In the West, winter often belongs to Persephone, who returns from the underworld and brings the frost in her wake. Or to Skadi, the huntress who walks across ice with vengeance in her heart. There, cold is the shadow of loss, the reminder that life sleeps beneath snow, waiting to be reborn.
But in the East, winter is not merely absence — it is judgment. It is stillness that remembers everything the world has tried to forget.
Far beyond the northernmost mountains, where sunlight fractures and never returns, there reigns Xuan Ming, goddess of the dark and the cold. Her palace is carved from black ice, its corridors echoing with the whisper of frozen winds. She does not command life or death, but the boundary between them — where the last breath turns to frost and the spirit lingers in its own silence.
Once, a mortal general sought her out. His army had perished in a blizzard, his kingdom fallen to ruin. He wandered through the endless snow, begging the heavens for power — to avenge, to endure, to remain. When at last he collapsed before a frozen lake, she appeared, veiled in drifting mist, her eyes like twin stars trapped in ice.
"Why do you seek me?" she asked, her voice carrying the hush of an eternal storm.
"To conquer death," he answered. "To rise again."
She regarded him for a long moment, and then touched his chest. The cold entered his heart like steel, and the snow ceased to fall. He rose, pale and unbreathing, his pulse gone but his will unbroken. In time, he would be known as the Ghost General, leading legions that never slept, fighting wars that never ended.
But even immortality freezes. As centuries passed, his sword dulled, his purpose thinned, and he began to long for the warmth he had forgotten. One night, he returned to the northern lake, knelt upon the ice, and whispered, "Take back your gift."
The lake shattered. The storm rose again, swallowing him whole.
Some say Xuan Ming still walks the tundra when the wind grows sharp and the stars burn blue — a solitary figure cloaked in frost, her breath turning the living world to silence. She is not cruel, only constant. For winter is not death's arrival, but its reminder: that even endings can be pure, and even the coldest gods may grieve for what must fade.