The Longhouse of Stone Creek wasn't built for comfort; it was built for survival. Thick timbers, salvaged from glacial driftwood and lashed together with sinew and desperation, formed a low, cavernous space beneath a heavy sod roof. Tonight, the air inside wasn't just thick with the smell of peat smoke, damp fur, and unwashed bodies – it was choked with palpable fear. Every adult who could stand crowded inside, their faces gaunt masks etched with exhaustion and a new, sharper dread. The wind's usual scream felt distant, muffled by the weight of the news Headwoman Anya had just delivered.
Anya stood on a low crate at the far end, her presence a pillar of grim resolve amidst the swirling anxiety. Kael the trapper stood beside her, holding up two strips of treated leather. Impressed onto them, preserved in frozen mud and ash, were boot prints.
"Found 'em," Kael announced, his voice tight, cutting through the murmurs. "High ridge, west lookout. Five sets. Not trappers. Not scavengers." He tapped the clearest print. "See the tread? Fine weave, reinforced heel. City leather. Expensive." He held up the other strip. "This one... deeper. Bigger. Lead-weighted, I'd wager. For shattering bone or ice."
A collective intake of breath. City boots. Professional tread.
"Five," Anya stated, her voice a low rumble that silenced the room. Her icy blue eyes scanned the crowd, lingering for a fraction of a second longer on Tae, standing near the back, the unnatural chill radiating from him a constant undercurrent. "Moving quiet. Careful. Like they knew where to look. Kael tracked 'em... they circled. Came within a stone's throw of the south gully entrance." She paused, letting the implication sink in. The south gully was one of the village's most concealed approaches, known only to Creekers. "They knew where to look," she repeated, the words dropping like stones.
Old Man Heng shuffled forward, his voice a reedy whisper. "The Emperor's hounds? Come to finish the job on them?" He didn't look at Tae and Lian, but everyone knew who 'them' was. Suspicion, previously a low hum, now crackled in the air like static.
"Maybe," Anya conceded, her gaze sweeping past Heng, refusing to single anyone out yet. "Maybe somethin' else. Bandits with fancy boots? Unlikely. What matters is why they're here now, pokin' around our ice." She slammed her gnarled staff on the crate for emphasis. "Plan's simple. Double the watch. All hidden points manned, day and night. Eyes sharp. Ears sharper. No one ventures out alone. Kids stay central."
Borik, his face grim, spoke up. "And if they find the way in? If they come knockin'?"
Anya's jaw set. "Then we show 'em why we cling to this dyin' rock. We fight for our ledge. But fightin' means dyin', most like." Her gaze hardened. "Evacuation routes. You all know 'em. The ice caves north, the deep fissure south. Pack essentials – food, water, furs, medicine. Be ready to run into the glacier's belly if the horn sounds. It's cold down there, colder'n here. But it's deeper than their reach... maybe." She didn't sound convinced. "Questions?"
There were none. Only the heavy silence of people contemplating the unthinkable – abandoning the fragile, hard-won safety of Stone Creek for the certain death of the deeper ice. Anya's eyes flickered again towards Tae, a silent communication passing between them – a mix of accusation, resignation, and a fierce, protective fury for the village. She suspected why the hunters had come, but voicing it now would only fracture their fragile unity. Survival demanded cohesion, even built on unspoken truths.
Outside, cloaked in the perpetual twilight of the Blizzard Wastes and the swirling snow, the five figures were anything but idle. They were a blur of white and grey against the grey, moving with preternatural silence. Wraith flowed like smoke over the wind-scoured rock, his senses extended, tasting the air, reading the minute disturbances in the snowpack. He paused near a cluster of skeletal black plants, his hand hovering over a patch where the grey-crimson grit seemed slightly compressed.
"Here," he breathed, the sound barely carrying to Kestrel , who stood a few feet away, eyes closed, her consciousness expanded like a net. "A pause. Scuff marks... deliberate. Camouflage attempt. Crude."
Kestrel nodded minutely, her brow furrowed. "Qi signature... faint. Very faint. Like cold embers buried deep. Two sources. Muted. One... colder. Sharper. Wrong." She opened her eyes, pale and intense. "They passed this way. Recently. Headed... towards that rock face." She pointed towards a seemingly sheer expanse of the dark, glassy stone that formed the valley wall.
Ember moved forward, studying the rock face with a tracker's eye. "No visible entrance. Wind patterns... odd." He scooped a handful of snow, let it fall. The flakes swirled erratically a few feet from the rock face, as if hitting an invisible wall before drifting down normally. "Barrier. Illusion. Strong. Silent Moon grade, maybe stronger. Rooted deep." He looked at Kestrel.
