The sun was pale, fragile — a pale ember caught in a sky thick with mist. It hovered low, a hesitant glow behind veils of silver-gray clouds, reluctant to wake a world buried beneath white silence. Dawn's light seeped through the fog like whispered breath, thin and tremulous, brushing the frozen peaks with a faint kiss that barely stirred the cold.
The mountains stood unmoving, great stone sentinels cloaked in snow, their ragged crowns lost in drifting clouds that clung to the heights like shrouds.
Their silence was absolute — an ancient stillness that weighed down the air, pressing in like something older than winter itself.
A silence so vast, it seemed to swallow sound whole.
Beneath her boots, the snow whispered.
Soft, endless whispers.
Like secrets.
Secrets murmured between frost and wind.
The cold ground gave slightly underfoot, compacting with a faint, satisfying crunch.
Each step—
a muted echo fading quickly into the white hush.
The powder spilled around her feet in tiny swirls, caught for a moment on the wind before vanishing into the gray.
The air was sharp, brittle, and empty.
A breath caught between seasons, between life and the slow, deep sleep of the earth.
It carried no scent of woodsmoke or thawing streams. Only the pure, crystalline cold of untouched snow and ice, and something else beneath that.
A subtle, ancient chill that crept beneath skin and bone.
No birds called to break the silence.
No creatures stirred beneath the brittle skeletons of trees, their branches etched black against the pale sky.
Even the wind seemed cautious, moving with soft restraint, as if afraid to disturb the fragile world it swept across.
Only the cold.
Only the sound of her passing.
She walked slowly, deliberately, each step measured like a whispered prayer.
Her boots pressed into the snow with soft insistence.
Not stomping, not dragging—but flowing forward, steady and sure, as if she were a shadow cast by the mountain itself.
Her gait was light but purposeful, each movement attuned to the rhythm of the frozen land.
Her scarf, long and white as fresh snow, wound tightly around her throat and neck, caught now and then by the wind.
It fluttered behind her like a delicate thread torn loose from the fabric of dawn itself, trailing faintly in the cold air.
The fabric whispered secrets as it brushed against her dark cloak, which swayed gently with the rhythm of her steps.
Her breath came in thin, trembling clouds, pale and fragile in the cold air, fading quickly as it mingled with the frost.
Each exhale was a ghost of warmth in the vast chill, a quiet proof of life in a land that seemed to have forgotten it.
The cold bit at her cheeks and nose, painting them faintly pink beneath the pale skin, but she did not quicken her pace or seek shelter.
She was accustomed to the cold.
It was part of her, like a second skin woven from ice and silence.
Her dark eyes, sharp and steady, moved slowly over the landscape, taking in every detail with a kind of quiet reverence.
The brittle, frost-coated branches arched overhead, delicate as glass, their tips sparkling with tiny diamonds of frozen dew.
Here and there, a stubborn sprig of pine clung to life—its needles vibrant and green, a flash of stubborn color against the endless white.
She paused beneath a jagged outcrop of stone, its edges rimed thick with ice, sharp as a blade.
The air shifted suddenly here—
grew still, heavy, as if the world itself had drawn a breath and then held it tight in its chest.
The unusual whisper of the wind died away, leaving a silence deeper than before,
like the hush that falls just before a storm.
Her fingers, pale and slender, brushed the rough surface of the stone, trailing lightly over patches of moss frozen stiff beneath frost.
The snow continued to fall, soft and relentless, each flake a tiny, perfect star dissolving on her cloak.
The world seemed to shrink to this one fragile moment.
The touch of stone beneath her fingers.
The weight of silence pressing close.
The faint rustle of her scarf in the cold air.
Somewhere far above, the mountains waited.
The wind whispered secrets in a language older than memory.
And she stood there still,
listening.
✰✰✰
And so—
She ran.
Each footfall soft but urgent against the brittle snow, barely more than a whisper in the vast silence.
