And to commemorate my arrival.
@yrsillar. Here is an omake for the omake throne. Well, it happens in an undetermined future and assume a few things, so I guess that it being an Apocrypha is more accurate.
English isn't my first language, and this is the first time I have written anything. So critiques and advice are welcomed. Praises even more so.
Blessed by Winter
Dong Zhu could hardly stay still as his mother put layer over layer of thick clothing on him. The previous evening had seen the very first snowflakes of Winter drift lazily from the sky, and the morning had greeted their little village covered in a mantle of pure white. All around, as far as the eye could see, there was a sea of snow, perfectly pristine and immaculate, without as much as a single footprint to break the uniformity of the beautiful vista.
Dong Zhu could swear it was calling for him to fix that.
So he burst out of the door as soon as his mother took her hands off of him, ready to be the first to claim the top of the nearby hill all the kids always played in. Dong Zhu had always loved Winter. How could he not, when his parents always told the same story every year?
Dong Zhu had been born 13 years ago in the midst of an unusually harsh winter, the kind rarely seen anymore since the ascension of the Ling clan to Viscount rank. He had been born weak and sick, and he was crying constantly. His parents didn't know what to do, but they couldn't ask for help due to the heavy snowfall that hadn't stopped for over a week by then.
Just when his father was getting ready to brave the journey anyway something stopped him in his tracks. The crying that had never stopped suddenly turned into giggling and laughing. Dong Zhu's parents hurried to his crate and couldn't believe their eyes to what they saw there.
Floating over the crate were a dozen of winter fairies and sprites, playing with the little baby inside. Apparently they had been curious about the source of ruckus, and so they went to investigate as is their want. Now they laughed together with the newborn, sharing that pure childish joy. The winter spirits didn't leave them until the first snowmelts, protecting the house from the outside cold.
Since then everyone said that Dong Zhu was blessed by Winter, and Dong Zhu thought so as well. He loved Winter, and he was sure that Winter loved him back. That's why he always did his best in the Winter's Ceremonies. Not that it was really a chore to do so.
Most ceremonies Dong Zhu had attended were trite and boring things, where everyone just knelt and prayed and listened to unending sermons. Winter's Ceremonies were different, more like the harvest festival than anything else. The people sang and danced together around a merry hearth, and the children were brought to the temple to play with the winter spirits.
Winter spirits that have just been born only know a bleak and desolate world, which is why they are attracted to merriment and warmth. By having children play with them, the spirits feel welcomed and appreciated, and so are more inclined to ward the people from Winter's harm.
Dong Zhu lamented that he never could have seen Lady Hanyi's performances, but there was no way for someone like her to come to such a small village as his own. Even to listen to the songs of the Winter Maidens they had to go to the nearest town, almost half a day of travel by cart.
It was with such thoughts that Dong Zhu spent the day playing with his friends in the snow, with the occasional minor spirit joining as well. All too soon the sun started to set and it was time to return home. In his way back, Dong Zhu noticed a few winter spirits entering the forest beyond the village's limits. Dong Zhu had been warned over and over to never go past the wards surrounding the village proper, since danger dwelled in the outside. But he was blessed by Winter, what danger could there be for him?
So it was without fear nor doubt that Dong Zhu stepped into the woods, following the retreating spirits further and further in. It didn't take long for him to lose sigth of the spirits, and not much more to realize he wasn't
quite sure of which way went back to the village.
It was then than Dong Zhu saw a flicker of movement out the corner of his eye. He eagerly turned, thinking it would be a spirit that could guide him back home, only to freeze mid-movement before what he encountered there. It was undoubtedly a spirit, but not like any kind of spirit he had ever seen before.
It had a vaguely lupine silhouette, but it's outline and features were shrouded by a haze of foggy shadow. It was nearly as tall at the shoulder as he was, and it's sharps fangs and claws could be seen through the darkness hunging over it like a mantle. However, what really caught Dong Zhu's attention was it's eyes.
They were hollow. Pitiless, bottomless holes full of hate and greed, brimming with malice and hunger. Dong Zhu understood instantly that this spirit was not a new friend waiting to be made. It was a being of deep cold and twisted want, coveting that which could never be theirs, and so despised everything that held warmth.
