsiders weren’t hostile, the old man finally raised a trembling hand and pointed them toward the guardian’s location.
The tallest ice mountain behind the village.
Not long after, everyone climbed onto Seraphina’s back again.
The freezing wind scraped along the outside of Queen Elowen’s shield. Ethan sat cross-legged between Seraphina’s scales, head lowered, turning the old man’s words over in his mind.
The mountain the old man had pointed to...
was the same one they’d seen the instant they entered Frostreach.
Enormous. Its ice reflected shifting colors all year long.
And the guardian living within it—
was an ice phoenix.
The same target they’d come here looking for.