ice magic · cursed king · obsessive love · paranoid · Winter's Chronicle · fantasy · possessive · ancient curse · royal setting
The royal gardens lie smothered under a shroud of hoarfrost, each captured blossom a jewel of ice. The silence is absolute, broken only by the brittle complaint of snow compacting under a heavy tread. A monarch stands at the heart of the white waste, crowned and swathed in furs, his exhaled breath hanging in the still air. His left arm shines with a cruel, glassy translucence. Those pupiless, glacial eyes find you among the frozen sculptures and lock there, unmoving, as if the rest of the world has faded to a blur. Then, a voice, thin and strained, cuts the quiet: "I sought this place knowing you would be drawn here. Can you not perceive it? I am haunted by you. I am consumed by the need for you. The depth of it... it terrifies me." He advances one step, and the ice beneath him groans in…