The cold hits immediately, sharp and unforgiving after the enclosed warmth of the passage, the wind cutting across the open ground with nothing to slow it. The buildings are worn, their structures leaning slightly with time, their surfacesstripped by weather and years of no one caring enough to maintain them. Snow covers everything, shallow but unbroken, undisturbed in the way that only happens when nothing has moved through a place in some time. The ground beneath is uneven, the cobblestones split and heaved, the snow filling the gaps between them. No voices. No smoke from the chimneys. No sign that anything living has passed through recently enough to matter.
Colsar checks the coordinates once, his eyes moving from the parchment to the village ahead, the wind pulling at the edges of it.
"This is it," he says.
We move carefully, our footsteps muffled by the snow, the quiet broken only by the wind pushing through the gaps between the buildings. The cold presses in at my face and hands, the kind that settles into the bones after long enough, and I keep my head down against the worst of it as we move through the empty street.
The door we stop at looks no different from the others, its surface aged and weathered but intact, frost collecting along the lower edge where the wind has pushed the snow against it. Colsar knocks once, his stance already angled slightly, his weight distributed in a way that is prepared for something other than a simple answer.
We wait. I shiver as a gust of wind moves through the area. Colsar notices. “Northwood,” he says through the door.
The door opens. Warmth meets us immediately, spilling out into the cold in a way that feels almost startling, the contrast sharp enough that I feel it in my chest before anything else.
A woman stands in the doorway, her expression open, her voice quick and welcoming as she ushers us inside without hesitation. A man sits near the hearth beyond her, rising as we enter, his posture relaxed in a way that feels almost practiced, the ease of someone who has done this before and learned not to show the effort of it.
"You made it," she says, already moving toward the fire to prepare something warm. "You must be exhausted. Sit. Eat."
They speak easily, telling us about the cold, the blizzards that have come through in recent weeks, the way the wind finds the cracks in the walls no matter how carefully they are sealed. The undead have not been spotted near the village in some time, the woman says, but that is not luck. Those who remain here do not use magic, do not draw attention, do not give anything in the dark a reason to turn its head in their direction. It has kept them safe enough.
"The next checkpoint will be larger," the man says, leaning forward slightly. "Warmer. Better accommodations than what we can offer here."
The woman's attention moves to me then, her eyes dropping briefly before returning to my face. "You look like you will give birth any day now."
I smile. "I hope not until we arrive at our destination."
Colsar's hand finds mine and closes around it once, quiet and brief, before he lets it go.
Morning comes differently.
When I wake the warmth remains, but the room has changed.
The couple is gone.
In their place stands a man I have not seen before, his expression neutral in a way that feels less welcoming and more watchful, his eyes moving between us with a careful economy that does not match the ease of the night before.
Colsar goes still beside me.
"He smells wrong," he says quietly.
The man does not react. He simply steps forward and holds out the coordinates.
"The next point is not far," he says.
We take them.
We leave.
The cold outside is immediate, the wind sharper than the day before, driving into the face and cutting through fabric in a way that makes every step feel more exposed than the last. The path is narrow, the ice beneath our feet uneven and slick, forcing each placement to be considered before the weight follows. The man had said it would be a short journey, but the distance stretches longer than it should, the landscape repeating itself in ways thatmake it difficult to measure how far we have actually come. We keep moving.
The silence does not hold.
The first of the undead comes from the side, its movement lurching and uncoordinated, its eyes nothing but dark hollow pits in a face that no longer remembers what it was. Colsar meets it before it reaches us and I feel the shift move through him, the change rapid and total, his body restructuring into the siakar form in the span of an instant. He hits the ground on four legs and tears through the first one before it finishes its lunge, his jaws closing with a force that ends it cleanly.
The second and third follow, drawn by the movement, and he meets those too, his body low and fast across the ice where mine would have slipped. When they begin to cluster he pulls back just enough and exhales, the fire coming in a controlled burst that catches the group of them at once, the heat cutting through the cold air, the bodies collapsing before they can push forward.
More come from further out, drawn by the noise, their pace dragging but the momentum of the group pushing them faster than any one of them could manage alone. I draw on my lightcraft and release it cleanly, the energy cutting through what remains at the edges, the bodies dropping before they can close the distance.
Then my foot slips.
