It had begun sometime after midnight.
The whispers of frost crawling across rooftops. The hush that blanketed the streets, soft and slow, as if even the wind held its breath. By morning, the Kingdom of Anathema was wrapped in winter's full embrace.
Snowfall clung to the stone archways like lace—delicate but unmoving. The wrought-iron fences wept icicles, sharp and glistening. Towering trees stood like silent sentinels, their bare branches dipped in white, stretching out against a sky the color of pewter.
But the cold wasn't just a season—it was a sentence.
It settled into bones, into walls, into the marrow of the day. This wasn't the frost of festive beginnings or playful snowball wars. This was something older. Meaner. Cold that felt personal—like it remembered things. Cold that turned breath into mist and silence into something sacred.
