YCH from the talented  Yanus!

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Even as I emerged from the frigid forest, the world was still wrong. It was not nearly so bad as it had been when those otherworldly beasts stalked me through the forest. I didn't know whether they had been sending me in pointless circles, or if some ethereal power had kept sending me back to that clearing, but nothing there was right. Even after defeating the creatures, their influence still apparently lingered, with the world coated in frost.

I held my side and snarled in frustration. The chill wind tugged at my wings and pulled the breath from my lungs, while inflaming the injury I had received in battle with the creatures. One of them had scored a good strike there, and the wound had pained me with every step out of the forest. It didn't add up. They had seemed so bestial, leaping and snapping without care like nothing more than hungry predators. But...there was something darkly intelligent about their behaviour otherwise. No wild bear or pack of wolves would trap its prey in a maze of snow. Or plunge the world into sudden, unnatural chill. They hadn't just hunted me. They had toyed with me.

But now, at least, I was free of that cursed place. I sat at the edge of the glistening lake, grateful for some reprieve. I hadn't expected frost or snow. I hadn't even expected a violent encounter. Simple wild beasts I could deal with. Hungry predators looking for a quick meal tended to run pretty quickly once they were shown some real danger. But those creatures hadn't...

A shift in the clouds above caught my eye. Finally free of the accursed forest with its unbroken, rime-crusted canopy, the clear sky was almost dazzling. At first, I though it was little more than a shifting cloud. But no, it moved far too quickly. Far too certainly.

Then an eye opened in the cloud.

A massive head raised from the mountain, its eye glowing ethereal and white. A serpentine body unwound from the mountain peak. The creature was impossibly vast, curled around the mountain like a lizard basking on a warm stone. It must have been hours of travel away, and yet it gazed down upon me as though I stood clear in front of it.

It...it was just like the creatures that had attacked me in the forest.

I listed my lip and snarled. Of course. Of course there would be no rest for me, not now, not out here. No rest for a wear warrior on the road. I grabbed at my wounded side and rose to my feet again. This beast, whatever it was, must be made to pay. If it was the progenitor of those creatures, whatever they had been, it would not get away with it. It would not send them after anyone else.

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"Stop, traveler," the massive voice boomed before me. "There is no further way."

The journey up the mountain had been long and arduous. The snowstorm had calmed, but the occasional frigid wind made flight a risky prospect, so I had chosen to make the hike on foot. No more of the beasts had hindered my progress, but the chill wind and the steep slopes made the task difficult enough.

I looked up at the massive monster before me, surprised that it had spoken. The beasts might have shown a hint of intelligence, but they also had seemed primal, hungry predators, not ones to hold conversation.

I growled and drew my sword. "Why did you send those beasts?" I said through gritted teeth.

The creature lowered its massive head, inspecting me with its narrow eye. The eye was a solid, faintly glowing white, with no pupil. The seconds stretched on as it took one, long breath. "Beasts?" it said at last.

"Those creatures, in the snow!" I raised my sword, growling. "Unnatural winter descends on the land, creatures that look just like you harry me in my travels, and now you are here, on the mountain. Is it all a coincidence?"

"It is no coincidence." The intense boom to the creature's voice had left, and it now spoke in long breaths, like the wind itself over the mountaintops. "Nightfall."

I growled and stepped back, readying my sword. I looked to the sky - broad daylight, though clouds ringed the mountaintop. Was this some new spell, to bring about night in midday?

But nothing happened. The sky remained as bright as ever, the sun beating down through the hole in the clouds over the mountain.

"You were attacked, traveler?" The voice was still like a breath of wind, but with an underlying intensity now. "By small reptillian beasts?"

"That looked just like you," I replied. I didn't understand. If the creature meant me harm, it would have done something more by now. Why send those creatures after me, only to talk to me now, so plainly?

"You are correct, these creatures are children of mine. But it was not I who sent them." Another long, deep breath, dragging out the moments. "It was an old enemy who stole them from me. Nightfall, the frost nightmare."
The chill in the wind picked up as the creature breathed those words, as though this Nightfall floated through the air and riled at the invocation of its name.

The seconds stretched on like minutes, but I dared not break the silence.

"Traveler," the creature finally said. It looks me up and down, its pupil-less eye taking in every part of me, even what could not be seen. "You are an adventurer, are you not?"

I couldn't speak, but only nodded in response.

"Then...I have a task for you."