Eirik Halvorn woke up before the cold did it for him.

  No matter how careful he was, Sanne always noticed when he woke up in the morning. For some reason, she had an inner alertness that kicked in immediately, even in the deepest sleep, as soon as he stirred in the morning.

  Today, too, she began to stir when he sat up in the gray semi-darkness before sunrise, even though he was consciously moving very carefully.

  The fire in the fireplace at the other end of the room had burned down during the night and turned into an even amber glow. It just barely kept the room from becoming uncomfortably cold. In the long winters of the north, however, even the embers csorry had mixed up the Text2 file. reuploaded itould only partially withstand the biting cold. In recent months before spring, winter had been more of a challenge to the endurance of the people of Wintermark than an actual threat. For generations, the people of Wintermark had been well prepared for winter, so that the long nights and low temperatures were more of a challenge to the spirit than a threat.

  Their son Taren had crawled back into their bed at some point. The boy slept between them, the blanket pulled up to the tip of his nose, his breathing quiet and steady.

  "Going out?"

  She didn't open her eyes.

  “Just the northern line.” Eirik put on his boots. The leather was stiff from the cold ground. He laced them up slowly, trying not to wake Taren.

  Now she opened her eyes after all. “Before dawn?”

  He hesitated a moment longer than he intended. “I want to check something.”

  Sanna propped herself up on one elbow. She eyed him critically. “If you're worried, say so.”

  “I'm not sure,” he admitted.

  That was enough to wake her completely. She sat up, taking care not to disturb the boy between them. “Take Halek with you.”

  “Not yet.”

  “It doesn't work that way, and you know it.” Her voice was gentle, but with a sharp edge. “Not after last winter.”

  He met her gaze. She held his gaze. No accusation. Just a reminder of what was worse. They had lost a border guard when he fell into a crevasse under treacherous snow that had been unknown until then.

  The fire crackled softly in the fireplace as they looked at each other for a moment.

  “I'll only patrol the border, which has been stable for years. I won't do anything stupid,” he promised.

  “You always say that.”

  He smiled slightly and gently caressed her cheek.

  “I'll wake Halek if it's more than nothing.”

  She looked at him for a moment longer. The gray light from the window began to change imperceptibly, becoming slightly less dark. Then she nodded once. “If you go get Halek, let me know and don't just go out again, OK?”

  Lyrn was on gate duty, wrapped in two heavy cloaks, one over the other. The long-serving guard leaned against the inner beam of the gate with the particular composure of a man who had long since come to terms with the cold. He looked up and stepped out of his shelter with the small coal stove as Eirik approached.

  "Your are Early."

  "Couldn't sleep. I will go and check on the northern border."

  "Wind's been wrong the last days." Lyrn lifted the bar with a grunt and pushed the gate open far enough to pass. "You feel it too."

  "Yeah, I feel it also."

  Lyrn let him pass without further questions. He was used to border guards like Eirik performing their duties at the most unusual times, depending on how far their targets were from the village.

  Outside the palisade, the world was white and silent. The snow lay thick on the ground and had hardened into a solid surface due to the days of cold weather. No new snow had fallen for several days. This meant that there were no new drifts to be seen, only a hard surface stretching to the pale edge of the horizon.

  Shortly after setting off, Eirik passed the first marker post, then the second. His breath formed steady clouds. The cold was sharper out here, without the protection afforded by the village and its palisade. The palisade served two purposes: on the one hand, it provided protection from hungry predators in winter and, just as importantly, it acted as a first line of defense against the sometimes fierce winter winds that could prevail here in the north.

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  At the third marker post, he slowed down.

  Something had interrupted the surface in front of him.

  From a distance, his first thought was that it was an optical illusion. A shift in the shadows during the transition between the long hours of night and the beginning of day. But as he got closer, the deviation became clearer. A long, narrow depression could be seen in the snow. He stopped and looked around briefly before his gaze slid back to the depression. No footprints. No trace of a sled or scattered tracks of an animal that had passed by during the night.

  The dent in the otherwise smooth surface looked as if something heavy had briefly settled there – then moved to the side and removed itself again.

  He stepped closer and crouched down to examine the depression more closely. Eirik brushed aside the top layer of loose snow with his glove. The crust broke cleanly. Beneath it, the older snow was firmly compacted, compressed by real weight. It wasn't old. It had been created after the last strong wind, so not today, but last night.

  He stood up and looked more intently to the north, then to the east, and then to the west.

  No tracks leading back. No other tracks nearby except those of the border patrol. Nothing unexpected that deviated from that.

  Just this single row of indentations, cutting cleanly through the otherwise untouched snow.

  “That can't be,” he said, taking a few steps back.

