Read Chapter 16: The Storm Lifts

The wind died first. Not gradually, the way weather usually surrenders in the mountains, but all at once—as if someone had reached up and pinched the throat of the sky. The snow stopped falling mid-flake, hanging in the air for one impossible moment before drifting down in a lazy, almost apologetic curtain.

Declan blinked against the sudden brightness. The gray ceiling of cloud had shredded itself into tatters, revealing a hard blue wound of sky above the ridgeline. The temperature hadn't risen—if anything, it had dropped—but the visibility had opened up like a theater curtain, showing them the white expanse of the valley below.

"My God," Maya breathed beside him. She'd been walking with her head down for the past hour, conserving energy against the wind. Now she straightened, taking in the view. "I can see forever."

Jules didn't stop walking. He'd been limping less since they'd rested, but his face had taken on a gray pallor beneath the chapped red of his cheeks. The wound on his arm had stopped seeping through the bandage Declan had re-wrapped at dawn, but there was a smell beneath the blood and sweat that Declan didn't like. It was too sweet, too deep. Like meat left out in a summer cabin.

"We need to move," Jules said, not looking at them. "The sunlight won't last."

Declan had been reaching for his radio to check the battery—a pointless habit, since it had been dead since the river crossing—when a burst of static crackled from his pack. Not the hiss of snow noise. Actual signal.

Everyone stopped.

Declan tore the pack open with numb, fumbling fingers, dragging the radio out like a drowning man grabbing a rope. "Cross to Nolan, do you copy? Nolan, this is Cross, over."

The static hissed for three long heartbeats. Then a voice, tinny and distant but unmistakably human, came through.

"Cross, this is Nolan at base camp. Christ, we thought you were dead. Where the hell are you?"

Declan fumbled for the map, spreading it across a flat rock with one hand while Maya crowded in beside him. The wind had carved the snow into drifts that rearranged the landscape, but the ridge line was unmistakable—the sharp, broken tooth of granite that rose above the tree line to the east of the Nest.

"Approximately eight clicks southwest of the objective," he said, reading his compass. "Southeast face of the eastern ridge, moving north along the high ground."

"We've been tracking your signal since you went dark. What happened out there?"

Declan thought of Ansel's torn-open body, still cooling in the snow behind them. Of the thing wearing Ansel's face crouched over a deer carcass, unhinging its jaw like a serpent. Of the way its spine had rippled and stretched beneath that human skin until it wasn't human anymore.

"Not on the radio," he said. "Just tell me you can get us out."

A long pause. Snow crunched somewhere to their left, and Declan's hand went to the flare gun at his hip before he realized it was just a clump of ice falling from a spruce.

"Nolan, you still there?"

"We can try," Nolan said finally. His voice had dropped half an octave, which Declan knew meant bad news was coming. Sgt. Nolan was a man who gave you the brutal truth in a soft tone, like a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. "But we've got a problem."

Declan waited.

"We've been tracking the—the activity around your base camp," Nolan said, stumbling over the word. "Tracks. Two, maybe three separate sets. Whatever the hell made them, it's not natural. They're big. And they're circling you."

Maya grabbed Declan's arm. Her fingers dug into his sleeve through three layers of insulation, and when he looked at her face, he saw the same fear he felt.

"How many?" she asked, close enough to the radio that Nolan could hear.

"At least two distinct sets, converging on your position. They seem to be herding you. Cutting off your eastward route, pushing you west toward the lower ground."

"The lower ground." Declan's stomach dropped. "Toward the river."

"Toward the river," Nolan confirmed. "Whatever's out there knows this terrain. It's driving you like cattle. If we can get a helicopter in, we need you on open ground, somewhere they can set down. But I'm not sending a bird into a landing zone where some—where those things are waiting."

Declan folded the map, his mind racing. Eight clicks to the Nest. Twenty-four hours if they pushed hard, less if Jules could keep his pace. But the Nest was where the creature was headed, the place where Lindqvist was supposedly waiting. Walking into that felt like walking into a wolf's mouth.

"Base camp," Maya said suddenly. "Can you land at base camp?"

"The clearing's exposed, but the snow's deep," Nolan said. "We could try. It's a smaller window, though. We'd need you there in twenty hours, maybe less if the weather holds."

Twenty hours. Declan looked at Jules, who had stopped walking and was watching them with an unreadable expression. His eyes flicked between Declan and the radio, and there was something in his gaze that Declan couldn't quite name—not fear, not hope. Something watchful and calculating, like a man who knows a secret he hasn't shared yet.

"Or we continue to the Nest," Declan said slowly. "The creature is headed there. Whatever's waiting for us at that petroglyph site is the source of this. If we can end it—"

"If we can end it," Nolan cut in, "we don't know what we're dealing with. We've got National Guard on standby, but they won't touch this without more intel. You saw what you saw, Cross, but I need something I can put in a report that doesn't sound like I'm drunk."

Declan thought of the journal, the final page he'd tucked into his chest pocket. PagesAnd PagesAnd PagesAnd he'd told the others the story ended mid-sentence. What he hadn't told them was what came after the last legible words. A single name, scrawled in an old man's trembling hand: *Lindqvist was first. He's not wrong. He's just waiting.*

"You have my report," Declan said. "You know what I saw."

Another pause. Then, keying the radio in a voice that sounded older than it had a minute ago: "We'll try for the clearing at Base Camp. As soon as the weather holds, we'll send the bird. Can you make it?"

Declan did the math in his head. Base Camp was southeast, behind them. The Nest was north, where the howls had come from. The creatures were herding them west toward the river, cutting off their retreat. If they turned back toward Base Camp, they'd be walking into the jaws of whatever was circling them. If they pushed north, they'd be walking toward the source.

Jules took a step closer, his breath fogging the air between them. "The Nest," he said quietly. "Elias's notes said the Nest is where it ends. If we destroy the petroglyphs, the power breaks. No more Taken. No more beasts."

Yael could almost hear the lie threading through those words—not the words themselves, but the way Jules held himself, one hand pressing against his wounded arm, the other clenched at his side. There was more he wasn't saying. There had been more ever since they'd found that journal.

Declan looked at Maya. She was brave and sharp-eyed and had already lost a brother to this mountain. If he led her into the Nest and she didn't come back—

"Base Camp," he said, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "We turn back. We make the clearing in twenty hours."

Jules's face flickered—relief, or disappointment, Declan couldn't tell which. Maya's shoulders sagged, and for a moment she looked impossibly young beneath all that gear and rime.

"I'll mark your trail," Nolan said. "And Cross? Whatever's out there, it's been ahead of you this whole time. Don't think it's going to let you walk away just because you turned around."

Declan clicked off the radio, sliding it back into his pack. The wind had picked up again, carrying the first whisper of fresh snow from the north. Twenty hours. Open ground. A helicopter. It should have felt like hope.

Instead, it felt like running with a predator at their backs, driving them exactly where it wanted them to go.

"Pack up," he said, and began the long walk back toward the sound of howling.