The wind threads through the black pines like a dull blade scraping bone. Snow doesn’t fall—it lashes sideways, stinging into the gaps of a collar, melting into a sharp, immediate pain. The torchlight trembles in the white storm, revealing a trunk, a branch, a sliver of ground—then surrendering it back to the deeper dark. They move slowly. Boots sink with a muffled crunch, and every step feels like an argument with the forest: please don’t notice us. Someone coughs once and regrets it instantly—the sound rebounds, thin and humiliating, as if the trees are laughing at his fear. The mail should be warm by now, tempered by body heat, but it isn’t. It’s wrong-cold, as though an unseen chill is crawling over the metal from the outside in.