Three years ago. The southern border of the kingdom of Elantra.
It was no ordinary night of snowfall.
It was a night when the sky was torn apart by the mad howls of tens of thousands of high-grade Ice Demons. Black blood sprayed across the blinding white snow, freezing into ghastly patches of deep crimson.
Amid the raging sea of snow, two figures in white robes embroidered with the Ice Eagle insignia of the fourth branch of House Dermott stood back-to-back.
The proud, short-haired white-haired man swept out a hand. Ice blades ripped through the air, cleaving hundreds of beasts in an instant. The woman beside him possessed deep-red eyes like magical crystal. With every wave of her hand, bolts of lightning crashed down from the heavens, ruthlessly scouring away wave after wave of the Beast Tide.
They were Bailey's father and mother—the two most extraordinary Mages produced by the main branch of House Dermott and House Pruvost in the past century.
“We can’t hold them off much longer!” the woman gasped. Her breath turned to white vapor in the freezing air. “Wolf Castle’s protective formation has been activated. We can’t retreat... Someone wants us dead!”
The man clenched his fists, his icy eyes drilling into the endless depths of the Snow Forest. From within it, a massive shadow bearing annihilating power was slowly emerging.
He didn’t turn around. He merely spoke in a low but resolute voice:
“Our blood will hold this line. And Bailey... our child carries what that rotten family has never understood.”
He raised a hand to his left chest. A strange magical light flashed and vanished into the void—a form of energy bearing no trace of Ice and belonging to no known element ever recorded by Elantra.
“It will awaken. And when that day comes, all of House Dermott will kneel before what they cast away.”
BOOM!
A wave of pitch-black mana swallowed the world. Snow erupted. A roar that tore through the eardrums rang out, and then everything sank into a merciless, deathly silence.
There were no bodies. No farewells.
Three years later.
At Wolf Castle, people had forgotten the heroic blood of the fourth child. All they remembered was a white-haired, red-eyed child living alone in the western tower—a child dismissed as “the remnant of a fallen branch.”
People whispered about the approaching Awakening Ceremony. They waited to see whether that child would carry on the glory of their parents or plunge into the depths of being a good-for-nothing.
But no one knew that the wheel of fate had begun turning on the night of ash three years ago. And the secret within the chest of that fifteen-year-old child... was about to turn the entire kingdom of Elantra upside down.
The Far North of the kingdom of Elantra had never known the gentleness of spring. Here, winter did not come and go with the changing seasons; it was eternal, reigning over jagged peaks of black slate and covering the canopies of ancient pine forests with a thick layer of numbingly cold snow.
Towering amid that merciless cold was Wolf Territory—the stronghold of House Dermott.
If Elantra was known as a land of magic and complex elemental powers, then Dermott was a name that inspired both longing and fear. They said the blood of the Dermotts ran through their chests colder than the frost atop snow-capped mountains, while their magic was as razor-sharp as the ice floes drifting across the frigid sea.
Everyone bearing the Dermott name possessed an Ice bloodline from the moment they drew their first breath. It was the gift of their lineage, as well as the invisible badge that allowed them to rule this land—poor in resources, yet rife with danger.
And yet, what truly made the other great families of Elantra whisper at lavish velvet banquets in the capital, what made even the most seasoned Mages frown warily... was the Awakening Ceremony held for children of the main line when they turned fifteen.
Normally, when a talented Mage of Elantra turned fifteen, they underwent a ritual to unlock their mana source and determine the element they could control. It was extremely rare for anyone to possess two magical affinities simultaneously at the very beginning of their path as a Mage.
But for children bearing the main bloodline of House Dermott, that rule seemed to bend. Alongside the Ice element that ran deep in their flesh, they had an exceptionally high chance of awakening a second elemental affinity when they turned fifteen.
Combining two elements from the very starting line was a high-stakes gamble of creation.
If the second element had a supportive nature—such as the Wind element adding penetrating force to ice blades, the Water element providing an abundant energy source, or the Wood element granting the ability to bind and promote growth—that Mage would become a mobile fortress, equally capable on offense and defense, with limitless versatility.
But if the second element was the ferocious Lightning element or blazing Fire element, it would become a brutal internal struggle. Ice and Fire, freezing cold and scorching flames—two conflicting sources of power that demanded an iron will and absolute control, lest the Mage injure their own mana pathways.
Yet to the heads of House Dermott, the clash between opposing elements still wasn’t the worst possibility. What truly hung over every child of the main line like a sword of Damocles was the opposite scenario:
Failing to awaken a dual-element affinity.
It sounded paradoxical, because throughout the rest of the kingdom, possessing only one elemental affinity at fifteen was perfectly normal. But in Wolf Territory, awakening only the Ice element was considered a sign of a deteriorating bloodline.
In a family where superiority was the sole measure of power and survival, anyone who “had only Ice” would immediately be branded the weakest link—a good-for-nothing who tarnished the glory of the bloodline.