Blood in the Snow

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Wind howled its old madness through the black trees, hurling spears of ice against Mira’s cloak as she staggered through the blizzard, Eiran close at her shoulder. The snow came sideways, white fury obliterating shape and trail, reducing all the living world to a labyrinth of shifting light and shadow. Once, years ago, Mira had thought herself hardened to hunger, pain, and cold. Tonight, the storm mocked every such conceit. Even the memory of Talin’s sacrifice—a burning afterimage somewhere behind them—was no match for the peril before and behind.

Boots vanished with each step in powder that clutched at their legs, threatening to suck them down to the knees. Frost slicked their brows, lashes stuck together in clumped rime. The trees, what little could be seen, loomed like ruined monuments—drunken, broken, their limbs cuffed by webs of white. Sound became ambiguous: a hoarse shout might be Eiran’s, or another spirit’s; the distant wails could have been the cultists or the wind or something with no name at all.

Neither dared fire nor speech for the first long hour. Terror had its own tongue—heartbeat hammering in the ribs, breath hissing through clenched teeth. Only when their lungs burned and Mira’s eyes watered with sharp cold did Eiran finally stumble to a halt, clutching her arm to steady himself.

“Mira—wait,” he rasped, voice near lost in gusts. “If—if we keep running blind, we’ll die before they reach us.”

She wheeled around, fists white as the drifts. “If we stop, they find us. If we slow, we freeze. Whatever’s behind us won’t care how tired we are.”

Eiran managed a bitter laugh as bitter as the wind. “Everything wants something—death, and the dark, and the cult. But so do we.”

For a moment, the world contracted to two trembling shapes wreathed in snow—each carrying scars the other could only guess at, breath mingling in the savage dark.

It was Eiran who broke the charged hush: “You’re bleeding.”

She touched her side, grimaced. The cut wasn’t deep, but the blood had spattered in tidy black drops, freezing instantly at the edge of her tunic. “My pride took worse.” A pause, then, voice choked by more than the cold: “I should have kept us together. Talin—Narsa—”

“They knew what might happen,” Eiran said, too aware of how easily comfort turned to blame. “So did we. If you want to wrestle guilt, take a number.”

“Is that what you really think?” She pressed close, storm-wild eyes glittering above her scarf. “You, the boy supposed to heal the world? If you’d made a different choice—if any of us had—”

“I carry enough ghosts,” he snapped. “You think I want this? I never wanted to be chased, or chosen, or anything. But the dreams—they’re in my bones. I ran from them my whole life. Maybe we both did.”

A sharp silence. The snow swirled, muting all but the pounding of blood and the distant, unnatural cries behind.

Mira let herself breathe, eyes locked to the night beyond. “You saw things in the root. So did I. All the times I left people behind, thinking I was clever or ruthless. And for what? Honor? Vengeance?”

Eiran was shivering hard now, teeth knocking. “We keep moving.”

“Tell me truth, Eiran,” she said, low and urgent, her hand reaching for the star stone buried in his coat. “Not prophecy or hope. Just truth. Why do you keep going?”

He met her gaze—defiant, vulnerable, whittled down to something raw and true. “Because I promised I would. Because even after everyone’s gone, if one memory of warmth survives, it gives the world a chance. Because if I stop—I’ll drown in the dark. You?”

She blinked, once. The wind drummed, erasing the lines of her face, rendering her young and old at once. “Because someone has to stand between the world and the night. Even if it’s only for a moment. Because sometimes promises matter more than survival. Maybe that’s how I live with myself.”

He offered her a half smile—ghostly, left-handed, but sincere. “Then let’s try to live a bit longer.”

They trudged on. For a time, they followed a line of wind-crooked firs, the snow endless. The land itself seemed to shift—hollows appearing where no step had fallen, ancient boulders hunched beneath blankets of white like giants curled in uneasy sleep. At intervals, an overhead limb crashed, vomiting snow in smoking cascades. Once, Eiran thought he saw a familiar, hunched form wavering behind a tree—Talin, bow in hand, face grave—but when he blinked, the shape was gone, nothing left but blowing powder.

