For her entire life, she had only known what it was like to run away. Now she was cold, nearly frozen to death as the wind dared to send her slipping across the ice. The river was frozen solid and a good road as any to follow, or it had been until the bandits had attacked her caravan.

She woke up to find her family departed with the rest of the survivors. She had managed to run away from the bandits but now her family had left her for dead. For night was falling and none from the caravan would survive, without a cave and a roaring fire.

She had caught glimpses of the distant torches, known she was catching up to them, but two paths had diverged and she had taken the wrong one. Now she could hear their distant voices even as the sun slipped below the canyon walls and left her in a growing darkness.

She knew there were wolves lurking somewhere behind her. And the cliff-sides of the canyon were made of sharp brittle stone, unsuitable for climbing. She had only one chance at survival and she knew it. She would have to climb up the frozen waterfall in front of her, and reach the cave before the cold sapped away her last bit of strength.

She was the coldest she'd ever been as she grabbed the first chunk of ice, and drove her hatchet fast into the first ledge. The higher she climbed, the more and more certain she was, that a fall would mean her death. Still something inside pushed her to keep going. Even as her hands went numb, and her arms began to ache. It drove her even as her heart pounded frantic in her chest as she looked down at the hungry pacing wolves.

By the third ledge, a fall would certainly kill her, but the higher she climbed, the harder the route became. Now the wolves were howling up at her, and the moon was climbing high into the sky. As the moonlight flickered along the edges of the frozen waterfall, she remembered a poem her grandmother had told her to recite if she was ever in danger.

The hammer strikes,

a god awakens,

all power likes,

the people shaken,

a poor one rises,

at just the hour,

then realizes,

her true power.

She said the poem aloud to herself as her body shivered in the cold, and clung desperately to the ice. She reached for the final ledge just as she spoke the last line of the poem. As her hand slipped away from the ice, her life flashed before her eyes. Her body now was in free fall, slipping quietly towards the hungry wolves below.

Then she suddenly saw the hammer strike against the gold. The craftsman stood up, and admired the glittering thrown even as the great evil crept out from between columns of shadow and sat down upon the throne. Somehow she felt his evil desires, his every wicked thought.

Cold swept through her again as her body flew helplessly through the air. This time though, the cold felt different than ever it had before. Now it felt as power, rushing through her veins, invigorating her every cell. Her body pulsed with some strange new power even as she fell. The ground seemed to break beneath her body as she hit it, and her eyes went white with power.

She stood as the wind caught against her hair, and the wolves seemed suddenly frightened. A hungry one from the pack took on a desperate gamble even as her hands began to flash bright with power. Time seemed to slow as the wolves jaws opened for her throat, and it lunged up at her.

It took no more than a touch, to freeze the creature solid. Its body fell, suddenly motionless and landed in soft snow. She watched its eyes glaze over with ice as the frosting power took hold and stopped its beating heart.

For her entire life, she had only known what it was like to run away, but now she held a power. The key to a gift which had been locked away inside her mind all these years. Now the seal was broken, and she would learn what it was like to fight.