Traces of Kashipa
The searing cold froze everything it touched. Those who had set foot in this realm of bitter frost had been robbed of time itself. Human forms buried in the snow and the frozen carcasses of horses still held the exact moment of their deaths, preserved as if the world had simply stopped around them.
The corpses were intact. That not even monsters had come to feed was proof enough that something absolute had lingered nearby.
Whoooooosh—!
A fierce wind drove a pure-white blizzard against a colossal wall of ice. The frigid air clawed across the surface, setting off a strange, resonant tremor.
I arrived at a vast ice cavern that could never have formed by nature alone. It yawned open in every direction, every face of the ice polished smooth.
Hazy cold drifted through the interior, swirling in tangled currents that pointed to the passage of some enormous living thing. I stretched out a hand and ran my fingers over the massive ice, thinking. He had been here.
Sharp gouges scarred the walls in places—marks left naturally by a vast body as it moved.
The faint cold painted the afterimage of that great creature: long-stretched wings, powerful legs, a head reared so high it must have looked down upon the entire world.
Where had that immense form gone, dragging its bulk away? I had come seeking Kashipa’s treasure, yet standing before these traces with my own eyes, I could not help but grow curious about Kashipa’s whereabouts.
I started deeper into the ice cavern. The frozen passage stretched on without end.
Downward. And still farther down.
When the wind from above had faded to a whisper and no light remained to show the way, I stepped into a vast hollow chamber.
My changed body could still make out the shape of that wide cavern even in lightless dark. In one rounded corner the ice was deeply hollowed—proof that a heavy, massive form had rested there for long ages.
Nightmare’s hoofbeats and the faint sound of my own breathing echoed through the space. As the echoes against the blue walls died away, I saw them: countless soldiers racing toward this place from beyond the ice.
I felt no shock at facing thousands of soldiers, for no life stirred in them.
As though time itself had frozen, they remained exactly as they had been—mid-charge, swords drawn against an enemy—simply existing.
They had never even realized they were dead. Leading Nightmare, I approached the great ice wall.
As I walked and turned my gaze, another throng of humans filled my sight. They too wore gleaming armor, swords raised high.
The ferocity of that moment seemed to reach me still. Every face preserved the time it had known. Fluttering banners had once stood tall, yet within the blue ice their majesty was lost.
Their armor differed in design from the first soldiers I had found. The banners rising here and there bore different emblems as well.
I understood then that these people had lived in entirely different ages. And not only them. Across the entire ice wall that ringed the chamber, countless humans stood frozen like ornaments.
“This is…”
It was a phenomenon that could never have arisen naturally. People of different eras running side by side within the frozen ice.
A feeling like staring into an abyss I should never have seen crept through my body. Nausea rose unbidden, and I covered my mouth.
“Well?”
A sudden voice drifted to me. It was the tone of a friend asking for an opinion—almost as if requesting a review of an outfit.
The boy was simply there, as though he had always been. Seated atop a great block of ice, he looked like a painting come to life.
His long hair stirred though no wind blew, and the blue robe he wore moved the same way.
At the boy’s slightest motion the surrounding mana responded of its own accord. He had not intended it. Everything around him simply moved with him—as if that were the natural order of things.
“Isn’t it magnificent?”
The boy spread both hands toward me as he asked. At the gesture, frigid cold met the air and spread through the entire chamber.
Prrrrh—
Nightmare tucked its tail and stepped back, realizing at once that the figure before us was no ordinary boy.
There had been no presence. The warmth a person should radiate was absent from him. Through the eyes that met mine came a vast, distant emptiness.
Instinct told me a life beyond all understanding stood before me.
“It is… magnificent.”
I forced my reluctant mouth open and gave the answer he seemed to await. The boy smiled brightly then, like a pure child receiving praise for the first time in his life.
“Thank you. This is the first time I’ve shown it to anyone.”
He rose and moved toward a corner of the chamber, rummaging out an old table and chairs. Frost clung to every piece he set down.
“Will you come sit?”
Refusal was impossible. I followed his words and took my place without protest. Nightmare stayed close at my side, snorting as if to guard me, but the boy paid the horse no mind.
“You know… I thought you might be kin, but you’re far too faint. Close, yet distant.”
The boy’s empty eyes gleamed as he spoke. Those eyes, from which icy cold seemed ready to spill, pierced through everything I was.
“Did you take a dragon’s mana into a human body, by any chance?”
I swallowed dryly and nodded. The boy smiled with a touch of regret and continued.
“If only you’d come a little sooner. Why would a child like this appear when the main body has gone below?”
The words were not for me. He was merely murmuring to himself. Watching his expression carefully, I spoke with caution.
“Um… are you Kashipa, by any chance?”
The boy shook his head at my question.
“Did I look like him? Sorry, but I’m not.”
“Then…?”
“A residual thought left in the mana. Nothing more than a small fragment that broke away from him.”
