The snow is falling.

  Slow, lazy drifts, as if taking their time before touching the earth.

  They fall in restless patterns, disturbed only by breath, by hunger, and by silence.

  Down there, a ragged campfire burns low, its embers glowing more for memory than for heat. The sky above is a bruise of dusk and frost.

  A cluster of Geherrim, worn, sharp, and seasoned, sit around the fire; their horns betray their otherwise human appearance. They laugh too loudly and drink like there is no tomorrow, as if trying to forget that liquor freezes in this cold, just like them.

  One punches another in the ribs. Another throws a bone into the dark edge of the pine forest, now covered in white.

  At the edge of the camp, sitting on a rock half-buried in snow, is Sol.

  Sitting still.

  Watching.

  Wrapped in a patchwork cloak, shoulders hunched like he is trying not to be seen by the sky itself. The edges of his hair are crusted with frost. His eyes, not glowing like the others', are dim and tired, vigilant on the treeline.

  Unlike the other Geherrim with two horns, Sol has only one.

  He is not part of the fire.

  He never was.

  "Hey, Snowboy," a rugged voice bellows from the warmth of the flame. "You see any meat yet, or are you just brooding for the sake of it?"

  The others chuckle. One mimics a human scream. "Oh, oh nooo, I'm a human. Please, Snowboy, don't kill me." Another burps so loudly it almost shakes the mountain's skin of snow into a single sheet.

  Sol looks at them and sighs. He does not answer.

  He blinks.

  Snow lands in his lashes.

  Past the camp's perimeter, the trees sway like figures in mourning. The darkness makes it hard to see, but Sol sees just fine. His eyes always adapt first to the dark.

  He ignores the party. His gaze returns to the treeline. Haunted. Quiet. Alert. He is not looking for prey. It feels like he is looking for something else.

  "All right," says the one Sol knows as Rahzar, standing. He is a massive man, over seven feet tall, menacing and muscular. His smile tells you he is up to no good. "Listen up, vermin. We're splitting. Caravan's late, or dead, or both; either way, we don't get paid to sit on our tails."

  A few grunts answer him. One Geherrim, blind in his left eye, licks his lips. Another, long-faced with longer horns, checks the curve of a blade.

  Rahzar brandishes a worn, creased, and stained map and tosses it into the firelight.

  "You all know your spots, I trust. Trained and tested. Ghosts of the north. Hunters in the frost. Yeah?"

  The others cheer and howl.

  "Sol."

  The name hangs.

  Sol does not turn.

  "Sol, sweetheart. You didn't get a map, did you?"

  Laughter.

  "That's because I wanted it to be a surprise. Your zone is west. The ridge. See the broken tree, the one that looks like it's bowing to the gods? Do you even believe in gods, eh, Sol?"

  "There's nothing that way. Just cliffs."

  Rahzar pauses, then gives a mock gasp. "Oh, look at that. He can talk. You hear that, boys? Our little stray knows the terrain now."

  He leaves the map near the flames. Some of the Geherrim panic, trying to save its burning edges.

  He stops behind Sol, leans to his right ear, and growls low.

  "You wanted to prove yourself, didn't you? Prove you're not just some mercy case?" The chill seems to seep in as Rahzar's bulk presses closer. "Well. Here's your shot."

  Sol stands. No argument. Just motion.

  An owl lands nearby, white as death. It stares at Sol, waiting.

  Sol looks toward it. The owl tilts its head upside down, then spreads its wings and flies.

  "Everyone got their spots on the map? Good? Good. Sol, sweetheart, don't freeze to death before something kills you, yeah?"

  Sol starts walking. He feels their eyes on his back. He also feels the owl's gaze following him as he disappears into the treeline.

  The Western Ridge is treacherous.

  In summer nights, this is grazing ground for massive elks. In midwinter, there is nothing here, it might as well be an execution ground.

  Sol walks. The cliffs to the west loom, sheer and dark. He stops at the edge, takes a breath, and peers over.

