In the midst of an endless plane of ice, a lone boy of nine years gritted his teeth against the snow-soaked winds, which bit into his chestnut skin with a merciless cold, and drove his foot into the snow-capped ground. His eyes were tightly screwed shut, and his slim body was battered by the wrathful blizzard, slowly being coated in a film of iridescent snow. The boy's small left hand was outstretched, his palm held shakily in front of his light frame, and the deft fingers of his right hand were wrapped stubbornly around an archaic wooden staff, which shimmered faintly in the rush of the blizzard. His lips had cracked from the intensity of the storm, and his youthful, ice-encrusted face was filled with the staggering weight of grief and the steel of determination. He took another step, coughing in his efforts against the terrible blizzard. His hand tightened fearfully around the rickety staff, forcing another pale glimmer out of the ancient wood, which was instantly swallowed up by the wrath of the snowstorm and the complete darkness of the night. Three steps followed, achingly slow, laboured with desperate drive, and then, on the fourth, the boy's foot plunged with an imperceptible crack through the snow and ice, breaking the path ahead of him into pieces, sending and into frigid water. He lurched forward, lashing out hopelessly with the wooden staff in an attempt to prevent himself from falling into the abyss of the frozen ocean. By some miracle, the antique crook sunk through layers of snow into ice, and the boy's fall was diverted from the lethal depths, instead slamming him jarringly into the compact snow, causing his arm to crack painfully against the ground and sending his head to crunch into the thick ice, breaking the skin with a smear of blood. The boy staggered up, eyes blinking groggily with shock and pain, and yanked the staff out of the ice. As he prepared to set off again, his eyes flicked to the ground, and he stared in horror at the sight of crimson. For a few seconds, the boy stood, paralysed with fear, before clenching the wooden staff with a crack, his once outstretched arm hanging lifelessly. The bone had fractured, but still he began to run, breath pumping raggedly from of his frozen lips. He held his staff even tighter, slamming his feet into the ground against the detestable winds and snow, consumed by overwhelming terror. Before he had travelled even ten paces, the ground shook beneath his feet, and moonlight began to shine through the wall of sharpened hail. The sweet scent of flowers began to spread insidiously through the blizzard, surrounding the battered boy, who now froze as inaudible whispers began to fill his ears. Mocking laughter echoed throughout the bleak landscape, and he felt the snowfall behind him becoming thinner and thinner. Now he poured all of his energy into fleeing, arms pumping desperately, nearly flying across the ice with speed unimaginable for a boy of his age. His feet skimmed lightly over the snowy floor as he sprinted, clasping the wooden staff tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, forcing the pale blueish light of the ornate staff to shine brighter and brighter. The scratching of metal against metal began to slide through the storm towards the helpless child, and the whispers grew stronger and the laughter layered over itself, creating a harrowing wall of sand. The sweet scent was smothered by the scent of blood as the snow began to turn from pale blue to white to pink, and eventually, to a beautifully terrifying scarlet. The boy zipped through the bloody storm, clenching his good arm with all of his might, until the whole staff shone incandescently, like a star in the midst of the horrid scene. Just before the terrible whispers began to reach his ice-covered ears, he whipped around, planting his feet and shouting, his once brown face, nearly white with ice and frozen sweat, drawn with terror and resolve beyond his years. The metallic scraping grew louder at a frightening speed, and a crazed, inhuman laugh stretched towards the young boy as he stood in the middle of the blood storm. Just as the tip of a bone-white claw became visible, lunging towards his open eyes, he spoke a word, his blue eyes filling with black smoke, and the claw was shredded along with the hand of the child by a terrible white light, which whipped across the snow, building the blizzard to terrible speed and power, ice rushing around the boy with horrid swiftness and sharpness, cutting into the skin of an invisible monster and the youthful, aged face of a nine-year old mage. Blood splashed from the shallow slashes across the boy's face and arms, drawing terrible tattoos in red across his body. Within the space of a single second, the destroying light exploded with a roar, shattering the child's demonic pursuer into ice crystals and then to dust, and smashing through the endless ice cap, throwing the boy's body through the air, high into the skies, until he began to fall, unavoidably and horribly, from the great height into the frigid sea, which enveloped him as he crashed through the thin coating of ice, recently formed, and into the black and blue of the depths.

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