The scream of the wind was a constant companion in Stone Creek, a weary dirge that scraped against the sod roofs and moaned through the cracks in the Weeping Glacier's tortured face. Inside Borin's cramped, smoke-filled hut – more a burrow reinforced with salvaged timber and glacial stone – the sound was muffled to a deep, rhythmic groan. The air hung thick with the smell of peat smoke, wet fur, cheap grain alcohol, and the underlying tang of metal from Borin's ice-cutting tools hung on the wall.
Tae Mu-Ryong – 'North Wind' – sat hunched on a low, hide-covered stool opposite the older man. A chipped earthenware cup of harsh, home-brewed liquor warmed his hands, a feeble counterpoint to the unnatural chill radiating from his concealed left arm, tucked close to his body. Borin, his face a roadmap of windburn and deep crevasses carved by decades squinting into blizzards, refilled his own cup from a blackened clay jug.
"Another week," Borin grunted, his voice like rocks grinding together. He took a long pull, the liquor barely making him blink. "Glacier's gettin' meaner. Clean ice's buried deeper. Takes twice the work for half the haul." He gestured vaguely towards the groaning mountain with his cup. "Used to sing, y'know? When I was a pup. A low hum, steady. Now? Just pain. Just dyin'."
Tae nodded, sipping his own liquor. It tasted like fire and regret, but it was warmth, however fleeting. "Hard land," he offered, keeping his voice neutral. It was the closest he could come to agreement without revealing the depths of his own understanding of corrupted ice.
"Hard?" Borin barked a humorless laugh. "Hard's the bones of the earth, boy. This?" He tapped his temple. "This is spite. The mountain's pissed. Been pissed since..." He trailed off, his gaze sharpening as it landed on Tae. "Since before you blew in with your storm-cloud face and that chill clingin' to ya like a shroud." He took another drink, his eyes never leaving Tae's. "What storm blew you here, North Wind? Not many choose the Weepin' Glacier's doorstep unless they're runnin' from somethin' worse."
The question hung in the smoky air, sharp as an ice shard. Tae met Borin's gaze, the man's weathered face unreadable. It wasn't suspicion, exactly. More like the assessment of a man who'd seen too many desperate souls wash up in Stone Creek, knowing most carried burdens heavier than any sledge. Tae chose his words with the care of navigating a crevasse.
"Storm's a good word," Tae said, his voice low. "One that tears things down. Roots. Walls. Names." He swirled the liquor in his cup. "You run until the wind changes, or until you find a ledge that won't crumble underfoot." He didn't look away. "Stone Creek's a ledge. For now."
Borin's eyes narrowed slightly. He grunted, a noncommittal sound. "Ledges freeze over fast. Especially with the chill you carry." He pointed his chin towards Tae's concealed arm. "Anya's got eyes sharp as frost-crow's. She lets you stay 'cause you work. 'Cause you keep that cold leashed." He leaned forward slightly, the smell of peat and liquor intensifying. "But leashes snap, boy. Seen it happen. Man gets desperate, or scared, or just plain tired… the cold takes over. Then we all pay." He drained his cup. "You runnin' to somethin', or just runnin' from?"
The question struck deeper than Borin could know. Running from the Emperor's hounds, from the burning ruins of his home, from the memory of his father dragged away, from Yun's sacrifice. Running towards… what? Vengeance felt like a distant, frozen star. Survival was the only immediate destination. He couldn't speak of the Mu-Ryong, of the Frostblade, of the Watcher. The truth was a death sentence, for him and for anyone who heard it.
"Right now," Tae said, forcing his voice steady, "I'm just trying not to freeze on the ledge." He met Borin's gaze again, letting the man see the weariness, the raw edge of grief he couldn't fully hide, but nothing more. "The work keeps the cold at bay. Mostly."