Suddenly, Mira’s hand shot out, yanking Eiran flat behind a drift. Voices, muffled nearly to whispers, threaded through the blizzard—a jagged, chantlike cadence shifting between common speech and words old enough to hurt the ears. Black shapes flickered in the distance, flame-lanterns bobbing on spears. Cultists. At least six. More shadows slunk at the edges, moving like four-legged hounds, but turning their heads with sick, near-human precision.

They pressed themselves deep into the snow, silent as prayer. Mira’s blade rested lightly on her knee, half-drawn, her breath measured emptiness. Eiran cupped the star stone tight, wishing, with a childish urgency, that it could banish cold as it once summoned visions.

The searchers drew nearer. The cult leader—a hunched figure swaddled in patched robes—cursed the weather, voice warped by a guttural accent. “Find the star. The blizzard won’t hide them forever. They bleed fate with every footprint.”

A hound-creature lingered near their drift, snuffling. Eiran tensed, jaw locked. Mira’s hand tightened on his wrist, an unspoken command for stillness. The beast lifted its head, eyes gleaming dark as oil. It sniffed the air—then jerked away, snarling at its master, trailing blood and shadows in the snow.

The cultists pressed on. A moment passed, then two.

Eiran let out a breath he’d half-forgotten he was holding. Mira slumped beside him, spent. “We can’t keep winning luck forever.”

He cast about, heart kicking, and pointed to a narrow gap among the trees—one where wind had exposed the earth. “If we circle east, cut through that copse—”

Mira nodded, urgency in every line. “Lead. We go quiet as ghosts.”

They wormed through waist-deep snow, squeezing between clustered alders, boots leaving scant trace. Cold gnawed at Eiran’s toes, dulling the burn of exhaustion until only pain and will remained. Overhead, the sky flickered dimly—curtains of blue and gold ghost-light sliding just beneath the clouds, as if some aurora had torn loose and spilled across the stars. Eiran stared, mesmerized by the unnatural shimmer; for a moment, it seemed to form a sigil—six-pointed, fractured, spinning at the limit of perception.

“Do you see it?” he whispered, half to the night, half to Mira.

She stopped beside him, following his gaze. “The storm’s playing tricks. Or something worse.”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve seen it before—in dreams. That shape—”

But the vision collapsed, and the night hurtled back in. The cold felt sharper, hungrier, as if the world itself watched through needle-eyed cracks.

They pressed on. Once, the snow beneath Eiran’s boot gave way. He tumbled into a shallow sink—half-drowned in icy water, thrashing and gasping. Mira hauled him out, hands stinging with cold. His lips blue, breath weak, they huddled together for warmth, forced closer than comfort allowed.

“We have to move,” she growled, her voice unsteady, “or neither of us will see dawn.”

Shoulders locked, they staggered toward a scatter of boulders. The wind’s howl modulated into voices—first the chant of cultists, then whispers that neither belonged to any living tongue. Eiran pressed his hands over his ears, but the sound bored into his marrow: So close. Bring me the broken star. Let go.

Mira forced him on, boots half dragging, her own breath a litany of curses and prayers. They collapsed at last behind an overhanging slab, the snow drifted high enough to smother.

Eiran shuddered violently. “Those voices—did you hear—?”

“Only the wind,” she lied, smoothing hair from his clammy brow, trying to anchor him with touch.

He seized her hand, desperate. “Don’t leave. Not for anything. Promise me.”

Her face softened then, briefly shorn of armor. “I’m not leaving.” A beat. “You might have to leave me.”

He squeezed her hand tighter. “No. Never.”

For a moment, the world shrank to shared breath, hearth-warmth defying the encroaching void. “Tomorrow,” Mira murmured, more vow than comfort. “We leave them nothing but snow and empty footprints.”

He slept, rocked by fever and fear, dreaming of stars whirling in the black above a field of bloodless snow. In his vision, the cultists stood at the world’s edge, howling, hands raised toward a sky torn open by a single, burning star.

Mira watched over him, blade drawn, eyes fixed on the false dawn swirling east. In the few hours before daylight, she saw shapes pulse in the drifting snow: faces she knew, and faces she had lost, repeating in silence the promise—broken or not, they would endure, even if the whole world woke buried by the storm.

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