Chapter 26 : something in the smoke

Later that night, the wind outside howled against the walls of the house, but inside, the crackling hearth cast flickering orange light across the room. The stew was surprisingly good—some kind of spicy root blend with mana-soaked venison—and even Vix grudgingly accepted a second bowl.
Kael’s mother, now far calmer and properly introduced as Mira, had proven to be more than just a scolding cook. Her mana-infused ladle doubled as a tracking charm, and her shelves were lined with enchantments, scrolls, and devices that buzzed faintly when touched. She was a former Forge Knight, retired after losing her right eye in a war none of them dared to ask about.
Lara sat near the fire, bundled in blankets, sipping slowly from her mug. Her magic had stabilized, but the earlier breakdown still lingered in her eyes. Her voice was small when she finally spoke.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. The corpses turning, I mean. I thought I had them.”
“You were tired,” Aldah said gently, seated beside her with a bowl on her lap. “You pushed too hard.”
“It’s not just that…” Lara stared into the flames. “Something… interfered. I could feel it. Like someone else’s fingers inside my spells. Cold, wrong. Watching.”
Everyone stilled.
Kael leaned forward, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘watching’?”
There was a presence. Just for a moment. But it didn’t feel like mana. It was older. Wilder.
Kael drummed his fingers on the metal of his gauntlet. “Whelp. That sounds perfectly ominous. Do we think it’s just some rogue spirit? Wild magic in the storm?”
“No.” Vix’s voice was quiet. 
Mira returned with a kettle, refilling their mugs. Her face darkened as she heard the words. “You didn’t tell me there was something out there.”
“We didn’t know what it was,” Ryo said. “Still don’t.”
“Well,” Mira said, placing the kettle down with a heavy thud, “if it wasn’t the storm or the dead, and it didn’t strike… then it was curious. Or hunting.”
Lara’s hands tightened around her mug. “What would want to watch a necromancer fail?”
Kael was already standing, his smile gone for the first time since they’d met. He crossed to the window and pushed the curtain aside.
Outside, the storm had passed. The moon hung low and heavy, veiled in thin clouds, and the snowfields gleamed faintly blue in its light.
Ryo moved to stand beside him. “See anything?”
Kael shook his head. But his voice was distant. “No. But something knows we’re here.”
Behind them, Vix pulled a charm from his coat. A smooth obsidian disk, etched with a silver rune that never stayed the same shape. He muttered a phrase in an old tongue, and the room dimmed. Even the fire flickered.
“Warding the cabin,” he said without looking up. “If it comes back tonight, we’ll know.”
Lara looked toward him, wide-eyed. “You think it will?”
He didn’t answer.

---
Later That Night
The others slept.
Or at least, they tried.
Lara tossed and turned on her cot, haunted by half-formed dreams: She woke with a start, sweat slick on her skin despite the warmth of the room.
Then she heard it.
A scrape.
Soft. Barely audible.
She sat up slowly.
A shape moved outside the frosted window. Not a person. Not even a beast. Tall. Thin. And wrong.
She tried to call out, but her throat locked up. Her hand reached for her staff, but her fingers wouldn’t close.
The thing turned its head—though it had no face—and looked directly at her.
Her warded bracelet flared green, searing light spilling from it. The presence recoiled—its silhouette warping like smoke—and then it vanished.
She could breathe again.
She gasped, and the sound finally woke the others.
Kael rolled out of bed instantly, grabbing his gauntlet. “What is it?!”
“Something was at the window!” Lara cried. “I—it looked at me. It saw me!”
Vix surged up, hands already forming a glyph in the air. He pushed past Kael to the door, flung it open—and saw nothing.
Just moonlight.
Just snow.
But… now the snow outside bore no tracks.
No sign of approach.
No sign of departure.
Not even wind-blown prints.

---
Moments Later
They gathered near the hearth again, all of them fully dressed now. Weapons in hand.
“I’m telling you,” Lara said. “It wasn’t a hallucination. It was real. It watched me.
Ryo looked pale. “Whatever it is, it’s following us.”
Kael grunted.
They turned to him.
“It could’ve killed Lara. Easily. Could’ve broken the wards, entered while we slept. But it didn’t. It wanted us awake. It wanted us afraid.”
Mira was silent. Then, from the shelf, she pulled an old, dusty tome. “There’s only one thing I’ve ever heard of that behaves like that in these mountains.”
She opened to a page marked with a torn scrap of fabric. An illustration sprawled across it—faint, smudged by time. A tall figure. Boneless. With smoke for eyes and hands like shadows.
Underneath, in a language half-lost to time, a name was scrawled in red ink:
Nhar'zel.
“The Cold Hunger,” Mira whispered. “A wraith that stalks humans, mages...”
Lara swallowed hard.
“Why would it follow me?”
Mira looked grim. “Because something woke it up. And now it wants more than just you.”

