Frozen Village
Chapter 5: Frozen Village
.... The Prophet Child ....
The snow crunched beneath Alden's boots as he moved through the abandoned village. Each step left a temporary record of his passage, soon to be erased by the relentless snowfall. The wind cut through his layers of clothing, finding every gap, every weakness in his defenses against the cold.
He paused before a small hut, its door hanging from a single hinge. His breath formed clouds before his face, momentarily obscuring his vision before dissipating into the frigid air. The glass shard that had replaced his left eye frosted over, creating a peculiar sensation—half of his vision clear, the other half increasingly clouded by delicate ice crystals.
With a gloved hand, he carefully wiped the frost away, feeling the unnatural cold of the shard even through the leather. The eye was more than a prosthetic; it was a reminder, a price paid for knowledge he sometimes wished he could forget.
The interior of the hut offered little shelter from the elements. The roof had partially collapsed, allowing snow to accumulate in the corner. Wind howled through broken windows, creating an eerie chorus that echoed his own isolation. Furniture lay overturned, personal belongings scattered—evidence of a hasty departure.
Alden moved methodically through the space, searching for anything of use. Food. Medicine. Information. His supplies had dwindled during the journey from the city, and the unnatural winter that gripped this region showed no signs of abating.
A flash of color caught his attention—bright red against the weathered gray of the wall. Stepping closer, he examined the graffiti painted in what appeared to be dried blood:
*"Break the Veil. Burn the Artificers."*
Beneath it, the familiar spiral symbol of the Dissidents. He traced the pattern with his fingertip, feeling the rough texture of the dried blood. The message was recent, perhaps only days old. The Dissidents had been here, which meant the village hadn't been abandoned due to natural causes.
He continued his search, finding little of value. The villagers—or whoever had come after them—had been thorough. Only useless trinkets remained: a child's wooden toy, a cracked mirror, a book whose pages had been consumed by mold and moisture.
As he prepared to leave, something glinted beneath the collapsed section of roof. Carefully moving aside debris, he uncovered a small vial half-buried in snow. The liquid inside remained unfrozen despite the temperature, its iridescent blue glow faintly visible even in daylight.
White Chord. Rare and valuable. He pocketed it without hesitation, ignoring the voice in his mind that cautioned against further use. Necessity outweighed caution now.
He exited the hut, surveying the village square. Other buildings encircled an ancient well, all in similar states of disrepair. The snow had transformed the scene into something almost beautiful, softening the edges of destruction, concealing the darker truths beneath a blanket of pristine white.
Movement across the square caught his attention. A figure emerged from another building, hunched against the wind. As they drew closer, he recognized the distinctive gait, the careful way she held her hands.
Liora.
---
The cold penetrated deeper than bone, reaching into the core of Liora's being. She pulled her cloak tighter, though the gesture was more habit than practical defense against the elements. The bandages beneath her gloves felt increasingly inadequate as the crystallization spread its icy tendrils further up her fingers.
Each step through the snow sent dull pain shooting through her hands. The Grey Chord was wearing off faster now, its effects diminishing with each dose. Soon it would offer no relief at all.
When she spotted Alden across the square, she felt conflicting emotions surge within her—relief at finding him, apprehension about what he would say when he saw her condition, anger at his stubbornness that had led them all here.
They met in the center of the village, beside the frozen well that had once been its heart. Neither spoke immediately, each assessing the other, noting the changes that recent weeks had wrought.
"You look terrible," she finally said, her medical gaze cataloging his symptoms. The pallor of his skin. The slight tremor in his left hand. The frost gathering on his glass eye.
"You found me," he replied, ignoring her assessment.
"I followed the rumors. Hollowed attacks. Froststorms appearing without warning." She gestured to the abandoned village around them. "Your handiwork, I assume."
He didn't deny it. "The boy? The one with the Shroudmark?"
"Safe. I left him with others." She stepped closer, reaching for his face. "Let me see your eye."
He flinched away. "It's fine."
"It's not. Nothing about you is fine." Her voice softened slightly. "Let me help you, Alden. That's why I came."
Reluctantly, he allowed her to examine him. Her gloved fingers traced the edge where glass met flesh, noting the unnaturally cold temperature, the way the frost reformed almost immediately after being wiped away.
"We need shelter," she said. "Somewhere I can tend to you properly."
They found a structure more intact than the others—the village meeting hall, its stone walls better able to withstand the elements than the wooden huts. Inside, Alden kindled a small fire while Liora unpacked her medical supplies.
The firelight cast dancing shadows across the walls as she worked, cleaning and bandaging a gash on his arm that he hadn't even mentioned. The silence between them was heavy with unspoken words, accusations, and regrets.
"Your decay is accelerating," she said finally, nodding toward his glass eye. "The Chord use—it's making it worse. You need to stop."
"Too late," he replied, his voice flat. He reached into his pocket, producing the vial he'd found. "Besides, I need it for my work."
"Your work." She couldn't keep the bitterness from her tone. "Is that what you call this?" She gestured to encompass the abandoned village. "These people are gone because of what you started."
"What I started? I'm trying to fix it."
"By creating more Chord? By pushing yourself further into decay?" She pulled off one glove, revealing her crystallized fingertips. "Look familiar?"
He stared at her hand, recognition and horror dawning in his expression. "How long?"
"Months. Grey Chord keeps it contained, but for how much longer?" She flexed her fingers, the crystalline structures catching the firelight. "We're both running out of time."
