Read Froststar — Free Preview
The first three chapters of Froststar (Book One), free to read right here. A world falls. A princess lands on Earth. And a small white shape follows her through the gate…
Chapter 1: The Planet That Broke
Veyra’s sky broke at dusk.
It did not darken the way a storm darkens. No clouds gathered. No warning rolled in across the horizon. The heavens simply split—as if something beyond the world had struck them with one brutal, deliberate blow. A heartbeat earlier, the aurora had still been flowing above the city, violet and glacier-blue and silver-white, beautiful in that quiet Veyran way that made eternity feel ordinary.
Then a white beam tore through it.
The aurora shattered like glass.
JJ stood in the western gallery of the palace, one hand on the crystal railing, and watched the sky split open.
The second thing she heard was not thunder.
It was metal. A deep mechanical groan rose through the air, above and below at once, vibrating through the palace stone and the bones in her chest. In the distance, the city shield flared into visibility at last—a blue dome flickering under repeated impact. One strike. Then another. Cracks spread across it like frozen lightning.
The shield failed.
White fire poured over the city.
“JJ.”
She turned.
Queen Seris was already striding toward her, silver hair half-fallen from its careful arrangement, one sleeve scorched black. On Veyra, a world of crystal, ice, and impossible light, soot on her mother’s skin looked more frightening than blood.
“Come,” Seris said, closing hard around her wrist. “Now.”
JJ did not ask why.
They ran through corridors already breaking into panic. Courtiers clutching bundles. Guards with cracked ice-armor. Servants carrying children wrapped in blankets. The air smelled of scorched metal and torn atmosphere—wrong, violent, alien.
They descended into the mountain beneath the palace.
At the base of the final stair, King Cael was waiting.
He wore no crown. Only battle armor threaded with living geometric light—the law-lines of Veyra’s royal blood. JJ had never seen fear on her father’s face before. Not weakness. Not panic. Something worse: the terrible calm of a man who already knew how this ended.
“Is it ready?” he asked Seris.
“As ready as it can be.”
JJ looked from one of them to the other. “What’s happening?”
Cael crouched so their eyes met.
“They came for the core.”
Every child on Veyra knew what that meant: the crystal heart of the planet, the source of the aurora, the gates, the terrible order and beauty of their world.
The mountain shuddered.
Seris crossed to the sealed chamber door and pressed her hand to the frost-carved sigil. The chamber opened onto an active gate array, silver-blue energy coiling through its lines, the center folding space into a trembling ring.
JJ looked at it and understood.
“You’re sending me away.”
“We’re sending you where they can’t reach,” Cael said.
“No.”
Seris took JJ’s face in both hands. “You have to live.”
There was no time to argue. Outside the chamber, the palace wards screamed. A white line burned through the outer barrier. Black-armored figures spilled into the corridor beyond.
Cael raised one hand. A wall of ice surged upward.
“Go!”
Seris pressed an ice-blue shard on a chain into JJ’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “Remember,” she whispered. “Remember who you are.”
Then she shoved her into the gate.
Space folded.
JJ twisted on instinct, looking back as the world tore into light. She saw Cael step into the line of fire, royal law-lines blazing across his armor. She saw Seris at the edge of the array, pale and unbroken, hair whipping in the wind of the gate. She saw the invaders flooding the corridor.
Then the planet itself cried out.
A sound rose from somewhere deep below, too vast to name.
They had struck the core.
White light swallowed everything. Through it, JJ saw one last thing: a small white shape hurtling after her, tumbling through the collapsing gate like a piece of snow that refused to be left behind.
Then Earth’s rain slammed into her lungs.