  He looks down. Nothing. The void yawns. He cannot see the river far below that runs to Elm, his village.

  He steps back, clasps his hands together, and exhales.

  He turns north, toward the slope.

  The slope is supposed to be a shortcut, one only Sol and a handful of Elm's young Geherrim know, a way to reach the other side of the Stake, the massive mountain standing before him.

  If his memory serves, there should be a cavern usually accessible in summer.

  He does not know whether that cavern is accessible in midwinter. No one has tried.

  The snow thickens.

  The wind calms.

  Sol swallows. It is going to be a gamble.

  Either he finds an exit there towards the fields, or he will have to make the impossibly dark and cold trek backwards towards the southern part of the Stake, where has spent the last eight days walking alongside the members of Rahzar's party.

  His thoughts stopped, he spotted something.

  Tracks, long and wide.

  "…an Elk."

  He follows.

  A cavern opens in the ridge, the same the young ones use to laze around, its mouth veiled with light frost.

  He enters.

  The stone is damp. The air is still.

  His eyes adjust at once. The tracks continue northward. The elk is moving toward the hidden field at the northern base of the Stake.

  He keeps walking in the dark and never stumbles. His eyes are always better than the others'. He always known it to be true, he just doesn't know how far of a difference was it when compared to the others.

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  There, he spots a natural depression in the rock. The exit to the northern base, to the hidden field.

  Snow lies soft and untrodden. Dark green pines sleep beneath white coats.

  Sol sees only absence. The elk tracks remain. He just has to follow them, kill it, and get back.

  If he is lucky, a human caravan might pass through. A dying breed, forced to be nomadic in order to escape the need for the demons to use them as either food, or fuel.

  He could kidnap one of them, his physicality is better than a normal human. Hopefully the one he kidnaps is a natural-born sorcerer with the aptitude to absorb mana, even better if the sorcerer can also purify mana. Maybe then the village chief will grant him another chance. Maybe he will receive his mac'ga and finally be recognized as a Geherrim.

  His eyes sweep the field. The sky is clear. Stars glitter like old memories, reflections of the past.

  He stops. His eyes catch on something in the middle of the white. A figure, shining like a star in the snow.

  Small. Still. Standing at the center of the field. Not animal. Not demon, unlike him. This person gazes at the sky, expression hard to read.

  Then Sol notices a shimmer, like a thin veil of aurora where moonlight touches ice in the air.

  A sorcerer, perhaps natural-born.

  He crouches. Watches.

  She does not move. She does not shiver. She stands impossibly still, watching the sky.

  He takes a step forward, then another. Slow steps quicken.

  A branch snaps beneath his boot.

  Crack.

  Sol turns to her. She turns to him.

  Their eyes meet.

  Then, out of nowhere.

  A massive, sharp-fanged maw bursts through the snow to devour him.

  He gasps what air he can and dives aside. The cold makes him sluggish.

  "...!!!"

  It was too close.

  His hand goes to his tool belt, searching for the hilts of his daggers. He finds one dagger, but not the second. He must have lost it while evading the attack.

  He exhales. This elk is no mere elk. It is the Nhiven, the sacred protector of the Stake, an apex predator of this mountain. Bears and wolves do not compare. Only a Garm might, and a Garm does not usually come this high. It does not need to.

  "...this was the one that I was following?"

  The Nhiven's eyes are on him. The horizontal slits blink. Its maw hangs half-open, fangs turning it into something far worse than any bear or wolf.

  "Shit."

  Sol grips his dagger and draws. His eyes flick left, toward where the girl stood.

  She is gone.

  Of course she is. She must have run the moment she heard the commotion.

  He inhales. The air is crisp and burning in his lungs. Survive first. He can find the human sorcerer later.

  He blinks. In that split second. Nay, in that split of a split second, the Nhiven's maw is already upon him.

  He rolls again, barely evading the massive snap from the Nhiven's maw. The dagger finds no purchase. He aimed for the legs to dissuade pursuit, but this thing is too fast.

