Snowflake in Snowfall

For what feels like a millennia their people have lived in winter.  Crops were made useless and beasts were becoming increasingly scarce. So scarce infact they recently have resorted to cannibalism, attacking other villages who also barely had anything so they could eat at least a little bit longer.  Wise men predict their people will die off, they will be forgotten like a snowflake in snowfall.  Feeling they were out of options they gathered their remaining resources and made a crusade for the west. 
Wise men said this is where winter ends. 

They were lead by Derrid Ironback, called this way for his strong posture and surviving twelve arrow shots at his back.  A caravan of wise men and the remaining  able bodied men of the village ventured to the west.  The wise men told them where to go and the soldiers kept them safe.  They traveled for what felt like weeks, Derrid counted five, as every week the frostbite took one finger of his. 

The men were climbing the mountain separating their region from the unknown, they only had three men and one wise man who was on the brink of death as well. 

In his final moments, Derrid asked him where they should go, and they should keep west. 

Reaching the other side of the mountain, Derrid and the men only saw a vast whiteness that destroyed their hearts, but they kept going west.  They ventured for a month as well, one by one the men fell, but Derrid persisted.

Derrid lost to the neverending winter his fingers, then his toes, one leg and an arm.  In a month he also lost his life, becoming another victim to the inescapable winter.  Another snowflake in snowfall.