Embedded Files
It doesn’t chase. It waits. It doesn’t roar. It whispers. And in the frozen dark of Monarch Ridge, Nellie steps into the snowy terrain where warmth is currency and voices are weapons.
Word Count: 12.9k
TW: canon-typical violence. use of mild language.
- - - - - -
The blizzard had come in fast overnight, dumping snow so thick it erased the trail, the sky, the sense of directions, everything. Monarch Ridge is a white void; the whole mountain swallowed in a storm that howls like something alive. Inside a battered orange tent halfway up the slope, Kyle Mercer jolts awake to the sound of his radio spitting static.
“Kyle —”
“— you up?”
“Kyle, answer me —”
He sits upright fast, heart hammering, cold rushing into his lungs. He fumbles for the receiver clipped to his jacket. “Chris? What’s going on?” His voice comes out groggy, confused.
There’s breathing on the other end, fast and uneven. “I need you to listen,” Chris whispers. “Don’t come out. Stay put.”
Kyle blinks at the frost crusting the tent ceiling. “Why? Did you see an avalanche forming? Hell, is it a bear? Just tell me —”
“It’s not — it’s not a bear.” Chris swallows audibly, static popping behind his voice. “There’s… someone out there.”
He scoffs under his breath. “Dude, no one else is stupid enough to be up here at this time of year.”
“I know what I saw,” his friend snaps, voice tight. “A guy. Standing by the tree line. I thought he was waving at me but, but he didn’t move. At all.”
He rubs his face. “You’re freaking yourself out. This storm —”
“Kyle,” Chris interrupts, barely audible now, “he turned toward me without moving his feet.”
A chill runs through his chest that has nothing to do with the cold. He shifts toward the zipper. “Okay, I’m coming out.”
“No — Kyle, seriously don’t —”
But he is already unzipping the tent, pushing the flap aside. Snow pellets sting his face instantly, like needles carried by the wind. The world outside is a blur of white, swirling violently in every direction. He steps out, boots sinking into deep drifts.
“Chris!” he shouts over the wind. “Where the hell are you?”
Only silence answers.
Then, softly, something else.
“Kyyyyle…”
Kyle’s lungs seize. He turns sharply, flashlight beam jittering across empty air.
“Chris?” he calls again, but doubt edges his voice now.
The storm shifts momentarily, giving him a partial view of Chris’s tent, only a couple yards away — its surface sagging under snow. He trudges toward it. His boots crunch loudly, each step sinking up to his shins. When he reaches the tent, he stops cold.
There are no footprints leading to it.
None leaving either.
Just blank, perfect snow.
“Chris?” he whispers, dread creeping in.
His hand shakes as he grabs the zipper and yanks it down. The tent is empty. Sleeping bag still warm. Flashlight still on. But no Chris.
His radio crackles violently.
“—yle—”
“—don’t—”
“—behind—”
Kyle spins, breath frosting in the air. His flashlight flickers. At first he sees nothing but white and shadow… and then, slowly, like a figure forming behind thin paper, a silhouette takes shape in the storm.
Tall.
Human-shaped.
Wrong.
“Kyyyyle…”
The voice slides across the wind, so close it brushes his ear.
He stumbles backward, nearly falling. “Get— get away from me!” He shines the flashlight directly into the storm. The beam flickers, dying, then flares once more, just long enough to reveal, the figure standing impossibly still.
Too still.
Head tilted.
Shoulders hunched forward.
No face visible — just darkness where a face should be.
Kyle’s breath stutters.
The figure takes one step. Then another. Moving with a slow, gliding motion that sends snow curling around its legs without disturbing the ground.
The radio shrieks. The silhouette jerks sharply at the noise. That’s all it takes for him to bolt.
He slips on the slope, boots carving fresh trenches. Snow slams into his face as he runs blindly, breath tearing from his lungs. He doesn’t know where he’s going, just away.
But the whisper follows him. “Kyyyyyle… come back…”
He veers toward the safety of his own tent, half in panic, half in instinct. The world tilts, vision blurring with wind and fear. He reaches the tent flap, grabs it as a hand clamps over his wrist.
Cold.
So unbelievably cold.
His scream tears from his throat and vanishes into the storm as the silhouette rushes toward him, swallowing the light and sound in a single, horrifying motion —
Then silence.
Total silence.
The storm calms as though nothing happened. The tent stands alone in the snow, flap flapping weakly in the wind. The ground around it is untouched by footprints, by drag marks, by anything that would suggest a struggle. Inside, frost creeps across the entire tent wall like a spiderweb of white. And in the center: A perfect handprint, frost-bitten deep into the nylon from the inside.
