White Terror Still Haunts the Skies Above Phandalin

The first witnesses spoke softly enough that some dismissed them as road-shaken liars: a white shape above the clouds, a breath of winter on a warm day, livestock scattered as though thunder had grown claws. Such tales are common wherever taverns stand near dangerous roads. Yet the company’s return from Umbrage Hill has ended the comfortable habit of disbelief.

They came back bearing the signs no sensible person invents. Cloaks stiffened with frost. Faces marked by cold-burn. Eyes turned too often toward open sky. The name now spoken over mugs and behind shuttered windows is Cryovain, and each repetition seems to lower the room’s temperature.

Those near Adabra Gwynn’s lonely windmill describe a pale dragon stooping through cloud, its wings cutting the day into terror and shadow. One account claims even the manticore harassing the hill struck at the dragon before turning its fury elsewhere. Another insists the dragon’s passing silenced every bird at once. The Orb cannot swear to either detail, but both have the shape of true fear.

Townmaster’s Hall offers no comfort beyond locked doors and reward notices. Travelers are advised to keep tree lines, low ground, and stone cover within sight. Merchants now look at the sky before counting coin. Children have begun drawing white wings in hearth ash. Phandalin has survived orcs, ruins, and hungry things before, but a dragon changes the size of every question.

If the beast has chosen Icespire Peak as its crown, then the frontier now lives beneath a throne of snow. The roads remain open, but no road is empty. Every cartwheel creak, every sudden wind, every cloud too bright against the sun now carries the same whispered question: how close will Cryovain come next?