The cold is like a slow curse.
At first, it was the wind—sharper than a blade, slipping through cracks in the stone. Then the snow came. Not gentle or pretty, but thick and endless, like the sky was trying to bury them.
By the fourth day, the walls of Fort Vireloch groaned under the weight. The fires needed constant feeding. And the food?
The food was almost gone.
No merchant caravans could break through the frozen passes. No messages made it south. The roads were more myth than path now—choked by white silence.
Zareena stood in the storage hall, staring at empty barrels and sacks with mice-chewed corners.
Salted meat: five strips left.
Flour: one sack, damp.
Dried apples: moldy.
Nothing fresh. Nothing growing.
The steward whispered beside her, "If the sun doesn't break the storm by next week…"
She already knew the rest.
They'd starve.
The mood in the fortress shifted. Fast.
Laughter died. Soldiers snapped at one another. The air felt heavier, as if hope itself had frostbite. Even the strongest among them avoided each other's eyes during meals.
Zareena kept calm—or at least, she looked it.
She wore her thickest cloak and walked the halls twice daily, even when her hands ached from cold. She thanked the kitchen staff when they served thin stew. She didn't complain when her quarters froze over. She listened to every whisper, every fear.
And slowly, without speaking a single brave word, she became the quiet center everyone looked to.
If she hadn't cracked yet, maybe they wouldn't either.
By the seventh day, food was locked and rationed. Fights broke out. One man tried to steal bread and was caught. There were shouts. Someone demanded his exile.
Zareena stood in the middle of it all, unmoving.
"We don't waste strength turning on each other," she said quietly, but her voice carried. "That's how we break."
No one argued with her.
Not because she threatened them.
But because in that moment—they believed her.
That night, when frost bloomed across the ceiling like veins, she lit a small candle and marked a note in her journal.
*The weather is crueler than any man I've met.
It kills slowly, with silence.
If this storm has a will… it's not done with us yet.*
And beyond the fortress walls, hidden in the snow-laced forest, something else stirred.
Eyes watched the fort from the shadows. Not merchant. Not soldier.
Something… older.
And very, very hungry.