Sebastian landed on the other side of the portal and for a moment there was only white.
He stood inside a house, or what used to look like one.
The structure around him was ancient beyond sensible measure, wood blackened and petrified, stone walls half-swallowed by frost, beams sagging under layers of frozen time. Whatever hearth had once warmed this place had long since died, leaving only a hollow shell where wind threaded through broken gaps like.
Outside, the blizzard screamed. Not metaphorically, it actually screamed.
A continuous, low, unnatural howl that pressed against the walls as if the storm itself was trying to get inside and finish what it started. Sebastian slowly turned in place, taking it in.
"…Damn," he muttered under his breath. "Where the hell is this place…"
He moved toward the doorway.
Every step creaked against frost-coated wood that should have collapsed centuries ago, yet still held.
He pushed the door open.
The world outside hit him like a physical strike that shouldn't harm him, a wall of white slammed forward, wind and snow erupting so violently it would have knocked an ordinary man flat instantly. Ice crystals whipped across his face, cutting, stinging,
But none of it mattered, his body didn't register cold.
It rejected it. Flames stirred beneath his skin. the snow that reached him didn't even survive contact; it hissed into steam before it could settle, vanishing into thin air in brief ghostly wisps.
Sebastian stepped outside anyway.
And immediately regretted how little he could see.
The blizzard was absolute. A total collapse of visibility. The horizon was gone. The sky was gone. Even distance itself felt swallowed. Witcher senses strained, searching for life, for heat signatures, for anything that made sense,
Nothing.
Just endless, moving white.
Sebastian narrowed his eyes.
"That damn portal…Where the fuck am I?"
His voice was barely audible over the storm.
His medallion trembled against his chest, vibrating harder than he had ever felt it before. Not the usual magical warning pulse.
He pressed a hand against it briefly.
"Easy…" he muttered, though there was nothing calm about the situation. "I don't think Faelorn and the others should follow me through that damn portal…"
He turned sharply back toward the house.
That was when his expression changed.
He paused
Then he said, "…Oh, fuck."
There was no portal. No frame. No rune glow. No tear in space. Nothing but frozen wind and a collapsing storm swallowing every trace of its existence.
Sebastian stared at the empty house.
"That was an unstable portal…" he exhaled. "So I'm not just displaced… I'm stranded somewhere."
His eyes scanned the horizon again, slower this time.
"…If I had to guess," he muttered, thinking aloud, "this could be Kovir… maybe the Dragon Mountains… or Skellige mountains…"
He paused as another realization settled in.
"…Or somewhere worse."
His medallion vibrated again, stronger now, almost frantic.
Sebastian exhaled slowly.
"Great…"
He rolled his shoulders once, and the temperature around him shifted immediately.
Flame bloomed from his body, controlled and steady, living heat that pushed back against the blizzard. Snow hissed and evaporated around his body as firelight began to outline him against the white void.
For a moment, he stood like a single ember in an endless white storm.
Then he pushed further, the flames expanded outward in a controlled surge, snow melted in arcs around him, carving temporary paths through the blizzard, thin corridors of visibility that cut through the white chaos.
"Alright," he said quietly, "If anyone else got thrown here… this'll have to do to help them."
He took a step forward.
Then anothern, each step sending heat rippling outward, melting space into something briefly navigable.
But the storm resisted.
The snow thickened where he burned it away, swirling back in unnatural density as if the blizzard itself was refusing to yield ground. Wind surged harder, pushing against his flame, trying to snuff it out or bury it beneath overwhelming pressure.
Sebastian's eyes narrowed.
"…That's not normal."
He extended his hand slightly.
The fire intensified.
Stronger now and wider.
A controlled inferno spreading in every direction, turning the immediate radius into a shifting halo of steam and molten snow. Yet even as his power expanded, the storm pressed back, like an equal and opposite force refusing to be dominated.
For the first time since stepping through the portal, Sebastian felt it clearly.
This place wasn't just cold.
It was hostile, almost alive in its own way.
"…This is really unnatural," he muttered, voice low as he walked forward through his own flame-lit corridor.
And deeper into the white void, where even light struggled to survive,
Sebastian kept moving anyway.
.
.
.
The storm didn't change, that was the first thing Sebastian realized after what felt like hours of walking through it.
No matter how far he pushed forward, no matter how much flame he poured into the frozen world around him, the blizzard remained absolute, an endless white ocean.
Even time felt uncertain here, his boots crunched through snow that immediately tried to swallow his steps, only for heat to push it back again in a constant, exhausting struggle. The wind howled without direction.
Then, finally,
Something broke the pattern.
A shape. At first he thought it was just another distortion in the storm, another trick of white and shadow playing against exhausted senses. But as he moved closer, the silhouette refused to disappear.
It stood against the blizzard, a lighthouse.
Sebastian stopped.
Slowly.
"…No way," he muttered.
It didn't belong here.
Lighthouses were built for coasts. For oceans. For ships lost in dark waters, guiding them back toward land.
But there was no sea.
No shoreline and no sound of waves beneath the stormn only endless snow and screaming wind.
Yet there it was.
Half-swallowed by ice and time.
The lower structure had long since been buried beneath frozen drifts and packed snow, as if the world itself had tried to erase it. Only the upper portion remained visible, jutting out of the blizzard.
The light at its top was gone.
Sebastian narrowed his eyes.
"…That's impossible."
Still, he moved.
The storm fought him harder as he approached the structure, as if it resented the interruption. Wind surged violently, snow thickening in sheets that slammed against his flame body. Yet he pushed through, fire intensifying around him in controlled bursts as he propelled himself upward along the partially buried structure.
Stone groaned beneath his weight as he climbed.
Ice cracked under the pressure of heat.
Sebastian kept going anyway, until he reached the top.
The lantern room was half-frozen, glass panels cracked and fogged with centuries of frost. The mechanism inside was ancient, rusted, barely functional, but still intact enough to respond.
Sebastian placed a hand on it.
A small pulse of flame ran through his fingers.
The lantern ignited and light spilled outward.
Warm, weak at first, then steady thanks to Seb's flame.
Sebastian exhaled and lowered himself against the inner wall, finally sitting beside the light as the wind howled just beyond.
For the first time since arriving, there was something resembling shelter.
"…What is this place," he muttered quietly, staring out into the white void beyond the lighthouse. "It doesn't even match any place I've read about."
His eyes scanned the storm again, searching for meaning where there was none.
"I don't think there's anywhere in this world that snows like this. Not at this level. Not continuously."
Silence followed.
Sebastian leaned back slightly, gaze drifting upward toward the flickering lantern above him.
Then, his expression shifted.
Slowly.
"…Wait a minute."
His voice lowered.
Something clicked behind his eyes, a recognition of a certain possibility.
His eyes sharpened.
"…Could it be…"
/-\
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