Borin studied him for a long, silent moment. The wind groaned outside, emphasizing the stillness within the hut. Finally, the ice-cutter nodded, a slow, deliberate dip of his chin. "Work does that," he conceded, his voice losing some of its edge. "Keeps the ghosts quiet too, sometimes." He reached for the jug again. "Just remember, North Wind. This ledge? We all stand on it. You let your cold crack the ice beneath you, we all fall." He refilled Tae's cup without asking. "Drink up. Dawn comes early, and the glacier don't care about our storms."
They drank in silence after that, the unspoken understanding hanging between them – a fragile truce built on shared hardship and mutual caution. Tae knew Borin saw the shadows he carried. Borin knew Tae wouldn't speak of them. In Stone Creek, that was often enough.
Across the frozen village, in the shared, cramped darkness of their corner in the communal Ice Cellar, Lian lay on her pile of furs. The cellar's usual smells – fish, roots, damp earth – were a familiar blanket, but tonight they offered no comfort. Tae's desperate question echoed in the hollow space the Watcher had left inside her: "Could you try to reach it?"
The thought was a serpent coiling in her gut. Reach the Watcher? The entity that had hollowed her out like a rotten log, that had puppeted her body with grotesque ease, that had spoken with Yun's sacrifice dripping like poison from its stolen lips. The violation had been absolute, a psychic rape that left her feeling perpetually unclean, perpetually watched, even in its absence. The silence it left wasn't peace; it was the echoing void after an explosion, filled only by the phantom vibrations of its terrible presence.
Yet… Yun. Her little brother. Swallowed by the darkness after the Watcher's bargain. Was he screaming in some lightless pit? Was he already gone, consumed? Or worse… was he becoming like it? The not-knowing was a slow torture, a constant drip of acid on her raw nerves. Tae's plea, born of helpless fury and brotherly love, had ignited a terrifying spark of possibility. Could the connection work both ways? Could she… tap the silence? Not to invite it back, never that, but… to listen? To maybe catch a whisper, a fragment, a hint of Yun's fate?
The idea was madness. It was poking a sleeping dragon with a stick. It was opening a door she'd sworn to weld shut. But the image of Yun's face – not the possessed mask the Watcher wore, but her brother's, scared and determined as he stepped towards the gateway – flashed behind her closed eyelids. The spark flared into a reckless ember.
Just a touch, she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Just… listen. Like straining to hear a voice in a blizzard.
She took a shaky breath, trying to calm the frantic pulse in her throat. She focused inward, past the numbness, past the echoing silence, towards the place where the Watcher's crushing weight had resided. It felt like probing a missing limb – a phantom ache radiating from an absence. She imagined the silence not as emptiness, but as a vast, dark lake. She cast a mental thread, fragile as spider silk, into its depths.
Yun? The thought was a desperate whisper flung into the void. Are you there?
Nothing. Only the profound, heavy silence, pressing in, amplifying the frantic thud of her own heartbeat. It felt foolish. Pointless.
She tried again, pouring more focus, more need into the thought. Watcher! The name itself sent a jolt of terror through her. What did you do with him? Is he alive?
Silence. Deeper, heavier. The dark lake remained undisturbed. Not even a ripple. A wave of despair washed over her, cold and sickening. Stupid. Reckless. Pointless. She was shouting into a tomb.
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, frustration warring with fear. One more time. She gathered every shred of her will, every ounce of her love for her brother, every drop of her terror and hatred for the Watcher. She forged it into a single, sharp mental spike and thrust it into the center of the silent void within her.
ANSWER ME!
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
It wasn't an answer. It was an invasion.
The fragile mental spike didn't pierce silence; it shattered a dam. A torrent of pure, malevolent presence exploded into the hollow space it had vacated. It wasn't the crushing weight she remembered; it was a shrieking vortex of alien cold and ancient malice. It didn't fill the silence; it annihilated it, replacing it with a roaring cacophony of fractured thoughts, glacial screams, and the grinding of tectonic plates of frozen hate.
