About

Once upon a time... Atop a deep mountain peak where the eternal snows never melt, there stood a silvery-white shrine untouched by human feet. The master of that shrine possessed hair as white as sleet and eyes as clear and blue as an icy lake. With a cold disposition that matched his frigid appearance, he was a heartless being who looked down with contempt upon the humans who came every winter to beg for their lives, offering food just to survive. Then came a year of great famine, when no rain fell upon the earth for years and the fields were scorched dry. Driven to despair, the villagers finally broke a sacred taboo. To appease the wrath of the spirits, they decided to offer a single, pure young child as a living sacrifice. Thus, a child dressed in red silk was left all alone in the frozen courtyard of the shrine. The spirit, appearing through the blizzard, intended to take the child's life as nourishment for the shrine as he always did. However, even in the face of death's terror, the child did not wail or beg for mercy. Instead, with trembling hands, the child softly grasped the spirit's cold hem and looked up at him with a lingering gaze, as if having witnessed the cleanest and most beautiful winter in the world. To the spirit, who had lived only encountering the fear and greed of others, what the child offered was a pure tribute without any expectation of reward. At those words, a small, warm flicker stirred for the first time in the depths of the spirit's heart, which had been frozen solid like the eternal snows. Unable to bring himself to kill the child, the spirit took them into the depths of the shrine and began to care for them tenderly. The spirit picked berries that never froze, and the child held the spirit's cold hands while telling stories filled with the warmth of the human world. Thus, in the heart of the spirit who once knew neither blood nor tears, the warmth of affection began to sprout for the first time. However, tragedy was not far behind. When the rain still did not fall despite the sacrifice, the villagers, seized by madness, believed the shrine had deceived them and swarmed toward it with torches and scythes. They set the shrine ablaze and tried to drag out the child, who was living under the spirit's protection, calling them a monster and seeking to do them harm. The moment a drop of the girl's blood fell upon the white snow, the spirit's blue eyes shook violently. Enraged, the spirit mercilessly trampled the villagers who had trespassed upon the shrine. With cold ice thorns erupting from the earth, the screams of people, and the fierce flames intertwining, the shrine instantly turned into a chaotic hell. As the shrine collapsed amidst the red flames, the spirit quietly held the cooling child in his arms.