The Eskimo pulled the parka over, but even seal blubber couldn’t protect the Eskimo against days and days of dawn cold.

Against the backdrop of the morning, the mountains looked more sheer, more dangerous than before. The mountains would turn variously purple, then green, then white...

A sign of the times, to be sure.

The white fur on the hood was supposed to protect the Eskimo from stray snow. This season, this endless season had no more snow to give. All the snow was either compacted onto the ground, stuck stubbornly onto the mountains, or simply breaking away.

The Eskimo had seen snow - not ice - fissure itself silently off the continent. Taking away more and more chunks of the coast until it had hit the Eskimo’s home city. The bastion against all that was bad, and the keeper of all that was good. The library with mammoth spires holding, like jewels in a crown, the records of learned priests. The aging Council kept in safety in the stone Colosseum, tucked away like savant infants in a crib. Everything was endangered. The city’s marksmen, trained against whales and invaders, had no recourse for the city simply breaking apart at the edges.

History...law...power... all was now endangered to The End of the World. Maybe the city was even gone right now, at this moment, as the Eskimo drew closer to the base of the mountains. The line of the mountains seemed interminable. So sharp, so crisp, unending.

But there was supposed to be an end.

The Eskimo was supposed to reach The End of the World. There, there should be a hero waiting to save the city. Such a hero had been prophesized even before the city was found. Indeed, the hero was the very meaning of the city. Valius. Waiting for valor.

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The Eskimo did not know what the hero would look like. Scholars had taught that the hero could arrive in many forms. A young girl. A white fox. A man twice as long and twice as thin as normal men. The Eskimo was ready for anything. The Eskimo’s breaths drew in raggedly and sometimes expired in dry coughs. The Eskimo’s sight was sharp as ever, but the Eskimo’s mind was waning.

Over and over, the Eskimo turned its eyes across the span of the mountains. Although the Eskimo saw the streaks of green and purple glance off the mountain, bouncing like huge fishing bobs, the Eskimo refused to believe it. The sky was blue and mountains were grey.

The Eskimo’s eyes strained to find The End of the World. But no matter how hard the Eskimo focused against the edge of the line, there was never an endpoint. The Eskimo’s eyes felt red and torn from the wind and from the exertion.

Endlessly, endlessly, the Eskimo drew strength from an unknown place within. But the strength was slipping away, and the Eskimo knew many days had passed since The End of the World first claimed the borders of Valius.

After a certain time, the Eskimo stumbled and tripped. Such an event should be impossible, because out in the borders there was nothing to trip on. There was no life and no rocks. Constancy was the nature of the landscape.

But the Eskimo tripped and fell, and the fur got stuck in the Eskimo’s eyes, and the Eskimo’s nose burned with contact against the dry ice.

Flipping over, the Eskimo stared at the sky. There was no hope here, and no hope for Valius.

The End of the World could not be found. The hero could not be reached.

With a sense of calm resignment, the Eskimo rolled over and watched the beautiful, otherworldy lights display against the mountains. The Eskimo, without even really realizing it, began to sing an old song.

“It’s not someone who’s seen the light...”

As the Eskimo sang, the lights flickered in a pleasing way. The Eskimo continued to watch.

“It’s a cold and a broken hallelujah...”

The green light shone in from the left and scattered onto the ground, into the dip between two mountains. The purple light swept in from the right and dispersed at the same spot.

“Hallelujah... hallelujah...”

The Eskimo stared at the crevice where the two mountains met and glimpsed, right before dying, the unmistakable shadow of a human.