The spirit took a single step forward, causing the slightest of crunches in the snow. It resounded like a massive crack in a frozen lake in Dong Zhu's ears. The spell was broken, and Dong Zhu ran.
Dong Zhu didn't know where he was going, only that he had to escape. So he ran, jumping over roots and brushes and treading through the snow. Never looking back, but knowing with absolute certainty that that thing was chasing him nonetheless.
But that was when Dong Zhu noticed that something was wrong. The snow that had started falling at some point was obscuring the path ahead more than it seemed possible; it clung unnaturally to his limbs, weighting more than snow had any right to do. Jumping over the next root, Dong Zhu stepped into a slick frozen puddle hidden by the snow and slipped, crushing into the ground. He turned slowly, his entire body aching, and saw the creature looming over him.
The spirit pounced, and Dong Zhu barely had the time to raise his arm to protect himself. Jaws bit down, teeth sinking deep into flesh. Dong Zhu screamed in pain as the wolf-thing dragged him around, but more than that he felt something entering through the wound, traveling up his arm, searching his core.
A blast of cold wind impacted, hitting the wolf in it's face, making it release him, and the beast snarled. A score of winter spirits, fairies and sprites he somehow recognized as the ones he had spent the day playing with, rushed at them. They hurled gusts of winf and spikes of ice at the dark spirit, forcing it to retreat. With a last hateful glare towards Dong Zhu and another snarl, the beast fled, disappearing between the trees and the falling snow.
The winter spirits cirlced Dong Zhu, unsure of what to do. Dong Zhu was curled in the ground, overcome with the temblors a chill that came from within. Through a blurred memory, Dong Zhu remembered his father arriving at his side, and carrying him back home.
Dong Zhou was cold. No matter the amount of blankets he wrapped himself in, no matter how much fuel was added to the hearth, no matter how much hot stew he forced himslef to eat, Dong Zhou was cold. And each day he was a little colder
The village's medic was called, an old lady said to be a cultivator who knew everything about herbs and their uses. When she didn't know how to save him, the priest of the closest shrine was called. "Contamination of the unawakened dantian", he had said. Dong Zhu didn't understand what that meant. He only understood that he was going to die.
It was in the middle of such despair that someone else arrived. Even through the feverish state he was in, Dong Zhu gasped when he saw the Winter Maiden walk into his room. The Winter Maidens were a special branch of priestesses founded long ago by the Ling clan. They were Lady Hany's apprentices and took on the duty of conducting the Winter's Ceremonies over all the minor settlements of the Ling clan's territories and beyond.
The Winter Maiden was clad in a simple yet elegant gown of several layers. It's color was that of the purest white, with clear blue winter motifs around the hems. Her light hazel hair was tied up in a braid inlaid with white flowers, flowing over her shoulder and across her chest. The Winter Maiden bore a small, warm smile as she looked at him.
The Winter Maiden didn't say anything as she entered, leaving his parents in the doorframe. She simply sat in a chair at his bedside, clasping his hand in hers. And sang.
Dong Zhu felt the cold that had been worming inside of him for days react. It didn't disappear or diminish, instead it started to change. All this time Dong Zhu had felt something gnawing inside of him. A cold stripping him of all warmth. Coaxing him to sleep and not wake up. To give up. To End.
Now, with each passing note, it felt more like the cold he had always enjoyed. It felt like receiving a hit in the face during a snowball fight, like sinking into a mound of snow at the end of a long slide.
"You have the talent to become a cultivator", declared the Winter Maiden after she finished singing.
Dong Zhu could only stare and gawk as he slowly sitted upright in his bed, slowly opening and closing his previously numb hands. The cold was stil there, Dong Zhu could feel it. But it was no longer threatening him, instead it felt like a paradoxically warmth embrace.
The next few days were as much a blur as the time Dong Zhu had spent laying in his bed, though for completely different reasons. The Winter Maiden had declared that he needed to learn to undertstand and control the power that now slept within him. And so he would be taken to the peak of the living mountain, where the heartquarters of the Winter Maidens resided.
He would be taken away from everything that he had ever known, and brought to a place he had never expected to see beyond leyends. It would be path full of difficulties and danger, with many such encounters as the one that had nearly costed him his life.
Despite all that, Dong Zhu couldn't help the surge of trepidation that traveled up his spine, together with a cold chill.
