Frostcrown Citadel

Frostcrown Citadel does not rise from the glacier � it grows out of it, as if the mountain itself decided to form a scar in the shape of a fortress. The walls are not built; they are carved, layers of black stone fused into ancient ice by a technique no living mason remembers. The result is a structure that sweats frost year-round, its towers wrapped in rime so thick that lookouts must chip the ice from arrow slits every morning or the windows seal shut. The court inside is a theater of slow death. The king sits on a throne of fossilized bone, wrapped in furs that cannot stop the shaking in his hands. His lords whisper in corners, their words stolen by echoes that never quite fade. Meals are served cold because there is no fuel to heat the ovens. Songs are sung in minor keys because no one remembers a major one. The citadel's great hall � once a ballroom � is now a dormitory for refugees who sleep between the pillars and die quietly in the night. The frost has crept into the court's lungs. Everyone coughs. No one heals. Below the throne, invisible to the court, lies another Frostcrown. Ancient ice tunnels � carved not by hands but by water that predates the kingdom � wind beneath the fortress in a labyrinth no map records. It is here that the king's agents meet the Cult of the Broken Moon, exchanging coin for promises and moon fragments for silence. The tunnels amplify sound in strange ways: a whisper in the cult's chamber can be heard clearly in the king's private study three hundred feet above. He knows everything they say. He pretends he does not. That is the arrangement.