“The cold always comes first,” Castle Guard Garrick said, watching his breath cloud in the torchlight. He took a swig from a silver flask and pushed it toward his partner, Ward.
Snow fell steadily, gathering on their shoulders and helmets, flake upon endless flake, the blanket of the north. In the distance, the heavy beat of Threadneedle’s bells marked the hour.
The castle walls, towering and ancient, stretched to meet the snow-draped earth below. Large flakes softened the rough edges of the battlements, torchlight glinting off their frost-bound stone.
Above the ramparts, mountain peaks caught the last of the light of the day on their faces, sharp as drawn blades. The village spread out beneath them—stone houses with slate roofs that bowed under the weight of years and frost, and narrow lanes choked with snow and black with soot.
Garrick’s large frame braced against the wind that swept down the ramparts. His face, weathered with scars, carried an enduring strength, as if hewn from the ancient stones of Threadneedle’s walls.
Where Garrick was stone, Ward was shadow: razor-edged and restless, his wiry frame at odds with the stiff, well-kept uniform he wore.
Though no one had seen anything but snow here for years, Threadneedle’s Lord insisted the tower remain under constant watch.
Ward chuckled and tipped the flask as he spoke. “Two guards to a shift. Ol’ Lord Edric wouldn’t want us losing our minds staring at the snow all night.”
“Someone has to keep you from drinking through your shift,” Garrick grunted, then shook his head. “It’s too heavy tonight. Coming down fast.”
A smirk tugged at his mouth as he sipped; for Ward, every moment hid a joke. Gallows humor for a gallows town, he thought, and resolved to put some words to his musings with another swig of the flask.
“You worry too much, old man,” Ward said, his words slurring pleasantly. He rolled his eyes and tipped back the flask again as he leaned lazily against the battlement, snow catching in his untidy hair.
“No, that snow’s looking awful heavy up there,” Garrick responded, nodding toward the peaks. “See those cracks in the snowfield? I’ve never seen them stretch that far.”
Ward followed his line of sight, blinking at the glacier’s fractured surface. He let out a slow breath and rocked on his heels.
“Ah, well,” he said, waving his flask vaguely at the peaks. “Maybe it’s just the mountain trying to smile.”
Garrick did not blink. “An avalanche would take out half the village.”
Ward huffed. “Look, all I’m saying is, well, maybe it ain’t a sign. Maybe the snow’s just stretching its legs.”
“You’re full of shit,” Garrick muttered.
“And yet I don’t collapse under my own weight.” Ward grinned. “Unlike that snowfield.”
Garrick slowly turned his head. It was the look of a man weighing murder.
Ward clapped him on the back, mostly to check if he was still warm. “Listen, if the mountain does bury us, you can say ‘I told you so’ when we die.”
This time, Garrick shook his head and swung around toward the jagged row of peaks. But Ward’s gaze drifted below.
Something was wrong. At first, it was a prickling awareness worming its way up his spine, the kind of feeling that made a man reach for steel before he even knew why.
Then, a patch of darkness close to the outer wall, where flakes should have been drifting, swallowed them whole.
Ward was not a man to get goosebumps lightly. But he blinked and squinted against the swirling snow. Like breath fogging in a mirror, a shape began to form at the edge of the ruins below.
His throat was dry as he tried to speak. “Garrick.” No response. He tried again, louder this time. “What—what’s that?”
Garrick barely moved his head, but his posture shifted uneasily. Because the shape in the snow… it wasn’t just standing there anymore.
It stared back.
Ward’s flask dropped, forgotten. His expression lost the grin, morphing into something closer to… to dread.
Then, like a fast-moving cloud, the shapes broke apart, dissolving into nothing but the snow below.
As if only imagined.
Kicking the flask, Garrick snorted. “You’ve had too much of that, brother.”
Below them, Threadneedle was ever the same. Sleeping buildings hunched under layers of snow. Wisps of smoke curled from chimneys. A window here glowed orange with candlelight, a window there was black with frost.
And yet, both men turned toward the signal tower.
Black and angular against the bruised horizon, it loomed over the village like a scar in the sky. Garrick shuddered, hearing—or imagining—a scream.
This time, the terror was all too real.
The siren’s voice tore through the night, echoing along the stone walls of Threadneedle. Like a dying breath, the unnatural scream sailed through the falling snow, fading into the darkness.
From a tower above, an icicle cracked loose and fell, shattering on stone. Both men drew their swords, the cold steel whispering from their scabbards.