  Without even a small pause, the Nhiven charges. Sol has not recovered when it closes half the distance.

  The impact slams into his chest. The pronged horns drive into him. Two tines stab through his left and right arms. Some stabs him through the stomach.

  He coughs blood.

  The blow flings him upward. He lands with a heavy thud, even cushioned by the massive amount of snow.

  His consciousness fades. His breath turns shallow. He lifts his head. The Nhiven is no longer where it stood.

  He searches with his eyes.

  He sees no movement.

  To his left, heavy steps pound toward him with haste.

  This is it.

  This is why they sent him west.

  Why they pointed him to the ridge.

  They wanted the Nhiven to find him. They wanted him to find the Nhiven. They wanted him to die here.

  From his left, the Nhiven gores him again and sends him flying.

  At this point, he can't really feel any pain anymore.

  He knows he can no longer move. His wounds make it difficult for him to move, nimble and dexterous evasions are definitely out of the question.

  Then, what's the point of resisting?

  Thud.

  He lands between two massive rocks. Using everything he got, he tries to slide deeper inside. The crack is smaller than the Nhiven's head. If he dies inside, at least the beast will struggle to eat his carcass.

  The Nhiven sees him and rams the rock with brutal force. The vibration sends pain through him like fire.

  "I guess that's it."

  He smiles painfully. The reality rings clear in his head. This is the end of his short life.

  The elk peers through the crack. Green slits weigh whether to dig him out or drop the boulder.

  Apparently, it doesn't really care about his carcass. It just wants him dead.

  And it wants him dead now.

  It shuffles back, horns forward. A full charge that will most likely bring the stone down on him.

  Sol looks into its eyes, and it looks into his.

  "Do your worst, you oversized deer."

  It charges. Sol keeps his eyes open, he does not flinch.

  The charge ends midway as a massive white wolf crashes down from the ridge and slams into the black elk.

  A Garm.

  "Garm? This high on the mountain?"

  He peeks.

  "No fucking way."

  He slides out. His dagger is no longer holstered. He scans and spots it on the snow far down the slope. It was the one he lost at his first roll, evading the Nhiven's ambush.

  If he slides, he could reach the dagger and possibly retreat back toward the cavern.

  But then, he would return without the girl.

  Then, Elm would reject him again.

  Sol, the Eclipse-born.

  One-Horned Sol.

  Sol the Half.

  Son of a Human.

  This is his only chance to be accepted.

  This is his last chance to be accepted.

  He slides down, uses his less-injured arm to grab the dagger, and watches as the Garm tears into the Nhiven.

  The Nhiven retreats. The Garm pursues with sharp, swift movements. The Nhiven feints a gore. The Garm slips back and rakes a hind leg.

  The Nhiven is losing. It knows it cannot win. Elk do not beat wolves.

  It bounds higher up the hill. The Garm glances at Sol, then closes with its prey.

  "Did the Garm… just glance at me?"

  There are stories about Garms, though Sol has never seen one in his life. In fact, no one from Elm has ever seen one. They say Garms are the guardians of the Stake, ever since the land was made impure and filthy by humans and their magicks.

  They are shaped like massive wolves, five to six times the normal size. These beasts can grow up to two meters tall, and two and a half to three meters in length.

  Their fur lets them blend with the surroundings, and it is so thick that no amount of cold can get through.

  Their fangs can pierce the strongest steel any Geherrim has forged.

  The thing is, they do not go up into the mountains.

  Perhaps because of the Stake's magical leylines, or out of a mutual respect with another apex predator at this height of the mountain—Sol does not know.

  But he is certain of one thing: the creature fighting the Nhiven is a Garm.

  A snow-white Garm.

  For a heartbeat, the two great shapes stand on the ridge, facing each other. The full moon shines brightly after a thin veil of cloud passes.

  It looks like a painting.

  Sol cannot help thinking how beautiful it is, no matter how close to death he is.

  The elk bellows.

  The wolf howls.

  Silence.

  Then a deep growl from within the mountain, and then a vibration.

