Northern European Front

The clock turned back, and the scene shifted to the Northern European snowfields.

By April, the Northern European snowfields were no longer a land of pure ice and snow, but a battlefield utterly defiled by blood, scorched earth, and lingering magical residue.

Under Kohaug's iron-fisted command, the International Aurors' joint force had fought continuously for seventeen days. More than two hundred elite Aurors from Germany, Poland, Switzerland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland had scarcely had a single day of true rest.

(Note: Southern European Ministries of Magic, such as those of Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece, were more focused on the Italian front.)

Their camp had been set up in temporary wooden cabins amid howling wind and snow. Protective wards ran day and night, while the healers at the supply stations took shifts until their eyes were ringed black. Many had bandages wrapped around their hands, their robes scorched and torn, yet they still gritted their teeth and held their posts.

The sky over Northern Europe seemed to have been pressed low by some ancient curse. The polar night had arrived early without warning. Daylight was as brief as a sigh, while heavy lead-gray clouds hung over the snowfields all day, so low that even magical flames seemed dim and lifeless.

And at the heart of that frozen world, the fire giant Surtur strode like a walking natural disaster.

With every step he took, the frozen earth burst apart in spiderweb cracks. Dark-red magma surged up from beneath the ice, searing hissing scorch marks into the snow; ice and snow that had remained unmelted for a thousand years instantly vaporized in the heat, billowing into vast white mist that blotted out the sky.

Spells striking his body, covered in lava and ancient runes, mostly did no more than scatter