The forest blurred around her — pale trunks and dark branches streaked with wind-blown frost, fading into a storm that erased the world in shades of white.
The sun had slipped beneath the heavy clouds, the sky darkening like a shuttered eye closing slow and sure.
Now the light was strange — scattered, hollow — as if the day itself were dissolving.
Her breath came quick, ragged — small ghosts chasing each other into the cold air.
The wind screamed between the trees, tearing at her scarf, lifting fine flurries that stung her cheeks like shards of glass.
Snow lashed sideways — not gentle, not soft — a thousand needles driven by a storm that had found its teeth.
It howled around her, wild and feral, drowning every sound but her breath, her heartbeat, her steps.
Her legs burned.
She pushed forward through the skeletal trees — branches reaching like clawed hands, scraping her skin, pulling at her cloak.
She stumbled once, caught herself, ran harder.
The snow beneath her feet was treacherous — shifting, concealing ice and twisted roots.
But she did not falter.
She did not look back.
Ahead, movement—
A flicker.
A fragile crimson flicker beneath the frozen boughs.
A figure.
Curled. Still.
A child.
Cold and small, fragile as a flickering light caught in a storm that did not forgive.
Her knees hit the snow before she could stop them.
Her hands reached, unthinking.
Cold fingers brushing hair from colder skin.
His face was too pale, too quiet.
His breath—
Shallow, uneven.
A ghost struggling to hold on.
She did not know his name.
She did not know who he was.
But she could not leave him here.
"Stay with me."
She whispered it fiercely — voice tight with fear, wrapped in wind, nearly stolen.
The storm roared around her, swirling faster, louder, as if to drown him out, as if to bury them both.
No answer.
Only the silence — thick, alive, pressed close like breath against her ear.
The storm had a pulse now, deep and rhythmic, older than wind, older than winter.
Her hands searched — trembling — for warmth.
For life.
A faint pulse — irregular, weak — but it was there.
A stubborn ember.
A stubborn soul.
A stubborn star.
Refusing death.
Her palm pressed to his chest.
The cold burned through her skin, deeper than bone — but she did not pull away.
She anchored herself there.
To him.
To the flicker.
Why?
She does not know the reason.
"Hold on."
A voice, not hers, echoed inside her — strange, unbidden, ancient.
As if the storm itself had spoken, or the mountains, or something beneath the snow that remembered every soul who'd passed this way.
The snow howled louder.
The sky cracked — not with thunder, but with silence folding inward.
The wind rose higher, screaming over stone and branch and breath.
She held him tighter.
And through the storm, through the white and the cold and the nothing.
She did not let go.
She won't ever, let go.
But her mouth.
It moved.
The wind stole the words, but they came all the same.
Unbidden.
Unwilling.
Not her own.
"Let the silence between your heartbeats guide you."
The storm seemed to hush for half a breath — as if listening.
The words did not belong to her.
Yet they tasted like truth.
Bitter.
Ancient.
Inevitable.
They rose from a place older than her voice — older than her fear.
As if something sleeping beneath the snow had stirred, and spoken through her.
The child did not answer.
But the flicker pulsed — once — beneath her hand.
Not stronger.
But… aware.
She felt it then — not with her skin, but with something deeper:
And around them, the storm screamed louder.
Not angry.
Awake.
✰✰✰
The light had lost its blue edge.
It fell now in soft ribbons through the broken clouds, pale gold diffused across the frost.
Not quite warm—never truly warm in these heights—but gentled.
The wind no longer carried the bite of dawn.
She moved through the hollow beneath the cliffs, where shadows sheltered stubborn life. A forgotten field, cradled between stone outcrops, speckled with patches of snow that had thinned in the sun's slow arc. A place the wind rarely reached. Even the crows avoided it.
