Snow woke to a world buried in white.
A raging snowstorm unlike anything he had ever witnessed surrounded him, swallowing the horizon and blurring the very shape of the land. The wind roared as if it possessed a will of its own, and snow lashed violently across the endless expanse.
For a brief moment, he simply stood there.
Then he rose to his feet and surveyed his surroundings, frowning at the harsh weather.
The storm here was far more intense than the one that plagued the Riffy Cliffs.
Yet, as usual felt nothing.
The freezing air did not bite at his skin nor did the violent wind chill his bones. Even the snow that blanketed his shoulders seemed light and almost harmless.
Calmly, Snow brushed the flakes from his grey fur coat and released a long sigh.
"I am dreaming again?"
He asked himself puzzlingly.
He had instantly recognize the farmiliar white world of everlasting snow that had been plaguing his dreams for the past few days.
The dreams had begun six days ago without warning.
Snow would dream being a wolf, living among a pack of white wolves and hunting other creatures.
Most of the time, the dream was blurry and he would act like someone else without any lucidity of what he was doing. It was only after he woke did he remember the details of the dream.
As he thought of this, Snow frowned.
This time the dream was different.
For starters he noticed that he wasn't a wolf but was a human. Not his human body though but seemed to be in an identity of someone else.
The second thing that was different was that he was lucid.
From the moment he arrived, he felt lucid and even recognized that he was dreaming. And this was different from his previous dreams were he would behave according to the dream and only regain lucidity once he woke up.
As soon as he realized this strange anomaly, Snow was simply left puzzled and vexed.
So many questions appeared in his mind without answers.
And knowing that the only way he would find answers was navigating this world, Snow then decided to travel around.
But he remembered that from his previous dreams, there was a presence of a powerful pack of white wolves in this dreamscape world and other dangerous creatures.
He decided to first find a place he could take shelter.
'l still don't have any idea of what will happen if l am injured or worse killed in this place. And given by the real like experience l faced so far. l have no intention of finding out.' Thought Snow as he walked cautiously.
The land resembled the extreme region of the Riffy Cliffs, but with a weather and landscape more extreme than Snow's hometown.
The ground was covered with thick piles of snow. The sky was dark gray with no signs of the sun and from the dark gray clouds snowflakes kept raining down on the land with relentless fury.
As Snow studied the terrain around him, it didn't take more than five seconds for him to recognize where he was.
Thanks to the memories from his earlier dreams, Snow possessed a vague mental map of certain areas within this world.
Even through the storm, he could roughly determine where he was.
"If I remember correctly…" he murmured.
"There should be mountains nearby."
And somewhere near those mountains there should be a cave.
Snow began moving in that direction.
Sure enough, after only a few minutes of walking, dark shapes slowly emerged through the swirling snow.
The mountains where just like how Snow remembered them. Tall and wide. At the top there was solid ice with snow blanketed on top.
The moment Snow reached the mountains, he picked up his speed heading towards where he believed there was a cave.
And within another additional minutes of walking, Snow reached a narrow mouth of cave that was located at the bottom of the mountain.
The cave's mouth was not wide and its interior was dark making Snow unable to see the interior.
Snow moved foward and stepped inside the cave.
But instead of entering blindly, he chose to approach cautiously, his nerves on the cautious side , ready to bolt the moment he detected danger.
He stepped deeper into the cave, leaving the howling blizzard behind him.
The moment he passed the narrow entrance, darkness swallowed him whole.
Unlike the storm outside, the cave was completely silent.
This made him pause, as he tried to allow his eyes to adjust, but the interior remained stubbornly black.
When he had come here in previous dreams when he had been a wolf—darkness had never been an issue. Beasts possessed night vision, allowing them to see clearly even in deep shadow.
But now he was human.
And human eyes were useless in this kind of darkness.
Snow sighed quietly.
"Great…"
He stretched one hand forward and began walking slowly, carefully placing each step.
The stone beneath his boots was uneven, and the air inside the cave carried a faint dampness that smelled of old stone and frost.
Snow moved cautiously.
One hand brushed against the wall to guide him, while the other hovered in front of him to avoid colliding with anything unseen.
After several careful steps, his boot suddenly struck something.
CRACK.
A brittle sound echoed through the cave.
Snow froze.