Kestrel approached the swirling snow boundary. She extended a hand, not touching, but probing the air with her senses. "Complex. Layered. Visual distortion, sound dampening... thermal masking. Clever. But... not perfect. There's a resonance. A low hum, like stressed ice." She concentrated. "It's tied to the rock. To the mountain itself. Drawing power... or hiding from something that takes power."
Grendel cracked his knuckles, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet. "So we knock."
Torrent, consulting his twitching instruments, frowned. "Resonance is unstable. Glacier's groan is louder here. Pushing the barrier might... crack more than ice."
Wraith drifted closer to the shimmering air barrier. He seemed to melt into the swirling snow at its edge, becoming nearly invisible. He studied the point where the snowflakes danced erratically. "Defensive mindset. Fear. Hiding." His voice was a whisper of wind. "Not warriors waiting. Prey burrowing."
Grendel grunted. "Prey with sharp teeth, maybe. That 'wrong' cold..."
Kestrel made a decision. "We pull back. Circle wider. Look for weaknesses, another approach. Avoid triggering—"
She stopped. Wraith had gone utterly still. Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned his back on the invisible barrier. He took two measured steps away, his posture relaxed, almost dismissive. The others tensed, recognizing the feint. Then, in a movement faster than the eye could truly follow, Wraith spun. Not with a weapon, but with his lead-weighted fist coiled like a spring. He didn't roar; he exploded forward, his fist driving not at the air, but at the solid rock face behind the shimmering distortion, aiming for a hairline fissure Kestrel's senses had pinpointed as an anchor point.
"Found you," he hissed, the words lost in the sudden, catastrophic CRACK.
His fist struck the rock not with brute force alone, but with pinpoint precision and a surge of focused qi. The rock didn't just fracture; it screamed. A spiderweb of glowing crimson lines, mirroring the veins deeper in the mountain, erupted from the impact point. The invisible barrier flickered violently, like a reflection in disturbed water. For a split second, the illusion shattered completely.
The pursuers saw it: a narrow cleft in the rock face, cleverly disguised, leading into shadow. They saw rough-hewn steps. They saw, just for an instant, the widened eyes of a hidden sentry peering out from the gloom before the barrier snapped back, stronger, shimmering with angry energy.
Grendel let out a low, rumbling chuckle. Ember smirked. Torrent sighed, adjusting his instruments. Kestrel's lips thinned. Wraith lowered his fist, knuckles bleeding slightly onto the snow, his expression unreadable behind his mask. The message was clear: We see you.
Inside Stone Creek, panic was a living thing. The sentry at the south gully post stumbled into the Longhouse, pale and gasping. "They saw! The barrier flickered! One of 'em... he punched the rock! Made the mountain bleed light! They know!"
Anya's face turned to granite. "Right. Plan B. Defensive positions. Non-combatants to the deep cellar. Now." Her eyes locked onto Tae, who stood frozen, the Watcher's warning echoing in his skull (Death is coming...). "North Wind," she commanded, her voice cutting through the chaos. "Take Shadowed Brook. Deep cellar. The one behind the icefall. Now. Don't come out till I fetch you myself."
The order, the use of the aliases, the specific cellar – it confirmed everything. Anya knew exactly who the hunters sought and why. She was shielding them, buying them time at immense risk to the village. Tae's shock warred with a surge of desperate gratitude. He nodded curtly, turned to grab Lian – and she was gone.
His heart stopped. "Lian?!" He scanned the frantic crowd dispersing, mothers herding children, men grabbing makeshift weapons – axes, picks, fishing spears. No sign of her pale face, her slight frame. Panic, colder than the Frostblade shard, seized him. "Has anyone seen Shadowed Brook?!" he yelled over the din.
Elara, clutching her toddler, pointed towards the back of the longhouse, her eyes wide with shared fear. "Saw her headin' towards the wellspring, North Wind! Looked pale... shaky. Said she needed water."
The wellspring! It was near the central clearing, perilously close to where the village would make its stand if the hunters breached the barrier! And Lian was drained, fragile after the Watcher's violation. Terror propelled Tae. He shoved through the crowd, ignoring Borik's gruff call, bursting out into the screaming wind and swirling snow.
Lian leaned heavily against the rough stone rim of the communal wellspring, a deep, natural fissure in the rock fed by a trickle of less-tainted glacial meltwater deep below. The tin cup trembled in her hand. She'd tried to drink, but her throat felt raw, constricted. The cold wasn't just outside; it was deep within her bones, a residual ache from the Watcher's possession. Her mind felt scraped raw, her limbs leaden. She just needed a moment. Just a moment to breathe, to gather the shattered pieces of herself before facing the cellar's suffocating dark.
