The icebreaker continued onward.
The ice here was no longer snow-white. It had taken on shades of rose red, light and dark, as though something had seeped into it from within.
Sunlight shone in at a low angle. As it passed through the ice, it refracted and scattered into hazy patches of crimson, revealing an eerie beauty—unreal, dreamlike, reminiscent of the stained glass beneath a church dome, or the final painting smeared out by some mad artist before his death.
Beautiful enough to make one's heart tremble.
The ship's arrival seemed to have disturbed something beneath the water.
Some long, slender creature was climbing up along the hull. It moved without a sound, without splashing water or scraping against metal, merely clinging to the ship's side and wriggling upward in silence.
On deck, two crewmen were observing the distance through binoculars.
This was a task personally assigned by the elders—keep watch for unknown islands, mysterious palaces, or anything that did not appear to be naturally formed.
Although cameras had been installed in every direction around the ship, and the twelve screens in the monitoring room cycled continuously, magnifying every detail across the full three hundred and sixty degrees, there were some things those soulless machines might fail to capture. That was why people had to keep watch outside.
The sun hung lazily in a corner of the sky, casting down its light. That was how the sun was during the Arctic summer: it never rose any higher, and it never set.
Its light carried no warmth. One could not feel any heat on one's body beneath it. Instead, the frigid wind cut like steel blades, slipping through gaps in their collars and sliding down their backs, making them shiver uncontrollably.
Fortunately, Frost, the acting family head, was fairly understanding.
He