Snow came in the night.
Not soft flakes, but hard pellets, rattling like thrown seeds against rooftops and shutters. Edenrock woke uneasy, fires stoked higher than usual, smoke curling low into the white sky. The village bell rang twice not alarm, just notice that hunters were called off. Too much risk in the drifts.
Nerin sat at the tavern's back table, his journal spread open, pages crammed with diagrams no one else could read. The ink bled in crooked spirals, almost alive, and the longer he looked at them the more his temples throbbed.
He rubbed his bandaged arm.
The pulse beneath his skin was stronger today.
The echoes are looking for me, he thought. Or I'm looking for them.
Either way, it wouldn't stop.
---
The tavern door banged open. Dorrin, the grizzled woodcutter, stomped in, boots caked with ice.
"They're back," he said flatly. "North path. Two of them. Masks."
The room froze.
Nerin shut his book.
---
They went together Dorrin, Leyra, three hunters with spears, and Nerin walking silent at the back. Snow had blanketed the fields waist-high, burying fences and swallowing paths. The only signs of life were the crows wheeling above and the ragged footprints already pressed into the drifts.
At the north path, they found them.
Two masked figures, standing perfectly still, half-buried in snow. Their masks were carved from bone this time, jawless, mouths left open in silent wails. Their bodies twitched faintly, like marionettes waiting for the pull of a string.
"They're… not moving," one hunter whispered.
Nerin narrowed his eyes. No. They're listening.
He felt the pulse in his arm again.
Calling me closer.
---
"Stay back," Dorrin muttered, raising his axe.
But Nerin stepped forward anyway.
The pulse grew stronger.
And then he heard it.
Not in his ears.
In his skull.
A scraping whisper, overlapping syllables, words forced through waterlogged throats.
"Nnnerrrinnn… Halon… Halon… Nnnerrrinnn…"
He staggered.
The others didn't hear it. Their eyes stayed locked on the still figures.
But Nerin-
Nerin saw something else.
For a moment, through the snow, the masks turned transparent. Beneath them were not faces, but threads spools of memory wound tightly into the bone, tugging at one another. Like roots. Or veins.
He could read them.
A lattice. A script.
A flaw.
---
The first figure jerked violently, snow spraying as it lunged for the hunters. Dorrin's axe met it mid-charge, biting deep into its chest but it didn't fall. It kept clawing forward, shrieking through the hollow of its mask.
The second sprinted sideways, leaping for Leyra.
"Down!" Nerin shouted.
She dropped, spear snapping upward just in time to catch its arm. But it wrenched free, mask rattling, scream sharp enough to split the air.
The hunters panicked. Spears clashed, boots slipped on ice. One man was dragged down screaming into the snow.
Nerin stood very still.
The lattice in his head blazed.
Then without thinking he spoke.
Not words he knew.
Words carved into him.
"Stop."
The figures froze.
Just for a heartbeat.
Long enough.
Nerin lunged, drawing the spine-shard blade in a single smooth motion. He didn't slash wildly he struck exactly where the lattice told him. A seam just beneath the throat of the first creature, a point where the memory threads knotted.
The blade sank, hissed.
And the mask split in two.
The body collapsed like wet clay.
The second screamed louder, thrashing but Nerin was already moving, ducking under its swipe. He pivoted, angled the shard, and stabbed into its mask's hollow mouth.
The scream cut short.
Then silence.
Both bodies twitched… then dissolved, leaving only bone fragments and snow melted into black puddles.
---
The others stood frozen.
Breathing hard.
Staring.
Leyra's voice broke first. "What… was that?"
Nerin stared at his blade. At his hands.
The pulse in his arm had gone quiet.
"I think," he said slowly, "they listen to me."
---
Back in the tavern, the air was heavy with fire smoke and fear. The hunters drank in silence. Dorrin whetted his axe without a word. Leyra sat beside Nerin, eyes sharp, voice low.
"You commanded them."
"No," he said. "I… rewrote them. Just for a moment. Like shifting a line of ink."
"And that doesn't terrify you?"
Nerin looked at his arm, at the faint pattern under the skin now glowing like old scars.
"It terrifies me every second," he admitted.
Then he closed his journal and whispered:
"But it also means I can find out who Halon really is."
---
Far beyond Edenrock, in the fungal marsh, another masked figure paused mid-step. It tilted its head. For the first time, it whispered a name back not to itself, but to the snow.
"Nerin."