• • •
The heater by the door of the ranger station is losing a battle with the cold. Every time the wind shoves the building, a draft slices through the entryway like a knife. Naturally, that’s when Nellie pushes through the front door, hair damp, cheeks raw from windburn, snow clinging in stubborn little clumps to the shoulders of her coat. She stamps her boots once, twice, like she’s trying to intimidate the weather.
“Snow,” she mutters under her breath, shaking out her sleeves. “This is why I love Texas.” The sarcasm is barely audible, but the ranger behind the main desk looks up anyway, eyebrows raised like he’s heard that tone from too many tourists already.
She gives him a practiced, polite smile, the kind that doesn’t reach her eyes but sells the role. She slips a laminated badge from her pocket, flipping it open with an easy flick. “Morning. Julia Richards, search and rescue consultant. I heard you’ve got a missing hiker situation.”
The ranger leans forward, squinting at the badge through bifocals. “They sending specialists this far out now?”
“Budget cuts,” she replies smoothly. “Fewer people, more travel. You know how it goes.”
He grunts, apparently understanding government dysfunction on a spiritual level. “Damn shame. Well, yeah. Two hikers went missing in the last forty-eight hours. One found dead. One… we’re still trying to locate.”
She nods with practiced professionalism, though her pulse flickers. “Mind if I take a look at what you’ve got?” she asks.
“Knock yourself out. I’ll warn you, it’s not pretty.”
He hands her a thin file and motions toward a weathered oak table piled with maps. She flips open the folder as she walks, scanning a grainy photo of an empty campsite. Her stomach tightens. The snow around the tent is pristine — too pristine.
Yep.
Definitely not a bear.
“Alright,” the ranger says, leaning on the table as he starts listing details, “we’ve got: no tracks coming in or out of either tent, two missing hikers, one recovered body with cold-burn trauma, and… some weird reports.”
Nellie raises an eyebrow. “Weird how?”
He shifts uncomfortably, lowering his voice even though they’re alone. “Couple of the search and rescue boys came back spooked.” He taps the second file. “Said they heard whispering. In the storm.”
Nellie keeps her expression neutral, but a sharp prickle runs under her skin. She flips to the photos from the recovery team. Each one is worse than the last:
A tent flap with frost burned deep into the fabric.
A radio split open from inside, as if the cold cracked it mid-scream.
A hiker’s jacket sleeve frozen solid even though his body had been retrieved hours earlier.
“What do you mean ‘cold-burn injuries’?” she asks.
He grimaces. “Coroner said it was frostbite, but… not quite. The patterns don’t match environmental exposure. It’s like the cold was directed.” He scratches his cheek. “Ever seen frostbite form in the shape of a handprint?”
Her eyes flick to the next photo.
A frost-seared handprint across the inside of a tent wall.
She swallows hard. “Next weird report?” she asks, keeping her tone loose.
“A hiker said he saw a man standing in the blizzard a few days ago.” He pauses before adding, “But he swears the guy didn’t leave footprints.”
She taps the photo with her knuckle. “Tracks get covered in heavy wind.”
“Sure,” the ranger says, “but we checked. Snow wasn’t falling at the time. And the ground around the area was untouched.”
Nellie closes the file slowly, resisting the urge to rub at the returning pressure behind her eyes, the hum sharpening the edges of the room. She forces a calm breath. “Anything else you want to warn me about?”
He hesitates, then leans closer. “One of the SAR volunteers said… whatever he heard out there… it said his name.”
She doesn’t flinch, but she feels something cold twist deep in her gut. Whispering, no tracks, cold that doesn’t behave like cold.
The ranger’s radio crackles with some call from the back office, and he mutters something about a snowmobile maintenance check before lifting his parka off a hook. “I’ll be in the garage,” he tells her. “If you need anything, holler.”
“Will do,” she replies.
The door shuts behind him. The second it does, the ranger station drops into a different kind of silence, not peaceful, not empty. Listening.
Nellie spreads the files out across the scarred wooden table — crime scene photos, weather logs, recovery notes, even a crude sketch from the SAR volunteer who claimed he “saw a man in the storm.” The drawing looks more like a shadow with legs.
Her eyes narrow. “Great,” she mutters. “Love when the storm grows a face.”
She reaches for the evidence bag containing personal items recovered at the campsite. A cracked GPS tracker. A frozen compass. A mangled metal thermos. And a navy-blue knit hat, rim stiff with ice crystals. She pauses, thumb resting on the plastic. A small, familiar dread settles in her chest.
“Here we go,” she whispers, unsealing the bag with careful hands.
