The four walked north, further and further across the ice. At first, there were occasional holes in the pack ice to the water beneath, pieces of it that drifted around. But as they walked, day after day, the surface grew more solid, until finally, ice was all that there was — white ice and snow, extending in all directions around them. The fish, seals, and even the occasional bird or bear disappeared. It was good they had fed well on seals in the Summerlands, for here, there was nothing.

The days grew shorter, and the sun grew lower, until one night, the sun never rose again. The Long Night had fallen upon them, and winter crept up on their tails. The nights were cold, and now, there was nothing but night. Yet, they had to keep moving: if they stopped too long, they would never move again.

So, they walked. There was no end to their journey, no sign of food, no sign of light but from the rings and Twins above. The whole world was frozen. It felt as if they had walked beyond the borders of Tasien, and into a land that the Dreamer had forgotten to dream. They had reached the end of the world and stepped past it into endless cold, darkness, and ice.

And finally, even the rings abandoned them. None of the four had never known a night without their light. Throughout all of their journey, the rings had been their guide north. But here, they refused to rise. It was as if they had walked into another world.

With no maps, the Wayfinder had become useless, and Alika had only her magic to guide her north. For a while, they walked by the light of the Twins, waxing and waning. They had lost the direction of the rings. The notion of day and night had been taken with them. Even space and time had abandoned this empty, lifeless land. Only the slow changes of the Twins marked their passage.

It was the four of them, all alone against a frozen eternity. They were miserable, starving, and freezing, and there was no sign that they had made any progress toward the fabled Emerald Isle, if it even existed. They dreamed of those kind, warm days with Yarik, when their bellies were filled with fish. Now, their skin wrapped around their ribs. All they could do was keep walking, and keep hoping.

When the storms came, even the Twins were lost to the snow.

Blizzard winds roared around the cramped den Alika had dug out, nothing on the sheer surface to halt their terrible fury. They might have spent hours, days, or months huddled together. Alika’s frozen wings covered the den’s exit, blocking the others from the wrath of the storm. There was no space for any of them to move in — though cold air still seemed to creep into the cracks between their fur and scales.

Warm breath poured down from Alika’s jaws, but even Snow shivered with the dragons. Tarka and Snow had both taken positions on the edge of the pile, with Gust curled up in the center.

Gust seemed to have the worst of it. His cold scales froze against his shaking body. No matter what the others did, how tight they held him, it seemed like he couldn’t get any warmer.

Alika blew hot air onto his stiff mane. Gust whimpered, his talons shuddering. Tears fell from his eyes, turning to ice as they slid down his scales.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, letting cold air into his throat. “I’m sorry for being so weak.”

“It’s not your fault, Gust,” Alika said, though she couldn’t hold him any tighter.

“I’ve brought down so much tragedy on you,” Gust shivered. “I’m the one who brought Tshav and got you kicked out of your pack. And now I’m doing it again. I’m slowing you down because I’m not made for this sort of weather.”

Gust looked up into Alika’s eyes, his own gaze dull and colorless. Ice crystals had grown around the edge of his tear duct.

“You have to leave me behind,” Gust continued. “You won’t make it before winter otherwise. I don’t belong on this realm, I don’t belong on this journey. Please, I won’t make it to the Emerald Isle anyways.”

The winds roared above Alika’s wings.

“No!” Tarka shouted. “We’re not leaving you! If you hadn’t been there, I’d be dead twice over!”

“Besides, their pack wasn’t so great anyways,” Snow added.

Alika nuzzled against Gust’s snout, scraping away the ice on his scales.

“You’re part of the family,” Alika said. “You belong with us. We’re not leaving anyone behind, no matter what.”

Eventually, the four realized that no matter how long they waited, the storm would not end. If they were to go north, they had to go through it.

When the winds were as light as Alika knew they would ever get, they continued forward.

Ice and snow blasted against Alika’s wings. Every step was a struggle, her limbs straining against the force of the winds. Each time she stopped, it was as if her fur and muscles froze, and that she break through ice just to lift her paw.

The heavy burden between her wings weighed her down. Gust lay lengthwise along Alika’s back, his tail trailing into the snow behind them. His body was cold and motionless, except for a whispered lullaby emanating from between his fangs. Even though his head hung down by Alika’s ear, she could barely hear him over the wailing winds. Occasionally, they won out over Gust’s emaciated tune, and the four had to stop and hunker down until Gust could sing again, willing the winds to sleep.

