As October marches on, my blog’s unique stories were coming due. Up first was a picture post. So I went to DeviantArt and began scrolling through the artwork. Eventually, I stumbled upon a breathtaking landscape, a swirling vortex bearing down on two towers/keeps, with a solitary man striding between them. Even now, I can’t fully explain why this image captivated me. But I’m thankful I found it, because it sparked a story that took root deep within my mind.
There’s a particular kind of stillness that only exists before a storm, as though the world itself is holding its breath. The image below captures that stillness perfectly. Its landscape, though desolate, is both beautiful and merciless. The pale light bending through the whirling vortex doesn’t just hint at silence. It embodies it. Yet as I studied the image, it wasn’t the scale that impressed me, but the atmosphere. It evoked something haunting and familiar, a sense of half-buried voices and places that remember every soul who dared to walk there.
The longer I looked, the more I imagined the footsteps leading toward that spiraling column of frost. Who would walk into such a storm willingly? What loss, or what longing, could drive someone to chase the heart of something so relentless? As those questions refused to let go, the image became an invitation to explore what happens when grief and hope meet in the same breath.
This story was born from that meeting. It’s not just about endurance, but about listening, to the wind, to memory, and to the quiet truths that survive beneath the storm’s roar. Before you read, take a moment to picture it: a lone figure against an endless expanse of white, a horizon swallowed by snow, and in the distance, something vast and impossible waiting to be understood.
The wind ripped across the desolate ground. The piled snow shifted as the horizon screamed like a living monster looming over the lone traveler. As the howls filled the tundra, splinters of ice whipped past his face, reddening his pale flesh. Kael touched the exposed skin and cringed as a name, tinged with regret, escaped his lips. “Rhea.”
As a tear welled, he wiped it away and unslung his pack to pull out his spare cloak. He lashed the bundle, slung the bag over his shoulders, and fastened the wrapping. Once he covered his face, he resumed his march through the whirling ice and snow.
The world narrowed to hardened breath and endless white. His footprints vanished the instant he made them, devoured by the tempest. Behind him, a continent slept beneath frost. Ahead, a myth waited. Each gust of wind carried a voice like a memory given shape. Each whisper bore the name of someone dead.
Sometimes the breeze held the name of his mother, a former commander, or a sibling. Then, when his name joined the chorus, he froze. He knew stopping meant joining the names borne by the storm. He took a deep breath and pulled the extra cloak tighter as he pressed forward. With each step, his eyes locked onto the monstrous column spiraling in the distance.
The villagers called it the Frozen Dagger. Since the walls looked carved from sheets of pure ice, the name fit. However, none of the scholars he’d met with agreed on its origin. Some said the structure anchored the severe storms in the region, a curse from the gods. Others claimed it marked the resting place of the first frost giant. Some even asserted this to be a wound in the sky that would never heal.
As he tightened his cloak around his face, Kael stared at the massive jutting building of ice. For him, it was the final location to chase the remnants of his dying hope.
Trudging through knee-deep drifts, he pulled the frostbitten compass from his belt. Its needle spun wildly, as if the storm denied it access to its guiding pull. The light bled out of the sky hours ago, leaving only the faint blue glow of frozen illumination pulsing through the spiraling vortex. It was beautiful. It loomed, a weary sentinel guarding the structure.
Lightning crawled inside the pillar’s heart like veins of trapped starlight. Each pulse threw fractured reflections across the horizon, revealing glimpses of shapes. Kael’s breath froze, hung before him, then plummeted.
When the first tremor hit, Kael dropped to a knee. Before long, more tremors tore through the ground beneath his feet. He caught a stone jutting out from the frozen earth to steady himself. He glanced up in time to see the tornado form from the swirling snowflakes and ice. The newborn funnel bent inward, like a creature preparing to draw in a deep breath. A moment later, violent wind wrenched his body, pulling him toward the sucking hole.
Kael drove his axe into the tundra. Despite the impromptu anchor, Kael’s legs dragged through the piled snow, carving twin lines into the drifts. As his fingertips whitened around the shaft, the gale tried to wrench him from the earth. Shards of winter lifted from the ground, whirling upward toward the column’s heart. In its depths, he glimpsed something he never expected to find. A single, unmoving source of intense illumination, glowing pale and perfect amid the storm’s chaos.
“Rhea,” he said, looking away from the light. His sister’s name tasted like the frost threatening to consume him.
She had disappeared into this storm a year ago, chasing the same myths he pursued. When she vanished, he’d called her foolish. Brave, yes, but reckless. Now he was about to be devoured by the same legend.
The cyclone seemed to hear his whispered plea. The voices assaulting him intensified, creating a deafening chorus of wind and cracking thunder. The light within the tornado brightened, painting the sky with vibrant yet cold hues, amplifying its luminescence. When Kael glanced back at the funnel, shapes moved inside the icy vortex. Those translucent figures circled about the light like frozen moths stalking the solitary source of illumination. After a moment, one of the silhouettes paused and turned to him, extending a single finger.
“Rhea!” Kael released the ax as he raced to his lost sister. The sucking wind quickened each step, blurring the world as he rushed to his sibling. The cold, which had been biting through his second cloak, ceased as he neared Rhea’s form.
He reached out a hand toward her, and she mirrored his motion. Her expression was both sorrowful and serene. The moment their fingers grazed, everything stopped. The wind fell silent, and the light dimmed. Kael opened his eyes to find himself lying on the desolate tundra.
He climbed to his feet and brushed the clinging snow from his clothes as his gaze whipped about. The storm was gone. Only a faint shimmer covering every visible inch of the ground arrayed before him suggested the violent tempest had been there. Another gust of wind flew past his ears, carrying a message from a familiar voice. “Go home.”
He retrieved his compass, opening it. As the ancient device sat on his palm, the needle pointed at the horizon. The shimmer blanketing the tundra reminded him of frozen glass, fragile and eternal. His mind raced back to a fond memory centered on Rhea’s laughter. The sound filled his chest with the warmth it once carried.
Now, that mirth was nothing more than part of the wind. He didn’t know whether she’d saved him or let him go. Either way, her final gift was direction. With that, understanding blossomed. The storm had never been his enemy. Instead, it waited for him to listen.
Kael wiped his eyes before the tears froze, then tucked the compass back beneath his cloak. He turned toward his family’s home and walked forward, oblivious to the gentle snow.