Seraphina was somewhere else entirely—back in a memory as sharp and biting as the frost in the air.
It began with laughter. Soft, clear, like ice chimes tinkling in the wind. It echoed through the grand halls of the Northern Sea Ice Palace, a place of shimmering cold and breathtaking beauty. In her mind's eye, she saw her mother moving through those halls, her presence commanding yet elegant, her footsteps barely making a sound against the polished floors of enchanted ice. Sculptures lined the corridors—serpents twisting in frozen coils, wolves locked mid-leap, plum blossoms caught in an eternal moment of bloom.
The palace was a wonderland. It was a place where the air itself carried a quiet melody, where the walls seemed to glow under the pale northern lights, where her mother's laughter turned the winter cold into something warm and alive.