She closed her eyes, focusing on the bite of the wind on her face, the solidity of the stone beneath her hands – anything to ground herself away from the echoing void inside. Then, movement caught her bleary eye. She turned her head slowly, wearily, towards the village's main entrance path, partially obscured by a snowdrift.
Her breath hitched. Figures. Clad in white and grey furs, moving with unnatural silence and precision through the swirling snow. Not Creekers. Their posture, their bearing… it screamed discipline, power. Recognition, faint and dusty, flickered in her exhausted mind. The cut of the grey silk beneath the furs… the way one moved, a hulking shadow… Murim Alliance. Sects. Hunters. Just like the Watcher warned. They were here. Panic flared, cold and sharp.
Then, another movement. Closer. Tae! He was crouched behind a stack of firewood maybe twenty paces away. His face was a mask of terror and fury. He caught her eye and his hands moved in a rapid, intricate series of gestures – old Mu-Ryong battle-sign, stripped of qi but clear in intent: Danger. Hide. Now.
Hide? Where? The open ground offered nothing. The longhouse was swarming with people. The nearest huts were too far. Her gaze snapped back to the wellspring. The dark, icy water below. It was madness. She was exhausted, freezing. But the hunters were scanning, methodical, moving closer to the village center, towards the well. She had seconds.
Decision crystallized in pure, animal terror. Lian dropped the tin cup. It clattered on the stone. Without a sound, she swung her legs over the well's rim and pushed off.
The plunge was a shock of absolute cold that stole her breath. The dark water closed over her head, numbing instantly. She kicked down, away from the circle of dim light above, pressing herself against the slimy, frozen rock wall of the well shaft. The cold was agony, sapping her already depleted strength. She tilted her head back, just her nose and mouth breaking the surface, hidden in the deep shadow cast by the well's rim. She clung to the rough stone, fingers already going numb, her entire body trembling violently. Hold on. Just hold on. Breathe quiet.
Tae watched Lian vanish into the well, his heart pounding against his ribs like a frantic bird. The hunters were closer now, fanning out slightly. The leader, a sharp-featured woman, seemed to be studying the ground near the well. Had they heard the cup? Tae's hand closed around a heavy metal bar used to chip ice from the well rim. It was cold, solid. He would tear them apart if they looked in that well. He would unleash the Frostblade's shard, consequences be damned.
The hunters converged near the well. The sharp-featured woman (Kestrel) held up a hand, her gaze sweeping the area. Her eyes lingered on the well rim. Tae tensed, the metal bar heavy in his grip. Then, a gruff voice cut through the wind. Headwoman Anya, flanked by Borik and Kael, both holding fishing spears like pikes, stepped into the clearing from the longhouse path. Anya planted her staff firmly in the snow.
"Lost your way, travelers?" Anya's voice was a challenge, loud and rough, carrying over the wind. "Blizzard's no time for sightseein'."
The hunters turned as one, their movements synchronized and unnerving. The sharp-featured woman (Kestrel) offered a thin smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Headwoman Anya. Your reputation for resilience precedes you." Her voice was calm, cultured, utterly out of place. "We seek only shelter from the storm. And... information."
Anya snorted. "Shelter's earned. Information's traded. What's your business in the Weepin' Glacier's shadow?"
The large man (Grendel) shifted, a subtle flex of his shoulders. "Looking for someone," he rumbled, his voice muffled but heavy with implication. "Two someones. Fleeing something. Might have passed this way."
Anya's gaze was flinty. "Lots of folks flee somethin'. Few make it here. Those that do... they work. They contribute. They don't bring trouble." She stared pointedly at the spot where Wraith had struck the barrier. "We mind our ice. You mind yours. The storm's passin'. Move on."
Kestrel's smile remained fixed. "Trouble often finds places trying to hide from it, Headwoman. We mean no harm to Stone Creek. Only to find what doesn't belong." Her eyes flickered, almost imperceptibly, towards the well.
Tae's grip on the metal bar turned his knuckles white. He saw it. They knew. Or suspected.
"Everything here belongs," Anya stated flatly, taking a step forward, Borik and Kael mirroring her. "Or earns its place. You overstay your welcome. Time to leave." It wasn't a request.
Kestrel held Anya's gaze for a long, tense moment. The wind howled. The silence stretched, filled with unspoken threats. Finally, Kestrel gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. "As you wish, Headwoman. The storm does lessen. We'll... circle wider." She turned, a deliberate motion. "Move out."
