The forge had never felt smaller.
With three refugees added to the guest room and another pair sleeping near the wall, every corner breathed warmth—but it wasn't comfort. It was survival.
Elira moved through the narrow space with practiced rhythm, distributing tea and heat as if they were equal parts of medicine. The forge fire snapped, but even its light seemed dimmer now. Torren hammered less often. More staring. Less shaping.
The cold had gotten into people's bones.
Not just outside. Inside.
Thern arrived just past noon, kicking open the door with snow still clinging to his boots.
"They're gone," he said, voice tight. "All of them."
Maverick didn't look up from his sharpening stone. "More livestock?"
"Same pen as yesterday," Thern growled. "Three goats. A calf. One damn chicken."
"Any signs?" Torren asked. His voice was rough, not from surprise, but from knowing what would come next.
"No prints. Gate still tied. And there's a smell this time. Like something old… and wet."
Torren looked at Maverick.
Maverick nodded. "I'll take second patrol."
Elira moved quietly, retrieving her thickest scarf. "You'll need this. The wind's shifted."
That evening, Alric was already waiting by the wall post.
"You know I should send a rotation," he said as Maverick approached. "You haven't slept."
"I don't trust rotations."
Alric handed him the second lantern. "Neither do I. But you keep saying yes when you mean no. That'll kill you quicker than frost."
Maverick took the lantern. "Send backup in thirty. If I don't whistle, send them anyway."
The path to Thern's field was all memory now. Maverick didn't need the torch to know where to step, which corners creaked, which patches iced over quicker than the rest.
The pens stood crooked in the dark. Older wood. No true foundation. They had weathered frost, flood, fire—but not this.
He stepped through the same broken gate he had examined yesterday.
Nothing had changed.
And that was the problem.
The snow inside the pen was flat. Too flat.
The gouges in the post were still fresh. Narrow, deep. Like something had gripped from within.
And the smell...
It had gotten worse.
He turned toward the supply barn.
The door was ajar.
Lantern raised.
The shadows shifted across the hay bales and sacks of grain, the frost thickest where the beams met the wall.
He stepped inside.
Silence.
Then—
A breath.
Not his.
It dropped from the rafters.
No warning. Just mass.
Maverick moved on reflex.
Lantern in left hand, spear raised in the right.
The creature hit the ground hard—too hard. No pain response. Just a scramble of limbs that didn't fit right.
It lunged.
He stepped aside—low stance, angled his body to the right.
The spear thrust into something soft, then met resistance, as if bone had reformed around it.
No blood.
The thing shrieked—high, brittle. Not from the throat. From somewhere deeper. Like air forced through cracked stone.
It swung a long limb toward his shoulder.
He ducked, turned the spear into a crossbar, and shoved with full weight, pinning it against a crate.
Their eyes met.
Or would have, if the thing had eyes.
Just black hollows.
Watching.
Waiting.
Then it slipped.
Sideways.
Up the wall.
Into the dark beams again.
Gone.
No footsteps. No creak. No breath.
Just the return of silence.
Maverick stood there, lungs dragging air that refused to feel clean.
The frost had returned to the inside of the barn.
The smell didn't fade.
It hung there.
Like it had become part of the wood.
Alric arrived soon after.
He looked at Maverick's face first, not his weapon.
"You saw it?"
Maverick nodded.
"It attacked?"
"No. It watched. Then it moved."
"Was it—"
"No."
"Bandit?"
"No."
Alric took a long breath. "Then what?"
Maverick looked back toward the rafters.
"It knew I was there. It didn't run. It just… decided to leave."
"Because it was afraid?"
"Because it was finished."
Back at the forge, the heat felt wrong.
Too strong. Like it was trying to make up for something.
Torren sat near the fire, unmoving. Elira worked in silence, her eyes sharper now, less forgiving.
Selene wasn't there.
Maverick noticed that immediately.
She'd been around every night this week.
Tonight, nothing.
Only a scarf. Folded. Neat. Left on the bench.
No note.
He didn't ask.
He stood near the window for a long time, staring out past the lantern's reflection.
Elira joined him.
"Did you stop it?"
He shook his head.
"No."
"Did it try to stop you?"
He hesitated. Then: "No."
"Then what was it?"
He turned, and for the first time in weeks, his voice sounded almost uncertain.
"I think it was looking for something."
She paused. "Did it find it?"
"I don't know," he said. "But it's not looking outside the walls anymore."
Torren's voice broke the silence like a blade cracking ice.
"Next time, you meet it in the light."
Maverick looked at him.
"And if there is no light?" he asked.
"Then bring your own."