The Winter Chant

By Mana Sol

A Fantasy Short Story -

 

It's never-ending ice and snow, thanks to the curse of the elusive Winter King. When he asks Danara to accompany him to his castle, she accepts, hoping she can find a way to invoke his mercy.

 

What she finds is something else: love, sacrifice, and the Winter Chant.

 

And when she leaves his castle again, she'll never be the same woman she was when she went in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mana Sol
• Release date: Dec 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393020806

Book preview

Chapter 1

It had been the longest night of the year for so long that no one remembered when it first began. It was the never-ending winter solstice, the peak of darkness, infinite night. And at the center of it all was the sprawling, jagged castle over the frozen lake, spiked with ice-capped spires and shrouded in mist rumored to suffocate anyone who dared step within it.

The Winter King lived there, the great and terrible monster who had plunged the world into eternal ice. No one knew who he was otherwise - where he had come from, why he had done it. No one even knew his name. He was simply the man who had called winter, and from then on, winter had never left.

And would never leave, unless the people obeyed this first ever decree in living memory to come out of the depths of the frozen stronghold.

Your…Highness. Elder Pliny was probably sweating like a pig under that heavy cloak. It didn’t matter that it was so cold this close to the frozen lake that the foggy plumes of everyone’s breath crystallized in mid-air. In the presence of the terrible Winter King, no one dared divide their attention, and in truth, the sight of him was far colder than the ice and snow that surrounded them all.

This is everyone from your village?

The Winter King spoke for the first time, and his question pierced the hearts of everyone close enough to hear his splintering voice. It was as heavy as it was frigid, yet somehow, it made Danara think of keen rays of light bending through a wall of ice. Translucent, glowing, muffled. She slipped a discreet hand up to her chest inside her cloak and clutched at her tunic, wondering if it was possible for a heart to beat so fast it could burst out of her body. It felt like it could. She could hardly breathe. The Winter King - he looked nothing like anyone had ever expected, nothing like the horned, demonic, twelve