The hat is cold enough to sting her palms even through her gloves. Frost coats the inside of the fabric in delicate branching patterns like something had breathed cold into it, not onto it. She presses her fingertips gently into the weave of the yarn. Static snaps behind her eyes. The world tilts. For a split second she feels cold. Crushing, suffocating cold. Snow closing in around her.
A voice whispering. A shape in the white, towering, hollow —
She jerks back with a gasp, almost knocking over the map stack behind her. She clamps a hand over her forehead, riding out the sharp, electric pressure blooming across her temples. She sets the hat down gingerly, as though it might snap at her. Her heartbeat steadies. She shakes her head, rolls her shoulders. It’s not much, not enough to identify the thing, but absolutely enough to know:
Someone out there froze these men from the inside out.
Someone intelligent.
Someone watching.
Nellie swallows hard. She’s handled ghosts, witches, revenants, and rituals.
This? She’s not sure yet. But she knows supernatural when she feels it, when it hits that place in her chest that thrums with psychic static and warning. And this is supernatural.
She zips the hat back into its evidence bag, slides it into her inner coat pocket, and gathers the files. She straightens to her full height, all five-foot-seven of determined hunter, and mutters to herself, “Well. Guess it’s my problem now.”
It’s not long before Nellie’s back outside, with a borrowed set of keys to a ranger’s snowmobile. It sputters to life with a roar that cuts briefly through the storm’s low growl. She grips the handlebars tighter than she needs to and mutters a curse as icy wind lashes her face.
“Warm beaches,” she grumbles under her breath. “Next time I take a case, it better involve warm beaches.”
The snowmobile jolts forward, tearing a fresh path up the narrow mountain trail. Pines line either side of the slope, their branches sagging heavy under thick snow. The world around her is forest, rocks, and endless white layers.
By the time she reaches the trailhead, the cold is biting through three layers and her nose has gone numb. She kills the engine, the silence swallowing the world whole the moment the motor dies. The quiet isn’t peaceful. It’s the kind of quiet that feels… deliberate.
She steps off the vehicle, boots sinking deep into powder. The wind is a low hiss, the kind that slips around your ears and doesn’t sound quite like wind. She pulls out the ranger station’s marked trail map and tucks it under her arm as she starts up the path toward the campsite.
Every step sends a muted crunch through the snow; too soft, too quickly swallowed. The air feels thick, like it’s holding its breath. She follows the trail, scanning for anything the rescue teams missed. Branches cracked under unnatural weight. Snow disturbed from the wrong direction. Blood. Or frost.
After maybe ten minutes, she stops. The hairs on the back of her neck rise. There, at the corner of her vision, a flicker. A shadow. Moving against the wind. She freezes, breath fogging in front of her. Slowly, she turns her head. Nothing.
Nellie lets out a shaky exhale. “Don’t start with the creepy peripheral vision shit,” she mutters. “At least wait until I’ve had lunch.”
Another flicker. This one closer. A smear of movement sliding between two trees, darker than the storm around it.
Her pulse kicks. She stops walking.
The forest listens.
She reaches for the small EMF meter clipped to her belt out of habit, though she already knows her sense doesn’t behave for equipment. The air around her vibrates. Just faintly. Like static building under her skin. A ripple pulses through her temples, sharp and sudden.
“Nellie…” The whisper is soft and way too close.
Her breath catches in her throat. She turns sharply, but the trail behind her is empty, just snow and pines and a storm threatening to swallow the world.
The whisper comes again, from the opposite direction. “Nellie…”
Her heart stutters. She forces herself to breathe through the tightness in her chest. “Okay,” she whispers. “That’s… new.” She looks up at the tree line. Snow drifts fall in lazy spirals, but she sees another flicker, something almost human-shaped moving deeper into the woods. She narrows her eyes.
“You want me to follow,” she says under her breath. “Yeah, not happening. Not until I know what I’m dealing with.”
The trail narrows as Nellie hikes deeper into the ridge, the storm ebbing just enough that she can see more than a few yards ahead. The wind still snarls occasionally, sending flurries of snow across the path like white ghosts rushing past her boots.
She pauses, closes her eyes, and breathes in slowly. Her senses aren’t something she can switch on like a flashlight. It’s more like letting down a wall and bracing for whatever leaks through. She opens that internal door just a crack. A faint hum whispers through her skull. A pressure at the base of her spine. A soft, electric prickling behind her eyes.
“Okay,” she murmurs, palms open at her sides. “Talk to me.”