The object rolled slightly beneath his foot.
He slowly crouched down.
His fingers searched the ground until they brushed against something smooth.
Snow frowned.
"What…?"
He lifted the object slightly, running his fingers across its surface.
There were hollow indentations.
Then ridges and jagged edges where something had broken long ago.
Then his fingers slipped into two empty cavities.
Snow's expression stiffened.
Eye sockets.
He slowly turned the object in his hands.
A hollow jaw.
Missing teeth.
And a smooth dome of bone.
After feeling all these details, it didn't take long for him to recognize what he was holding.
"…A skull."
Snow immediately dropped it.
The bone struck the stone floor with a hollow clatter.
For a moment, he remained crouched there, staring into the darkness even though he could see nothing.
"A human skull…?"
Snow swallowed lightly and reached forward again.
This time, he searched the ground more carefully.
His fingers soon brushed against more bones.
A ribcage, fragments of an arm and pieces of a spine.
The remains were scattered slightly, but it didn't take long for Snow to confirm the truth.
It was a human skeleton.
Or at least something very close to one.
The bones felt old—extremely old.
Smooth and dry, as if they had been sitting here for years… perhaps even decades.
Snow continued examining the remains.
If someone had died here, there was a chance they had carried something useful.
His hand eventually brushed against something different.
He felt a metallic item brush against his hand.
Snow pulled it closer and felt the texture carefully.
It was thick and rough likely the remains of some kind of coat or armor that had long since rotted away.
Then beside that item, his fingers touched another metallic item.
Snow slowly lifted it.
It was a cylindrical object, small enough to hold in one hand.
Even in the darkness, he could faintly feel engraved lines carved across its surface.
Runes.
Snow's expression sharpened immediately.
"A mana blazer…"
He recognized the object at once.
Mana blazers were ancient tools used to generate controlled flame using a small beast cores as a power source.
They were extremely rare artifacts, usually created by skilled sorcerers or artificers.
The Riffy Cliffs possessed only a handful of such devices.
Snow carefully turned the object in his hand.
His thumb brushed against a small switch embedded in the side.
He hesitated.
If it still worked, then the cave would no longer be dark.
Snow pressed the switch.
For a split second.
Nothing happened.
Then suddenly— FWOOM.
A soft blue flame burst to life at the tip of the device.
The cave was instantly bathed in pale light.
Snow blinked.
After so long in darkness, the sudden illumination felt almost blinding.
When his vision adjusted he was finally able to see the cave clearly.
The skeleton lay sprawled across the ground, its bones yellowed with age.
Tattered remnants of clothing clung to it like decaying shadows.
But that wasn't what caught Snow's attention.
Instead It was the human figure leaning against the far wall of the cave.
Snow froze.
A man sat slumped against the stone, half buried in shadow. His body was covered in wounds deep gashes ran across his arms and torso, and dried blood had long since darkened the front of his clothing. One of his legs looked badly mangled, twisted at an unnatural angle.
For a moment Snow simply stared.
The man looked no different from a corpse.
His head hung low, chin resting against his chest.
Completely still.
Snow's grip tightened slightly around the mana blazer as the pale blue flame flickered in his hand.
Another skeleton…?
He asked with skepticism and before he could decide on checking the man something suddenly happened.
The man moved all of a sudden.
It was subtle.
Just the faintest shift of his shoulders.
Snow's eyes widened.
Slowly, the man raised his head.
His face emerged from the shadows.
His skin was pale, his beard rough and unkempt, and his eyes, though dull with exhaustion still carried a strange sharpness within them.
Those eyes fixed directly onto Snow.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then the man gave a faint, tired chuckle.
"Well now…" his voice rasped, dry as old parchment.
"Fancy seeing your kind here, lad."
Snow's mind froze.
Your kind?
Before he could ask what the man meant, the blue flame of the mana blazer flickered violently.
And then the cave walls seemed to blur.
The man's wounded figure faded like mist.
And suddenly...
Snow's eyes snapped open.
He was back in his bed.
The familiar wooden ceiling of his room stared down at him.
The storm outside Riffy Cliffs howled faintly through the windows.
Snow lay still for several seconds, staring upward in silence.
Then he slowly sat up, his expression tight with confusion.
"…What the hell was that?"