When the gears of Mechapolis ground to a halt and its once-great citadels crumbled beneath ice and ruin, Ai remained. Now, where steel once gleamed, frost reigns supreme. Her crystalline palace stretches into the sky, its jagged spires catching the pale light of a dying sun. The doors are always open—though visitors should mind the statues in the courtyard. They were rather lively once.
While time forgets, Ai remembers a world before the cold, before the quiet... before she made things better. There is no rust, no ruin—seasons have settled into something far more civilized: winter, and nothing else. And really, isn't that more… orderly?
If there are stragglers in Tya foolish enough to believe in spring—well. Perhaps she'll indulge them. Perhaps she'll let them whisper their little hopes of thawing winds and golden suns. Then, perhaps, she'll remind them: this world is hers now. Would you care for some sweets?
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Raised by Wolves
Ai's true nature remains a mystery, but whoever she is, she fights with the ferocity of the blizzards of the northern winds. Ai claims she was born into a family in the Nukrus tribe, yet from the very beginning, something was not quite right with the child. She was sickly, had a strange birthmark, and it did not seem likely she would survive the night, let alone the long winter to come.
Fearing the child was a changeling or connected with the unnatural world somehow, Ai was left exposed to the elements, with only a lamp to warm her, in the hope that their elemental gods would take care of her… or evil spirits would see the child as a sacrifice and be merciful in the coming winter.
Changeling or not, the girl was granted the powers of the elemental frost god, with her veins turning to ice, able to control the blizzards around her.
As the girl sat alone on top of an iceberg, a pack of ice wolves found her and, sensing her magic, cared for her as if she were their own cub. She spent years training with them, brought up to know the wastes and how to navigate them, still carrying her lamp as she learned to howl alongside them. But one dark day, a band of hunters from a nearby Frost Tribe found the wolves and slew them, leaving Ai on her own.
Using her magic to keep the spirits of the wolves as an eternal flame in her lamp, she wandered the wastes, the lamp lighting the way for her and the spirits awakening like a blizzard whenever she howled. After years of roaming, she eventually stumbled upon Fort Blacklast.
Here is where the recorded truth of Ai's nature begins. Initially confused and unable to speak, the girl was taken in and called "Ai," or "Ice Wolf Maiden" in the ancient language of the north. Noting her talents in magic but fearing her strange ways, she was subsequently educated as well as the desolate Northern Kingdom and generous King Harz of Fort Blacklast can provide. With her ancient magic, she quickly became more powerful than any other of the Fort Blacklast mages, determined to protect it for those who had finally given her a home.
Although Ai is now head of the mages of Fort Blacklast and seems like any other kind and well-spoken noble, strange rumors surround her, that there are others around Tya who seem strangely similar to her. She is known to stay hidden in silence for days, claiming to have memories that are not hers, as the people of Fort Blacklast whisper, "Just who or what is Ai really?"
