Page 39 of The Enchanted Frost

I nodded, blinking back tears, and we continued walking through the shifting maze stretching around us in every direction. My grip on his hand tightened, as if holding him close could somehow keep him from slipping away. Whatever lay ahead, we would face it together.

The narrow path we walked suddenly split beneath our feet. Frost caught me as my feet skidded on the ice. Walls slid into place, outlining three icy corridors stretching before us in different directions, each as cold and ominous as the last. Through the mist ahead, I could barely discern the faint outline of a mirror at the end of each path. Frost and I exchanged an uncertain glance before wordlessly choosing the first route.

What we hadn’t noticed from the entrance to the path was that the mirror in the distance wasn’t the only one—the walls were lined with reflective panels. The path began to curve and bend, obscuring the end. The mirrors fractured our images into pieces, then seemed to multiply until I was completely disoriented, surrounded by dozens of reflections of Frost and myself.

Our steps slowed as we tried to gain our bearings. The walls continued to shift. I fell against Frost as a mirror-lined sheet of ice suddenly pressed against me. Panic rose, and Iwondered if we’d be trapped here indefinitely or crushed between the heavy walls.

Frost pushed back against the icy sheet and quickly assessed our surroundings, trying to guess where the walls would shift next and which direction we needed to move. Seized by a sudden thought, he turned to me, tightening his grip on my hand.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered.

I stared at him in bewilderment. “What?”

“Our vision is only disorienting us, as the labyrinth intends. To reach our destination, we must find another way.”

Closing my eyes inside a magical, sinister maze was the last thing I wanted to do, but I met Frost’s gaze and nodded shutting my eyes. I trusted him. His footsteps shuffled against the ground as he cautiously led me sideways.

“I’m shutting my eyes as well, and I’m going to try and keep my left hand on the wall,” he said. “If we keep moving along one wall, rather than trying to follow where the mirrors seem to lead us, we should eventually get there.”

Though it felt like it took a snippet of Frost’s eternity, we slowly edged forward, stumbling at times as the wall abruptly shifted, but managing to progress.

At long last he finally stopped. “You can open your eyes now.”

I blinked in the dim light. The pathway lay still for the moment, the large mirror at the end silent and waiting. The air grew heavier as we approached the mirror, our reflections rippling across the surface. My breath caught as the glass shimmered and the image shifted to reveal a vision of Frost alone. He stood in a world of endless snow, his expression serious, his shoulders weighed down by the mantle of his duties.

I watched as he crafted delicate snowflakes, each one a masterpiece of crystalline perfection, before sending them spiraling into the air with a flick of his fingers. The wind howled at his command, carrying blizzards to distant lands. I could almost feel the pull of his magic through the glass as he reached out to collect the frozen souls of those whose time had come, gently cradling them in his icy grasp.

This was the man I adored doing the work he loved, and yet…it wasn’t. His eyes, once filled with yearning and tenderness, were now cold and distant, frozen over with a steely resolve I hadn’t seen in him for some time—as if the flicker of humanity kindled by our love that I had come to cherish was now buried beneath layers of frost, as if he’d withdrawn into the very essence of winter itself.

Though he remained the master of the season, the spark of empathy and understanding that had begun to thaw the cold within him had been dimmed, leaving his heart untouched by the connection from when our fates became so entwined.

My heart clenched in sorrow at the sight of his isolation with magic as his only companion. Instinctively I reached for his reflection, my fingers brushing against his arm as the image dissolved, the mirror fading back into the icy wall. We stood in silence, the weight of the vision hanging between us, thick with unseen possibilities.

We eventually retraced our steps, the walls standing still and silent this time. Exchanging a glance, we ventured down the next path, where another mirror awaited us at the end, its glass swirling with shadows and light. This path was also lined with mirrors, but rather than a confusing maze, these seemed to be glimpses of other places, locations I longed to explore.

I paused to stare at a sun-drenched meadow, completewith cheerful daisies and a sumptuous picnic for two invitingly spread on the grass. Suddenly more aware of the cold that seemed in such contrast to the warm image, I ventured a step closer, anxious for a better look. Frost’s hand tightened on mine.

“It’s an illusion, but one that will trap you,” he warned. He nodded his head towards the wall on his side, which showed a stunning castle of ice and snow, even grander than the one Frost had built. On a turret stood the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, ethereal and enchanting, beckoning with a smile.

Frost edged away from the wall past the enticing vision, but his steps slowed when he saw an image of a child, shivering as a biting wind swirled around him and holding out a desperate hand for help. I felt him leaning towards it and frantically tugged at him.

“Look at me,” I whispered. “If we keep our eyes on each other, we can’t be led astray.”

We finally made our way to the end of this corridor, gazes fixed on each other, until we turned to face the end wall. I felt Frost tense beside me, his usual calm wavering as we approached, and I braced myself for whatever torment this mirror would reveal.

The glass shimmered, then cleared, revealing a vision of Frost living amongst mortals—no longer a life of eternal winter or boundless power, but one marked by fleeting moments of joy, laughter, and warmth. I saw him standing in a sunlit field, bathed in the golden glow of a late summer day. His expression, so often etched with the weight of his role as Winter’s Keeper, was softer, and he smiled in a new way, free from the mantle of winter’s icy grip, as though he had never known the burden of his icy crown.

Yet as the vision continued, its contents eventuallyshifted, revealing the full truth of what it meant to embrace humanity—not just the fleeting happiness but the inevitable hardships that accompanied it. Mingled with the moments of joy were heartache, sickness, and the creeping shadow of death Frost could no longer escape without his previous immortality.

I saw Frost kneeling by my bedside, his face drawn with grief as illness took its toll on me; I watched him age, his once-youthful features lined with the passage of time as his strength waned while the weight of mortality pressed down upon him, the vitality that had once shone in his eyes faded.

This life, if he chose it, wouldn’t be a dream of endless happiness…though it would be a complete experience—rich with both love and sorrow, laughter and tears, where every finite moment mattered. Frost would feel the warmth of human touch, but also the cold bite of mortality…and one day his body would fail him, and I would be forced to watch him wither, piece by piece.

My chest tightened as I watched the life that could be ours. There was something profoundly beautiful in the simplicity in his movements of a man living an ordinary life no longer bound to the seasons. The thought of living a life free from the barriers of his immortality where every finite moment mattered was intoxicating—a life where we could walk hand in hand, share the warmth of the sun, and experience the joys and sorrows of a mortal existence together—real, messy, and heartbreakingly beautiful. Could I savor such a life with him, even at the cost of being forced to watch him suffer and age, knowing that time would eventually steal him from me, whittling his lifespan down from infinite millennia to a handful of decades?

As I wrestled with these emotions, the vision shifted once more, revealing the full price of such a choice—not just for Frost and the magic he wielded, but for the world and thebalance he maintained; Borealis would take his place as Winter’s Keeper.

Whereas Frost’s touch balanced sleet and howling winds with gentle snowfalls and quiet stillness, Borealis would wield winter like an unyielding storm, commanding blizzards with unrelenting ferocity to increase his power and glory in his might. Bitter frost would dominate as the world shivered under Borealis’s reign, his icy winds shrieking across the land with little regard for the humans that Frost had respected for so long. Winter would be robbed of its beauty and meaning—no longer would it be a time of rest and refreshment between growing seasons, with the magic of frosted windowpanes and hot chocolate after sleigh rides, but a daily struggle for survival.

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