The inside of the tent had never felt so hollow.
Maisie stood in the center, boots planted where the blue Rysti fragment pedestal once sat. The ground there was colder now. The frost had returned, creeping in like a trespasser reclaiming stolen territory.
Her cot was stripped. Her crates—gone. Only a satchel of notebooks, a roll of field tools, and her father’s battered journal remained.
She knelt beside the last supply trunk and opened her compact mirror, not for vanity, but habit. A flick of reflection stared back—jet-black hair pulled tight into a loose braid, eyes red-rimmed but dry. Her face was pale with exhaustion. Her figure, as ever, was lean, slightly curved, unimposing. No Serenya, with her large bust to fondle or cloak-and-dagger attitude. Just skin, bone, and will.
“Focus,” she murmured. “Tenacity. Tired. But not finished.”
She set the mirror down and opened the side pocket of her coat. The revocation letter sat there, folded crisp like a commandment. She withdrew it slowly, as if it might change with a second glance.
“Your permit has been rescinded effective immediately.”
She opened the small iron lantern delivering the rejection to its fiery demise.
The parchment curled with satisfying defiance.
Outside, a gust of wind kicked the side of the tent with a hiss.
Maisie glanced sideways.
“Then find someone who will,” she whispered.
The words still clung to her from earlier. She hadn’t known what they meant then. She wasn’t sure she did now. But they felt real. And right.
She reached for her journal, wrapping it in cloth. Then the roster page—Hailcrest. Snomantle—tucked carefully in the inner flap.
She stood, lifting the satchel to her shoulder.
One last scan of the tent—her empty prison fortress.
Her chapel of silence and sigils.
She stepped outside.
The wind hit her like absolution.
Above, the Auroria-Borealis had faded—but faint strands of new auroral light pulsed to the south, low on the horizon, where ice met wilderness.
Maisie adjusted her scarf, tightened the leather straps across her coat, and began walking—south, toward the only name left that hadn’t lied to her.
The tent flap fluttered behind her once, then stilled.
And the snow swallowed her footprints with reverence.
---
The path to Snomantle narrowed the farther south Maisie walked, curling between ice-slick ravines and the frozen ribs of old forests. Where Frosthold had been all angles and lanterns, Snomantle was quiet curves and smoke trails, a village half-buried in snow, carved more than built.
The village had no gates, just ancient pines creaking in the wind and the crunch of boots breaking old snow. Stone homes huddled together like they were trying to stay warm.
Parents watched with guarded eyes as children played with rune-etched bones.
Maisie stepped toward a hunched old woman kneeling by a communal fire pit, scraping ice from the rim of a cast-iron cauldron.
“I’m looking for someone,” Maisie said. “A Hailcrest. First initial ‘D.’”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The woman didn’t answer at first. Her hand moved in rhythmic strokes, cleaning the soot from the metal.
“D. Hailcrest,” Maisie repeated, unfolding the roster page.
At the sound of the name, the old woman finally paused.
She gave Maisie a long, unreadable look, and then a faint nod toward the southern ridge.
“D. Hailcrest—the failure. He built a cabin just past the quarry road. Took to solitude.”
Maisie opened her mouth, then closed it.
“You might find his son there now,” the woman added, turning back to her work. “Dax Hailcrest. Doesn’t speak much, just enough.”
Eventually, the woman nodded toward the ridge beyond the stone archway.
“East of the sigil-marked tree. You’ll know it.”
Maisie squinted into the snow-drifted horizon.
“Why a failure?”
The woman finally looked at her.
“No idea. It’s what people say.”
It took another hour to find him.
The snow deepened with every step south. It was nearly dusk when Maisie found the cabin, half-sunken into the rock face.
A line of pelts hung stiff in the cold. The smell of smoke and dried herbs clung to the air.
She stepped into the clearing and stopped at a respectful distance.
A man emerged from the side—tall, broad-shouldered, hair tied back, face like cold stone. He carried a skinned snow hare in one hand, the other still gripped a knife with blood in its seam. He said nothing.
Maisie pulled the paper from her satchel and unfolded it with care.
“Are you D. Hailcrest?” she asked, holding out the roster page. “Did you travel with my father, Thomas Morton?”
Dax’s eyes flicked down at the page, then back to her.
“My father did. Do you need him any time soon?”
Maisie stared at him, unblinking.
“I was told your father guided the expedition. I thought maybe you were—”
Dax pointed behind her, to the southern mountains wreathed in low clouds.
“That way.”
She turned to look. The wind picked up, howling softly across the valley.
“When do you expect him back?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
Dax replied.
“That was twenty years ago.”
Maisie’s breath caught. She realized, too late, she’d asked for the dead.
“I need to travel south. Before the Nyxlumina ends,” she said, voice tightening. “You should know that land better than anyone.”
Dax returned to the hare, kneeling to begin gutting it.
“Are you looking for knowledge?” he asked, looking up, “Or ghosts?”
Maisie exhaled, visibly and slowly.
“I’m not looking for closure,” she said. “I’m looking for a guide.”
That made him pause.
“The last Morton who came through here left behind bones and echoes,” he said looking away from her.
“If I take you, I don’t just walk into a storm. I walk into ghosts.”
He didn’t meet her eyes, busying himself with the carcass.
Maisie met his gaze.
“Then you understand why I can’t go alone.”
He didn’t answer.
The wind pressed through the trees. The snow began to fall again.
Dax stood and turned away, the knife glinting in his fist.
Snow began to fall, erasing the day’s last footprints.
He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no either.
---
The wind picked up as Dax finished cleaning the last of the hare, his hands working silently in the dusk.
He stood and slung his pack over one shoulder, the fur at his collar gathering fresh snow as the sky dimmed.
“We head out before sunrise,” he said simply.
“Storm’s pushing north.”
Maisie gave a nod.
“Understood.”
Dax glanced behind her.
“Where’s your gear?”
She tightened her grip on the strap of her satchel.
“You’re looking at it.”
A flicker of something passed across his face—disbelief, maybe, or pity. He didn’t voice either. Instead, he reached behind him and pulled a rolled cloak from his pack—thick, fur-lined, well-worn but clean.
His hands reached out offering it.
Maisie didn’t move.
“I’m fine,” she said, a little too fast.
“I’m accustomed to working in cold environments.”
She was. That wasn’t the problem.
But her mind flicked—Calren’s hand on her thigh, the smirk he wore like a mask, the way Serenya leaned in close with her perfect body and perfect lies. Collaboration, he had called it.
Maisie looked at the cloak as if it were a bear trap.
Dax didn’t press. He just folded it in half and looped it onto his pack.
“Suit yourself.”
They walked in silence, feet crunching over fresh snow as the last of the light faded into a hazy aurora. Southward. Toward the valley where so many things had gone missing. Fathers. Truth. Maybe even faith.
Maisie didn’t look back toward Frosthold. She didn’t have to.
What waited behind her was silence and ash. What lay ahead was uncertain.
She tightened her grip on her satchel and breathed in the cold.
But Calren’s face burned in her mind—the smug grin, the stolen work, the looming podium at Sigilspire. She could almost hear him now:
“We all play our part, Miss Morton. Some of us just know how to collaborate.”
She swallowed down the bile.
“You don’t talk much,” she said after a while, her voice muffled by the scarf pulled high across her face.
Dax kept his eyes on the trail.
“The snow doesn’t need to be told it’s cold.”
Maisie huffed through her nose. Maybe it was a laugh. Maybe not.
But she took one step after another and didn’t stop.
And neither did he.
But he did listen.