She knelt beside a crack in the stone, one hand steadying herself, the other brushing aside a thin veil of ice. Beneath it, nestled in a cleft that hadn't seen direct light in weeks, the petals of a Frostweave Bloom clung to life. Pale silver shot through with veins of lavender-blue, glinting faintly as her shadow passed over them.
She smiled—small, instinctive.
They were early this year.
She cupped the bloom in her hand for a breath, then took only the outermost leaves with a slow, practiced motion. A clean pull, gentle enough not to shock the roots. She whispered as she worked—not words, exactly, but the rhythm of knowing:
for frostbite, for frozen hands, do not take too much.
The kind of thing her grandmother used to murmur, half-memory and half-prayer.
One leaf tucked into the pouch at her waist. Another to dry. That was enough.
She stood, brushing frost from her gloves. The field sloped gently upward to a ridge of broken granite, beyond which the mountain dropped steeply.
There, where the snow clung stubbornly to shaded soil, she found the telltale dusting of Frostmoss —soft, grey-green tufts edging the rocks like old lichen.
She crouched low again. The moss numbed pain and slowed swelling—useless if overused, essential of exact. She peeled a narrow strip from the edge of the patch and rubbed the edge between her fingers. Still cold, still potent.
A pale moth drifted past her cheek, disoriented by the light. She watched it disappear into a crevice, then turned toward a darker stretch of trees beyond the stone.
Here, the ground grew uneven—riddled with ancient roots and forgotten cairns. Beneath one moss-covered boulder, the soil gave slightly underfoot. The woman knelt again, fingers sinking into the earth's edge.
It took time, but she found what she was looking for. Shadowroot. Gnarled and dark, coiled like something asleep. She dug slowly with a small knife, not severing the root, only lifting a single tendril. It came loose with the scent of damp wood and something older—like river stones or burnt sage.
"Steady hands," she murmured to herself.
"Soft voices. No sudden movement."
Not for the root—but for herself.
The forest, even when quiet, demanded respect.
She slipped the root into her pouch and straightened. The world around her had stilled. No birds. Only the soft hush of wind against bark and the distant sigh of iceec creaking somewhere higher. Somewhere unseen.
Then a sound—barely a whisper.
Her eyes flicked toward the field again.
Between two narrow trees where the snow dipped into a soft depression, something stirred.
A deer.
Its coat was pale—almost silvered—and dusted with frost. It lay folded among the whiteness, still but not lifeless. Its chest rose, slow and shallow. Its legs were tucked beneath it, as if it had stopped mid-step and simply forgotten to continue. One antler was broken. Its eyes were wide and unblinking.
It was watching her.
She froze.
Not in fear, but in reverence.
She had not heard it arrive. There were no tracks.
They stared at one another in silence.
The deer did not move.
Then its gaze shifted upward. Toward the high ridge. Beyond it, mist gathered like a breath held in the throat of the peaks.
She followed its eyes, slowly, past the stone, past the thinning clouds. The sky there was brighter than it should have been. Not golden. Not grey. Just light. Flat and pale and waiting.
When she looked back, the deer was gone. No sound. No trail. Only the frost beneath the trees, untouched.
She stood there a moment longer, fingers still curled around the strap of her pouch. The weight of the herbs, the press of silence, the sudden stillness in her chest.
Then she turned and walked back toward the edge of the cliffs. There were more roots to gather. And something about the air felt… different. Not wrong, exactly.
It just feels quieter than it should have been.
The wind—thick, heavier—hung low, like a held breath in the bones of the world.
Breathing came sharper, harder.
But maybe that was just the mountain playing tricks.
Or maybe not.
✰✰✰
"Hhhk… hhhk…"
A rough cough tore through her chest, ragged and raw, wrenching her breath into uneven gasps. She swallowed hard, the bitter tang of iron sharp and metallic on her tongue, settling heavy in her throat like cold stone.
The words she had spoken before—strange, foreign, ancient—scratched along her windpipe, lingering like embers still glowing with heat, a fire she could neither stoke nor quench.