“Then where did the real Kashipa go?”
The boy pointed beneath his feet. He could not have meant the blue ice sheet itself. When I looked at him, hoping for a clearer explanation, he slowly opened his mouth.
“Below this world.”
“Below the world…? You mean… beneath the clouds?”
“Yes.”
I stared with my mouth open. The vague sense I had held of something beyond this world had just spilled from the boy’s lips. Perhaps I was about to learn another secret of this world I had never known.
I shifted restlessly and spoke to him.
“Um, so… what’s beyond there? And why did Kashipa go down there?”
I wanted to know the end of the blue sky that stretched past the severed edge of the land. I wanted to see with my own eyes the other world that must lie beneath the white clouds. Even a vague description would have been enough.
Right now I simply wanted to know of a new world.
“Ah, calm down. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can tell you.”
“What…?”
“I told you. I’m only Kashipa’s thought. The memories I hold are nothing but the tiniest fragments.”
“Ah…”
At the boy’s answer the faint hope I had been nursing vanished.
Seeing my disappointment, the boy gestured into the empty air. At that light motion the surrounding mana surged, and from a corner something broad and frozen blue began to drift slowly toward us.
It scattered piercing cold as it came—a glittering scale.
“This is…”
“A scale the main body left behind.”
“Why give this to me…?”
“Weren’t you looking for treasure? Most of the other adventurers who came to this snow mountain seemed to have that purpose.”
I accepted the large scale and asked the boy,
“Is it really all right to just hand it over like this?”
“I simply felt like it. Looking at you reminds me of the children of my kin.”
“Ah, um…”
“Where’s the thank-you?”
“Th-thank you…”
The boy smiled brightly at the sight of me clutching the great scale. A few more brief exchanges followed, but the boy had few answers he could give.
“I should be going soon.”
“Going?”
“To do what I must.”
At my question the boy looked around and continued.
“Kashipa always wanted new decorations. So I decided to make some.”
“N-new decorations…?”
“You’re thinking of the right thing.”
The moment the boy’s answer ended, a pure-white wind began to blow. When the freezing gale that carried snow swept once through the chamber, the boy who had been sitting before me was gone without a trace.
“Wow…”
A light sigh escaped me. The tension left my body, and cold sweat ran down my back of its own accord.
Nightmare, who had stood guard at my side, slumped in utter exhaustion as well.
That had not been the main body?
Nothing more than a residual thought left in the mana?
I swallowed dryly and hugged the blue scale close.
Leoniss began climbing the mountain, pushing through the rough snow. Frigid cold surged toward him, yet he wrapped mana around his body and fiercely resisted the freezing air.
Crunch—
“Haa…”
White breath streamed out and scattered at once. Moving amid the throng of adventurers that filled the surroundings, he could not examine the area carefully.
So Leoniss broke from the adventurers’ ranks and began to move on his own. A few who saw him slip away trailed after him like freeloaders, but only Leoniss could move freely through the freezing blizzard.
By the time the adventurers following him vanished, buried in the snow—
Leoniss suddenly looked up at the sky and frowned. The light was gone. Everyone knew the sun set quickly in the mountains, yet this was no natural occurrence.
Someone had covered the sky.
“Ha…!”
Leoniss let out a hollow laugh at the absurd conclusion even he found ridiculous. Who in the world could cover a sky this vast?
The thought had barely formed when he took another step—
and discovered two gleaming eyes high above the blackened heavens. That blue flash held the arrogance of something looking down on every living creature on the ground.
And in that instant, a silent death began to approach. Blue mana, almost visible in form, rolled toward him on the wind like a living wave.
Crack-crack—!
Cold that froze even the air itself. Wherever the blue mana touched, time within that space seemed to halt.
“Damn it…!”
Leoniss ran. Reading the flow of mana with a mage’s instinct, he sprinted with everything he had toward any place the blue mana had not yet reached.
Breath burned in his throat and his heart felt ready to burst, yet he could not stop. The soundless blue death was already right behind him.
Crack-crack—!
The air froze. The moment the cloak fluttering at his back brushed the blue mana, it stopped together with the space around it.
Leoniss tore the cloak free in desperation and threw himself forward. He tumbled across the pure-white snowfield, belongings scattering wildly, yet he never even thought of retrieving them.
“Hah… hah…”
He thought only of survival. He kept running to escape the blue death that had blanketed the snow mountain.
How long had he fled?
Leoniss suddenly realized the movement of the freezing cold behind him had ceased.
“Huu…”
Drawing ragged breaths, he leaned against a frozen tree and looked down upon the world that had turned blue and still. Beyond the snow-covered mountain he caught the movement of a vast shadow.
Enormous wings stretched left and right, blotting out the sky, while a long neck rose through the clouds.
Leoniss understood by instinct alone. The form that revealed itself hazily beyond the blizzard was a dragon—something that appeared only in legend.