Frozen Horizon

When Nackio the Explorer set out from the port of Ashar, with a crew of fifty men - forty sailors, three mages, a map-maker, a physician, four saeli-tuk and himself - he was determined to be the first man to set foot on the Frozen Horizon. Soon, however, upon perceiving the vast mountains of ice with his spyglass, he realised that the environment he expected was much milder than what he had before him.
The Frozen Horizon is a place where the very air becomes too cold to breathe. The Academy mages and saeli-tuk concluded that the abruptness by which the temperature dropped was by no means completely natural, but there had to be some source of magic involved. One of the mages tried to project herself forward, but even that was too difficult, and all she was able to perceive was complete stillness. Another tried to connect with living forms. He found only one, but it was either unwilling or unable to communicate. He could not tell if it was a plant or an animal, or anything. Other than that, there was no other life. The third mage tried to control the natural elements, but did not manage to cause a dent to the immense ice. All three concluded that there was no way to move forward, and possibly nothing to discover.
Nackio refused to give up. Instead, he ordered his ship around the strange phenomena, but was defeated once more, since this took his ship dangerously close to the area where the mists are thick, and no human sailor even dared go into the mists. One of the saeli-tuk, a bright engineer, proposed a device that could be projected with a small catapult, which could collect at least some of the material of the surface for study. However, when the device passed a point, the rope which held it snapped. They tried flying, they tried going underwater. They tried combining all the forms of magic and ingenuity they possessed to find a way through this frozen space. To no avail.
After two years, the expedition returned. No life save this unknown one could survive on the Frozen Horizon, they said. Until now, no one has managed to find out why, or how this form survives. Or even if it is still there.