Her hands did not falter.
Fingers trembling but deliberate, they reached for the worn leather pouch at her waist—cracked, soft from years of use, scented faintly with dried herbs and earth.
She sifted through its contents: crushed root, brittle and dark like splintered bone; frost-pale petals, delicate as frozen lace, still shimmering faintly in the dim light.
Each leaf held a promise — bitter and cold — to soothe and bind, to slow the creeping frostbite and ease the boy's failing warmth.
She lifted the crushed root first, cold between her fingers, and pressed it gently to the skin where the pulse fluttered, faint and fragile beneath her touch. The ember beneath her palm — so weak it might vanish with the next breath — held stubborn, defying the silence that clawed at the edges of the night.
Outside, the wind rattled branches like brittle bones, a restless, uneven howl that scraped through the hollow trees and tugged at her cloak.
Her breath came quick and shallow—hsshh… hsshh…—each inhale jagged and sharp with cold air, each exhale a fleeting whisper lost to the storm's relentless song.
His chest rose once — slow, shallow — then stilled again.
She leaned closer, the cold biting at her cheeks, breath mingling with the faint frost swirling just beyond the shelter of the trees.
Her heartbeat thrummed loud in her ears — a steady drum amid the storm's chaotic rhythm — as her gaze held his, searching.
Searching for a sign.
For a spark.
For something beyond the stillness.
The scent of pine and crushed snow filled the air, heavy and raw, mingling with the damp earth beneath them and the faint, sweet bitterness of the herbs pressed to his skin.
Her fingertips brushed the boy's cheek — icy, fragile — like tracing the outline of a frostbitten leaf, delicate and easily shattered. But beneath the cold, beneath the surface, a faint warmth pulsed, subtle as the hesitant glow of dawn breaking the longest night.
The forest seemed to hold its breath around them.
No birds sang.
No creatures stirred.
Only the distant creak of ice, the soft scrape of stone beneath shifting snow, and the restless whisper of wind through barren branches.
It was not silence — not quite — but something heavier, charged with a presence older than the mountain itself.
A watching.
A waiting.
She pressed the herbs again, whispering low murmurs — half-formed words, half-remembered prayers — soft as snow falling:
"For frostbite, for frozen hands, for stubborn life to hold on longer than it should."
Her body trembled — not just from cold, but from the weight of the storm pressing close, the mountain's bones creaking under winter's heavy hand.
The pulse fluttered again, faint but certain, like the last stubborn glow of a candle fighting the dark.
Her eyes never left his, searching the stillness for something beyond the fragile silence — a promise, a glimmer, a thread of hope woven in shadow and frost.
Minutes stretched long, heavy with cold and quiet.
She did not move.
She could not move.
The night hung between them like a fragile breath — caught, suspended — waiting for something unseen to stir.
And through it all, the pulse beneath her palm held firm — a stubborn ember, a stubborn soul, a stubborn star refusing to be snuffed out.
She whispered again — words not entirely her own, words that tasted like bitter truth and ancient sorrow:
"Hold on."
Her voice was barely more than a breath, but the forest seemed to lean in closer, the storm itself pausing for a heartbeat to listen.
The boy's chest rose once more, slower, steadier, faint light blossoming in the darkness.
She pressed her hand down, heart full of fragile hope, and whispered to the night itself:
"Stay with me."
The pulse beneath her palm fluttered again — faint, stubborn — holding on.
Her eyes drifted downward, catching the faint glimmer of something unexpected.
Crimson.
Sharp and bright.
Caught in the icy herbs pressed to the boy's skin.
A star.
A crimson star.
Reflected there among frost-pale petals and brittle roots.
She blinked, heart stuttering.
It was as if the star moved, shimmering with quiet life, shifting with a slow, deliberate pulse.
Not cold.
Not distant.
But Alive.
It seemed to look back at her — not with eyes, but with something deeper, something unspoken.
