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When it first started, I thought it a might just be an overzealous patron dancing around in the hall, but the longer it went on, the more I realized that it wasn’t anything of the sort.
This was a bloodcurdling scream of agony.
My gaze ripped towards the front door. There was a man staggering through it. His leather armor had been white once, but now it was stained bright red with blood.
It looked like there were knife wounds all over his body.
The noise within the great hall slowly lowered to a dull hush until it eventually settled into a horrified silence.
“The Dark King’s army has reached the city gates!” the man shrieked. His eyes glowed a supernatural purple as he searched the crowd until he settled on me. For a long moment, he stared directly at me, and an uneasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Even though I wasn’t familiar with the magic of this land, I knew that this wasn’t as it should be.
This man was being controlled by someone else.
A cold chill flew into the room. Instantly, an icy shiver passed down my spine, and I froze.
The man standing at the doorway shrieked once more. There was no visible weapon to be seen as the flesh of his throat parted as though it had been sliced by a knife. Blood poured down over the navy stitching of his white leather chest piece, glaringly vivid in the flickering light of the torches.
I had only just opened my mouth to shout in warning when the foyer erupted with screams of terror. People rushed every which way in an attempt to escape, but the gusty winds swept through the halls as though a sudden storm had whipped up inside it.
I recoiled as invisible fingertips brushed against my hand. A frigid tremor passed through me, and I recognized the sensation immediately.
The ice wraiths of Helheim had come.
Every door in the hall slammed shut as the windy gusts swept up wildly all around us. A deathly silence loomed over the great hall as people hurried to gather together in small groups. For a few brief seconds, the icy wind whipped through the room, and I could feel the panic beginning to rise all around me.
People started to rush the doors, but they held fast. Several people tried to escape down the halls, but I watched in horror as they dropped dead in their tracks, collapsing to the floor with a sickeningly wet crunch.
The screaming started in earnest after that.
In a fit of extreme violence, the ice wraiths began to attack. No one could see them coming or going, so all hell broke loose. People ran all over the room, looking for an out and finding none. In the midst, several people tripped over their feet and ended up on the floor, only to be trampled by the panicked crowds. I tried to help up an elderly woman, but I was soon overcome with my own struggle as a wraith focused solely on me.
I shrieked as the malevolent creature yanked me back by the hair. My head cracked against a rock pillar hard enough to make me see stars. I whimpered in a daze, trying to blink my dizziness away so I could focus on staying alive. A freezing cold hand locked around my neck, lifting me up just enough that the tips of my toes barely reached the ground, making it suddenly very hard to breathe.
“It is you, isn’t it.”
The voice was decidedly male, a deep ominous rumble that turned my blood ice cold. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I stilled, staring straight forward. For a moment, I could see the dim edge of a specter, along with the glowing violet eyes that I would forever associate with true evil after this.
“Who are you?”
The wraith’s outline obscured away into invisibility for a moment, before coming back into focus. I wasn’t sure if anyone else could see him but me.
“You’re the one meant for him…”
Immediately, my sense of alarm peaked. I stiffened and the beady eyes tilted to the side, looking me up and down like I was cattle for purchase before returning to level with my gaze. The wraith’s lips edged upward in a terrifying, wide grin.
I could see the raw devastation the horrifying creatures were reeking upon the people in the hall right through the one holding me prisoner. The stone floors had grown slick with blood. Tears popped into my eyes as screams of agony echoed all around me. This was a massacre.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice was shaking with fear. I struggled to gain my freedom, but that only resulted in the wraith lifting me higher.
“With you, the path of destiny is still forked. When the time comes, your choice will determine which line of prophecy is to come to pass.”
The wraith drew back. Its form slowly faded away, but not before I saw the glint of a sharp knife in its hand. I tried to throw my body to the side, but the tip of the blade pierced through my chest like a hot knife through butter.
I screamed with an agony all my own.
It wasn’t just a normal metal blade. This was something tainted with evil magic, something meant to freeze me from within.
The muscle fibers of my heart iced over first, followed by the tiny veins that innervated my lungs. It drew wider still, freezing the arteries that pumped blood through my body. Tiny particles of ice flowed through my veins until at long last they froze solid. As I screamed in excruciating panic, my throat closed, prisoner to the freezing cold just like the rest of me.
