Ravennica, the City of Eternal Frost
Beyond the icy plateau of Lumer, hidden among the jagged peaks of the Ironfang Mountains, lies Ravennica—the only city that has managed to endure the freezing northern reaches of the Aschover continent. From afar, it rises like a colossal block of steel carved straight from the mountain itself, a place that is both city and fortress, where winter never ends and the sky is veiled by a constant shroud of silver mist, so thick that the sun is reduced to a faint, translucent smear.
People call it the "Fortress of Iron and Wind," for nothing survives in Ravennica except metal and willpower.
Elsewhere, winter lasts only a few months. Here, winter is existence.
Winds scream through the furnace towers like the roar of metal beasts, and snow falls without end, burying every trace of human footsteps.
Roofs lie under layers of frost. Smelters burn red through the swirling snow. The pounding of hammers striking ore echoes day and night. These are the breaths of the city. The steel forged here is twice as hard as ordinary metal, tempered under brutal temperatures by northern blacksmiths—people who fear neither the cold nor death, yet tremble before the suffocating silence of snowy nights.
After sundown, Ravennica never truly goes dark. Light from hundreds of smelter chimneys bleeds upward, forming an artificial aurora—an ominous, reddish-orange glow staining the snow as though the entire city were burning beneath the ice. The citizens call this glow the "Breath of Iron."
The city is divided into two layers.
The upper layer is home to residences, churches, inns, and the grand forges, all linked by iron bridges and stormproof tunnels.
The lower layer—known as the Underforge—has been carved directly into the heart of Ironfang. This is where the metallurgical guilds work, where the heat is so intense it can melt stone, and where ancient curses are etched into furnace walls to ensure the flames never die.
A thousand years ago, Ravennica was once a stronghold of the Demonkin, where they forged living weapons for their invasion under the Demon King. After the Demonkin fell, humans reclaimed the ruins and rebuilt the city atop them. Yet the elders still say that on nights when the northern wind howls the fiercest, you can hear metal weeping deep beneath the earth—the cries of blades that have never cooled.
After the Dark Age ended, Ravennica became the greatest supplier of steel and ore in the North. However, the eastern bypass—the ancient road that once led outward—was sealed by the Ardent Rift, a chasm born from magical collapse.
Thus, only one path remains: the endless white road through the Lumer ice plateau, where the cold can shatter bone and swallow even the living. That road has turned Ravennica into a fortress isolated in a sea of winter.
Merchants, mercenaries, and pilgrims can reach this city—if they have the courage to face its climate and its ironbound laws.
The Red Forge Tower—the tallest structure in Ravennica—stands in the city's center, the largest construction undertaken here in the modern era.
The tower was not a relic of the ancient world; it was built merely ten years ago, after Julia unified every metallurgical guild and seized complete control of the city.
It was she who ordered the Red Forge Tower to be constructed—a structure so tall it pierces the snowfall and can be seen even from distant Lumer.
The tower is forged from Ironfang's black-steel alloy, a material that can only be shaped in Ravennica's subterranean heat. Every floor is surrounded by spiraling fire ducts, twisting around the tower like the arteries of some colossal living creature.
At the summit burns the Eternal Forge—a flame fueled by oil extracted from living iron ore, a resource so rare that each drop costs the blood of miners. The fire blazed for seven days and seven nights when the tower was first ignited, and it has never gone out since.
People call it the Heart of Ravennica.
But the Red Forge Tower is more than a symbol—it is the core regulator of the entire metallurgical network.
The tower gathers heat from the hundreds of smelters across the city through ancient magic conduits running underground, channels it upward, then purifies it before redistributing the refined flame back into the forges.
When night falls, its fire leaks through vents and chimneys, making the tower glow like a giant torch of steel piercing the snowy darkness.
Now, within the top floor of the Red Forge Tower—
Julia sat inside a domed office, its walls lined with polished copper mirrors that reflected both flame and frost. Her desk was a flat iron anvil, cold and engraved with thin, trembling lines like scars from a blade.
She sat quietly, head bowed over a forge blueprint, her sharp eyes gliding across every detail, every heat-flow symbol, absorbing the design's structure as if memorizing each breath of the metal.
Behind her stood a wall covered with weapons—all without blades, only empty frames—symbols of those who died to build the tower.
