As promised, here’s the summary of the gods story, “Burning Ice.” It’s not complete yet (and it probably won’t be for a while) but I wanted to share the concept with you.
I also added a cover for the story. The title might change later on; it’s just the first thing that came to me in the moment.
* ঌ ˚･ﾟ❆*･ﾟ* ঌ ˚･ﾟ❆*･ﾟ* ঌ ˚･ﾟ❆*･ﾟ* ঌ ˚･ﾟ❆*･ﾟ* ঌ ˚･ﾟ❆
In a world where gods ruled, humans lived under their watchful eye. Storms obeyed tempers, harvests obeyed favors, and earthquakes obeyed whims. For centuries, humans prayed and offered sacrifices and adoration in temples made of marble and gold, believing that if they worshiped the god, they could influence them to favor them. They offered gold, blood, incense, and sweet, whispered promises. But what could a god who ruled seas and lands possibly want from fragile, fleeting humans?
It doesn’t take mortals long to realize, although perhaps a bit too long, that most gods don’t grant favors because they are benevolent. They grant them because it is convenient for them to do so. They don’t want anything from mortals, they already possess everything the world can give. They don’t need adoration, when mountains bow and seas obey without it. Mankind, in truth, has very little to offer a god.
Yet, among all these powerful deities, there was one who was different from the others. He helped without wanting anything in return, granted favors without calculating the cost and walked among mortals wearing a smile as bright as the morning sun.
The god who, by nature, was expected to be aloof and unfeeling, was instead the most benevolent presence in the skies. He was a god who ruled not through fear and not through indifference, but through kindness and warmth.
He was not alone, though. Beside him stood the god who, by nature, was expected to be warm and benevolent, but was instead a presence that carried frost within his gaze, a presence that made kings quake and armies tremble. He was a presence carved from stone, except when the first god smiled. Then, and only then, something softer flickered through the severity.
Together, they were the very essence of balance: destruction and mercy, darkness and light. They were yin and yang personified, so inextricably linked that one could not function without the other.
But then, one day… the kinder god was gone.
No battle was waged. No sign was given. No sky was shattered. He was gone—without so much as a whisper of an explanation, without even a blessing to go along with his departure.
And with his disappearance, the balance of the world was destroyed.
The second god did not mourn in silence. His coldness turned to rage, and that rage found a target—on humanity. If before the gods had been distant, now they were unreachable.
The Fire King, the ruler of flames and ash, withdrew his favor completely. His warriors—the lesser gods of embers and wildfire—no longer bothered to intervene in the world of men. Crops burned to ash, winters dragged on forever, storms came and went without so much as a whisper of divine aid. The other gods, unwilling to incur the wrath of the Fire King, stopped intervening altogether. None dared cross him.
Finally, the people realized that the gods had never needed them in the first place. So the people did the only thing they could do… they forgot.
Temples fell into ruin, statues cracked and broke off at the hands of vandals, offerings were no longer made, prayers were no longer prayed, and sacred places returned to the earth from whence they came—overgrown with vines and moss.
The names of the gods became stories, then warnings, then myths. Gradually, the concept of gods faded from memory—no longer the masters of the elements, but fairy tales told to frighten naughty children in the dead of night. The world learned to live without them.
Until it began… the ice caps began to weep.
It started quietly enough: the cracking of ancient glaciers, the movement of coastlines by inches, the arrival of winter too late and its departure too early. Then the poles began to melt in earnest, great white kingdoms crumbling into the dark, rising waters. The air began to thicken. Summer lingered longer. Forests parched like dry tinder waiting for a spark to set them alight.
Rumors began to circulate fast. Was the Fire King still out there? Was this his mourning? Perhaps his revenge?
But this didn’t make any sense either, because the Fire King had been gone, unseen and unheard, since the year 1633. Gone since his Red Guard withdrew from the mortal world at his command. Gone since the Air King, his strongest ally, chose loyalty over balance and turned his back on humanity too. And when the air withdrew, the earth could not stand alone. He followed. The Water King, who did not want to fracture the alliance and needed both air and earth to sustain his kingdom, gave in soon after.
One by one, the thrones of the elements fell silent. Humanity was left with nothing: not with the blessing of the gods, nor with their wrath, nor with their compassion. Merely with their absence.
Mortals tried, in their small and fragile way, to resist the inevitable. They planted trees, rationed resources and studied the sky, the land and the waters, desperate to stem the tide of the creeping heat. They called it science, progress, hope…
But what could weak hands accomplish against a grieving god?
The Fire King had not burned cities in his wrath. He had not rained flames from the skies. He had simply been a presence of increasing heat – a heart that never cooled. The world had not burned in a fiery inferno. It had simmered – as if it felt the Fire King’s rage.
Because there was only one being in the world who could cool a flame so old. Only one force in the universe who could face the Fire King, the ruler of flame, without being reduced to ashes.
The Ice God – the oddity among the gods.
All the gods had legions at their command – thousands of lesser gods crafted from stone, sea, wind, and flame. The Ice God had never created an army in his image. There had been no Frost Generals, no Blizzard Sentinels and no Glacier Heirs.
He had been unique – completely alone in his domain. At least, he had been until he vanished…
Because since his disappearance, no one had inherited his domain. No one had inherited his powers, no one had been left to temper the burning heart of the Fire King.
So the poles melted. And humanity, for the first time in centuries, knelt in prayer – not to gods for riches, rain, or victory.
But for a lost god to return.
