Wayra existed in the cracks between the world. Little splinters in reality, where time and space seemed to peak through in a haze of mysticism. She still couldn’t believe she was back, that she was home after so many days, weeks, months in his lair. Now she wished she could figure out why she couldn't stay there. Why looking at that home left her hollow and empty.

She had learned his name. It was Carnage, and oh did it make sense. But still, she could not bring herself to name him. It was better he was a haze. It was better her time in his lair was foggy with pain and grief.

A name made him real, and Wayra didn’t want to live in a world where he lived too. 

Yet, in reality, Wayra did not live. She had died on the ice, run through the heart by spears of bitter snow, right on the Chamber’s lake. She had lain like that for months, until the snow melted and she had drowned.

And even then, he, the gray god, had not let her die. 

Wayra shivered, and it was not the warm summer day that made her cold. She was cold, her heart was cold, her soul was cold. Wayra would never be warm again. She had lived on, but her heart had frozen, and now she felt the constant chill of it, each breath burned her lungs. 

Yet, she could do something else as well. She could see those cracks in the world, and with those cracks, she could slow everything down until it froze. She could make towers of ice in an instant, build a palace of snow, yet she could not melt the ice in her heart.


It was ironic. 

The little blue girl blew gently, and around her snow swirled. It danced and spun, forming into a perfect ice replica of him, her gray god. Carnage. Wayra ground her teeth. He had done this too her. She had been a child of summer, of green grass and pine forests. He had made her a daughter of sky and snow, frozen and cold. Never again would her heart quicken at the sight of a handsome boy. Never again would she feel the flutter of anger, surprise or joy. Once she had been all eyes and smiles, now she just felt cold, numb, dead.

With a toss of her head the ice sculpture exploded. She was not broken, but she was cold, and Wayra thought that was worse. All those months, all she wanted was to be home, and now, she couldn’t stop thinking of his lair, of the dank and dark, of the spear of ice shoved through her heart. 

She was branded, a circle with a stake through it, directly on the center of her breast. She could feel it, burning there. A lot of people didn’t know this, but ice could burn as easily as fire, so all Wayra felt was ice and fire, so similar in their intensity. She felt numb, yet she burned, burned with something she could not yet name.