The Storm

The storm came at dusk just after we packed the remaining rations.

It crept in, slowly, the way predators do. The sky dulled to shades of gray and whites, heavy with promise of worse to come.

“Sky’s turning,” Kol said, strapping his pack.

A few stray flakes drifted down.

The wind picked up like it had taken offense at our actions earlier.

Within minutes, the gentle snow became a torrent. The wind whipped flakes horizontally, stinging our faces. My lashes froze together. Visibility dropped, narrowing to a white howling void.

"We need shelter!" I shouted over the rising gale.

“Yeah, no shit!” Kol snapped, already moving.

We moved fast.

Too fast.

That was my mistake.

The ground dropped suddenly beneath my feet.

Black ice.

I slipped—arms flailing—then slammed hard against the frozen slope. Pain exploded through my ribs. My eyes spun white. I screamed until hands caught my collar and hauled me back onto solid ground.

Kol’s grip was strong.

“Careful,” he growled. “Can’t let you die here.”

The storm swallowed his words whole.

We were trapped between ridges now, wind howling like something alive and furious. The world became nothing but white chaos and the sound of our breathing.

“This way!” Kol shouted.

I followed.

The path he chose was a frozen river.

The ice beneath us was dark, a death-slick ribbon winding between jagged stone walls. Snow scudded over it in blinding sheets. One misstep would send us sliding straight into the split rocks below, like I almost had.

“We can’t cross this,” I said.

“We don’t have a choice!”

The wind screamed like it disagreed.

Kol went first.

His steps deliberate, lowering his center of gravity, testing each footfall. I mirrored him as I’ve been doing lately. Heel flat, knees bent. Weight forward.

Halfway across, I heard a crack then my foot slipped.

Gravity grabbed me but Kol caught me again.

“I told you a storm was coming,” he snapped. “If you had listened, we wouldn’t be here!”

Oh irony, my old friend, hath thee come to bite me in the ass?

The cracks deepened as we clung to each other like fools refusing to fall.

“Ravine!” Kol bellowed, almost dropping me as he pointed.

I turned my head to see a frozen fissure in the earth that was rapidly being obscured by the storm. Kol lifted me bodily and ran, ignoring the cracks beneath us. We slid into the ravine and crammed ourselves beneath a cliff overhang. We huddled together like animals. Fire was impossible, rations frozen solid. Just wind, darkness and the sound of our own teeth clattering to keep us company.

I don’t know when I finally slept. Consciousness drifted in and out between the bone deep shivers and the storm’s relentless howling.

I woke to silence.

With the blizzard’s fury gone, my body felt stiff. Every muscle locked in place from the fetal position I had maintained all night. My ribs throbbed where I’d hit the ice yesterday. I blinked frost from my eyelashes and peered out from our overhang.

The storm had buried the world in new snow. Our tracks, gone like they didn’t exist. So was the Amarok trail Kol was tracking. Kol was already awake, crouching near the ravine entrance, scanning the distance.

Warmth brushed my skin. I turned to see he had a fire going. His shoulders looked broader in the glow, muscles twitching as he moved. The cold must have been lethal indeed if it made them complain.

His face was caked in dried frost, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. He offered a curt nod toward me, almost as if to say ‘ we made it,’ and I replied with a nod of my own, ‘seems that way.’

The danger had passed, but our situation was bleak. We were alive. That was all we could say for ourselves. The fire guttered low, barely enough to thaw the frozen rations. Hunger was back, like it never left.

Kol shifted, groaning as stiff joints protested the movement. He pulled out one of the frozen ration pouches, then tossed it back in with a sharp thud.

"Ice," he said.

He drew his knife and began carefully scraping away frost that had formed on the inside of the rocky wall. He didn't look at me as he worked, his focus entirely on the painstaking task.

He gathered a small, pathetic handful of shaved ice and offered it to me silently. The gesture was small, practical, and devoid of any sentiment, yet it held more weight than any apology for his earlier snapping even though it was deserved.

I let the ice melt in my mouth, the cold numbing my cracked lips.

"We have to move," I said. "If the weather turns again, we won’t last."

Kol didn't argue. He rose smoothly, efficiency returning to his movements.

"We follow the riverbed," he decided, pointing down the frozen path we had used to slide into the ravine. "Bound to find something at the bends, maybe an air pocket for fish, or tracks that crossed during the storm."

He was already back in hunter mode, the survival expert we needed. The brief moment of shared quiet was over. It was time to push forward toward the Amarok trail.

I had been on the trail for 6 days now, Kol had been with me on four of those.

When I was young, my father tried—gods, how he tried—to turn me into a hunter.

“It will be your responsibility, Irrythik,” he would say, placing a hand on my shoulder like the weight of the future itself belonged there. “A chief must know how to feed his people.”

All I heard back then was duty dressed up as expectation. Oh, the expectations, not just from him but everyone. I wanted stories, not spears. Songs, not blood. I refused him again and again. But eventually, I gave in. I always did with him.

Now, walking through a frozen grave of trees and white silence, every breath biting my lungs—I missed him more than I could bear.

Before today, I never would have thought that Kol would remind me of him so much.

We’d survived a storm that tried to flay us alive, slept pressed together for warmth, shared food, curses, spats and boar hunts.

You could even say we’d become friends.

That’s why it hurt so badly when I finally saw the truth.

It didn’t come all at once.

It arrived like frost, thin at first barely noticeable then suddenly everything becomes cold and rigid.

Days blurred after the storm. Time stretched and warped in the white expanse, measured by hunger and the ache in our steps. Day seven, Day eight. We followed the frozen riverbed as Kol said we would.

Sometimes it rewarded us: a cracked air pocket where sluggish fish hovered beneath the ice, a hare foolish enough to bolt too late. Other times it offered nothing but the cold shoulder.

My thoughts were sporadic. Faster than I could understand. Words came harder, even grief softened at the edges —not because it hurt less, but because I got tired of feeling it. I hated that most of all.

Kol noticed, of course.

He tried steering back towards the ritual that was already pressing in on me. It was Sixteen days of intense preparation. Of stripping the self down until only the village remained.

A chief could not be crowned unless the land accepted him.

And that will only happen after completing the ritual.

Which I’ve been ignoring like a plague.

Day nine. The dreams started.

They’ve varied but the one I got the most was of my father sitting by the fire, sharpening a blade that was dull. He didn’t look at me, however, I could see my name was written on the blade.

I woke every time with my hands clenched, nails digging into my palms and my heart racing like I’d been running.