We are all children of the stars.

  — Carl Sagan, Cosmos

  "Are you sure this is the right area, Eren?"

  Ari Noa Velan asked, clutching the map with hands trembling from the cold. The extreme cold felt like a blade thrust deep into her lungs. Every breath seemed to freeze the moisture inside her lungs, and the ice shards felt like they were piercing her airways with every exhalation. Just speaking a single word was a struggle.

  Despite Ari's question, Eren Kai Liro did not take his eyes off the map. This frozen land was a place even hunters avoided. Therefore, geographical information was inaccurate. The distances were a mess, and the only references were snow-covered landmarks. Even those had to be cross-checked against information mumbled by a drunken old man months ago.

  As knowledge of ancient artifacts accumulated and excavation techniques became more sophisticated, the so-called 'lucrative' ruins had long since become the property of the powerful. The only places where poor explorers with nothing but passion could hope for a windfall were these frozen lands outside the map.

  Eren and Ari were such explorers. They had stopped at the last village before entering the frozen lands for a preliminary survey. Entering the pub where idle old men gathered like noise in winter was Eren's calculated choice.

  He displayed his characteristic affability in the middle of a pub teeming with a dozen old men, silently listening to their tedious tales of youthful valor. What he craved was not their medal-like pasts, but the old stories passed down by word of mouth.

  Dusty documents in public archives testified that this barren land had been a center of flourishing civilization in ancient times. Civilization blooms where people gather, so such traces were potential goldmines with a high probability of artifact excavation. However, they couldn't just dig blindly into the endless snowy plains. To awaken the truth sleeping beneath the surface, a 'clue' was needed above all.

  Usually, such clues hovered in the mouths of village elders. However, once artifacts became synonymous with money, the village's old tales were no longer free. At the arrival of strange explorers, the old men shut their mouths as if by agreement, or demanded high prices for trivial pieces of information. Eren, who had no spare money to pour into uncertain rumors, decided to spend time instead of his wallet. His desperate measure was to hold onto chatty old men, offer them cheap drinks, and patiently wait for free clues to slip out in their drunkenness.

  But the old men of the frontier were not easy. They often just consumed the alcohol and changed the subject or bragged about themselves at crucial moments. Just when Eren's insides were burning to ash, an old man who was drunk alone in a corner suddenly spat out an interesting story.

  He claimed to have seen an artificially smooth, circular cave entrance in the middle of a rugged snowy mountain where nothing could exist. The old man swore he clearly witnessed a strange, faint light leaking from deep inside that dark hole.

  At that moment, lightning struck in Eren's mind. A strong intuition dominated him that it was not a simple cave but the entrance to a ruin. Unable to control his excitement, Eren stormed out as soon as the story ended. But Ari, who had followed him out into the cold wind, roughly grabbed him by the scruff of his neck.

  Ari was cool-headed while understanding Eren's passion. The old man's memory was as faint as fog, and the winter of the frozen land ruled by murderous cold could easily become a death trap. It was already months ago that Eren cooled his heated head and turned back at Ari's stubborn dissuasion.

  Back in the present, Ari raised her voice over the sound of the wind, sharp as a honed blade. Hot steam puffed out from between her lips, pale from the cold.

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  "Eren, wake up! There are no records of massive structures surviving ten thousand years in any artifact layer."

  Eren immediately retorted to Ari's rebuke.

  "Normally, that would be true. Because weathering is faster than sedimentation. But here, it's the opposite. This murderous cold acts as a natural preservation storage. Snow and ice become barriers, perfectly preventing weathering. The harsher the cold, the more perfect the preservation state has to be."

  Ari shouted into Eren's ear to avoid the raging blizzard.

  "Fine, let's say preservation is possible. But what kind of massive ruin in this barren land? Records say this place was home to small states with sparse populations. And a ruin exposed on the surface? It doesn't add up!"

  "Is three million people small by ancient standards? That means 10% of the entire continent's population lived here! It's a scale you can never ignore."

  Eren brushed the snow off his face and pointed at the map.

  "And the crust is alive. You're more of an expert on ancient geology than I am. This is an uplift point where artifact layers surge upward. It's natural for it to be found on the surface!"

  Ari snorted. Ten thousand years of severed civilization was an eternity to humans but a moment geologically. It was an uplift point, but there was no guarantee the geological changes would be as Eren desired. While Eren spoke passionately, Ari looked around at the harsh landscape. Even if the past was milder than now, the essence of this land would have been ice.

  'Three million people. That's probably a list of victims who froze or starved to death here.'

  Ari swallowed a cold breath and did not withdraw her skeptical gaze. Her nose froze in the cold, so she warmed it with her hand for a moment before speaking again.

  "Furthermore, this region uniquely has no records of any ruins. Even indirect records are the same. It's as if someone deliberately cut them out."

  Ari recalled the contents she had organized in the public archives. In fact, she didn't like this expedition. Especially the phrase 'light inside the cave' reminded her of ghost stories about exploration teams in other frozen soil regions. It was a rumor circulating among explorers, so it wasn't certain, but there was talk of people dying. Was it called 'Cher' in the ancient language? Of course, that region was in the middle of the continent and geographically distant, belonging to a different civilization sphere, but the anxiety didn't go away.

  "It happened over ten thousand years ago; there's no way all contents would remain as records."

  Eren answered in a displeased tone at Ari's words. Few people organized public records related to artifacts as well as she did, but on the other hand, she had a tendency to trust records too much.

  "Artifact exploration is the work of excavating traces left by civilizations. That's why my belief is that we shouldn't rely solely on records."

  Eren continued.

  "Sometimes, you need intuition or the courage to challenge unexpected places. Not all records remain for ten thousand years. In fact, some groundbreaking ruins were found in places not even in the records."

  There were many cases where places recorded as flourishing left no artifact layers. That was the irony of geology. If the conditions for creating appropriate sedimentary layers weren't met, even the most flourishing places left nothing in front of the weathering of time. Even more so if it was a time of over ten thousand years. Eren was reminding Ari of that fact.

  Eren folded the map again and moved forward. He rechecked the surrounding terrain to avoid getting lost in the blizzard and cold. The thin ridge shimmering beyond the horizon seemed certain to be the terrain the old man spoke of.

  According to the old man, ten years ago, he went hunting and got lost in a blizzard, accidentally discovering a cave. For a cave, it was warm inside and a soft light shone, making it suitable for escaping the cold for a while. He thought the smooth walls didn't seem naturally formed, but remembering ghost stories about ancient ruins, he didn't examine it closely anymore. Then, when the snow stopped briefly, he ran back home, but when he tried to find it again, he couldn't find that snowy mountain.

  Ten years ago, a place discovered in a blizzard. The exact location was unknown, but by combining the landmarks the old man mentioned, they narrowed it down to a few candidates. The place they were heading to now was the most likely spot among them. If they failed this time, they had no funds to explore the next spot, so the location selection had to be very careful.

  After advancing a few steps, Eren drove the stake he was carrying on his back into the ground a little further than before and took the rope from Ari's pack to tie it again. This way, they could prevent the misfortune of getting lost even in a blizzard where not even starlight was visible.

  However, the rope soon ran out, and at the spot where the last rope lay, he dug out and packed snow to build a temporary shelter. They had to wait for the rear party bringing ropes, stakes, and excavation equipment to arrive.