It appears like a ghost in the fog. One moment there was nothing below them, the next it appeared.

The Lost Bridge.

From a distance, the bridge seems to be overgrown with some kind of greedy weeds or thorns. But this is nonsense, it is clear that no life can thrive in this abyss, and the cold here seems to shine from the bottom up.

No, this weed-like thing is not the plant life you see on a daily basis. This is the opposite of life. Sigvar felt a twitch in his stomach, and he swallowed, the contents of his stomach seemingly going up. Members of the congregation hall who had been down here had told Sigvar about the fireside, but even with preparation, the sight was unsettling.

He jumped the last ten feet and landed crouching. His muscles burned from exertion, and his hands twisted into claws from clenching on the ice axe. Although he was exhausted, he stared around vigilantly, barely daring to gasp or blink.

"Don't touch anything," Hala warned him.

"If I touch something, it's the will of the three sisters, right?" Olar said. Sigvar couldn't help but smile at the veteran's quip.

Hala turned and shook her head. "Take a breath. This is the last bridge. It doesn't stop until you get to the bottom – the next one is the longest. May the three sisters look upon us. ”

Sigvar relieved himself of his excess burden and walked to the middle of the bridge, staring around in fear and amazement. The wind was no longer violent, and the whistle blew through the strange stone structures that seemed to wrap around the bridge like twisted fences.

He couldn't guess what he was seeing, but even just looking at it made him uncomfortable.

Huge arched rocks surround the bridge, like a column of lava crossing the full length of the bridge, and then suddenly solidify in mid-air.

He certainly knows the history of the bridge. The thing imprisoned below began to try to escape from its prison a long time ago, and by that time the time of the three sisters had long since passed.

Here, the Frostguard men fought against the darkness, and here, they died. The death of each person allows the things that inhabit it to grow. It eats into the corpses of the dead, absorbs them, transforms them, and turns them into fuel for explosive growth. That's what it is. It may have been dormant for thousands of years, looking lifeless and lifeless, but a drop of blood can suddenly bring it back to life and reveal its tyrannical nature.

What Sigvar was looking at, the strange-looking, disgusting, mixture of ring-shaped archstones and misshapen detritus, was the path of the inhabited thing, which jumped from one Frostguard corpse to another, taking over them all.

The substance it eats, gives birth to something else.

There was an uneasy, insane pressure in Sigwa's mind, one that seemed to emanate from below. He pressed his knuckles on his temples to relieve the headache.

Without warning, a long-forgotten memory flooded over like a swarm of bats flying out of a cave. He remembered his childhood, when he had not yet been adopted by the Frostguard Clan. He remembered his tribe's ice arches, and the streamlined three-masted galleons that stood on sharp blades and raced across the frozen waters. He remembered the night when their ship came to the great spire. Frostguard warriors with black helmets were waiting there. Sigwa and six other children under the age of ten from his tribe were singled out. It's a great honor. And there he was, facing the midnight sun, watching his tribe sail away. That was the last time he saw his family.

He was taken to the main castle, where he was put to the test, forced to participate in bloody and cruel trials. One by one, the other children from the same tribe as him were extinguished, and he was left alone.

By that time, he had completely forgotten about his clan. He already has a new home. New faiths.

He's the Frost Guard.

A hand was placed on his shoulder, pulling him back to reality. He was sitting on the ground, his back against the shattered stone statue of the Ancient Guard. He couldn't remember when he sat down. Oral was bending over to look at him.

"Don't sleep," said the old soldier. "Nightmares, only nightmares here."

Sigvar crawled to his feet. He hadn't remembered his old clan in years. The afterimage of the dream faded, but Sigvar still felt deeply uneasy.

"The time has come," Hala said.

And so they began the last descent. There is nothing below them but madness, cold, darkness and despair.

The thing that dwells below is waiting, and it has been waiting for a thousand years.

The lower they descended, the darker the ice wall became. Black veins crawled in it, sticking out their claws upward. A faint crackling sound came from all around them, seemingly scratching Sigwa's brain. He couldn't see any signs of movement, but in his imagination, the sound came from the black cords beneath the ice, struggling to escape the cursed pit and crawl to the surface.

Sigvar tried to get the sound out of his head and began to chant the prayer silently, focusing on each toe kick and ice axe

The ice here is starting to become less smooth, full of bulges and depressions that are difficult to climb. Sometimes, the trio had to rely only on ice axes to climb for help, and their feet could only hang over the bottomless abyss. On both occasions, they had to stop and could not find a way to continue their descent, and then they had to return the same way twice, until at last Hala decided to open a new path.

The ice mist enveloped them tightly, so thick and oppressive that Sigvar could no longer see his companions below. The fog also blocked out all sounds, except for the incessant, heart-wrenching scraping sound.

Finally, the icy ground appeared, interrupting the fog abruptly, much to Sigvar's surprise. Hala and Oral were waiting for him below, having unloaded their bags, ropes, and ice axes. The silence here is unbearable. Even the crackling in the ice stopped.

"What the hell are we doing?" Sigwa whispered. He shook off his equipment, and the breath he exhaled immediately turned into mist.

"We're only going down here," Oral whispered. "But the abyss is even deeper."

The older Frost Guard took two steps forward with him, pointing downward. There was a cliff in front of them, and Sigvar saw that the ice in front of them had disappeared, and there was still no bottom below.

"How deep?" He whispered.

"Nobody knows. It could go all the way to the center of the world, and maybe even deeper. It may lead to the realm of the things that inhabit it. ”

Sigvar kicked the toe prick of one foot into the ice beneath his feet. "We almost got off here. If we go 30 feet further in either direction, we will never climb to the bottom. ”

"Icespirit won't lead the way," Oral said, placing a hand on Sigvar's back and leading him to Hara.

Sigvar was half-kneeling, touching the ice through his gloves. The biting coldness pierced through the layers of fabric and stung his hand. It's not just cold, the ice is radiating power.