  The north stretched flat behind the markings, the land gradually sloping down to the ice fields. Everyone in Wintermark had grown up with this shifting border. It advanced and receded with the seasons, a slow rhythm that the elders followed and discussed by the fireside.

  But it left no traces like the depression in front of him.

  He felt the urge to follow the trail north, felt almost drawn to it. He noticed it, shook his head briefly, and then deliberately took a step back. Carefully, he placed his boots in his own tracks until he reached the well-worn path at the marker post again. His footsteps crunched softly in the trampled snow. After one last look, he turned around and walked briskly back to the village.

  Running was a message, and he wasn't ready to send it - yet.

  When he reached the gate again, smoke was already rising from the roofs of the settlement inside the surrounding palisade. Morning was breaking, whether anyone wanted it to or not.

  Lyrn was already waiting for him at the open gate and scrutinized his face as he entered. “That doesn't look like nothing.”

  “No.”

  “An animal?”

  Eirik thought of the shape, the clean edge, the absence of any tracks. “I don’t think animals are the cause.”

  That was enough to make Lyrn's shoulders slump. He closed the gate again and let the gate beam sink back into its brackets with a dull thud. “Do you want Halek?”

  “Yes. And Vardek.”

  Halek was the first to arrive, still getting dressed and just closing the last clasp of his outer coat. He looked equally annoyed and awake.

  “If it's about wind patterns again,” he muttered, “I'm going back to bed and you can think about what you've done, Eirik.”

  “Unfortunately not,” Eirik replied sadly.

  Halek grimaced. “You can't just make it easy, can you?”

  Vardek came last, moving at his own pace. The old shaman leaned on his carved walking stick and joined them without asking any questions. Over the years, he had learned that when he was summoned at such an unusual hour, he should form his own opinion.

  Less than an hour and a half later, they passed the third marker in silence. Halek was the first of his companions to notice the depression. He stopped, crouched down, and carefully pressed his gloved hand against the edge of the depression. He approached the phenomenon, following exactly in Eirik's boot tracks from that morning.

  “This wasn't here yesterday?”

  Eirik nodded in confirmation. “No.”

  Halek looked up at him. “It's fresh, but not from last night. Judging by the tracks...” He glanced at the surrounding snow. “...the night before last.”

  “I know.”

  “And you're sure it wasn't there yesterday?”

  “One hundred percent sure.”

  In the meantime, Vardek had examined the old marker post without touching it. He folded his hands over the top of his staff. After a long moment, he spoke, pointing to the depression.

  “This leads directly north.”

  “Not quite. It comes from the north.” Eirik pointed to the cracks at the top of the indentations, where they broke through the upper layer of snow. “But I haven't found anything to suggest that they went back there.”

  Halek squinted at the horizon. Slowly, he began, “Maybe Ice displacement? Something could have broken off and been thrown south. It happens.”

  Eirik's gaze remained fixed on the depression, doubtful. “So far from the ice fields? Unlikly.”

  Halek opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  The answer came from elsewhere.

  A faint sound rolled in from the distance—not loud, a deep rumble, transmitted more through ground than through air. Paired with a long, slow crack, as if something massive were stirring in the cold.

  All three froze mid-moving.

  Halek's voice whispered. “Was that the ice?”

  The snow beneath their boots suddenly trembled. A small crack sread out from the tip of the depression, branching a few times before ending abruptly at the fourth landmark post. Eirik felt the vibration in his chest, a pressure that settled in his stomach.

  “That...” he swallowed convulsively, “...wasn't just a sound.”

  Vardek said nothing for three breaths. Then he handed Halek his staff, slowly crouched down, and pressed his bare palm flat against the center of the mark on the boundary post.

  Eirik reached out his hand to Vardek. “Don't.”

  The old man closed his eyes.Only the wind flowed between them—nothing else moved. Then Vardek inhaled—sharply but controlled. He whispered something quietly to himself that Erick didn't quite understand.

  “...do not advance south.”

  Halek exhaled. “Good. That's...”

  “Watch out, something is rising!” Vardek interrupted.

  The ground made a dull thud under their boots. No tremor, no quake—something clearer than that, like a single step taken far below them. The original depression widened slightly. Another fracture line spread out from it and headed toward the next marker post.

  The fourth one toward the hunting grounds.

  Halek stumbled back involuntarily.

  Eirik stood there staring at the new fracture. An unpleasant coldness spreadding somewhere behind his breastbone. A certainty—one that heralded something unwelcome.

  “Alert the gate.”

  This time, Halek did not object. He turned and ran.

  Behind them, far to the north, the ice spoke again—longer, deeper, and unmistakably closer than it should have been.

  want to tell, even though I cannot yet express it fully on my own — especially not in English, which is not my native language.