The wind changed first.
All night it had blown north, smearing snow across the cliffs, but at dawn it swung from the east and carried the smell of stone dust and frozen sap — the kind of air that meant the forest was thinning.Kael woke to that smell and to the girl's hand on his shoulder. She pointed toward the ridge, then down. Tracks laced the slope below them: not boots this time, but bare prints shaped like crooked hands.
"Animals?" Kael whispered.
She shook her head once. "Not anymore."
He didn't ask what she meant.
They packed the few things they had — her knife, two lengths of sinew cord, a pouch of pine bark — and started west along the ridge. The sky had turned white from horizon to horizon, and the light made every surface a blade. Kael blinked through tears until the girl handed him a strip of soot-black cloth to tie over his eyes. "Too much light kills sight," she murmured.
He trusted her by now; he tied it on.
They moved like shadows stitched to the snow. The rhythm they'd learned together — quiet lungs, measured steps — carried them over the first hour without a sound louder than breath.When Kael's legs began to shake from cold, the girl stopped beneath a rock ledge and pointed to the ground.
"Lines," she said softly.
He frowned, then noticed the faint pattern pressed into the ice: circular ridges, evenly spaced, pulsing upward from below. He felt them before he understood — a vibration running through the soles of his feet.
The earth was humming.
"Don't step there," she warned. "Old things sleep under the frost."
They skirted the pattern, hugging the rock until the vibration faded. Kael glanced back once and saw steam curling from the grooves like breath from buried lungs.
By mid-day they reached the tree line. Below stretched a valley crusted in frozen mist, and beyond that a sea of gray forest that seemed to breathe with its own rhythm. Kael stared down, dizzy at the scale of it.
"That's where we're going?" he asked.
The girl nodded. "If we cross before night."
"Why before night?"
She only said, "Because the cold moves different after dark."
They descended in silence. The slope was cruel: sharp stone hidden under loose snow, every step a test of balance. Kael slipped once, slamming his knee. Pain flared through him — and with it, the Lines under his skin brightened in an instant. Heat spread up his thigh, stopping the bleeding almost as soon as it began.
The girl noticed. "You can shape it now," she said. "Good."
"I didn't mean to."
"Better that you didn't. Instinct first. Control later."
They rested under a shelf of frozen roots. Kael rubbed his leg and studied the glow fading beneath his skin. "What are these Lines, really?"
She looked at him for a long time, as if weighing how much truth he was ready for."They're what's left when the body refuses to forget pain," she said finally. "Yours just remember faster than most."
They reached the valley floor before dusk. Mist coiled around their ankles, cold enough to bite through cloth. The girl stopped beside a half-frozen stream and crouched, pressing her ear to the ice.
Kael waited.She motioned him closer, and he listened too.
Under the ice, faint but clear, was a sound like a heartbeat echoing through water. Thump… pause… thump. It wasn't fast like a human pulse; it was slow and vast, like a drum struck miles away.
He felt his own Lines answer.
The girl pulled back quickly. "Not too long," she said. "It listens when you listen."
Kael swallowed. "What is it?"
"The mountain's breath you heard before," she said. "It runs under everything. That's why the world doesn't fall apart."
He didn't understand, but the words lodged somewhere deep, where curiosity and fear shared a single shape.
As darkness fell, they built a shelter under the hollow of an uprooted tree. The trunk arched overhead like a rib cage, packed with snow from years of storms. The girl sealed the entrance with brush, leaving only a slit for air.
When the wind finally died, Kael realized how loud silence could be. His own heartbeat filled the space. Every few minutes, he'd hear the distant crack of ice settling or the faint whisper of something moving outside — not close, just aware.
"Try again," she said suddenly.
He blinked. "Try what?"
"Your breathing. You have to move the heat, not let it move you."
She sat opposite him, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes. Her breaths were invisible, so shallow they didn't frost the air. Kael copied her.The cold stung his lungs. The Lines resisted, wanting to flare. He clenched his jaw.
"Don't fight them," she murmured. "Guide them."
He focused on his heartbeat, slowing it, counting the way she'd taught him. The Lines began to dim, then shift — not burning now, but flowing. He felt the warmth gather in his core, steady, quiet.
When he opened his eyes, the air around him shimmered faintly, like heat over stone.
The girl smiled — a rare, brief thing. "Good. That's the first step."
"What's next?"
"Surviving the night."
The temperature plunged. Frost crawled across the wood above them until it creaked. Kael's breath turned to needles. When his teeth began to chatter, he remembered her words and pulled the warmth from his chest outward, tracing it through the Lines. It obeyed sluggishly at first, then surged. The shivering stopped. His skin prickled with a faint red light, hidden under his clothes.
He fell asleep to the sound of their synchronized breathing — two quiet hearts in a world of cold.
He dreamed of nothing.
When he woke, it was because light had returned — thin, blue, the color of iron cooled too quickly. The girl was already outside, scanning the valley. He crawled out beside her and saw their tracks from yesterday glowing faintly where the sun hit them. It was as if the ground itself remembered their steps.
"Do you see that?" he asked.
She nodded. "The Lines don't only live in you. Everything keeps its marks."
"Even the snow?"
"Especially the snow."
Kael looked back at the endless white path behind them. Every step was a trace of heat, a confession written across the world.
He wrapped his arm tighter in cloth. "Then we'd better not stop."
The girl smiled again — that same small, knowing curve. "Good. You're learning."
They turned west, where the forest swallowed light, and began walking.The wind rose behind them, scattering their footprints grain by grain, until even the snow forgot where they had been.