I decided to include the one-page edit version for completeness. Enjoy!

In the depths of the laboratory a fire warded against the howling winter outside. The magician sat at his table, and across from him, the oracle turned a crystal in her hands: a sickle curve gleaming blue, its depths hazed with white.

"It's beautiful," she said. "Tell me its story."

Brynn spoke slowly, his voice distant. "Long ago, when I was young and ambitious, my research uncovered a legend written in old Fomorian. It spoke of a gate to the gods, perhaps to Erinn itself, and at the same time of an artifact, a 'heart of ice' that could control the elements somehow. Maybe the two were one, it wasn't clear; but the mystery of it compelled me. I argued my master into allowing me to seek this legend, and commissioned a squad of mercenaries from a guild called Citadel. Our route took us through the Hoarfrost. We faced kobolds, yetis, the treacherous ice itself, but beyond those depths, we found our goal, a realm where spring never came. Vaults and corridors of ice stood unmelting, and the chill bit deeper than humans were meant to bear. And deep within that harsh place, we found a great door, with glyphs of warding long faded. Beyond it was a vast temple, open to the sky. I was ecstatic at my success...but it soon became clear how deeply I'd erred in my understanding of what I had truly sought. Gate to the gods; a heart of ice that could control winter...it was all true, but the only mystery we unveiled that day was death. It came down through the roof: a silver-white dragon made of winter itself. It looked at me, and I felt as though it knew every fiber of my being and then dismissed each one. When it breathed, it was the howl of a snowstorm, raising a forest of ice; and when it roared, the ice shattered. Those who were in the wrong place..." He didn't finish, and Tieve shivered.

"It was toying with us. Such brute control of elements was beyond any magic I'd ever seen, and far beyond our match. But those mercenaries were brave; three stood against it, to give the rest a chance to flee. I helped pull the fallen onto the sled; alive or dead, I didn't know. Those of us who remained, pulled for our lives down those endless tunnels, until exhaustion dropped us. Those who had stayed to fight...didn't return. We had to return by stealth, where we'd passed in strength before, only half the number that had set out." He tapped the crystal. "That, we found later, caught in one woman's armor: the tip of a claw. It was my only reward for that journey, aside from my life. Such as it is. And questions whose answers recede out of reach, and winters that keep growing colder."

"Brynn," Tieve said. There was a strange expression on her soft face: sad, and kind, and indescribably old. "Your life is worth more than you think. Though you are not at the center of fate, you have touched it. And someday...all questions will be answered."

His throat went dry. "You speak as an oracle?" he asked.

"Call it that, if it comforts you. But the truth is yet to come. All winters must end. And when this one does...yours will, as well." Her presence suddenly seemed vast in the dim room. She reached out, her cool fingertips brushing his cheek, leaving fear, and longing, and a deep tremor of awe within him. Her eyes filled the world.

Brynn startled awake from his dream, its fragments already fading. There had been a dear friend, closer than anyone he knew in waking life, and an old pain of loss. And...hope? It was faint, a soft flutter like wings around his heart. "All winters must end," he whispered, and lay awake for awhile, listening to the night as it turned toward dawn.