The hunters turned as one, melting back into the swirling snow with the same eerie silence they had arrived with. They didn't look back at the well. Tae didn't relax. He watched until the last flicker of grey fur vanished into the whiteout. Only then did he surge from his hiding place, sprinting towards the well, the metal bar forgotten in the snow.
"Lian! Lian, they're gone! Come out!"
He skidded to his knees at the well's rim, peering down into the gloom. For a heart-stopping second, he saw only dark, churning water. Then, a pale face broke the surface, gasping, choking. Lian's lips were blue, her eyes wide with terror and exhaustion. She flailed weakly, unable to find purchase on the slick walls.
"Tae!" she rasped, her voice raw.
He lunged forward, lying flat on the icy stone, stretching his arms down. "Grab on! Now!" His good hand closed around her wrist, his corrupted arm screaming in protest as he hauled with all his strength. She was dead weight, sodden and freezing. He dragged her, scrabbling, over the rim. She collapsed onto the snow beside the well, coughing violently, shuddering uncontrollably.
Tae ripped off his outer fur tunic, wrapping it around her, rubbing her arms frantically. "You're okay, you're okay," he choked out, relief warring with the image of her blue lips, the terrifying vulnerability. "You scared the life out of me! Why the well?!"
"Nowhere... else..." she managed between coughs and shivers, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. "They... looked right at me... didn't see..." A weak, shaky smile touched her lips, born of pure, desperate triumph. "Hid..."
Tae pulled her into a fierce, crushing hug, ignoring the freezing dampness soaking through his clothes, the unnatural cold in his arm flaring in response to her icy skin. "Never do that again," he whispered fiercely into her wet hair. "Never."
"Wouldn't... recommend it..." she mumbled against his shoulder, her shivers slowly lessening slightly within the circle of his arms.
A shadow fell over them. Headwoman Anya stood there, Borik and Kael flanking her. Her expression was unreadable, carved from glacial ice. She looked down at the soaked, shivering girl and the brother holding her, radiating protective fury and unnatural cold. She looked towards the path where the hunters had vanished.
"They're not circling wider, North Wind," Anya stated, her voice devoid of its earlier bluster, flat and cold as the glacier's heart. "They're lickin' their wounds and countin' our heads." Her icy blue eyes locked onto Tae's, holding a weight that made the Watcher's warning seem like a whisper. "You. Me. The longhouse. Now. We have words to share before the night falls... and they come back with steel."
The swirling snow swallowed the five figures quickly, but the tension didn't dissipate. They regrouped a hundred yards beyond the last visible outcrop of Stone Creek.
"Barrier's reinforced. Stronger now. Defiant," Wraith reported, materializing beside Kestrel.
"Felt the old woman's qi," Grendel grunted. "Stubborn. Like the rock. The big one with the spear... he knows how to hold a line."
"The cold," Kestrel murmured, her eyes distant, replaying the scene at the well. "The unnatural cold... it flared when the brother grabbed the girl. Faint, but... unmistakable. Like the signature near the tracks. Sharper. Wrong." She looked at Ember. "The well?"
Ember had scooped fresh snow near the well rim. He let it sift through his fingers. "Disturbed snow. Scuff marks... recent. A dropped cup." He held up a faint impression in the snow – part of a small handprint, fingers splayed. "She was there. Hiding."
"Where did she go?" Torrent asked, frowning. "We scanned. Saw nothing."
Wraith's gaze drifted back towards the seemingly solid rock face hiding the village. "Down." He pointed towards the well. "Only place."
Kestrel's thin smile returned, colder than the wind. "Clever girl. Desperate." She shook her head. "But the cold... the defiance... the hidden village guarding its secrets so fiercely..." She looked at her team, her pale eyes gleaming in the gloom. "This isn't just a refuge for outcasts. It's a bolt-hole for ghosts. The Mu-Ryong remnants are here. Hiding behind skirts and fishing spears."
Grendel cracked his knuckles again, the sound like gunshots in the quiet. "Told you. Tainted. Like their mountain."
"So we report back? Wait for the Elders?" Ember asked.
Kestrel looked towards the bruised sky, then back at the hidden valley. The wind moaned, a sound like a dirge. "Report? Yes. But waiting?" Her smile vanished. "They know we're here. They'll run. Or they'll fortify. That barrier will be stronger tomorrow. That defiance will harden." She met each of their eyes. "We strike tonight. Under the cover of the storm's last gasp. Before dawn. We take the ghosts. We crack the ice. And we bring the Elders their confirmation... along with the heads of the traitor's spawn."
The order hung in the frozen air. No objections. Only the grim acceptance of hunters closing in for the kill. The pursuit was over. The purge was about to begin. Stone Creek's fragile ledge was about to shatter under the weight of orthodox vengeance.