Page 43 of Winter's Echo
“This is wrong,” I mumbled.
Baxley didn’t slow. “What is?”
“This place should be busy,” I told him. “Caravans come through here. This is their last stop for trade. Traders, hunters, escorts. There should be tracks. Layers of them.”
“Saw that too.” Larana’s gaze dropped to the ground. “Possible that the snow has covered them?” she asked me.
“Not like this.” I shook my head. “Snow falls fast up here, but we walk through it anyway.”
She nodded. “Yeah, thought that too. There’s no disruption underneath. No frozen ridges. Nothing.”
They kept moving, and I followed them.
The buildings closed in around us, low, squat structures built from thick stone, their doors shut tight. No light bled from the cracks. No sound carried.
There was no life.
A door hung slightly open to our left. Larana saw it when I did. She lifted a hand, stopping us.
Baxley shifted his grip on his blade. “Stay behind me,” he murmured again.
I wasn’t going to argue with him. Larana nudged the door wider with the tip of her boot. It creaked too loudly, and we all stilled, waiting for something or someone to answer.
But nothing was here. No movement. No voices. No sudden rush of bodies.
Just silence.
Baxley moved first, slipping inside. Larana followed him. I hesitated and then stepped in after them. The smell hit me first. It wasn’t rot. Not exactly. But it smelled like something colder. Metallic maybe.
Whatever it was, it waswrong.
My gaze adjusted to the dim interior. Tables and chairs and a hearth gone cold.
I stopped.
“Don’t,” Baxley said sharply.
Too late because my eyes had already found it. The floor near the hearth was scorched, not burned like firewood or blackened like a cooking accident. Scorched in a wide, uneven circle like something had exploded outward.
Exploded with enough force that the stone had cracked beneath it.
And whatever had caused it… had been hot enough to split rock.
Larana crouched beside it, running her fingers just above the surface without touching. “No soot,” she murmured.
“No fire,” Baxley added.
I swallowed. That meant magic. I didn’t know enough about it, but I didn’t think this was the kind taught in institutions.
“Do we?—”
“Shh,” Larana whispered. She and Baxley were both gazing up at the ceiling.
And suddenly, Skallfen being silent didn’t feel like a mystery. It felt like a warning. One we should’ve listened to.
“Amarya.” Larana’s voice was so low I could barely hear her. “I need you to run when I say so. Run straight for the gate and don’t look back.”
“I can help?—”
