The castle of Dunmore sat like a jagged tooth atop the cliffs of the Scottish Highlands, perpetually shrouded in a mist that tasted of salt and old sorrows. Inside its damp, echoing walls, Alistair lived as a ghost of his former self. Once a knight of the Golden Order, he was now a disgraced exile, his armor rusted, his name a curse in the courts of the south.

In the center of the castle's ruined courtyard, sheltered by a crumbling stone arch, grew a single, iridescent flower—the Lunar Lily. It was a botanical miracle, a plant that bloomed only once every century, said to hold the purity of the stars in its petals.

Alistair had dedicated the last three years of his life to the Lily. He had built a shelter of glass and iron, he had hauled water from the deepest wells, and he had spent his nights whispering ancient poems to the fragile stem. The Lily was the only thing in his life that had not betrayed him.

But the Great Frost was coming.

It began as a whisper in the wind, a sudden drop in temperature that turned the Highland lochs into sheets of opaque glass. The mist became a frozen veil, and the air grew so cold that it burned the lungs.

Alistair watched as the frost crept toward the courtyard. He saw the other plants—the hardy heather, the stubborn pines—shiver and turn grey. He knew that the Lunar Lily, for all its celestial beauty, was delicate. A single night of this cold would shatter its petals into dust.

"Not this time," Alistair whispered, his voice a low growl.

He spent the next forty-eight hours in a fever of activity. He lit every torch in the courtyard, hauling piles of peat and driftwood to create a ring of fire around the Lily. He wrapped the glass shelter in heavy wool blankets, his fingers numb and bleeding from the cold. He stayed awake, fighting the crushing weight of exhaustion, feeding the flames with everything he had—his old books, his furniture, even the wooden beams of the ruined arch.

He was not merely saving a flower; he was fighting the very concept of loss. Every flicker of the flame was a defiance of the void, a scream against the inevitability of the frost.

On the third night, the storm reached its peak. The wind howled like a wounded beast, tearing the blankets from the shelter and extinguishing the torches one by one. Alistair stood over the Lily, his own body shaking violently, his breath coming in ragged, frozen gasps. He used his own cloak to shield the plant, leaning his weight against the glass, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

He felt the cold invading his marrow, the frost claiming his toes, his fingers, his lungs. He was a man of sixty, and the cold was a predator that knew exactly where to strike.

As the first light of dawn broke through the grey clouds, the wind suddenly died. The silence that followed was absolute.

Alistair leaned back, his strength gone. He looked through the glass. The Lunar Lily was still there. Its petals were slightly singed, its stem a bit bent, but it remained white and pure against the frozen wasteland of the courtyard.

He had won.

But as he tried to stand, he found that he could not move his legs. He looked down and saw that the frost had finally claimed him. His boots were frozen to the stone; his skin was the color of the winter sky.

He lay there, a rusted knight beside a celestial flower, a smile touching his blue lips. He had failed to save himself, but he had saved the bloom. In the absolute silence of the Highlands, Alistair found his peace, knowing that for one more century, the world would have a piece of purity that the frost could not touch.

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