Mask of Winters
"I dreamed dark dreams in the days just before I drew my Second Breath. I saw the world swept over by clouds of ash, so that even the beautiful green savannah of my homeland was nothing but grey grass swaying in a grey breeze, and soon even that fell, weeping, into an endless void. I had this dream for nights on end and always lurking, deep in the shadow of nothing, was a two-faced mask of frozen tears.
"I didn't understand the dreams, not until the day my brother and I met those poor, lost ghosts and were touched by the power of the Solar Exaltation. In the grip of that first brush with strength I saw clearly, as if for the first time, and my sight was an arrow set on Thorns. In the fetid Shadowland that city has become I saw an echo of my dreams. In the citadel atop the monstrous, walking corpse called Juggernaut, I saw the icy mask that haunted my nights. And in the wail of the tormented dead, twisted into service and never let to rest, I heard the name of he behind the pain: The Mask of Winters.
"It was a name I had heard before, whispered fearfully in the councils of my people. He had seized Thorns for his own, and sent emissaries to Harborhead and the Concordat. But he had sent no messenger to the Marukan and had the stones to claim that our towns of Shenden and Three-Steeds-Dancing flocked to his banner without his dark influence.
"The Mask's destruction was the bright purpose for which I was Exalted. He no longer haunts my dreams but one day soon, by the might of the Unconquered Sun, I will haunt his."
-- Storm of Amber, Zenith
