polar day and polar night
Lu Chen, once the youngest Paladin Commander of the holy city Dawnsplendor, is exiled to the Dark Abyss Borderlands after his sacred light-fire power violently and inexplicably mutates during a ritual, severely injuring his comrade Adrian. Stripped of his rank and the emblem of his order, he arrives at the desolate, frozen wasteland known as the Everfrost Wastes via a rail-disc.
Stepping onto a vast, eerie frozen lake illuminated by ghostly blue ice, Lu Chen is immediately attacked by predatory Shadowspawn. In desperation, he unleashes his now-unstable, destructive pale flames, killing some but attracting more. As one nearly kills him, the attack is abruptly halted.
Tang Xiao, the enigmatic Keeper of the Wastes, appears. With terrifying power, he instantly **freezes the attacking Shadowspawn and even Lu Chen's chaotic light-fire mid-eruption**, creating frozen sculptures of light and shadow. Tang Xiao is utterly cold and dismissive, viewing Lu Chen only as noisy "Light Realm scum." He commands Lu Chen to extinguish his unstable flame and offers him only one "choice": walk into the deadly Shatterbone Rift** to be devoured by its horrors.
As Tang Xiao issues his cruel ultimatum, a violent tremor rocks the cavern. A massive fissure erupts with magma nearby. Tang Xiao reacts instantly, revealing his true power: he unleashes a torrent of deep blue, darkness-tinged cold to battle the molten heat, ultimately sealing the fissure with a colossal, cracking ice dome. This effort costs him dearly.
The exertion partially dislodges Tang Xiao's hood, revealing a horrifying secret: half his face is covered in obsidian-black, lifeless "stone"** – Shadow Etching, a corruption caused by wielding extreme cold against elemental forces. Worse, he uses his own ice power to form living blue ice seals crawling on his skin, desperately holding the corruption at bay. He reveals this is the price he paid trying to stop a disaster in his homeland, Cinderkeep, and blames the Light Realm's "holy flames" for starting the world's elemental imbalance.
Exhausted and in agony from the effort and his spreading corruption, Tang Xiao turns his icy, murderous gaze back on Lu Chen. Declaring that Lu Chen's remaining "spark" of light-fire will be used to reinforce his "ice coffin" sealing the magma, Tang Xiao summons his deadly cold power again, this time with clear lethal intent against the exiled paladin.