At the room's center, a narrow iron bridge opened into a bottomless furnace pit where, some say, the breath of the Ardent Rift still coils through the rising smoke.
Everyone in Ravennica knew her story.
To them, Julia Asterfeld was a legend.
Seventeen years ago, during the fall of the Kingdom of Kakor, Ravennica still thundered day and night with the sound of hammers.
Steel from Ironfang. Fire from the Asterfeld forges.
All of it flowed into Kakor in a desperate attempt to resist the Empire's inevitable conquest.
But the blood forged into that steel was also what doomed them.
One winter night, when snow fell so thick one could no longer tell ash from ice, Ravennica was ambushed.
Imperial soldiers clad in iron armor surged through the northern gate, burning the smelters and turning the entire city into a sea of crimson fire reflected against the Ironfang peaks.
Julia Asterfeld was fourteen then. She remembered only the blazing arcs of flaming arrows streaking across the sky, and the final roar of her father—the last master smith of the Asterfeld line—standing in the forge doorway to shield his daughters from the invading soldiers.
Her mother, her hands scarred from years of working steel, used her own body to cover the two children when the forge collapsed.
There was no time for final words.
Julia escaped only by dragging along her four-year-old sister, Lilianne, through a back alley where the scent of steel dissolved into the snowy fog.
For weeks afterward, the two survived within the corpse of the city.
They hid inside abandoned chimneys, slept in freezing metal crates, and ate crumbs of stale bread left behind by raiders.
Every night, Julia held Lilianne tightly, trying to keep the small body from freezing in Ravennica's merciless cold.
Every morning, she crawled through the snow searching for leftover coal—just enough to light a tiny flame, small enough to make Lilianne smile.
No one believed the two children could survive the ruins where molten steel fused with ice. Julia's survival was a contradiction—a small ember enduring a frozen hell.
Then the war ended.
Kakor was conquered and turned into the Empire's new capital.
Ravennica, once the "Iron Fortress of the North," became a forgotten scar.
Julia grew up in that world—a world where survivors had no room for weakness.
She learned to gather scrap metal, learned to trade, learned to outwit and break those stronger than her.
By the time she turned twenty, Julia Asterfeld had become the clandestine queen of Ravennica, holding the lives of laborers and smugglers alike in her hands.
Now, Julia Asterfeld is no longer the frail child shivering in the snow.
To the people of Ravennica, she is the Steel Queen—the living symbol of the city, the embodiment of its brutality and its will to endure.
The present.
Julia Asterfeld possessed a pair of heterochromatic eyes—one blue, one ash-gray—an unsettling contrast that made anyone who met her gaze instinctively look away. In them reflected not only the frigid cruelty of the North, but also the intellect and ruthlessness of someone who had once walked past death and returned.
Her hair, long and silver-gray like quenched steel, was loosely tied to one side. A few strands fell over her cheek, catching the red glow of the forge as if ablaze.
Her skin was pale like the morning frost over Ironfang, faintly marked with thin scars that looked carved by steel itself. She never tried to hide them. They remained as symbols of authority.
Julia wore no crown, nor needed any other emblem to signify her rank—because Ravennica itself was her crown.
Around her right wrist was a cracked iron bracelet engraved with ancient Demonic runes, the only artifact ever found near the Ardent Rift.
Whenever the forge-light struck it, the fractures flared a bloody red. And if one looked closely enough, a serpentine silhouette could be seen coiling within, shifting slowly as if in slumber.
After finishing her review of the forge design, Julia flipped the sheet of paper over.
The back was not blank. The smoke-stained surface was filled with slanted, jagged handwriting—strong and deeply pressed, as though carved with a blade rather than written with ink.
The chaotic lines were nothing more than fragments of scattered thoughts: rough simulations of heat conduction formulas mixed with muttered ramblings of a mind both brilliant and deranged. Between the overlapping lines were broken ink strokes, as if the writer had paused mid-madness before continuing.
Julia's eyes halted on the very bottom. The final stroke was thick, swirling into a closed spiral, ending on a single name—written coldly, proudly, and far heavier than any other word on the page.
She stared at it in silence for a long moment, the forge-light from the Red Furnace Tower reflecting off the letters, making them seem alive, resurrected from ashes.
