Chapter 1: The Quiet
The ford stones were showing.
Sten crouched at the river's edge, cold from The Coldrun seeping through his boots and into his bones. Three stones visible - safe crossing. His father had taught him that: Three stones, you go. Four, you take a wagon. Two, you wait. Three was enough.
He straightened, scanning the far bank. The forest pressed close on both sides, dark pines crowding down to the water, their branches motionless. No birds sang. No wind stirred the needles. Just the river's steady rush and the faint creak of ice forming at the edges, brittle and thin. The quiet felt wrong.
"Sten!"
He turned. Gerta stood on the near bank, arms crossed and jaw set, her breath misting white in the cold. The set of her shoulders said everything her face didn't. "I'm checking the stones," he called back, straightening and wiping cold-numb fingers on his trousers.
"I can see that." She picked her way down to the water's edge, boots crunching on frost-hardened mud, and crouched beside him. Her fingers found a river stone, turned it over, tossed it back. "And?"
"Three showing." He kicked at a chunk of ice. "Safe crossing."
She nodded, but her eyes were on the treeline, not the ford. Watching the stillness between the pines like she expected something to step out of it. "Good. Get back to the village."
"I was going to check the snare line-"
"Not today."
"But-"
"Sten." The tone that brooked no argument. "The forest's too quiet. You know what that means."
He did. The Twisted. "The Wardens-"
"Aren't here." Gerta's jaw tightened. "Supposed to patrol through sixteen days ago. We haven't seen them."
Sten looked back toward the trees. Somewhere past that dark treeline, his snares waited, probably empty, possibly tangled with frost. He'd checked them every other day for two weeks, following trails his father had taught him, and nothing had seemed wrong then.
But that was before the quiet settled over the forest like a held breath.
"Come on." Gerta's hand found his shoulder, firm but not rough. "Headman Torven's calling a meeting. Everyone's pulling in close until the Wardens show."
They walked back toward the village in silence. Rimvik wasn't much - forty-some houses scattered along the road, timber and stone, roofs thick with moss where tar had worn thin. Smoke rose from chimneys, mixing with the smell of morning porridge and wet wool drying by hearth fires. The common square's well had ice crusting its stones. The shrine stood empty at its edge, carvings worn by weather and generations of fingers, offerings long since weathered to nothing. Down by the ford, sawdust drifted in frozen heaps, and the timber yards smelled of fresh-cut pine resin, sharp and familiar in the cold air.
The village reached him before he saw the square clearly. Voices, more than usual this early, axes hitting wood, the familiar sounds of morning work. But something else layered beneath it now, an undercurrent of readiness that made the ordinary feel strange.
More people in the square than usual. Clusters of neighbors talking in low voices, mothers keeping children close, one hand always on a shoulder or gripping small fingers. Old Harrick stood by the shrine with his hunting spear, and two other men carried axes - not the kind you used for splitting wood.
Gerta squeezed his shoulder. "Go find Mara and Jesper. Stay near the common house. I need to talk to Torven."
"Are we in danger?"
She looked at him for a long moment, and he saw things he'd never noticed - the lines at the corners of her eyes, the way her mouth went tight when she was thinking hard. His stomach clenched, cold spreading through his gut like river water.
"We're always in danger," she said quietly. "But we're careful. That's how we stay alive."
Then she was gone, walking toward the headman's house with long purposeful strides, and Sten stood alone in the square with his hands shoved in his pockets and his breath clouding white. He kicked at a frozen clod of mud, watched it skitter across packed earth. Around him, villagers moved with purpose, gathering wood, checking supplies, keeping children close. Mara and Jesper were over by the well with Mara's mother, hauling water. He should join them. Should help.
But instead he looked back toward the trees.
Still quiet. The pines stood black against grey sky, crowding close like they were leaning in to listen, and somewhere in their depths something waited.
* * *
He didn't check the snare line.
Instead he spent the morning hauling firewood with Jesper, stacking split logs against the common house wall until his arms burned and his hands went numb despite the gloves. The split wood smelled of pine sap and cold, fresh enough that it would smoke too much when burned. Mara's mother and two other women sorted through sacks of supplies nearby: dried beans that rattled like pebbles when poured, salted pork wrapped in muslin dark with curing salt, hard rounds of cheese sealed in wax that had cracked from age. They checked weights and tallies, scratching marks on a slate, voices low and quick.
