Northstar Vale nixëloss

The trek northward had been a steady ascent into thinner, colder air, an altitude that finally felt somewhat appropriate to her station. But here, the earth abruptly fell away. Aerith halted on a wind-scoured ridge, golden gaze descending into a vast vale scooped out of the mountain’s granite heart like a bowl waiting to be filled.
The fall was steep, a tangled tapestry of frozen scree and shadowed timber that would daunt a spirit weighed down by raw instinct. The helçariel moved with the weightless grace of a specter navigating a downdraft. Her paws, silent and precise, found purchase on ice-slicked stone where others would find only a fall. Her snowy white coat, marked with the elegant charcoal script of her kind, made her appear as a shard of the glacier itself, detached and drifting downward into the tree line.
As she descended, her mind turned over the fragments of lore she had gathered, lowland whispers, crude and unfinished. A fairy, the stories claimed, deep within the forest, that conquered a valley, leading a haven for those in need. She reached the valley floor, her posture rigidly upright, plumed tail held like a frozen banner behind her, gaze sweeping across for any movement that might arrive.