All was dark in the Long Night. Alika could barely see her talons beneath her, much less Tarka, carrying Snow a few paces away.

“Are we ever going to get there?” Snow’s voice screamed out from nearby — apparently, she and Tarka were on Alika’s right. “We’re being led to our deaths!”

Green light extended north from Alika’s talons. It was their only guide, their only light, but even it was drowned out by the cold torrents of snow.

“My path still points forward!” Alika roared. Gust shuddered on her back. “Do you want to turn back?”

For a few moments, there was no response, just the cries of the icy tempest.

“It’s too late to turn back, isn’t it? If we don’t find the Emerald Isle, or just as likely, it doesn’t exist, we’ll all starve or freeze to death here!” Snow let out a cackle, barely audible. “We’re all going to die here, aren’t we?”

Alika shut her eyes. What if her path was leading her to her death? What if Night had lied to her? There’d been no sign of the Emerald Isle, no sign of anything. All was dark in the Long Night.

Maybe this was the end.

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“We need to keep going!” Tarka roared back. “It might be dark, it might be cold, and we might be really hungry, but we need to keep going! I have faith in Alika. We’ll make it, I know we will!”

Tarka might have had faith in her, but Alika wasn’t sure she had it in herself. Still, what other choice did they have?

Gust murmured something in her ear. Alika couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded pained.

“It will be okay,” Alika said to him. “We’ll all be okay.”

Still, Alika couldn’t believe her own words.

Alika raised her paw, fighting against the storm and her half-frozen body. She took another step forward.

It was all she could do.

Hours, days, or months. Feet, yards, or miles. Neither space nor time had meaning in the Heart of the Cold.

As Gust and Snow fell silent, Alika and Tarka walked. They had started this journey together, and so, they would end it, step by step.

And finally, the storm ended.

The blizzard cleared around them. Though cold and hungry, their steps suddenly felt lighter, their energy restored. The winds quieted into calm mists.

Gust’s head moved. Alika let out a sigh of relief, her breath turning into a twirling cloud of white. She’d been afraid that she’d been dragging along a corpse.

“Let me off,” Gust whispered.

The Kurothian’s legs creaked as he stepped, his body stiff and frozen, his scales gray and cracked. But as he walked through the powdery snow, a quiet melody came from his jaws, and the color returned to his scales.

Snow climbed off from Tarka’s back. The golden glow had returned to her eyes, and she stretched her tails, as if waking up from a terrible dream.

As the four walked forward, the mists disappeared, revealing the night sky.

Filaments of green light streaked across the heavens, shining their light down upon the ice. Side-by-side, they traveled north in unison, twisting and curling as they did so. The ice glowed with their vivid hues, and with each step she made, the light of the aurora rose from Alika’s paws.

“It’s beautiful,” Gust said.

“It is,” Alika replied.

Tarka, Snow, and Gust all ran alongside the aurora, laughing, leaving behind three trails of tracks in the snow. For a moment, the world around them was calm.

Alika looked back. In the distance, a wall of white stretched from snow to sky. Here came another storm, far more horrible than any she’d seen before but one. And Alika knew for certain that if they got caught in it, they would all die, or suffer a fate worse than mere death.

The wall of white moved forward at breathtaking speeds, obliterating the serene, icy landscape. Where it swept across the sky, the aurora was doused, obliterated.

Alika turned and ran after the other three, from terror, rather than joy.

“Look!” Tarka called out.

In from of the four, mountains rose out of the darkness, piercing the ice of eternity like the jaws of the Dreamer had broken through from beneath the world’s frozen surface. They stretched all the way into the sky, their peaks forming a sharp barrier. To the left and right, more mountains stretched, curving slightly away. These were no natural mountains — it was as if something terrible had ripped the skin of Tasien apart to create them.

Alika’s head turned upward, to where the aurora disappeared behind the wall of mountains. They were impassable.

“This is it!” Tarka squealed, stomping his paws up and down in excitement. “Right, Alika? The ring of mountains around the Emerald Isle!”

“Yeah,” Alika said, staring at the sheer-sloped mountains in wonder. “It is.”

