Read Chapter 13: The Great Divide

The ridge line dipped and rose like a broken spine, each crest promising a view that the next valley swallowed whole. Declan kept his eyes on the ground ahead, reading the snow for what it was: a palimpsest of lies written in boot prints and claw marks that never quite matched the story they told.

He stopped at the edge of a steep drop. The land fell away into a gorge that split the forest like a wound that had never healed. Beyond it, the peaks rose again, but between here and there lay open ground, exposed, white and clean as a blank page.

Maya came up beside him, breath fogging her hood. "That's not on the map."

"Nothing's on the map out here." Declan scanned the gorge for a crossing. "We go north. Follow the rim until it narrows."

Jules limped up behind them, one arm pressed tight against his side. His face had taken on a gray pallor beneath the cold flush, and the bandage Maya had rewrapped that morning showed a dark bloom of blood seeping through. He didn't complain. He hadn't complained once since Ansel.

"You think the thing crossed here?" Jules asked.

Declan didn't answer. The beast track had cut north two miles back, deliberate, patient, like it knew exactly where it was going. Boot prints walked alongside it again. Always boot prints. Always two sets.

"If it did, we cross too," Maya said. She pulled her pack strap tighter.

Declan led them along the rim, picking a path through wind-scoured rock where the snow lay thin and the going was slow but steady. The gorge narrowed after an hour, its walls closing in until the drop became a scramble, and the scramble became a slope, and they crossed at a frozen waterfall that glittered like something out of a dream.

Jules slipped twice. Each time Maya caught him before Declan could turn around.

They stopped on the far side beneath the overhang of a granite shelf, shelter from the wind that had begun to pick up. Declan checked his compass. Northeast. The Nest was northeast. The creature was northeast. And whatever walked beside it in human boots was northeast too.

Jules sat hard against the rock, breath rattling in his chest. Maya knelt beside him and peeled back the bandage without asking. Declan looked away, but not before he saw the wound.

Five parallel furrows, deep as knife cuts, the flesh around them mottled black and purple despite the cold. Human fingers. He'd stopped doubting that the moment he'd seen Ansel's face melt into something else. But the wound was wrong in a way he couldn't name. Too deep. Too dark. Like something was still working under the skin.

"It's not healing," Maya said quietly.

"Did you expect it to?" Jules's laugh was a wet, broken sound. "The thing that did this wasn't a bear."

Declan turned to face the gorge they'd crossed, watching their back trail. Nothing moved in the white. But the pendant under his shirt hung warm against his chest, which meant the creature was far away. For now.

Maya came to stand beside him. She didn't speak at first, just stood there with her arms crossed, staring at the same emptiness he was staring at.

"When I was a kid," she said finally, "my brother used to tell me stories about the North. He said the wilderness keeps what it takes. That you don't rescue people out here. You just borrow them for a while until the land decides to call them back."

Declan's jaw tightened.

"I didn't believe him," she went on. "I thought he was just being dramatic. He was a geologist. They're all drama." She paused. "Last winter, he went out on a survey team. Six people. They were supposed to be gone three weeks."

The wind picked up, stealing her next words for a moment. Declan knew what was coming. He'd known since the pendant had appeared in Maya's hand, since he'd seen the scratched initials on its back and felt the world tilt under his feet.

"They never came back," Maya said. "Search and rescue found the camp. Found tracks. Found—" She stopped. Swallowed. "They found one body. And a journal that stopped mid-sentence. The rest of them just walked into the snow and vanished."

Declan's hands were numb. He realized he'd been gripping his ice axe hard enough to whiten his knuckles.

"That was your team," Maya said. Not a question.

He turned to look at her. Her eyes were flat, unreadable, but there was something beneath them that looked like anger, or grief, or both.

"It wasn't my team," he said. "It was my search."

"Same thing."

"Same thing." He let the axe hang loose at his side. "I found the tracks. I followed them for three days into a storm. I should have turned back sooner. I should have—"

"Should have what?" Maya's voice cracked at the edges. "Died out there with them? Brought back more bodies?"

"Brought back your brother."

The words hung in the air between them, heavier than the cold, harder than the ice underfoot. Maya's face went still.

"His name was Peter," she said. "Peter Lindqvist."

The pendant went cold.

Declan jerked a hand to his chest, feeling the bite of frost through his fleece, spreading like a stain. The cold wasn't from the wind—it was sharp, sudden, targeted. He spun, scanning the treeline behind them, the gorge below, the slope above. Nothing. No movement. No tracks he hadn't already read.

"What is it?" Maya asked.

He didn't answer. The pendant was cold. The creature was near. But there was nothing here. Nothing but snow and rock and wind and the two of them and Jules, who had pulled himself to his feet and was staring at something in the distance with an expression Declan couldn't place.

"Jules?" Declan said.

Jules pointed. His hand shook.

Declan followed his gaze to the far ridge, where the forest leaned into the sky. For a moment he saw nothing. Then a figure stepped out of the treeline.

It was too far to make out features. Just a shape. Human. Standing still. Facing them.

Declan fumbled for his binoculars. He raised them, adjusted the focus, and found the figure in the lens. Small. Distant. Dressed in gear that was weathered and torn, the kind a person wore after weeks in the wilderness had chewed through everything they had.

The figure raised a hand.

Declan adjusted the focus again. The face sharpened. Familiar. A face he hadn't seen in a year. A face he'd failed to bring home.

Peter Lindqvist smiled.

Then the wind howled down the gorge, and when Declan blinked the lens clear, the ridge was empty.