Lian's body arched off the furs, rigid as an iron bar. A silent scream tore through her mind, ripping through her defenses like wet parchment. Her eyes flew open, but they didn't see the cellar's dark ceiling. They saw infinite cold – swirling galaxies of black ice, stars dying in supernovae of absolute zero, the vast, lidless eye of something older than mountains turning its gaze upon her insignificant soul. Her mouth opened in a soundless rictus.
The Watcher hadn't descended. It hadn't been invited. It had been waiting. Lurking just beyond the threshold of her perception, coiled around the edges of the silence it had created. Her desperate probe hadn't summoned it; it had simply given it the crack it needed to flood back in.
Tae pushed open the heavy timber door of the Ice Cellar, the scream of the wind momentarily loud before the door thudded shut behind him. He carried a small, precious bundle of frost-kissed kale and bitterroot greens traded for an extra hour hauling ice blocks. The dim lantern light revealed Lian sitting cross-legged near the small, permitted brazier, a battered tin pot steaming gently over its low heat. Her back was to him.
"Managed to get some greens," he said, his voice rough from the cold and the lingering tension from his conversation with Borin. "Marta said they might help with…" He trailed off.
Lian hadn't moved. She was utterly still. Too still.
"Lian?" He took a step forward, unease prickling his spine. "Did you hear—"
She turned.
It wasn't Lian.
The face was hers, pale and delicate beneath the cellar's gloom. But the eyes… The eyes were pools of absolute darkness, deeper than the cellar's farthest corners, swallowing the weak lantern light. No pupil, no iris, just fathomless voids that pulsed with a cold, alien intelligence. And the smile. It stretched her lips wide, far wider than humanly possible, revealing too many teeth that seemed unnaturally sharp in the flickering light. It was a predator's grin, filled with cosmic amusement and chilling contempt. The air around her crackled with unseen frost, the heat from the brazier seeming to recoil.
"Little Tae Mu-Ryong," the thing that was not Lian purred. The voice was a distorted symphony – Lian's higher tones layered over a guttural, grinding bass that vibrated in Tae's bones. "How… domestic. Fetching vegetables. Playing at survival in this frozen midden heap." The head tilted, a grotesque parody of curiosity. "You called, didn't you? Whispered my name in the dark, begged for a sign… and now I grace your hovel." The smile widened impossibly. "Cat got your tongue? Or is it just… terror?"
Tae froze. Every muscle locked. The bundle of greens fell from his numb fingers, scattering on the frozen earth floor. The unnatural cold in his arm flared violently, a raging blizzard contained beneath furs, resonating with the monstrous presence before him. His hand instinctively flew towards the concealed Frostblade shard beneath his tunic, its familiar, hungry chill the only anchor in the sudden maelstrom of horror.
"Watcher," Tae snarled, the word ripped from his throat, raw and venomous. "Get out of her!"
The possessed figure laughed – a sound like glaciers calving and bones snapping. "Out? But she invited me, in her clumsy, desperate way. Such a touching display of sisterly concern." Not-Lian rose with unnatural, fluid grace, movements that were all wrong, joints bending too far, too smoothly. "You wanted answers, Tae. You pestered your broken sister to poke the sleeping dragon. Well? Ask your questions. Before the ice claims your courage entirely."
Rage warred with terror, threatening to choke him. He wanted to lunge, to tear the thing out of Lian with his bare hands, Frostblade or not. But the sight of his sister's face contorted by that monstrous presence held him paralyzed. He couldn't risk her. He forced words past the frozen lump in his throat, aiming for defiance, landing on strained fury.
"Why here? Why torment us?" He gestured wildly at the cellar, the village beyond. "What game are you playing?"