The one who submitted this was a blacksmith from the workshop—talented, audacious, and clearly aware of what they were doing.
She set the paper down, lips tightening slightly. This wasn't a mere sketch. This was a proposal capable of changing the very rhythm of the city. Using this design would mean adjusting hundreds of furnaces… the duct layouts, pressure ratios, even labor distribution. A single decision at this height would ripple through the entire Underforge.
At that very moment, the iron bracelet on Julia's right wrist quivered softly, letting out a faint metallic scratch—like steel scraping stone.
She glanced down.
A thin red gleam ran along one of the cracks.
The snake-like shadow inside stirred, ever so slowly.
Wisps of smoky red mana seeped out, curling around her wrist. The creature was not alive, but neither was it an illusion. It raised its head, its eyes smoldering like dormant magma. With each breath, the air around her grew warmer.
"Awake already, Aethra?" Julia murmured, a faint smirk tugging at her lips.
The serpent didn't respond at first. It merely tightened faintly around her wrist—a reflex of something that had been sealed far too long.
The flames flickered against the tower's metal ceiling, reflecting in Julia's gaze, tinting one of her eyes crimson while the other remained cold as ash.
She tilted her hand slightly, letting the Eternal Forge's glow shine directly onto the cracked bracelet. The red mist unfurled, tracing crooked patterns in the air as though relearning the act of breathing.
Aethra lifted its head. Each exhale came out as thin threads of heated vapor.
"…Still the scent of iron and flame…" it rasped, the voice hoarse yet warm, like something rousing from an impossibly long sleep.
"If you slept any deeper, I would've had to throw you into the furnace and heat you another few hundred degrees," Julia said dryly.
Aethra emitted a sound like steel shifting—half a laugh, half a sigh.
"You're still as sharp-tongued as ever. Six months passed, and I dreamt of your two sisters—small, curled up in the ashes. Back then, your hands trembled, your voice cracked from the cold. And now… you've built an entire city of steel."
Its red eyes drifted across the room—the bronze walls, the furnaces, the weapon-lined mosaics.
"Did you dream of anything else?" Julia asked quietly. "Like… where you came from, or what you truly are?"
"You've asked that question countless times, Julia. Don't you tire of it?" Aethra paused. Its translucent, split tongue flicked lazily, tasting old memories.
"I only remember that I once slept very deeply. Beneath that Rift… where human blood merged with the abyss. The details are blurry."
"You sound like a bad poet."
Julia tilted her head, the dual colors of her eyes catching the glow of the cracks on her wrist.
Aethra chuckled softly. "Poetry? That's for those who still dream. All I recall is the sound of bodies falling. Thrown one after another… heavy, breaking. Their blood seeped into the stone, reached me—and I awoke."
Julia's eyes narrowed, anger swelling for a moment. She inhaled slowly, forcing calm back into her chest.
Seventeen years ago, when the Empire invaded Ravennica, thousands perished in the inferno.
Bodies filled the streets, stacked onto carts, dragged to the eastern edge of the city where the Ardent Rift yawned like an ancient beast.
The Empire hadn't wanted to waste manpower burying them. They dumped everything—civilians, soldiers, horses, broken weapons, even those still clinging to life.
Her parents were among them, lost forever to the Rift.
Regardless of Julia's rising emotions, the serpent moved more slowly now, looping loosely around her wrist, its warmth spreading as it continued:
"And then I saw you two—tiny children, shaking endlessly from the cold."
Julia gave a thin smile, the fire flickering in her mismatched eyes.
"And I struck a pact with you. In exchange for our lives, I granted you a refuge—"
"No." Aethra interrupted softly, eyes glowing a muted orange. "You did not grant me shelter. You shared your body with me. A piece of your soul burned with mine from that day on."
"…You make it sound like I became your personal forge."
The atmosphere dimmed.
The glow of the Eternal Forge wavered between them—woman and beast—casting crimson shadows, neither revealing which of them was the more dangerous.
Aethra laughed, the sound like iron bones clattering.
"Perhaps you did. But remember this, Julia… when the flames die, steel grows cold—yet I do not."
It raised its head once more, eyes blazing briefly, before silently coiling back into the cracked iron bracelet.