No one said it out loud. But Sten knew. They were counting what they had, counting how long they could stay inside waiting for the quiet to break or the Wardens to arrive. Whichever came first.
By midday, the village bell rang. Three slow tolls. Not an alarm. A summons.
Everyone gathered in the square, breath misting in the cold, children held close. Headman Torven stood on the shrine steps with his hands planted on his hips. Thick-shouldered and grey-bearded, the kind of man who'd been old as long as Sten could remember. His voice carried even in wind.
"Right." His gaze swept the crowd. "You all know the forest's gone quiet. We've seen this before. So we pull in. No one past the timber yards. No one works alone. We double the night watches, keep the fires burning."
"What about the Wardens?" someone called out. "They're late."
"They're late," Torven agreed, scratching his beard with thick fingers. "Could be weather. Could be trouble south of here. Either way, we don't wait on them. We watch, we stay sharp, and we don't take stupid risks." His eyes found Sten when he said that last part, and heat crept up Sten's neck.
"How long do we wait?" another voice asked.
"As long as it takes," Torven said. "The quiet doesn't last forever. Either it passes, or the Wardens show, or we deal with it ourselves." He paused. "We've done it before. We'll do it again."
That night, Sten lay in his cot under wool blankets that smelled of woodsmoke and old sweat, the familiar scent of home made strange by everything he'd seen that day. The watch bell rang - iron clang echoing across the village, the same sound every hour, a rhythm that should have been comforting but wasn't. Through the thin wall, Gerta's breathing came slow and even. Cold seeped through gaps in the timber where the chinking had cracked, and he pulled the blankets tighter, curling into himself for warmth that wouldn't come.
Sleep wouldn't either. His mind kept circling back - the woods, the snare line, the way the trees had stood that morning like they were waiting for something. Too still. Too dark.
His father used to say that the wilderness wasn't cruel. It was just indifferent. If you respected it, learned its rhythms, you could survive. But if you got careless, if you thought you were smarter than the forest, it would kill you without malice or hesitation.
"Three stones means safe crossing," his father had said once, crouched beside him at the ford. "Four stones means you can take a wagon. Two stones, you wait. And no stones?"
"You find another way," Sten had answered.
His father had smiled. "You find another way."
Sten rolled over, pulling the blanket tighter.
He wished his father were here now. Not just for the advice, though he could use that. For the steadiness - the way his father would crouch by the fire with his hands loose on his knees, talking through a problem like he was planning the next day's work, voice calm even when the problem had teeth.
Earlier that evening, Gerta had sat with him before bed. The fire had crackled between them, throwing orange light against the timber walls, and they'd talked about their father the way they sometimes did when the dark pressed close. "He tracked a bear once," Sten said.
Gerta's needle flashed in the firelight, pulling thread through worn fabric. "I remember."
"Three days into the hills." Sten poked at the fire with a stick, watching sparks spiral up toward the smoke hole. "Found it in a ravine. Thought he had it cornered." He paused, remembering the way his father had told the story - slow and matter-of-fact, like he was describing how to set a snare instead of facing down death. "But the bear came up instead of back. Charging straight at him, no warning. He had time for one shot."
Gerta's hands had stilled on the mending.
"He took it." Sten's throat felt tight. "Through the heart, thirty paces, while it was coming for him. Didn't run. Didn't miss. Took him two more days to drag it back. Said the hard part wasn't the shot - it was standing still long enough to make it."
Quiet stretched between them, filled with the crackle of the fire and wind outside. Then Gerta's voice, soft: "You remember that story?"
"Yeah."
She set the mending aside and pulled him close, her hand warm on the back of his head. "He'd be proud of you. Checking the stones this morning. Knowing when to come back."
Sten hadn't said anything. Just leaned into her, feeling the warmth of the fire against his face and the weight of her hand on his head, trying not to think about bears or forests or the way the quiet outside felt like something watching.
But now, lying in his cot with his sister's steady breathing on the other side of the wall, he wondered what good promises were against the thing that waited in the dark. The forest was watching. Even if the Wardens had left Skeld Gate the moment the quiet began, it would be three days before they arrived.
He closed his eyes and tried to let sleep find him.
The watch bell rang, iron and distant. Embers settled in the hearth. And somewhere out in the dark, the forest held its breath and waited.