"Game?" The Watcher chuckled, a low, grinding sound. "This is no game, little dragon. This is consequence. Your bloodline's consequence. Your father's arrogance. Your brother's… sacrifice." The word 'sacrifice' dripped with vile amusement. "I am the storm your family courted. I am the cold at the heart of your legacy. And you?" The dark eyes fixed on him, pinning him like an insect. "You are running out of time. Playing farmer in this frozen backwater while the world tightens its noose." It took a step closer, the air around it frosting visibly, the brazier's flame guttering low. "Death is coming to your doorstep, Tae Mu-Ryong. Sooner than you think. Can you feel its breath on the wind?"
The words struck like physical blows. The Black Tide? The Crimson Teeth remnants? The Emperor's spies? The Watcher's vagueness was its own torture. But Tae's mind snagged on one thing, the one question burning brighter than his own fear.
"Yun!" he roared, stepping forward despite the suffocating cold radiating from the possessed figure. "Where is Yun?! What have you done with him?!"
The Watcher's smile vanished. Instantly. Replaced by an expression of chilling, inhuman blankness. The dark eyes seemed to deepen, becoming bottomless pits of pure malice. "Yun?" The distorted voice flattened, losing its mocking lilt, becoming toneless and infinitely colder. "You saw. You were there. The gateway opened. The price was paid. He is… gone." The final word was a dismissal, absolute and final as a tombstone slamming shut.
Tae knew a lie when he heard it. The flatness, the abrupt shift, the refusal to elaborate – it screamed evasion. "Liar!" he spat, his voice trembling with fury and anguish. "You're lying! What did you do to him?!"
The Watcher's head snapped towards him, a movement too fast, too fluid. The blankness fractured into pure, unadulterated menace. The temperature in the cellar plummeted. Ice spiderwebbed across the earthen floor, crawled up the stacked barrels with audible cracks. The moisture in Tae's breath froze instantly into a sparkling cloud before his face. The unnatural cold in his arm screamed in resonance, threatening to burst its leash.
"NO MORE QUESTIONS!" The command wasn't loud; it was a pressure wave that slammed into Tae's mind, filled with the grinding weight of glaciers and the shriek of dying stars. It forced him back a step, his vision swimming. "His fate is sealed. Your concern is misplaced. Focus, little dragon. Focus on the death approaching you." The Watcher took another step, Lian's body moving with predatory grace. "The hunters are skilled. Patient. They smell your fear on the wind. Will you cower in this hole? Or will you remember the Frostblade's bite?" The monstrous smile flickered back, cruel and knowing. "Get ready."
As suddenly as it had arrived, the crushing pressure vanished. The intense cold receded, though the cellar remained unnaturally frigid. The dark voids in Lian's eyes blinked… and were gone. Her own eyes, wide, terrified, and utterly human, stared out. She gasped, a ragged, sucking sound, and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, crumpling onto the frozen earth beside the scattered greens.
Tae lunged forward, catching her before her head hit the ground. She was ice-cold, trembling violently, her breath coming in shallow, panicked hitches. Her eyes were unfocused, filled with residual terror. "T-Tae?" she whimpered, her voice a thin thread. "It… it was… inside…"
"I know," Tae murmured, holding her close, his own body shaking with a cocktail of rage, terror, and helplessness. The Watcher's words echoed in his skull: Running out of time. Death is coming. Get ready. And the lie about Yun… the blatant, terrifying lie. Yun wasn't just 'gone'. The Watcher was hiding something.
Before he could process the horror, before he could even try to soothe his shattered sister, a frantic pounding shook the heavy cellar door.
"North Wind! North Wind, open up!" It was Kael the trapper's voice, tight with urgency. "Headwoman's callin' a meetin'! Now! Everyone to the longhouse! Somethin's come down from the high ridges! Hurry!"
Tae's blood turned to ice colder than the Watcher's touch. Death's breath on the wind. The hunters. They weren't just coming. They were here. The ledge Borin spoke of was cracking beneath his feet. He looked down at Lian's pale, terrified face, then towards the door where Kael's insistent pounding echoed the frantic beat of his own heart. The Watcher's visit hadn't been an answer. It had been a warning. The game had just turned deadly.