[When Winter began spreading across parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in early September, everyone in the United States had something to say about it.
Many preached about the end times as their crops withered beneath frost and cattle became sick in the unseasonably cold weather. Others whispered about witches, devil worshipers who were taking revenge for executed sisters. In the shadows, away from the public eye, Assassins and Templars began to suspect one another was up to something truly awful as a way to seize control of the new country.
Only a small, wealthy family of immigrants from Norway knew the truth.
The family lived in a large home in New York, the father a wealthy businessman who made a very comfortable life for his wife and two daughters. However, the elder daughter, Elsa, was never seen by anyone who lived nearby. Nobody knew that she spent her life locked away in a few rooms in the manor, her parents terrified that someone might find out about her uncontrollable curse.
Unfortunately for them, Elsa could not be contained forever.
Not long after her twenty-first birthday an enormous fight broke out among the family members. The younger sister, Anna, wanted to leave home and marry a man she'd met in the city. Shut away in her bedroom, Elsa heard the discussion and felt loneliness, resentment and anger gradually grow to a fever pitch as she thought of the freedom forever stolen away from her. But when Elsa gathered the courage to join in the conversation, those emotions could not remain bottled up for long. She lashed out, turning the entire bottom floor of the manor into ice before fleeing toward the mountains in a panic when she realized what she'd done.
It was over. She couldn't go back to that life. She wouldn't.
The mysterious winter started shortly after Elsa fled, releasing her magic without restraint after a lifetime of repressing it. She constructed a house entirely out of ice and befriended a few hunters to provide her with food. Whether they complied from fear or something else, Elsa could not say. Regardless of what anybody thought, she was happier than she had ever been before. Complete freedom... for now, anyway.]
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