1 Reflections of Visions Unknown

Cold.

Princess Tempest was frozen solid, doomed to perish in a cage built from her own power.

"It will eat away my heart, then everything else, then leave a carving of ice where I once was," she predicted aloud as she felt the numbing tingle of the frost slowly swallow her fingertips. Her voice was thick and raptured with stigma. This was her fate.

She was engulfed in darkness as she let her eyelashes dip downwards, waiting for the ice to seal them shut, but her teeth clattered against each other as she only felt the ice covering her body. There was no escaping from looking at her world. And there was certainly no way to break free of her role as princess of her kingdom, frozen into a pattern of royal snowflakes just like her.

How did she get here in the first place?

She let her eyes be exposed to the open air again. But she saw nothing but a misshapen form in the distance, a silhouette.

"Who...?" she began, but the ice kept multiplying, choking the inside of her throat with burning cold and sealing her lips together.

"Who am I, Tempest? Who am I?"

-Who are you?-

"Yes, who am I?"

A beat.

Then she screamed. Fire. It had come upon her so quickly. Melting, but leaving burns that would linger for decades.

But it melted the ice.

A mirror before her glinted in the new darkness of the landscape, all-seeing. Tempest's gaze traveled over her own body as she looked upon her bone-white knees and arms. Burns. Burns everywhere. Her skin, her very foundation ripping apart. The tears fell without her permission. What had she done to deserve this mutilation?

In the mirror, there was a girl. She saw her. Did she do this? No. Her gaze was as panicked as hers was.

But she was different.