Unconsciously, she reached toward his face again, her bare crystallized fingers brushing against his glass eye. Both flinched at the contact—a resonance, a recognition of similar corruption manifesting in different ways.
"We need to find another solution," she said, pulling her glove back on. "The Chords are killing us."
"They're all we have." He looked away, into the flames. "Unless you've discovered something I haven't."
Before she could respond, a new sound cut through the howling wind outside—footsteps on the packed snow, deliberate and unhurried. They both tensed, reaching for weapons.
The door remained closed. The footsteps circled the building, then stopped.
"Someone followed you," Alden whispered.
Liora shook her head. "I was careful."
A cracking sound from above drew their attention to the roof. Something—someone—was climbing the exterior wall.
---
Aidan Blackwood felt the Shroudmark pulse beneath his bandages as he scaled the stone wall of the meeting hall. The pain was exquisite, a confirmation that his quarry waited inside. After years of searching, following false leads and dead ends, he had finally found the alchemist.
The cold didn't bother him anymore. His body had adapted to the perpetual winter that followed in the wake of Froststorms, his skin permanently chilled, his breath always visible. He had become as much a part of this unnatural season as the Hollowed themselves.
He reached the roof, moving silently across the snow-covered slates. A small chimney vented smoke from the fire below. He crouched beside it, hearing voices—two distinct speakers. The alchemist wasn't alone.
For a moment, he considered his approach. The crossbow at his back promised a clean end from a distance. But no—he needed answers before death. Understanding before justice.
The well in the village square offered a better vantage point. He descended as quietly as he had climbed, circling back through the snowfall to the village center. The ancient well stood frozen, its surface a perfect mirror of ice. Aidan climbed atop it, drawing his crossbow and waiting.
Patience had been his closest companion these many years. He could wait a few moments more.
When the door of the meeting hall finally opened, two figures emerged cautiously. The man he recognized immediately from descriptions: tall, lean, with a glass shard for a left eye that caught the fading daylight with an unnatural gleam. The alchemist. The creator of White Chord. The source of the Shroudmark that bound them together.
The woman was unexpected. Her hands remained gloved despite the fire that surely warmed the building they'd exited. A healer, by the look of her satchel and the careful way she moved. An accomplice, then.
Aidan raised his crossbow, sighting down its length at the man's chest. "Don't move," he called, his voice carrying in the still air of the square.
Both figures froze, eyes finding him atop the well.
"Aidan Blackwood," the alchemist said, not a question but a recognition. "The investigator."
"And you're Alden Voss," Aidan replied. "The man who created White Chord. The man who started all of this."
Alden made no move toward weapons, though Aidan knew he must be armed. "You don't understand what's happening."
"I understand enough." Aidan's finger rested lightly on the trigger of his crossbow. "You created a substance that warps the natural order. That creates these storms, these creatures. That marks people like cattle for slaughter." He pulled back his sleeve with one hand, revealing the spiral Shroudmark that glowed faintly against his skin.
"You caused this," he continued, voice rising against the wind. "You and your cursed Bloodsong."
The woman—the healer—stepped forward slightly. "He's trying to fix it," she said. "We both are."
"Fix it?" Aidan laughed, a harsh sound without humor. "Do you know how many villages like this one I've found? How many frozen corpses? How many Hollowed I've had to destroy? There's no fixing this. There's only ending it." His aim shifted to Alden's head. "And ending you."
The wind picked up suddenly, swirling snow around them in patterns too deliberate to be natural. The temperature dropped further, the cold becoming an almost physical presence between them.
"Something's coming," the healer said, her eyes scanning the perimeter of the square.
Aidan felt it too—a pressure in the air, a weight that pressed against his skin. The Shroudmark burned beneath his bandages, no longer a dull pulse but a searing pain.
The snow beneath their feet began to move, swirling upward in a tightening spiral. The wind howled, not through the buildings now but around them, encircling the square in a wall of white.
"A Froststorm," Alden shouted above the wind. "We need to take shelter!"
But there was nowhere to run. The whirlwind had surrounded them completely, cutting off escape in any direction. Ice crystals formed in the air, suspended as if time itself had begun to freeze.
Aidan kept his crossbow trained on the alchemist, though he knew the storm was the greater threat now. "Is this your doing?" he demanded. "Another of your experiments?"
Before Alden could answer, a figure materialized within the swirling snow—small, child-like, but with eyes that glowed with the same blue light as the Hollowed. It hovered above the ground, unaffected by the raging winds around them.
The child raised a hand, pointing first at Alden, then at Liora, and finally at Aidan himself. Though its lips didn't move, a voice seemed to emanate from it, carried on the wind itself:
*"The Veil thins. The Choir grows. Three marked by the same hand, bound by the same fate."*
The whirlwind intensified, the wall of snow and ice closing in around them, obscuring everything beyond their small circle. The child-figure remained at its center, those glowing eyes fixed on them with ancient knowledge no child should possess.
The Froststorm had come. And with it, something none of them had encountered before—not the investigator who had tracked Hollowed across continents, not the healer who had treated the marked, not even the alchemist who had unknowingly started it all.
As consciousness began to fade in the face of the storm's overwhelming cold, Aidan's last thought was that perhaps there were greater forces at work than even he had suspected. Forces that had brought the three of them together in this forgotten village for a purpose none of them yet understood.
The snow closed in. The world went white. Then, darkness.