❄︎ The Visitors of the North ❄︎
For two days, Christopher wandered the ice.
He did not know in which direction he walked — only that if he stopped, he would die. The sky had turned the color of bruised steel. Snow fell in endless silence, fine as ash. The cold was no longer pain; it was something deeper, a quiet erasure.
The world had gone small — his breath, his steps, the weight of the axe handle still frozen in his grip. His mind drifted between moments: Brann’s face, pale and bloodied; the scream of Harlo cut short; the sound of laughter that wasn’t laughter.
He wondered, dimly, if this was punishment.
He had led them here. For what? For glory? For curiosity? For some foolish hunger to prove himself greater than the horizon? The North had answered, and it had answered honestly.
When he fell, he did not feel it at first. His knees simply buckled, and the ice rose up to meet him. He lay there, breathing shallowly, watching his exhalations drift away like ghosts.
He thought he saw shapes moving beyond the fog — tall, graceful figures walking where no man could walk. He thought perhaps they were the souls of his crew come to claim him.
Then, warmth.
It began as a faint pressure on his shoulder — a hand. Then another. He tried to lift his head, but the world spun.
Voices murmured — not human, but not inhuman either. Fluid, lilting, a language that shimmered in his half-frozen mind.
He was lifted. His body was carried. The cold retreated, replaced by a dim red glow and the scent of something burning faintly sweet — oil or resin.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a cavern.
Walls of ice refracted light like glass, shifting between white and crimson. A fire burned in a pit of black stone. Figures moved about — tall, cloaked, their faces obscured by hoods of fur and bone.
One of them knelt beside him.
“You live,” it said. The voice was low, almost melodic. “Good. We did not wish to find you too late.”
Christopher tried to sit up, his limbs trembling. “Who… who are you?”
The figure tilted its head. “We are the North.”
Another figure approached — taller still, wearing a crown of antlers black as obsidian. Its face was pale, narrow, and too perfect — like something carved rather than born. Eyes the color of old ice regarded him with patient curiosity.
“You should not have come here, man of the South,” it said. “And yet, perhaps, you were meant to.”
Christopher’s throat burned. “My crew —”
“Gone,” said the crowned one. “Taken by the wild. It is merciful that you did not join them.”
Christopher looked down, shame crushing what warmth he had. “They followed me. They trusted me.”
The figure crouched, its gaze level with his. “And they died for it. Such is the way of your kind. Always you reach, always you consume. The North devours those who hunger too greatly.”
Christopher’s fists clenched weakly. “Then why save me?”
The creature smiled faintly. “Because you have something we do not.”
“What could I possibly have left?”
The crowned one leaned closer, and Christopher felt the cold of its breath on his cheek.
“Hope,” it whispered. “And hope is a dangerous thing.”
