## CHAPTER 2: _"The Girl in the Ice"_
The forest did not remember her name.
For centuries, it had buried her under root and frost, beneath whispering trees and haunted winds. Time had tangled itself around her bones like ivy — still, quiet, patient. But tonight, something was different.
The earth breathed.
The ice cracked.
And Lysia opened her eyes.
She gasped as if surfacing from the bottom of a dark sea. Her lungs ached. Her ribs trembled. Every breath was a knife. But breath meant life. And life meant pain.
She blinked slowly, trying to make sense of the world above her. Twisted tree limbs curled overhead like claws. Snowflakes floated downward in soft rebellion. Her body was half-buried in a cradle of crystal, frozen in a coffin of silence.
How long had she slept?
She couldn't remember her last thought. Or her last heartbeat. Only fire. Screams. The scent of burning stone. And the sound of someone begging her to run.
But she had not run.
She had died.
Or so she thought.
A sudden rush of warmth pulsed from the necklace around her neck — a silver chain with a pendant etched with two crescent moons over a bleeding heart. It glowed softly now, humming with life, matching the slow return of her senses.
Magic.
Old. Buried. Wild.
Her magic.
She sat up, shivering as the ice cracked away from her skin like glass. The cold bit her like an old friend. Her hair, long and silver-white, tumbled over her shoulders, tipped in frost. She ran her fingers across her arms — unscarred, untouched. Not even a burn.
They hadn't found her.
The king's soldiers. The firebringers. The ones who had come to erase her bloodline.
Her mind snapped into clarity. Her father's voice echoed:
> "Run. Hide. Never love."
And her mother:
> "You are not cursed, Lysia. You are the key to what they fear."
Lysia stood, bare feet pressing into the ice. The forest breathed with her now. Trees creaked. Snow shifted. Magic buzzed beneath the earth like a waiting storm.
She was not alone.
---
Far in the distance, beyond the tangled roots and shadowed hills, a spire rose against the horizon — black glass and crimson stone. A palace. A wound in the land.
The same one from her dreams.
Lysia stepped forward, drawn by instinct, by something ancient and unspoken. Her magic, once a wildfire of destruction, now whispered. It did not rage. It reached.
She walked through the trees. They bowed away from her path.
Animals fled.
Flowers wilted.
Wherever she went, death followed — not out of malice, but out of nature. Her presence tipped the balance. Her heart beat in rhythms older than kings.
And yet… something else stirred. A second heartbeat.
Not hers.
Someone else's magic had awakened her.
She could feel him.
The prince.
She did not know his name. Only that his dreams had been calling her back for years.
She had heard them in the cold.
> "She's close," he had said. "And I'm already hers."
---
By nightfall, she reached the Weeping River, a black stream that curved like a serpent through the woods. It was said no one crossed it and lived — not without paying a price.
Lysia bent at the edge of the ice-covered bank. Her reflection shimmered faintly in the water, silver eyes glowing, lips blue, hair like moonlight spun with ash.
But it was not her reflection that stared back.
It was her mother's face.
For a moment.
Then it faded.
> "You're not finished," the water whispered. "You've only just begun."
She rose, unshaken. There would be visions. Warnings. Lies.
But also truth.
A shape stirred across the river — a figure cloaked in white, unmoving. Watching.
Lysia blinked. It was gone.
She turned, heart pounding. The sigil on her chest pulsed, visible now beneath the thin fabric of her dress.
The prince was near.
She could feel it in her bones — like a storm climbing the spine of the sky.
---
She walked through the cursed forest all night. Creatures whispered her name, though no lips moved. The trees leaned in with old eyes. She was a myth made flesh, a girl who should not exist.
When she finally collapsed by the Hollow Tree — a place older than time itself — her fingers sparked against the bark.
The tree shuddered.
It opened.
A hollow chamber pulsed inside — not wood, but memory. Inside it: bones wrapped in velvet, ancient scrolls, and the remnants of a crown.
Not a king's.
A queen's.
Her blood.
She reached for the scroll. The moment her hand touched the parchment, visions roared through her like fire:
— Her mother, casting spells in moonlight.
— Her father, bleeding in battle.
— A betrayal. A burning. A prince screaming her name.
But not Arien.
Someone else.
And then — silence.
She awoke the next morning with ash on her skin.
The tree was gone.
The forest quiet.
But the pull was stronger now.
The prince was waking.
And with him — everything they had buried.
She walked toward the horizon.
Toward him.
Toward fate.
> _"If I love you, you'll die. But if I don't… I will."_