Day twenty-seven.

  Norman is gone. No one asks where he’s gone. No one seems even curious.

  It’s strange, then, knowing that he’s disappeared, when I cannot quite figure where he went. It seems strange to… almost forget about him like that. Like there was nothing amiss.

  Are there fewer people than before? No, no. They died to the cold. Norman wouldn’t die to the cold.

  I shove the thoughts from my head, and wait. And wait. And wait.

  Day thirty.

  We’re starving. I’m so, so hungry. More of the beasts have died… and I’ve killed people for trying to murder them. People use their requests on their deathbeds, asking for just a little more warmth. Artifacts that can keep the cold at bay. We steal those from their corpses, too, using it to keep the rooms even a bit warmer. Just a hint.

  My stomach aches with hunger, and the storm rages above.

  Day thirty-two.

  Finally, at night, something happens that I can control.

  I was asleep, ice covering my eyelids, when a hand touches me, ripping me from my slumber. But that hand isn’t attached to anything. I jump, [Solidfying] a dagger of mana and stabbing forward, hitting only air.

  There’s nothing. Ice and ice and more ice, a thick fog of frozen air, leeching the warmth from my bones. I growl in anger. The cold touches me, and for the first time, I reach out and [Deconstruct] it.

  Except, then, I remember that it’s not the first time. Not at all.

  I’ve done it a dozen times, over, each night when it tried to claim me, and the mist breaks against me. Icy fingers retreat into an ethereal, consuming form, and I know that the storm is not a storm at all, it is a maelstrom of faeries.

  A thousand combined monsters killing us with icy fingers. Starving us insidiously, and making people vanish. And for just a moment, I remember that Norman hasn’t disappeared because of the storm - but because of me.

  And then, the cold touches me again, and the memories fade. I swallow them into my Abiding Apathy, because I also remembered it was not yet time. Not yet. Just another few days.

  Day thirty-five.

  It’s ice cold. I sit with the beasts, in the stable, healing myself, keeping over a dozen fires going, keeping us warm as best I can. The eternal drumming of the sleet against the roof is a lullaby trying to get me to close my weary eyes, to rest but a moment, but the hunger in my stomach grounds me.

  Richard joins me in the stables. I hardly notice as she slides down the wall next to me. She whispers, slowly. “Hungry.”

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  And she is. Hiy’ht are probably more susceptible to cold than humans, I’d wager, and with her class… she must be starving. “What can you eat?” I ask.

  “Feed me magic,” she requests.

  I nod, slowly, and solidify an orb of mana, letting her chew on it. Like a jawbreaker, the construct breaks in her mouth, and I can see the magic transforming as she consumes it. Into something… different. Something I don’t yet get. Something I want to understand in the future.

  We wrap up in blankets in between wet furs, and I feed her more mana as the hours tick by. Orb after solid orb, each one denser, more powerful. It’s miserable, but we survive.

  Day thirty-eight. Richard is ice cold, but I heal her. More people have vanished from the main camp. Opal meditates, ice-cold blade gently sitting in their lap. Thatch [Channels] his anger through himself, just to keep his heart pumping. Dar is in pseudo-hibernation, his heart only beating every minute or so.

  We handle it. Bit by bit, we handle it. I carve through the cold each night, and forget each morning. Something has to change, I just wait for what. I wait and wait and wait…

  Ice falls on the roofs, and it becomes harder to open the doors to the outside. The storm is horrible and icy and I want nothing more than to break it, but it’s bigger than me. I carve into it each night, but forget. My mind feels foggy. I struggle to see, but whenever I do, I simply touch that open part of my skull.

  There is a burning there. A pain that marks me as a victim of fire. When I touch my exposed skull, the cold feels less scary, and my vision clears a bit, even as agony spreads through me. In my fugue, I can almost feel the mark the Flametouched left on me, and the way it makes the storm recoil when I remember it exists.

  And so, night by night, agonizing fire crawls through my skull. My eyes bleed, and the blood freezes into red icicles before it’s even halfway down my face. My white hair is caked in frost, giving it a blue-silver sheen.

  Day thirty-nine.

  Someone tries to kill one of the beasts. I stab him in the chest, wrestling him to the freezing ground, and then kill him. Once he’s dead, I let all the leftover magic fall into my Abiding Apathy, consuming it. I steal his artefacts. Richard descends on the body, hungry for the first real food in days.

  It’s ugly, but she eats him. And when it’s done, the body is gone.

  I can almost hear the ice laugh in my ears.

  Day… fourty.

  I wait.

  Fourty-one.

  I wait.

  Fourty-two.

  My mind is slowing. The cold is winning. I break it every night, but it’s winning, slowly but surely. The animals huddle around me, and I feel the essence within me fighting to stay conscious. I don’t want to freeze.

  Fourty-three…

  Something happens.

  Screams. That’s what I wake up to. Before we know it, the bloodbath is done. One of the four remaining huts is gone. Dead. Every single person in there turned into a frozen corpse, torn apart by tooth and claw and one-another.

  The storm wants us to kill each other. I’m sure of that now. It wants us to kill each other, to be suspicious. When we huddled together, we survived longer. We’re defying it, in our own tiny ways, but in that hut, it won. And it feels like only a matter of time until it wins here, too. It’s so cold…

  At night, a hand touches me. Like every night, the memories come flooding back. The knowledge that I must break the fae, that the storm is hungry, that there’s something I’m waiting for, that-

  I pull my stab, seconds before it hits human flesh.

  Norman stands in front of me, a grey cloak full of mana draped over him. “Hey there, Snow,” he greets. “I’ve worked it out.”

  He takes off the mantle I gave to him, and wraps it around my shoulders. The enchantments activate, powered by my mana, and I can feel heat rushing back into my bones, untouched by the hungry ice. Slowly, a smile spreads on my face. “Good work,” I reply. “Let’s give them hell.”

  is 40 chapters ahead!! <3