The Pining Frost | Part Five

"The frost grows thicker the farther I go.

Trees glitter with a dull ashen rime that stretches as far as the eye can see.

Feathers lie scattered, frozen within the skies forever locked in a motionless descent. Then, deeper still, I found a kilmei standing upright, pupils wide, with its breath halted as if the moment itself had stopped in time.

At the edge of the woodland, I found her footprints.

They circle a dead meadow, where the ground is blackened with soot of unknown origin, and cold, carved with strange spiral grooves, as though something dragged itself slowly through the earth behind her.

There are no other tracks.

Only hers.

And the feeling of being watched.

- B."