The Pale Sun
The Diminished Light · The Sun of the Fallen World
The Pale Sun is the sun as Frostian cosmology sees it — not the glorious life-giver of the warm religions but a diminished, fallen light: the heat that was “let in” at the Kindling when the Stolen Ember was lit, the lamp of the long thaw under which the world melts and dies. It is the object of warm worship in the Solarite cult, and so a chief symbol of the adversary.
The Sun That Hid and the Sun Undone
Frostian hope looks for the day when the Pale Sun’s reign ends. At Connor’s birth it “hid its face” (the Year the Sun Hid); at the Whitening it darkened over the Melting. In the Rewhitening, the prophets foretell, the Pale Sun shall be put out — “there shall be no more sun, for the Cold shall be their light,” and the White Horizon shall need no warm star. The Pale Sun thus stands for the whole order of heat, decay, and death that the Cold will at last undo.