A silent thanks.
A promise.
A presence offering help.
The crimson star glowed steadily in the frozen night, a spark of warmth amid the endless cold.
And beneath her hand, the ember beneath his skin stirred again — stronger, more aware.
The storm waited, watching.
And so did she.
✰✰✰
The light had shifted again.
Not golden anymore, but paler—faded like old parchment left too long in the cold. It spilled across the stone in thin sheets, gathering in shallow pools where meltwater ran between cracks, then vanished.
She walked alone.
She had left the field behind some hours ago, her satchel heavier now with roots and frost-leaves, though her steps were slower—not from weight, but from something else. A pull. Not physical. Not even conscious at first. Just a sense, like when birds vanish before a storm.
She hadn't meant to come this way.
But now, there it was.
Curiosity, soft and unspoken, had brought her here before she knew it.
A bridge—massive, unignorable—rose from the earth before her. Formed of stone darker than any quarried nearby, its bricks were bitter in color and strangely smooth, as if untouched by time or tool. It stretched into the air with the unnatural weight of something carved not for crossing, but for remembering. The arching railways were lined with frozen ropes and shattered carvings of things she couldn't name: not quite animal, not quite human, not quite alive.
She stopped at its edge.
Not from fear. But recognition.
The bridge rose not with grace, but with weight. Broad and ancient, too large for its place in the world, as if it had been built not for passage but for memory. Or punishment.
She did not speak.
No one ever did here.
Even the wind, which had followed her all morning, stilled near its entrance. The trees behind her, skeletal and half-buried in frost, looked smaller now.
Afraid.
Her eyes moved slowly across its length. It was… long. Far longer than she remembered.
Longer than it had any right to be.
"Velchi nal sar vulin," she said softly.
The words settled over the stones like breath over glass.
She knew the tongue—Old-Cethralian. Not many still spoke it, though its bones lingered in local sayings and lullabies. Fewer still could read it. But she had grown up with its cadences folded between stories and songs, passed down in the hush of winter rooms.
And there it was—etched faintly into the first slab of the bridge, where the frost had thinned. The same phrase.
The Veil of Silence.
Not a bridge for crossing.
Not truly.
It was for testing.
She'd heard stories whispered in firelit rooms: voices lured to leap by soft laughter, friends turned strange before reaching the other side. Shadows that moved like memories. Pale children who walked beside you, speaking with the voices of the dead.
And always—always—the ones who hung in the fog, silent and swinging.
None of it was written.
But all of it was known.
And yet, the bridge remained.
A road to something—or someone—that would not let itself be forgotten.
At the far end, still a kilometer or more across the narrow chasm, the Castle waited. The Velarastras' old keep. Its towers black against the mountains, glassless and broken in parts, yet strangely whole. A place made not of stone alone, but of lineage and shadow.
Her breath caught.
Not because of the cold.
Because she remembered stories.
The kind children weren't supposed to hear, but did. Of the Velarastras—lords once of Cethralis and something older, deeper. Whispers of cruelty too refined to name. Of the halls that echoed when no one walked them. Of a noble line that had vanished—no burial, no record, just gone.
And yet, the gates were still open.
Windows stared like blind eyes across the ridge. No smoke, no warmth. Only that strange stillness, and the way the snow around it never melted, even when the rest of the valley thawed.
Some said the bridge was cursed because the castle itself was a wound the world refused to close.
Her hand brushed the edge of the railing. It was smooth. Too smooth. Her fingers pulled away numb.
She looked again toward the middle. Mist clung low, rising in thin strands like breath from something sleeping beneath.
And in that mist—
She wasn't sure.
It might've been a figure.
Or not.
Her heart beat once, too loud.
She swallowed and looked down at her own boots.
Snow clung to the edges, crusted in gray.
Her legs had stiffened. She hadn't realized.
"Just a bridge," she muttered.
But the words did not sound like her voice.
Her mouth was dry.
