The deity watched Kairils in silence.
She seemed to have known all along that he would say that.
She understood the young man's nature better than anyone.
Yet the divine incarnation who had descended through the wind and snow did not answer immediately.
Under Kairils's astonished gaze,
the supreme being who ruled over winter and contracts slowly descended the steps.
Her ethereal skirts brushed the floor as she made her way to the enormous fireplace at the side of the divine hall.
Inside the fireplace, the undying flames still blazed, crackling as they burned.
The deity's spectral form stopped before the orange-red flames.
She slowly extended her pale hands toward the dancing fire, warming them in a gesture utterly ordinary for mortals in winter.
The sight left Kairils stunned.
The deity of ice and snow was borrowing warmth from a fire?
There was an indescribable incongruity to the scene, yet also an inexplicable harmony.
"Kairils, do you know why..."
"this fire has always burned in a divine hall devoted to winter?"
Kairils froze for a moment.
The fireplace had been burning since the first time he entered the divine hall, yet no one seemed to have ever looked deeper into its meaning.
He dutifully lowered his head and answered respectfully, "I do not know. Please enlighten me, my deity."
The firelight cast a warm orange glow over the deity's hands.
She remained silent for so long that Kairils thought time itself had stopped.
"Because winter's power is too cold, it needs the warmth of a fire!"
The deity's voice continued to echo through the hall, carrying the world-weariness of one who had witnessed the rise and fall of ages:
"Absolute cold can freeze all corruption and forge an unbreakable order."
"But a city governed only by cold laws is ultimately