Seraphina opened her eyes, though the term felt profoundly inadequate for the sensory input she received. There was no light, no darkness, only an infinite, featureless expanse of absolute, soul-deep cold. She wasn't standing on ice, nor floating in void; she felt suspended within the cold itself, yet utterly disconnected from it, like a mote of dust frozen perfectly in the center of an endless crystal.
This wasn't the dynamic, challenging, almost alive cold of the true Frost-Heart Cavern she had endured for a grueling year – a place defined by immense, shifting pressures, subtle resonant energies, and the constant, demanding potential for profound growth. This was horrifyingly different. It was the cold of perfect stasis, of absolute zero achieved and held eternally, devoid of any energy fluctuation, any potential, any hint of temporal progression.
