Chapter Text
The Ice Queen.
Her very name alone made the villagers tremble.
Not so long ago—after a tragedy that froze her heart forever—she began to reign over Kaplan. There, she raised an army to fight against enemy tribes, snatching children from their mothers to train them and turn them into the new warriors.
She turned the once-green farmlands of the north into a frozen wasteland. There she built her fortress, and ruled as the Ice Queen.
"Love is a lie," she once told her first innocent future soldiers. "It is a trick played by the cruel on the foolish and the weak." The boy, Tull, perhaps seven years old, who had tried to hold back the urge to collapse to the floor and cry in fear and panic, was now wincing in the Queen's tight grip for having admitted that he missed his mother, a grip that was freezing his chin. "In my kingdom, there is but one law," she continued, gripping him tighter. "Do not love. It's a sin, and I'll not forgive it." Finally, she released him, leaving burns around his mouth. That perfectly explained her current thoughts on loving and being loved.
And so children grew to be soldiers, becoming one with blade and arrow.
One ordinary night, when the moon was at its fullest, a bloodcurdling scream from Freya's mouth woke her. Anyone hearing it for the first time might have wondered why none of the soldiers in the castle were alarmed, but what those people didn't know was that they had grown accustomed to hearing that scream every night since the incident.
Her forehead was sweating, and she still couldnt breathe easily.
That nightmare again—or rather, that memory again.
She was sick of it; sometimes she wished she could plunge an ice rod into her head to stop thinking and feeling. Because yes, the Ice Queen did feel; the fact that she didn't show it to others didn't mean otherwise.
Unlike other nights, instead of closing her eyes, she got out of bed, carefully pushing aside the thin sheets.
Her white hair fell past her waist, and her white nightgown with light blue undertones trailed behind her as she walked.
Outside the castle, there wasn't much to see or explore. Just a countless—but not infinite—number of mountains forcibly covered in snow. But Freya didn't dislike the idea so much.
The icy wind touched her skin as she walked away from the castle. She just wanted to distract herself from her thoughts.
As she walked further, and further away from the castle, she saw a...tree?
After blinking twice, confused as to how she herself could have covered mountains that reached the sky but not a simple tree, she approached.
It was indeed a tree, more specifically a willow tree. Green, too green for her eyes.
Without hesitating for more than a second, she raised her hand and made a gesture to freeze that oddity.
Nothing.
Again.
Still green.
She scoffed as if the tree were offending her by resisting her powers.
She decided to get closer.
She tried again.
Nothing.
Maybe one more time?
Was it her imagination, or was the tree even greener?
"Oh, I know..." she said to herself. "A dream." She laughed, then pinched herself, which apparently didn't have the result she expected.
Five pinches later, on different parts of her arm, she gave up.
She stared at that green thing in the middle of miles and miles of frozen ground for a few seconds.
Was her subconscious trying to tell her something?
Before delving deeper into the matter, she couldn't help but notice the hole right next to that tree she had strangely missed before.
A rabbit living in all this?
She couldn't allow it.
She began moving both hands toward the top of that rabbit hole, creating sharp spikes of ice which she dropped into it, trying to end any life sheltering there.
It was strange that there was no sound when the spikes hit the bottom, so she moved a little closer for a better view. It was night, so she could see nothing but darkness inside.
She knelt down, first making sure no one was awake around, and put her arm into the hole, moving her hand to feel the bottom. Feeling absolutely nothing, she stretched her arm out even further.
It was so fast when her entire body fell into that hole, plummeting down and hitting some indstinct objects.
She completely lost consciousness when she finally reached the bottom.