She didn't cross. Not yet. But she stepped forward—once, then again—until the mist began to reach toward her ankles.
It felt… warm.
No, not warm.
Just… not cold.
Like breath.
Like something that remembered heat but hadn't used it in a very long time.
She stopped before the first arch.
The silence pressed inward.
There was no wind. No birds. Not even the sound of her own breath.
Just the far-off image of that black castle, and the unbearable stillness that threaded the stones beneath her feet.
She stood like that for some time.
Watching.
Listening.
Waiting for something to change.
And though nothing did, the feeling stayed with her—like a splinter beneath skin, or a word she almost remembered.
Then she turned.
Not away.
But toward the bridge.
And stepped forward.
✰✰✰
The storm had softened.
Not stilled, not broken—but softened, like something exhaling after holding breath too long. The wind still whispered along the ridges, dragging snow in thin, curling ribbons, but it no longer clawed at her skin. It merely passed—brushing her cloak, tugging gently at her sleeves—as if recognizing she would not turn back.
She stood slowly, cradling the boy against her chest.
He was lighter than expected. Not in weight, but in presence—like something barely tethered. A spirit not yet ready to belong to the world again. His skin was warmer now, though faintly. The herbs had done their work. Or perhaps… not the herbs alone.
She glanced down. The faintest shimmer of red still flickered at the edge of her sight, hidden in the fold of his scarf where the crushed leaves had once burned.
The star.
Still there.
Still watching.
Her hand curled more firmly around him.
"No more waiting," she whispered, and shifted her stance to carry him fully.
Her white boots pressed into the white snow—deep, certain—and she turned toward the shadowed path. The trees parted slowly, their branches bowed low beneath frost, as if stepping aside not out of fear, but respect. The sky above was a dull silver, veiled in mist, moonless.
She reached for the pouch at her side, opened the small stitched flap near its edge, and drew out a single match—long, white-tipped, kept dry through habit more than hope.
She struck it against the carved bone clasp at her hip.
Fsshhht.
The flame bloomed—not yellow, not orange, but a soft and otherworldly blue. Pale at the edges, deep at its core. It danced in the curve of her palm, unshaken by the wind, untouched by the cold. It gave no heat, not truly. And yet the air around it warmed—not in temperature, but in memory.
Like light caught in lullabies.
Like safety remembered.
She whispered a word—one not taught, but inherited. A sound that existed more in breath than voice. The flame lifted from her palm and floated forward, bobbing gently in the snow-laced dark.
It would guide her home.
And so, she walked.
She stepped forward into the storm, the boy secured behind her, a blue flame in hand.
She did not look back.
"Let the silence between your heartbeats guide you… huh?"
The words drifted back to her—not as echo this time, but as choice.
She repeated them softly, aloud:
"Let the silence between your heartbeats guide you."
And so, she did.
Through the thinning woods. Past the broken stone marker long lost to snow. Across the field where nothing grew but silence. Her steps were careful but sure, paced to match the flickering drift of the blue flame ahead.
The boy did not stir, but his breath remained steady, a quiet rhythm pressed to her collarbone.
She held him close.
They came at last to the bridge.
The Veil of Silence stood before her again, its stone arms lost in mist, its carvings half-submerged beneath new snowfall. But now, it did not loom.
It waited.
Like something ancient… and listening.
The flame slowed, hovering just before the first arch, casting soft blue light against the frost-slicked black stone slab. And in that light—just above the center of the bridge—she saw it again.
The crimson star.
High overhead, brighter now. Still small, still strange. But pulsing—soft and sure—like a second heartbeat.
She looked up, and for a moment, said nothing.
Only breathed.
Only watched.
Only listened to the quiet.
Then she stepped forward—into the mist, into the waiting—blue flame ahead, boy held close, and something unseen behind her, closing the forest's breathless eyes.
The snow fell quieter now.
And the bridge did not resist their passing.