The energy here is slippery, not like a ghost, not like a witchcraft residue, not like anything she’s felt before. It shifts, drifting in and out, as though whatever caused it isn’t lingering… but passing through. She follows the pulse, letting it tug her like a weak magnet. It leads her off the main trail, up a shallow incline toward a jagged outcrop of rock jutting from the slope. Her boots crunch over the snow as she approaches the stone face. At first glance, it looks like any other frost-covered rock. But then she steps closer.
The frost here is… wrong. It coats the stone from the inside out, the ice blooming in delicate, branching patterns beneath the rock’s surface — almost as if the cold had seeped through the stone and crystallized outward, instead of collecting from the air.
Frost doesn’t behave like that.
Not naturally.
She crouches, gloved fingers hovering over the surface. “What the hell…” she whispers. She pulls off one glove, biting her lip against the cold, and presses her bare fingertips lightly to the stone. Instantly, a psychic shock ripples through her. Her breath hitches, her vision blurring at the edges. And for a single heartbeat she sees darkness, a shape moving through white, a man screaming behind a wall of snow, a hand, cold and sharp, pressing into fabric. Whispers curling like breath against skin. She jerks her hand back so fast she nearly falls.
“Shit—” She presses a palm to her forehead, staggering to her feet. She blows warm air on her freezing fingers and fumbles her glove back on. Whatever she just felt through the stone, it wasn’t a memory.
She steadies herself. She takes one last look at the unnatural frost — and notices something else, half-buried in the snow near the rock.
A footprint?
No. Not a human one.
Something more like a drag mark. Or the edge of a body being pulled.
The hairs on her arms rise again. She steps back from the outcrop, scanning the tree line with renewed vigilance. She still isn’t sure what it is, but she is closer.
With a heavy sigh, Nellie turns back down the path carved between the pines, boots sinking in with a soft whump each time. She still looks at the trees, her head buzzes faintly, like distant static. Then something small catches her eye, lying beside the trail. She slows, frowning as the familiar hum zeros in on it. She crouches, gloved fingers brushing the powder aside until it reveals itself fully: a cigarette butt.
Her breath puffs into the cold air as she stares at it. “Huh… Either the local wildlife picked up some bad habits, or…” She pauses, leaning closer.
It’s a specific brand. Rough paper, cheap filter, the kind sold in convenience stores off highways and small rural towns. Her sense tingles faintly at the object; a soft but undeniable buzz. Not dangerous, but familiar. She reaches down and picks up the cigarette between two gloved fingers. She tilts her head, psychic senses brushing outward like the faint echoes of sonar. For a brief instant, she feels something like an emotional fingerprint, a stubborn, irritated, perpetually tired.
“Yeah,” she mutters to the empty woods. “Should’ve known you couldn’t stay away from this one.”
The wind picks up, howling between the trees like something laughing far off.
She tugs her coat tighter and moves forward. “Alright, old man,” she mutters under her breath. “Let’s see what you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”
• • •
By the time Nellie trudges up the steps of the ranger station again, the snow has worked its way into her boots, and her patience has completely evaporated. She shakes the wet out of her hair, pushes open the door, and calls out, “Hey! You didn’t mention another consultant was working this case—” Her voice dies mid-sentence.
Standing in the middle of the station, damp, irritated, and mid-argument with a ranger, is Isaac Neill. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days and got dragged through a snowdrift backward. He looks exactly like Isaac always looks when he’s neck-deep in a job.
Both of them freeze.
The forest ranger looks between them in visible confusion.
Isaac throws his hands toward the ceiling. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Nellie crosses her arms, staring him down with the unimpressed finesse of a woman who’s had enough of Colorado weather and old hunters turning up unannounced. “I thought you quit smoking.” Her tone is razor-sharp, and her eyebrow is raised to an Olympic gold level.
His glares. “Maybe I quit quitting.”
The ranger blinks. “You two… uh… know each other?”
They answer simultaneously.
“Unfortunately,” Isaac mutters.
“Work colleagues,” Nellie says brightly, like she’s giving the world’s shortest résumé.
He shoots her a look. “Colleagues?”
She widens her eyes innocently. “Isn’t that what we are? Professional acquaintances with excellent communication skills?”
The forest ranger squints at both of them, clearly deciding he doesn’t get paid enough to ask follow-up questions.
She steps past the older hunter and slaps her laminated badge on the counter. “I’d like the latest incident logs, environmental readings, missing persons statements, and any updates on the search grid.”
He crosses his arms, stepping beside her. “And the GPS coordinates I asked for two hours ago.”
The ranger sighs the sigh of a man dealing with city consultants who think they know better. “I’ll get what I can. But this weather is shutting down half our equipment.”
“We’ll work with what you have,” she says, smoothing her damp curls back.
He eyes her sideways. “You’re a little far from your usual routes, aren’t you?”