---

The storm had broken, but the mountain wind still whispered through the trees like something half-alive.
“Tell me again why we’re the ones carrying this?” Aldah muttered, eyeing the reinforced satchel slung across her back. The runes on the leather straps shimmered faintly, pulsing in sync with her heartbeat.
Vix walked ahead, boots crunching over frost-hardened ground, the forest around them painted in the last blue light of dusk. His cloak billowed behind him like smoke “Because you’re strong,” he said flatly. “Lara is still unstable and Ryo can't go without her, this why they'll go on with the first delivery, and we will take care of this one, we need money”
And also, I don't want a relative to see me, after all it's our territory...
Aldah chuckled. “You forgot the part where you volunteered me.”
“I did.”
“And I didn’t say yes.”
“You didn’t say no.”
She rolled her eyes, muttering something unflattering under her breath. But she kept walking.
Inside the satchel was a canister no larger than a wine bottle—wrapped in binding charms, hex-wire, and fireproof velvet. It pulsed faintly with heat and light. Explosive mana, freshly distilled from Kael’s forge. Unstable. Illegal in most city-states. And—according to Vix—exactly what the outpost two peaks over needed to reinforce their shield ward before the next frostquake.
“So,” Aldah said after a while, “what happens if it cracks?”
Vix glanced back at her. “First, you die. Then I die. Then the surrounding two miles catch fire and scream themselves into the void.”
“Charming.”
“You asked.”
Aldah took a breath, the cold air stinging her throat. “You know, for someone so careful, you sure deal in dangerous stuff.”
Vix’s silver eyes caught the fading light like mirrors. “Power doesn’t grow in safe places.”
They walked in silence for a few more minutes, until a branch cracked ahead.
Vix raised two fingers, and the air around them shimmered faintly—concealment ward, just enough to blur their forms if they didn’t move.
Three figures emerged from the trees ahead. Ragged, armed. One wore a wolf pelt across his shoulders, another had knives strapped up each arm. Bandits, by the look of them. Not undead. Worse.
“again” Vix whispered.
“We can go around,” Aldah said.
Vix shook his head. “We don’t have time.”
Aldah’s grip tightened on the satchel. “So we fight.”
“No,” Vix said quietly. “We steal the path.”
He raised his hand, drawing a sigil in the air—quick and silent. A thin ripple spread outward, settling into the treetops.
Then, with perfect calm, he stepped out of hiding and walked toward the smugglers.
“Vix—what the hell are you—”
“Trust me,” he said.
Aldah watched, cursing under her breath. Then she moved, flanking around through the trees, her boots silent on snow.
Vix approached the smugglers slowly, hands raised. The lead one turned, one eye milky white from an old wound. His companions immediately drew weapons.
“Lost, traveler?” the man growled.
“No,” 
The wind stopped.
Dead still.
No howling.
No drifting snow.
No sound at all.
“…Vix?”
He was already turning, one hand glowing with cold blue mana. His breath left him in a slow, measured exhale.
A shape stood halfway down the slope they’d just climbed.
Nhar’zel.
Its form was the same as the stories: tall, gaunt, faceless. Limbs too long. Skin like flowing shadow and smoke. The world around it seemed wrong—warped. As if space bent to accommodate it.
Aldah slowly dropped her hand toward her weapon. “Is it here for the bombs?”
“No,” Vix said quietly. “Look at it.”
Nhar’zel made no move to attack.
It didn’t charge.
It didn’t speak.
It simply… stood there. Watching.
Then, slowly—deliberately—it turned around and began to walk away. Not back toward the trees.
But into the frozen wastes beyond the ridge.
It left no footprints.
Yet every step it took, the snow behind it cracked and blackened, leaving a trail of frost-burned ground in its wake.
“Is it trying to lure us?” Aldah whispered.
Vix didn’t answer. His gaze was locked on the thing, his expression unreadable.
Why now? Why reveal itself at all?
And why to them?
Nhar’zel paused in the distance, its neck twisting unnaturally to glance back—though it had no face to turn.
“Come” the silence seemed to say.
Aldah stepped forward once. “If it wants us to follow—maybe it’s a trap.”
“No,” Vix said at last, his eyes narrowing. “It wants us to understand something.”
“You’re seriously suggesting we follow that thing?”
“I’m suggesting,” he said carefully, “we watch where it leads.”
And then, as if summoned by thought alone—it vanished.
Not with a sound. Not with a flash. Just gone, like the snow had swallowed it whole.
Leaving only that trail of dead frost behind.