“Burned snow? Just witches screwing around with fire charms. But those don’t smell like that.” Silas wrinkled his nose. “This smells like?—”
“Gunmetal,” Tristan finished.
Silas stared at him. “Since when does snow scorch smell like battlefield shrapnel?”
“Since tonight, apparently.”
Wind whipped snow across their boots. Silas lowered the lantern to shield the flame.
“I’ll tell Emmett you found something,” Silas said. “He’ll want to check the incident logs. Anything weird on your way in?”
“Nothing visible.” Tristan looked back toward the lake. “But the whole place feels… tense.”
Silas huffed. “Town’s always tense before Solstice. This storm’s not helping. People cooped up, too much gossip, not enough cider.”
Tristan raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t know cider fixed magical anomalies.”
“It fixes attitudes.” Silas smirked. “But seriously—be careful out here.”
Tristan nodded once. Silas turned and trudged back toward the path, the lantern fading into the white curtain.
Silence returned. Wind curled around Tristan’s neck, tugging at the collar of his black tactical coat. He moved forward, boots crunching through fresh accumulation, following the tracks toward the tree line.
They vanished abruptly near a bent pine, as if whatever made them had stepped into the trunk itself.
Or dissolved.
His tiger pushed again.
“I know,” Tristan murmured. “I don’t like it either.”
He scanned the treeline, then the lake, then the sky. He always paused at this spot. Old military habit: establish visual markers, confirm routes, check for unexpected movement. Hollow Oak was supposed to be safer than the places he’d served, safer than the firebases and fractured cities he’d patrolled overseas.
But it didn’t feel that way tonight.
He turned toward town, ready to return to the southern path, when a soft crack echoed from the frozen lake.
Not ice cracking.
Glass.
Tristan spun back.
A dark, thin, almost serpentine ripple spread across the surface. It vanished a second later under the white.
Then, something spread across the ice in a starburst pattern ten feet wide, the surface cracked and blackened as if something impossibly hot had burned through winter's grip. Steam rose in lazy spirals despite the cold, carrying sulfur and burnt copper.
He moved closer to the scorch-mark, careful to stay off the ice itself. The cracks spider-webbed outward from the center, but the lake hadn't given way. Whatever caused this hadn't been interested in breaking through—just in leaving its mark.
A calling card. A warning. Hard to say which.
“Enough,” he muttered, pulling out his radio. “Council Dispatch, Ash reporting.”
Static hissed. Then a voice: “Dispatch here. Go ahead.”
“Scorch marks at the north bank. Possible magical disturbance. Send a team to mark it before the storm covers it.”
“Copy that. Emmett wants updates as they come.”
