The river breathed steam like a dying beast.
Kaelen crouched on the bank where ice should have held thick as a man's arm. Instead, the surface sagged like old skin, dark water showing through cracks that spiderwebbed outward from the center. Each breath of vapor tasted of copper and endings.
Henwick stood upstream, fishing line taut in his weathered hands. The hook had caught something heavy—too heavy for any fish that swam these waters. When he hauled it up, metal clanged against the bank.
A belt buckle. Tarnished, corroded, still warm to the touch.
"Moren's missing since yesterday," Henwick said to no one in particular. His voice carried the flat certainty of a man stating facts rather than fears.
Kaelen's chest tightened. The steam rising from the water moved wrong—not random, but purposeful. Reaching. Like fingers testing the air for scent.
Behind him, boots crunched on frost-brittle grass. Gerun appeared at his shoulder, bow already strung, arrow nocked but not drawn.
"What's he pulled up?"
Before Kaelen could answer, someone screamed.
---
They found Moren wedged between two fallen logs downstream, where the current had caught him and held him fast.
What was left of him.
The skin had been peeled away in precise strips, leaving raw meat that steamed in the cold air. His eyes were intact but clouded white, lips burned down to nothing. Whatever had done this had taken its time, working with the patience of a craftsman.
"Same as the calf," someone whispered.
Elder Marec crossed himself with shaking fingers. "The hide is gone. All of it. Just like before."
Kaelen forced himself to look closer. No blood pooled around the body. The wounds were clean, cauterized, as if heat had sealed them shut. But underneath the char, something else caught the light—silver threads running through the exposed flesh like veins.
*Metal in his blood. Something put metal in his blood.*
"Everyone back." Gerun's voice cut through the murmurs. "Now."
But Kaelen couldn't move. Heat pulsed against his ribs, and the silver threads in the corpse seemed to pulse back in answer. For one terrible moment, he felt connected to the thing that had done this—not as victim, but as kin.
*It knows me. Whatever killed him, it knows what I am.*
Gerun's hand found his shoulder, grip firm enough to bruise. "We're leaving."
---
Supper passed in silence broken only by the scrape of pewter against wood.
The stew was thin—mostly broth and hope—but nobody ate anyway. Vern kept glancing toward the shuttered windows as if expecting them to explode inward. Edira's humming had stopped entirely, leaving only the pop and hiss of logs burning down to ash.
Kaelen pushed a chunk of turnip around his bowl, watching the pale root leave oily trails in the broth. Every surface in the room reflected flame—the polished spoons, the window glass, his own eyes when he caught them in the water bucket.
*The fire's getting stronger. I can feel it behind my teeth.*
"Frost's melting like plague rot," Vern said suddenly.
The words hung in the air like smoke. Edira's spoon clinked against her bowl—once, twice, then went still.
"Maybe the thaw is mercy," she said quietly. "Winter's been too long."
Gerun looked up from his untouched food. "Not mercy. Teeth."
Another silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken fears. Outside, something howled in the distance—long, mournful, not quite wolf. The sound echoed off the valley walls until it seemed to come from the earth itself.
Kaelen's hand found the spot where the charred medallion used to rest. The cord had snapped when Jori grabbed it, and now his throat felt naked without the familiar weight.
*They're all afraid. But they're not afraid of the same thing.*
He caught his father's eye across the table. Vern held his gaze for a moment, then looked away, fingers moving to the rusted pendant at his throat.
"Going to check the animals," Gerun said, standing abruptly. His chair scraped against the floor like a blade on stone.
Kaelen started to follow, but Gerun shook his head.
"Stay with Mother."
The door closed behind him with a soft thump, leaving Kaelen alone with his parents and their accumulating silences.
---
The barn loft smelled of hay and hidden fears.
Gerun had made a nest among the bales—blankets, water, strips of dried meat wrapped in oiled cloth. His bow leaned against the nearest beam, arrow nocked and ready. The silver arrowhead gleamed like a star in the lantern light.
"You're staying out here?" Kaelen asked.
"Something's hunting." Gerun tested the bowstring's tension, then relaxed it slightly. "Whatever killed Moren, it's not done."
Kaelen climbed up beside him, settling onto a bale that crackled under his weight. Through the loft's small window, he could see the village spread below them—dark houses, darker streets, the well's mouth like a wound in the square's center.
"What if it's not outside?" The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Gerun's hands stilled on his bow. He looked at Kaelen with the same intensity he'd use to sight a target.
