The snow never stopped screaming.
It wasn't loud, not in the way beasts roared or weapons clashed, but it howled all the same. A constant, needling shriek carried by the wind, slicing through skin, through breath, through thought. The twins felt it everywhere. In their ears. In their bones. In the hollow ache crawling up their limbs.
White swallowed the world.
Jagged ridges of ice stretched in every direction, half-buried under rolling drifts. The sky hung low and gray, heavy with the promise of more snow. No sun. No sense of time. Just cold… endless, biting cold.
The older twin staggered forward, boots crunching through frozen powder, legs trembling with every step. Frost clung to his lashes and brows, turning each blink into a small agony. His fingers were numb inside his gloves, stiff and unresponsive, like they no longer belonged to him.
"Keep… moving," he said, though his voice came out thin, nearly torn apart by the wind.
