Book One – Chapter 15

Even at the estate, on days where nothing was expected of him but silence and obedience, he had never functioned on less than ten. Tria had called him lazy for it, sneered down at him as if sleep were a failing of character, rather than a necessity his body demanded. And now? After weeks of strain and strenuous travel, of cold and filth and stress, they expected him to operate on seven?

Yu exhaled sharply, raking a trembling arm through the tangle of his feathers. His eyes flicked to the window. He forced himself up, crossing the room on stiff, unsteady legs before leaning into the narrow sill.

Outside, the storm raged, a swirling, impenetrable mass of white. It ate the world beyond. It swallowed the sun and almost all light, which made it impossible to tell the time of day. The only glow in the room came from a small white orb hovering beside the grand clock next to the door. The mechanical construction ticked steadily.

Yu listened.

At first, to the ticking. Then, for anything beyond the walls.

The mountains had a voice of their own — a brutal, ceaseless wail that scraped across the eaves, wormed through the cracks, and settled deep into the bones of the place. But beyond the storm, beyond the suffocating cold, there was nothing. No distant voices from the Snowtrail. No whispering remnants of the incomprehensible things he had heard over the past weeks. No lingering echoes of witches chanting. Just the wind, howling.

Then, Yu listened for something else.

For any trace of Terbert.

His breath shallowed. His focus sharpened. He strained for the faintest scratch of movement, the subtlest disturbance in the walls; any sign that he was not about to be greeted by some grotesque creep somehow lurking behind the stone.

Nothing.

Only the muffled sounds of the guild. Someone snoring. The quiet shift of people in their rooms. Someone turning a page, someone rummaging through a bag, the rustle of cloth as another undressed. The low murmur of travellers in the halls. Below, the distant clatter of dishes, the scrape of knives, Bubs muttering a recipe to himself in the kitchen. And above it all, the mountains raged on; roaring their fury through the corridors of the world.