The Long Winter's March

Prologue

The war did not come with a declaration. It came the way winter comes — gradually, then all at once — and by the time the clan understood what was behind them, there was nothing left to do but move. North. Always north. Toward Grønholt, the Green Hold, a valley spoken of in the same breath as old stories and desperate hope. The wilderness does not care about their reasons. The pines are heavy with snow, the frozen rivers groan underfoot, and the sky offers no stars to steer by. They have been marching for weeks. The strong ones carry what the weak cannot. The weak ones keep moving anyway, because stopping is dying, and this clan has not survived this long by stopping. Now the blizzard has found them — a wall of white fury that makes the open wilderness unsurvivable. The only shelter is Jotun's Maw, a vast cave system carved into the granite ridge ahead. Cathedral chambers of black stone, passages that fork and double back, torchlight that barely touches the walls. Strange carvings line the deeper tunnels, older than memory, and no one has yet looked at them closely enough to understand what they say. The clan moves inside. The storm seals the entrance behind them like a door drawn shut. And somewhere in the dark, something is already waiting — whether it is the warband that has been tracking them for days, the sickness already stirring among the children, or something older and quieter that the carvings were put there to warn against. The night that was supposed to last until morning is about to stretch into something far longer.