Votxuta the Cold was born during the longest winter the northern coast had seen in a century, in a fishing village where people nailed charms above their doors to keep the dead from wandering in with the snow. Her mother swore the girl never cried as an infant—she only stared, pale-eyed and silent, at the frost creeping across the windows. By the time she was ten, Votxuta could recite burial rites in three forgotten tongues and spent more time among crumbling records in the village crypt than with other children. The local priests feared her curiosity, but an aging archivist recognized something else in her: hunger. Not for power, but for understanding. He brought her south to an isolated library-fortress, where she studied under candlelight for years, sleeping beside towers of worm-eaten books while storms battered the cliffs below.

The name “the Cold” came later, though not because of magic. During an expedition into the ruins beneath an abandoned observatory, Votxuta and her fellow scholars uncovered an ancient chamber sealed in ice older than memory itself. Only she emerged alive. She returned carrying a black iron tome rimed with frost, speaking little of what happened below except that “something in the dark still remembers the stars.” After that, people noticed changes. Rooms chilled when she entered them. Ink froze in its well while she worked. Worse still, Votxuta herself became distant—measured and calm even in the face of death, as though some part of her had been left behind in that frozen chamber. Yet despite the whispers surrounding her, she continues to travel from ruin to ruin, chasing fragments of lost knowledge with relentless devotion, convinced that somewhere buried beneath the world lies a truth terrible enough to freeze the gods themselves.