“It’s…cold.”
A young child with black hair and scarlet eyes walked through the blizzard, his feet and hands were encased in a layer of frost, the poor boy was unaware that his fingers and toes had already contracted frostbite, and without the intervention of the heavens, he would never be able to use them again, if he survived this blizzard of course.
Even though the blizzard was raging forth, and the young child was half covered in snow, he still kept going forward.
His ragged clothes provided no protection against the biting cold, his skin was as red as it could be, and his frail figure, which was literally almost all bones, was a bad thing to have in this cold. If the boy had some layer of fat, maybe this would be easier, but he lacked even that.
He may even be just bone underneath the layer of skin, it didn’t seem apparent he had any meat on those sticks called bones of his.
‘Cold.’
The boy thought, but inside he was laughing at this cold.
‘Nothing. Dragon.’
His mind refused to acknowledge this cold as significant. The front of the dragon that captured the moon was carved inside of it. This cold…was nothing compared to the cold of the dragon.
But would his body acknowledge it?
Would his frail figure laugh at the cold? How? It was already shivering, and failing.
“Cold…”
Muttered the boy, his teeth were clacking against one another, the snow was piling up more and more…and he would drown in it like it was water soon enough. The last remains of his figure would disappear in the layer of white below him.
It had already reached his waist! And it was piling up at an amazing speed as well. It would not take long before he would be engulfed in the layer of white, cold, death.
Even though he could sense his death was near, he resisted it to the best of his abilities.
But how long would he, a child, be able to do this?
Just how long?
His body was already failing, he was dying, yet he refused to acknowledge this.
The mind was tough, but the body was weak.
“Can…not…fa-”
In the end, he fell, he fell onto the snow and his figure was soon buried within it by the raging blizzard.
The layer of snow on him was thin, but he was too weak to lift this body up. Even this thin layer was as heavy as a mountain to him.
His cracked lips. Desperately looking for some water accidentally took in some of the frost. The boy tried to spit it out but his body did not listen and devoured the snow before it could even melt.
His black hair had been covered fully and was now white, only his scarlet eyes remained free from the biting cold he was suffering from.
‘…dying.’
Indeed, he was dying. 𝘳.𝑐𝘰
Suddenly, when the boy was thinking the last thing he would feel would be a numbing, bitter cold…he felt warmth.
He felt warmth in his body, he had thought that maybe the heavens had pitied him and were granting him the warmth of the sun but he could not be more wrong.
His body had given up, that was all. It could not compete with the mind of the young boy.
“Warm…”
He muttered, oblivious of his impending doom. He fell asleep, relishing the warmth. In his innocence, he had thought the heavens had taken pity on him.
But the heavens didn’t give a shit.
*********
“…Huh?”
The boy woke up and saw an unfamiliar, wooden ceiling.
His body was covered in bandages and underneath a warm blanket, his head was resting on a soft, mellow pillow.
The area was warm, completely contrasting the bitter cold the boy remembered sleeping in.
He tried to get up, but a voice stopped him.
“Don’t.”
It was the voice of an old man, who was standing in front of a fireplace, cooking what looked like soup.
The old man was wearing casual clothing for the murim, and nothing about him seemed special.
But the boy knew he was anything but normal.
Although he couldn’t quite pinpoint it…the old man was scary. He wasn’t doing anything…yet the boy was fearful.
There was just something about him.
The boy calmly listened to the old man and stayed still, relishing the warmth of the blanket.
“Good, most people your age are brats.”
The old man was pleased with him. He poured chicken soup into a bowl and went towards the boy.
“Stay still, let me feed you, Your limbs are infected with the cold energy of yin.”
The old man exuded a strange energy that possessed warmth, it covered the young boy and expelled the cold yin energy in his veins, slowly and carefully in order to not cause any pain.
The boy hesitated to eat the soup at first, The old man informed him.
“It’s not poison, if I wanted to kill you I wouldn’t have rescued you.”
‘True.’
Coming to terms with the statement, the boy opened his mouth and ate the soup.
It was average. The boy never had chicken soup but even he could tell the old man didn’t know how to cook.
Well, when he looked at the old man more carefully…he could see why.
The body was as big as a boar, his beard and hair were rough, like it was the fur of a wild animal and he possessed the fierce eyes of a tiger.
He looked more like a wild beast than a human. If the boy was not special, he would have shat himself.
Literally.
“Eat, and recover.”
The boy, unable to resist, just went along with the flow. He liked the warmth, and he couldn’t even feel his limbs…so who was he to say no?
He opened his mouth again, and the old man fed him another spoonful of the soup.
It was the first time ever the boy’s stomach was completely full…if he recalled correctly.
𝘪𝑎.𝘤𝑜𝑚