“As we flee Bial, they continue to pursue us. Those manmade creatures of stone, bronze and iron, inhabited by enslaved souls. Narav seems to be losing it - ever since he forced us to make him a fol-ad-he, he has been raving about more power. He keeps repeating that it is only the beginning. How? We are down to less than a hundred, out of well over one and half thousand who got out of the Hall. We flee through days and nights, as the red Life guides us. Old books tell us, that Life used to be white from where our ancestors came, and I wish we could go back. As I said that to Narav, he shooed me away like I was a stupid child, mumbling about fractured spheres and Beyond.

...

We are down to 38 men and women. Children did not make it. Elderly neither. Remaining each of us is a Word, without Spark and Dew we would have ended frozen or dead of thirst. What use is of my Law of Care, if we die anyway? We reached the ancient structure, Narav told that this high palace made of giant steps was built by other people. They disappeared long before our people came. Apparently, that was their land and world, and we are but scavengers, like fleas in a dead dog’s fur. I do not understand everything Narav says, but I write it down. There is nothing else to do. The constructs that chased us do not come here, but we can not leave. Narav keeps talking. He talks not to us, but others we can not see. The question I asked him before seems to have sown a seed of idea. I dread what he will come up with. He wants to create a shagor, giving it form. Like the constructs that chased us, but made of power. And he wants to use a vol'iez, and he keeps looking at us. I do not want to have my Care and soul to be bound into THAT. And I believe, nobody wants either. He whispers complex calculations and mentions the Beyond.

...

We have little food left. Narav left us, planning to climb the palace from the outside, to bring his plans to fruition. Our people will not survive, but he does not care. He wants to prove his superiority to his rivals and get his revenge for the humiliation and hurt pride. Others agree with me. I have brought with me the Beating Iceheart. We will open it and fall into the embrace of everlasting sleep in eternal cold. The cold will keep out the unwanted, and let us finally rest after we have run this far. Thousand curses upon Nerav and other mages! Their greed and stupid rivalry got countless cities decimated. Oh fair Bial, I wish I could have my own sarcophagus in our family’s crypt, secure behind your tall walls, forever guarding you in my sleep!”

I closed the diary after reaching the last filled-out page.

Thanks to the elder, who pedantically wrote down his thoughts, I learned about several things about the world and past events.

And first, I was intrigued by the mentioned Beating Iceheart.

It seemed to be the cause of the local temperature anomaly. Guessing, that they would not have had enough time to use it and move too far away, I carefully checked the surroundings.

As I dug around the elaborately carved and decorated chests in the very middle of the corpses, near the body of their leader I soon found a small box.

The box was barely larger than a palm, made of semitransparent stone. I did not notice the box before due to the thick layer of ice dust covering everything and hiding smaller objects beneath it.

Staking at my current physique being apparently cold-proof and praying for no unpleasant surprises, I took the lid off the box with one smooth movement and stopped dead.

---

In the box lay a dark blue gem, with its colour slowly pulsing, reaching pure lack before reverting.

While I observed it carefully, I could feel a vortex of power expanding and shrinking as it sucked the energy from the surroundings. It was converting thermal energy, or perhaps even potential energy itself, into power and storing it!

As I watched it, I felt its attraction increasing. I felt myself drawn to it.

Perhaps, if a human or an animal of flesh and blood would touch it, they would most likely immediately freeze into a sculpture, like a parody of “The Day After Tomorrow” movie.

No wonder, that all the moisture had frozen in split second, perhaps there was even carbon dioxide frozen solid, its freezing temperature being −78.5 °C!

I did not want to think about lower temperatures that would get lead to liquid atmospheric gases and onwards towards absolute zero and the stop of atomic movements, zero entropy and a whole new realm of subatomic particle science.

Well, considering that I was able to apply kinetic movement, it was still above the absolute zero. That also meant that the world I was in, was not frozen solid. Well, not completely, at least. Cheers to open systems, entropy and equilibrium!

I got rid of distracting thoughts about physics that I remembered since school and looked again at the Beating Iceheart.

It was hypnotising. It hummed with the energy, and I felt I knew what to do.

I reached out my hand, wrapped by finger bones around the gem and squeezed with my whole might.

Consciously using all my strength, I could perhaps mold steel like clay.

For a while, nothing happened.

Then, with a silent crack, the gem shattered.