Alika glanced behind her again. The wall of white had gotten closer, consuming the ice. Dark shapes moved within it — one, then ten, then a hundred. They had come for her.

“Come on, let’s hurry and figure out a way across before the storm catches up to us,” Alika said, her breath shaky.

Alika couldn’t see any passes through the mountains — they formed a continuous ring. Could she and Gust fly Tarka over it?

“We made it!” Tarka laughed. “We made it!”

“Not quite yet,” Snow said, jumping onto Tarka’s back. “We still have to get over that somehow. Any ideas?”

The three turned to Alika.

The magic in Alika’s paws tingled.

Long ago, Alika’s sixth-mother had borrowed it from this place so that one day, her descendants could return. Now, Alika knew that it was that time. It was finally time to set it free.

Alika stared into the aurora, patiently waiting for her.

“I think this belongs to you,” she whispered.

And so, completing the quest of her mother before her, Alika freed the magic within her. She lifted up her forepaws to the sky, and green arcs of light spread forth from her claws. They twirled and danced as they rose up, the aurora coming down to meet them, winding and laughing as they were finally reunited.

Alika felt as the last vestiges of the magic were finally pulled from her body, the emptiness it left behind as she fell back to four paws. She’d found her path, and had followed it. The gift was gone, the journey was done.

The thin lines of the aurora grew in strength, covering the sky as they played. Alika watched as the Twins of Tasien shined through them, as if watching down on their fallen sister below, whole once more. The ice before them was lit up in vivid green light. Arcs of it, rings far brighter than the corpse of ice that circled the planet, converged beyond the mountains so high that Alika was sure they held up the sky itself.

Alika glanced back. The blizzard roared as it approached, an obliterating wall of white scraping the ice clean, freezing all who touched it. But they had made it. Alika’s friends, her family, were safe. Alika looked to the heavens again, lights rising before them.

Rings and stars filled the night sky. Green flames scorched the mountains. With each step that Alika took across the ice, cracks appeared in it, glowing turquoise lines rising from it before her. They danced with the aurora in the sky, wrapping each other like dragons coiling tails. They formed figures and squiggles, dancing as if trying to tell Alika a story that only they could read.

She squinted, attempting to puzzle them out. The lines of fire and ice converged into the figure of a dragon.

Alika had seen it once before, when she’d passed beneath the ringfall. Or perhaps she’d seen it a thousand times.

It opened its jaws, laughing silently. Alika raised a wing to greet it, but it turned and ran.

“Wait!” Alika called. She tried to run after it, but her paws slipped, and she fell on her underbelly.

The dragon laughed at her again, smashing its tail into the ice. A deep crack formed, but the ice did not break. Instead, green flames rose, reaching into the sky and pulling down the aurora. The fire coalesced into ropes, forming a flat platform jutting up to the stars.

“Come on!” Tarka shouted as he climbed the bridge up into the sky.

Snow bobbed up and down on top of Tarka’s back, waving her tails and gesturing Alika forward.

Alika got back to her paws and followed. Higher and higher she rose, complex graphs and lines surrounding her. The air became cold and thin.

She looked down. The mountains were so far beneath her.

Gust slithered through the sky, spiraling around the floating bridge. He held out a paw, offering to bring her into the sky with him, but she didn’t take it. This was a path she had to walk alone.

“Hurry up!” Tarka said. “Look, we’re almost there!”

Alika gazed past him. At the end of the bridge, she saw it. A floating island of green fire, burning in the sky.

The green lines of the aurora had centered on it, a million arcs of light pointing towards its center.

“The Emerald Isle,” she whispered. “It feels so warm and alive.”

Tarka ran faster.

“Wait up!” Alika shouted. She tried running faster, but the faster she went, the further away he got from her. The Emerald Isle began fading from view, the flames dying out.

“Stop, please!” Alika said. “Don’t leave me here!”

A whisper of wind behind her made her turn.

The wall of white had reached her. She’d been caught in the blizzard.

All was gone. The aurora and the land in the distance had all been doused out. Tarka, Snow, and Gust were nowhere to be seen, heard, or smelled.

Ice crept along the bridge, the light frozen. Alika felt cold and empty. She extended her talons, but the magic was gone. The journey was over. She had no path more to see.

Alika turned to face her fate.