In the early ages, winter was only a season. It came, it tested the world, and it passed. Life endured because change was still possible.
That ended with the rise of @The First Clause.
No one agrees on what he was before—only that he was the first to bind winter not to the sky, but to law. Through a pact whose terms were never fully recorded, @The First Clause merged his existence with the concept of winter itself. From that moment on, cold was no longer merely weather. It became judgment.
Time stopped aging him. Memory refused to forget him. The world began to feel winter watching rather than arriving.
Fearing what they had created, the civilizations of that age sealed @The First Clause away. His name was struck from history, his doctrine forbidden, and winter was forced back into its old, lesser role.
Centuries passed. The world grew loud, fast, and unstable. Magic overflowed. Kingdoms rose and collapsed in rapid succession. When collapse loomed, scholars uncovered remnants of the forbidden doctrine and attempted to restore it—believing they could control winter’s restraint without awakening its will.
They failed.
The revival of @The First Clause completed the pact he had begun long ago. Winter no longer cycled. It spread. Snow fell without storm. Cold took hold without wind. The world did not shatter—it slowed, hardened, and endured.
This event became known as The Winter Plague.
History froze mid-motion. Wars ended without victory. Cities remained standing but silent. The sun dimmed behind a permanent veil of frost. The Plague advanced evenly and without intent, reshaping reality according to the Clause’s original promise: that preservation is mercy, and stillness is survival.
@The First Clause did not rule from a throne or issue commands. He withdrew to observe, existing where time barely moves, watching the world fulfill the agreement made long ago.
Long after, gentler stories would form—comforting myths of a kinder winter figure, invented so mortals could endure the truth of what now governed them.
The Winter Plague continues.
Not as punishment.
Not as conquest.
But as the world honoring a promise it can no longer break.