"It should have been,” he answers, and nothing more.
We keep moving because stopping is not an option. There is nothing behind us worth returning to, and the distance we have already crossed has taken us too far from anything that could be reached again before the cold or the dark becomes something we cannot outlast.
The storm builds slowly and then all at once.
The wind shifts and strengthens, carrying more snow with it until the air itself thickens and visibility shortens. The land ahead becomes harder to read, shapes forming and dissolving in the movement of the storm, the ground beneath us disappearing under a fresh layer of white that hides everything beneath it.
"This is wrong," Colsar says, and there is no question in it.
I lift my head against the wind and force my focus outward. At first there is nothing but shifting white and shadow, and then something resolves through it. A structure, small and still. A cottage barely visible through the snow, and beside it a barn, larger and darker, its shape holding against the storm in a way that feels too intact for how exposed it is.
Relief does not come, and it should.
Instead something in me pulls tight. A safehouse should not be placed like this, not in open ground with no natural protection,no surrounding structures, no indication of warding even from a distance. It should be hidden, defended, designed to be missed by anything that does not already know it is there.
This is not hidden. This is placed.
"This is not it," I say. "The coordinates are wrong. The man sent us here."
Uralish does not make mistakes like this.
Colsar looks back the way we came. There is nothing there, no path, no village, no distance we could realistically cross again in these conditions.
"A trap," he says.
There is no time to debate it. We are already inside it.
He adjusts course without hesitation, angling toward the barn rather than the cottage, choosing position over assumption. If something is waiting he will meet it where it gives him the best chance to control what happens next. I follow, my attention splitting between him and the structure ahead as the snow drives harder against us, the wind cutting across my face and forcing me to narrow my eyes just to see.
I reach outward instinctively.
Something answers. Close, and not alone.
I draw on my lightcraft without thinking, the instinct rising clean and immediate, power answering the threat before I fully name it. It gathers quickly beneath my skin, bright and ready, building with a familiarity that leaves no room for hesitation, and for a brief moment I reach for it completely, intending tostrike outward and clear whatever waits ahead before it can reach us.
The pain arrives before I can release it.
It drives through me low and deep, forceful enough to shatter my focus as my body folds around it, the power collapsing inward instead of outward as the light breaks apart before it can take form. Control slips from me as the pressure builds and holds, dragging all of my attention into the effort of remaining upright.
I brace against it, breath catching as one hand moves instinctively to my side, pressing there as though I can force the pain to pass quickly enough to matter, but it lingers just long enough to take that moment from me, the light draining away before it can gather again and leaving whatever waits in the dark untouched.
I reach again, not for power but to feel what waits ahead, letting my intunar stretch just far enough to touch it. It answers at once. The presence is contained, held in place beneath everything else, shaped with intent in a way that does not belong to chance. A warning moves through me before I can form it into thought.
"Colsar," I say.
He turns as his hand reaches the barn door.
The explosion comes without warning, the structure tearing apart in a violent surge, wood and debris thrown outward with enough force to break the air itself. Heat flashes across my skin, sharp and immediate, then disappears just as quickly, swallowed by the storm as though it had never been there. The sound rolls outward across the open ground, loud enough and far enough to carry through everything.
Colsar moves back instantly, already shifting, already calculating. "Asharin. Get inside. That will draw them."
I turn toward the cottage and push forward through the snow, the ground unstable beneath it, forcing each step. The door is close, close enough to reach if nothing else happens.
Something does.
The ground beneath me breaks open.
An undead body surges upward from below the surface, rising from the snow with sudden violent force, colliding with me before I can react and knocking me sideways as its hands claw for purchase, its eyes nothing but dark hollow pits, its mouth already open. Colsar reaches us in the same instant, tearing it away and throwing it aside, his attention snapping outward as more movement cuts through the storm around us.