"Then I shoot through the floor."
Something in his tone—not quite joking, not quite serious—made Kaelen's mouth twitch upward. The first smile he'd felt in days, crooked but real.
"Promise?"
"Promise." Gerun settled back against the hay, but his grip never left the bow. "Whatever's whispering to you, it'll have to whisper past me first."
The wind picked up outside, rattling the barn's loose boards. Somewhere in the distance, that howl came again—closer now, circling the village like a predator testing boundaries.
Kaelen pulled his knees to his chest, watching his brother's profile in the lantern light. Gerun's jaw was set, his eyes never leaving the window. Ready for war in a village still pretending it wasn't one.
*He'd do it. If something came for me, he'd actually do it.*
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made the heat in his chest burn hotter.
---
Kaelen woke to the sound of whispered prayer.
His father's voice drifted up through the floorboards—low, urgent, desperate. Not the formal recitations Kaelen remembered from childhood, but something rawer. More afraid.
He slipped from his bed and crept toward the stairs, bare feet silent on the cold wood. The house was dark except for a faint glow from the kitchen, where a single candle burned before their household shrine.
Vern knelt before the tarnished icon of Melitele, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone white. The goddess's face—what remained of it after years of candle smoke—seemed to flicker in the unsteady light.
"Take it from us," Vern whispered. "Or bind it. I don't care which."
Kaelen froze on the stairs, one foot suspended above the next step.
"The heat is in his eyes now. I see it when he looks at me." Vern's voice cracked. "My own son, and I see it burning."
The words hit like physical blows. Kaelen gripped the banister to keep from falling, wood creaking softly under his fingers.
"Bind it, or take it. But don't let it burn us all."
*He's not praying for protection from the thing that killed Moren. He's praying for protection from me.*
Kaelen backed up the stairs, careful to avoid the boards that groaned. His father's whispers followed him, each word a small knife sliding between his ribs.
In his room, he pressed his back to the door and slid down until he sat on the cold floor. The heat in his chest pulsed like a second heartbeat, and when he looked at his hands, he could swear he saw veins of light running beneath the skin.
*Not cursed. Not chosen. Just wrong.*
Outside, the wind carried another howl—longer this time, hungrier. And underneath it, so faint he might have imagined it, the sound of something large moving through the snow.
Coming closer.
---
Dawn came gray and bitter, the sky the color of old bones.
Kaelen made his way to the river alone, drawn by a pull he couldn't name. The ice had cracked further overnight, dark water flowing free in the center. Steam rose from the current in lazy spirals, and the air tasted of copper and burnt things.
He knelt on the bank where the ice was thickest, or should have been. Instead, a single deep fissure ran from shore to shore, perfectly straight, as if something had drawn a line across the frozen surface with a burning blade.
Smoke hissed up from the crack—not water vapor, but actual smoke. Gray, acrid, carrying scents that didn't belong to any honest fire.
Kaelen leaned closer.
*"Child of ash."*
The whisper rose from the crack like breath from a grave. Not heard but felt, tasted, drawn into his lungs with each breath.
*"The fire remembers."*
He should have run. Should have screamed for help, for Gerun, for anyone. Instead, he pressed his palm to the ice beside the fissure.
Heat exploded up his arm. Not painful—welcoming. Like coming home to a hearth that had been waiting for him since before he was born.
The ice beneath his hand began to melt, water running between his fingers in warm rivulets. And in the steam that rose, he saw shapes that made his breath catch.
Wings. Scales. Eyes that burned like coals in the darkness.
*"Soon."*
Kaelen jerked his hand back, but the damage was done. The ice continued to melt where he'd touched it, spreading outward in perfect circles. The smoke pouring from the crack grew thicker, and in its gray depths, something moved.
Something vast. Something patient.
Something that knew his name better than the people who'd raised him.
He stood and backed away from the water, but the heat in his chest pulsed in rhythm with whatever stirred beneath the ice. Connected. Recognized.
*It's not hunting me. It's calling me home.*
Behind him, footsteps crunched through the snow. Gerun appeared at his shoulder, bow drawn, arrow aimed at the smoking crack.
"What did you do?"
Kaelen looked at his brother—really looked. Saw the fear in his eyes, the way his hands trembled on the bowstring. Saw the silver arrowhead pointed not at the river, but at him.
"Nothing," he whispered.
But they both knew that was a lie.