Chapter 10: Shadows in the Snow
The next dawn came gray and lifeless, as if the sun itself had grown weary of shining upon ruin. Our company broke camp in silence, the longhouse embers still faintly glowing behind us. Lord Carrow led the way north, his cloak stiff with frost, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
No one spoke Kael's name, but I felt him with us all the same. His warning lingered in the marrow of my bones: The storm has begun.
The road narrowed between cliffs and forest, the sea hissing far below like a restless serpent. Clouds pressed low, thick with coming snow. The land itself seemed to hold its breath.
By midday, Joran lifted a hand to halt us. He crouched, brushing the snow aside with his gauntlet.
"Tracks," he murmured.
I leaned closer. Bare footprints, shallow but fresh—dozens of them. Too small for soldiers. Too many to mistake.
"Children," Joran said grimly.
The men shifted uneasily. One muttered a prayer. Carrow dismounted, his face cut from stone as he traced the line of prints.
"They're driving them north," he said. His voice carried no doubt, only fury. "Like herds to slaughter."
We followed the trail into the trees. The silence there was suffocating, broken only by the caw of black ravens perched in the branches. The snow grew deeper, scarred by drag marks and the iron bite of chains. Frozen stains marked where someone had fallen, then been forced on again.
My stomach turned to ice. Joran's hand tightened on his sword hilt. "If they're close—"
He never finished.
A horn split the silence, harsh and guttural, echoing through the trees. Shadows burst from the undergrowth.
They were not men.
Their movements were wrong, jerking yet swift, wrapped in rags that stank of rot. Bone and iron masks covered their faces, their weapons crude but cruel—hooks, chains, barbed spears glinting with frost. And on every chest, painted in ash, the same sigil: the black sun, cracked and watching.
One lunged before I could draw breath. A chain snapped through the air, coiling around a rider's throat. The man was torn from his saddle, choking, dragged into the snow. Others followed with shrieks like carrion birds descending.
"Form ranks!" Carrow's command rang sharp as steel. "Shields—hold!"
We wheeled our mounts into formation, steel clashing in the dim light. My spear met one of the creatures head-on. The impact shuddered through my arm, dropping it in the snow. Its mask cracked open, and I saw the face beneath—gaunt, gray-skinned, eyes rolled white, lips cracked and bleeding.
Not raiders. Not men. Not anymore.
The fight was short and vicious. We cut them down, but the cost was heavy. Three of our riders lay dead in the snow, another dragged screaming into the dark, his cries fading until the forest swallowed them whole.
When silence returned, it was worse than the battle. The air stank of blood and iron. Our breaths rose in ragged clouds.
Joran wiped his blade clean, his face pale. "Gods save us. What in all the hells are these things?"
Carrow did not answer at once. He tore a mask from one of the fallen and crouched over the corpse. The skin beneath was waxen, stretched thin as parchment. Even in death, its lips twitched, whispering words too faint to catch.
Carrow's voice, when it came, was low and grim. "Scouts. Nothing more."
A shiver crept the length of my spine.
In the distance, another horn answered—long and deep, rolling through the forest like thunder. And beneath it, faint but certain, I heard the sound that froze the marrow in my bones.
Chains.
"—To Be Continued —"
Author : Share your thoughts, your feedback keeps the story alive.