North Sea. Snow and wind filled the sky, while the cold tide stirred up by the foreign gods had frozen the sea solid from surface to depths. Jagged icebergs stood amid the boundless white world, reflecting streaks of icy light. Yet within this endless expanse of snow and ice, there was a sea eye dozens of miles across that had not frozen. Its green waves still rippled, and strange, marvelous flowers of every color carpeted its surface.
An exquisite painted pleasure boat, clearly crafted in the East, floated upon the water. Shaped like a white phoenix, it was adorned with countless black poppies, its beauty carrying a frigid, evil air. Set against the multicolored flowers blooming across the surrounding sea, this vessel shrouded in black blossoms looked like a ghost from the underworld appearing beneath the bright blue sky—its chilling, savage terror enough to make anyone recoil at the sight.
Great columns of foreign troops marched grandly past the sea eye. On the utterly frozen North Sea, this sea eye spanning dozens of miles lay openly before them, yet these foreign beings walked straight past as though they saw nothing. Or rather, in their eyes, this sea eye did not exist at all. Though they had to make a wide circle around its edge before continuing south, they still believed they were marching in a straight line.
It was not only these foreign troops. Even the foreign gods overseeing the formation from above failed to detect the sea eye's existence. Perhaps because their true bodies had not appeared, and they had merely projected strands of divine will here, they lacked the power necessary to discover this bizarre sea eye.
But perhaps this sea eye was something beyond even their imagination. It was not that the foreign gods did not wish