Prologue
Blood marred the snow before any sound reached the sky.
It bloomed across the white in dark, spreading petals while teeth tore again and again into yielding flesh. Bone cracked, steam rising where warmth met winter. The beast ate slowly; its jaws worked with terrible patience, crushing, rending, pulling sinew free in long, glistening threads.
The raven screamed once. It had lingered too long, bold with winter’s scarcity, hopping closer with its head cocked. When the wolf lifted its muzzle, gore clinging to its fur, the bird startled into flight, black wings scattering loose snow from the branches. The feathers vanished between the trees, the wolf’s pale eyes following its ascent without interest. The kill was already claimed.
The forest stretched old and indifferent around it—trees thick with age, their trunks scarred and knotted like bones of giants buried upright. Snow lay heavy in the hollows, unbroken except for a few scattered tracks: cloven hooves, delicate pads, broader claws. Cold pressed into everything. It crept beneath feathers and fur, into bark and stone, into the marrow of the earth itself. Even daylight here felt reluctant, as though it might yet retreat.
The raven flew low at first, skimming between bare branches and twisted roots. As it burst from the last line of trees, it circled once, then twice, before angling toward the village below.
Smoke rose in thin, wavering lines from low rooftops covered in snow. The houses crouched close together, timbered and rough-hewn, their walls patched with mud and straw. Paths had been worn between them, the snow trampled brown beneath boots. Somewhere a dog barked, shrill and incessant.
At the edge, a shape stood unfinished and pale. The sound of iron rang incessant around it—hammer striking metal again and again, men working with stiff fingers and hunched backs, breath frosting before their faces. Wooden beams stood upright in the snow, bound together with rope while scaffolding creaked faintly in the wind. A wall was rising where none had stood before. A simple structure, its shape only beginning to assert itself against the sky. A cross lay on the ground, half-buried in snow,waiting to be lifted. Someone had draped a cloth over a rough altar stone to keep it clean, white fabric already smudged by careless hands and ash.
The raven circled once, high above it all. Beyond the last huts, a clearing pressed open in the woods, a lone apple tree enthroned at its centre. Its trunk bore the wounds of time, its branches twisting upward in a tangled crown that clawed at the winter light. Snow clung to its limbs in uneven patches, gathering in the crooks like forgotten offerings. Yet, one apple sprouted among the bare boughs—round and red and glossy, a defiant, impossible stain of colour against the frozen sky.
Beneath it, the ground had been trampled, the white churned gray by small, restless feet. Children's voices rose in bursts of laughter and complaint, wool caps and patched cloaks bobbing as they shifted and stamped their soles to keep warm. Some pointed upward, squinting against the light; others craned their necks back so far they nearly toppled over.
Above them, high among the upper reaches, a small figure climbed. She slipped between the branches with fearless grace, boots finding holds where there seemed to be none. Her limbs were thin, her movements quick and unthinking. Long black hair spilled loose down her back, strands slipping free to whip across her face with every breath of wind. She brushed none of it aside.
"Raveena, get down now!" a girl shouted from the ground, voice breaking with worry. "You’re going to hurt yourself!"
The name carried easily through the clearing. Raveena turned her head, teeth flashing white against wind-chapped skin. Laughter spilled from her mouth before she hauled herself higher.
"Elena’s right!" another voice called up, smaller. "You’re too high!"
They were right.
From where she was now, her companions were reduced to a bunch of shapes scattered across the snow like dropped seeds, their faces blurred into a single anxious mass. The wood creaked a little under her weight, a low, uneasy sound that traveled down the trunk, but she didn't cease. Curiosity burned hotter than fear ever could.
The bark was rough beneath her hands, its cold biting through skin already numb. Red marks bloomed across her palms where frost and skin met, stinging each time she tightened her grip. She hissed once throughher teeth, more irritation than pain, and wiped her hands against her skirt before reaching again.
The apple waited above her, its skin impossibly red—untouched by frost, unmarred by rot, glowing like a promise where nothing else lived. A miracle of nature, ripe and waiting.
Raveena kept going, breath coming fast in small clouds. The clearing below had gone strangely quiet, the children’s voices reduced to a distant echo, as though the tree itself were swallowing sound.
From the edge, the forest pressed close, dark and patient. Somewhere deeper within, blood had already frozen into the ground.
Above it all, the girl reached for the apple, smiling like the world had never once told her no—
when something gave beneath her foot.
The world lurched. The tangle scraped at her soles, offering nothing, the ground rushing up in a white blur as a broken chorus of gasps tore from below. Someone cried out her name.
Raveena snarled under her breath as her fingers closed around the branch, nails digging deep. Bark tore at her palms, pain flaring as her body slammed back against the trunk, snow shuddering loose from above and dusting her hair and shoulders in a cold, white veil. The wood groaned, deep and displeased, but it held. So did she.
A short, content laughter burst from her, and before fear could find her, she was moving again. Higher, always higher. She found new holds with quick, sure hands, her skirts gathered instinctively at her knees, her breath coming fast and bright.
The apple hung within reach now. It glowed in her sight, red and flawless, its skin taut and shining like it had been polished by unseen hands. For a moment, she only stared at it, eyes wide, mouth parted in awe.
Satisfied; as if she had proven something—to the tree, to the sky, to herself.
Her hand closed around the stem and twisted. It gave easily, warm in spite of the cold. She slipped it into the small leather pouch at her waist and cinched the cord tight against her hip before turning and beginning her descent.
Coming down was faster. Easier. Her hands found their way without thought, now accustomed to the bark's shape. Snow shook loose again as she dropped the last stretch, landing on her feet with a soft thud.
The children surged toward her in a rush of voices and movement, their fear breaking into noise now that she stood solid and whole before them. Raveena grinned, breathless, cheeks flushed red from cold and triumph alike as she pulled her trophy free. Without a second to spare, she stepped straight into the space of a boy who stood a little apart, taller than the rest, broader in the shoulders even under his rough wool tunic, his boots too big and caked with frozen mud.