  A vibration so deep it shakes Sol to his core.

  The snow begins to move.

  An avalanche.

  Sol looks up in awe as both predators leap away to safety, leaving him alone beneath the rolling white and the full moon.

  He breathes in.

  He does not know how long he was unconscious.

  Cold and warmth at once, from outside and inside his body. He is buried under an unholy weight of snow. He claws toward the surface. It is harder than he thought.

  He is deeper than he realized. Fractured arms and ribs do not help. The punctures from the Nhiven make everything worse.

  He claws free of the drift.

  Broken. Bleeding.

  He exhales everything.

  He lies on the snow for what feels like hours, though it cannot be that long.

  The sky's color has changed. A line of orange shows on the eastern horizon.

  He was out for that long, it seems.

  He looks around—no sign of the girl.

  "Heeey!"

  No answer.

  "Heeeeeey!"

  Only silence.

  "She was here. She turned. We looked at each other. I saw her eyes."

  He crawls and spots a piece of white fabric caught on a branch above the buried forest. His eyes widen.

  He runs to it and starts to dig.

  He digs. He digs more. He keeps going.

  His hands are bloodied and raw. Fingernails snap.

  He moves rocks and tears at branches like they have insulted him.

  His breath comes ragged. His chest rattles. Each wheeze stabs his ribs.

  Minutes pass. He finds nothing.

  His voice breaks. "Please… come on… please just be real."

  He sobs into the snow. Quietly. Ugly. Like a boy again.

  He has tried to be strong for so long.

  Desperate, he mutters, "I don't care what she is. I don't care if she's cursed. I'll drag her to Elm myself. Tie her down if I have to. Say I killed her. Say—"

  He chokes on his own lie.

  He doesn't have what it takes to be a Geherrim. He doesn't have what it takes to be a demon.

  To live is to consume.

  To win is to trample upon others.

  To stand at the top of the Geherrim food chain is to be the most unjustifiably cruel.

  He lacks all of it, the hunger, the cruelty, the sheer cold pragmatism of the other Geherrim in his village.

  That's why he's just… well, him.

  That's why the village acted like he did not exist. Like he is nothing, from the moment of his cursed birth up to now, when the village elder suddenly allowed him to join Rahzar's hunting party.

  They wanted him out.

  Rage boils in his chest. The pain stings worse than the punctures from the Nhiven's horns.

  But more painful than the rage is something else.

  Sadness. Grief.

  He realizes he is so unwanted that the people in his village cast him aside without a blink.

  The knowledge that someone can be so undesired that they are surrendered to the frozen wilds, to die at the maws of bears, wolves, or Nhivens.

  He punches the ground. Once. Twice. The snow stains red. His wounds reopen, and blood begins to drip.

  He presses his forehead to the drift.

  A scent reaches him. Sweet. Green.

  Tiny flowers bloom on the snow. Still warm.

  He blinks and touches one. It does not melt.

  Footsteps whisper over the crust. He turns his eyes toward the sun.

  The sudden flood of light forces him to wince.

  "Are you lost?"

  The voice comes from the direction of the sun. It flows. It sounds like the whistling of the spring wind over the blooming flowers of the southern plains.

  He opens his eyes slowly. The light obscures her face, but he knows it is her.

  The girl.

  The star.

  He stares at her silhouette.

  The girl walks on the snow, weightless, and crouches before his half-buried body.

  "Me too."

  Her index finger touches Sol's forehead.

  Around them, snow-flowers bloom, impossibly. The air is still and sacred.

  And just like that, he can feel the pain inside his body dissipating bit by bit. The broken ribs, the cracked forearms, the wounds from the Nhiven's horns.

  They are regenerating.

  Sol stares at her. He knows what she is not.

  She is not Geherrim. She is not human. She is something else entirely.

  She tilts her head.

  Sol tilts his the same way.

  She smiles, as innocent as the first snow and as bright as the sunlight rising behind her at the horizon.

  She leans forward, as if inviting him to share a secret.

  "Do you want to be lost together?"