The world was silent when Sailor Tjilaki returned.

Her boots crunched against brittle snow that had not shifted in centuries. The air was thin, empty, and cold enough that it almost stung to breathe, but she welcomed the ache. It felt honest, like the remnants of a people who had endured even harsher winters. She pulled her cape tighter around her shoulders and lifted her gaze to the distant horizon. Frosthaven lay ahead, a hollow shadow of the capital it once was.

The Ice Palace still stood, though the once-proud spires had been gnawed away by wind and time. They no longer glittered but sagged beneath the weight of their own silence. The great city square stretched out in skeletal emptiness, no merchants haggling, no clans gathering, no voices to echo against the ice-carved walls.

It should have felt hopeless. And yet—

Tjilaki could almost see it. Hear it. The laughter of children gliding across frozen streets, the chants of ice harvesters singing hymns to the goddess beneath the glacier, the heavy pawsteps of ice bears lumbering just beyond the borders of the city.

She closed her eyes. The memories weren’t hers, not entirely. They were fragments that bled into her bones, reminders of the Silver Millennium when her people had lived and thrived here. When the Ice Palace glistened with pride instead of ruin.

Her breath misted before her, curling into the frozen air. “You’re not gone,” she whispered, her voice trembling between defiance and longing. “You’re only waiting.”

She placed her palm flat against the cracked ice of the central fountain. Once, water had flowed here in perfect crystal arcs, a beacon of Frosthaven’s prosperity. Now it was little more than a hollow basin, split and abandoned.

Her hand burned cold against the ice. She focused—calling upon the magic that was hers alone, the heritage of the world beneath her feet. Power stirred sluggishly at first, then stronger, like a glacier shifting deep below the surface.

Blue light spread from her fingertips, seeping into the cracks of the fountain. They glowed faintly, then sealed, as if the ice remembered its own purpose. The basin smoothed, edges knitting back together. A thin sheet of frost shimmered over its surface, pure and unblemished.

It was only a small repair, a whisper compared to the ruin surrounding her. But the air shifted with it. The city no longer felt quite so empty. For the first time, Frosthaven seemed to breathe.

Tjilaki let out a shaky laugh. “There you are,” she murmured. Her chest ached with the weight of it — relief, hope, the enormity of what still lay ahead. She could not rebuild the city overnight. She could not summon her people back with a single act. But she could begin.

She drew herself upright, brushing frost from her gloves. The square was still quiet, but she imagined the elders’ voices in the Great Hall, the clans reuniting, the goddess watching from her glacier throne. Each repair would be a step toward that future.

And she would not stop.

The cold wind swept through the ruins, rattling shards of ice like distant chimes. Sailor Tjilaki smiled into it, the first flicker of determination blazing in her eyes.

“Let’s bring you home again.”