She matches his tone perfectly. “Funny. I was going to say the same thing about you.”
A flick of tension passes between them; subtle, sharp, loaded.
The forest ranger returns with a small stack of files. “This is everything we’ve got. If you two are done… colleague-ing… I’ll be in the back.” He retreats before either can respond.
Isaac sighs, long and painful. “You really had to show up here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Nellie fires back. “But we’re keeping this professional, right? Since we’re ‘colleagues.’”
He drags a hand down his face. “This day just keeps getting better.”
She snatches the file from him. “Good. Then let’s get to work.”
Even without saying it, both know exactly what the other means. Talk later, figure out what’s killing hikers now.
The ranger station isn’t big, but it’s full of corners that people forget existing. A storage alcove near the map cabinet, a corridor leading to the back offices, a bench wedged beneath a faded poster about avalanche safety.
Nellie beelines for the table she sat at earlier, tugging Isaac by the sleeve before anyone else decides to wander by. Isaac lets himself be dragged, which, in her experience, is as close to cooperation as he gets. The heater over their heads buzzes softly, giving them just enough white noise to pretend they’re talking about nothing but official search-and-rescue business.
He drops onto the bench with a grunt, squinting at her like she personally arranged for every bad thing in his life to happen in the last 48 hours. “What are you doing here?” he mutters low enough that only she can hear. “This place is a mess. A damn dangerous one.”
She meets his gaze steadily. “Trying to keep someone else from freezing to death. Same as you.”
His glare softens around the edges, barely, but enough. He rubs his hands together, shaking snow from his sleeves. “I picked up a disappearance three weeks ago,” he says. “Thought it was a simple lost-hiker case until I realized the cold burn on the recovered body wasn’t natural.”
She nods, leaning in. “The frost on the rock face wasn’t natural either.”
He snorts softly. “So, you went poking it with your bare hands.”
“Would you rather I leave it alone and hope for the best?”
“Yeah,” he says immediately, then sighs. “No. Damn it, kid.”
She huffs a laugh. “You always call me ‘kid’ when you’re worried.”
He looks offended. “I’m not — I just —” He stops, realizes he’s proving her point and scowls. “That’s not the point.”
She gives him a small, knowing smile.
“Look. All I’ve got is no tracks, sudden frost, radio interference, and cold trails.”
Nellie shifts closer, voice low. “I’ve got something for ya. Whispering. It… said my name.”
Isaac’s head snaps toward her. “What?”
“Not loud. Not clear.” She shrugs, trying to look nonchalant.
He gives her a look that translates roughly to don’t lie to me, we’re both in this mess. He exhales sharply. “You’re better than you used to be,” he finally says. “Not just at this —” He gestures vaguely, meaning her field skills, her instincts, the way she reads danger. “— at all of it. You’re faster. Smarter. You pay attention.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Is that your way of saying ‘good job’?”
“No.”
“Sounds like it to me.”
He rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “You’re exhausting.”
“And yet,” she says cheerfully, “you keep not avoiding me.”
He shoots her a side glance and leans back, posture finally relaxing a fraction. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll show you what I’ve got. Honestly you may be the key ending this whole thing.”
• • •
The motel at the bottom of the mountain looks like it’s been losing a fight with winter for years. Half the neon VACANCYsign flickers in a sickly pink. Snow piles nearly to the windowsills. The parking lot is more ice than pavement. Nellie stomps slush off her boots as Isaac unlocks the door to his room, key stiff in the lock. He pushes it open. The blast of stale heater air hits them first. Then the smell: coffee, gun oil, and a hint of whiskey.
The room is a disaster in the way only a hunter’s long-term hideout can be. Clothes piled in the corner. Coffee cups stacked near the microwave. A corkboard against the wall covered in thumbtacked photos, torn maps, scribbled notes.
He steps inside, kicking aside an empty duffel. “Don’t judge the mess,” he mutters.
She lifts an eyebrow. “I would never dream of it.”
He shoots her a look that says he knows exactly how much she’s judging and despite herself, she smiles. He then moves to the corkboard and starts pulling down papers. Maps with circles drawn in red, frostburn photos, coordinates, printed weather data. “All this,” he says, dropping a thick stack onto the small table, “is what I’ve collected so far.”
She pulls off her coat and drapes it over a chair, then sits, flipping through the documents one by one. Frostburn patterns. She’s seen frostbite before, but this isn’t it. These look like the cold reached out and grabbed them.
“God…” she whispers.
“Yeah,” Isaac says, voice low. “Medical examiner said the cold ‘spread from a single point,’ like it was pushed into the tissue.”
“Cold doesn’t move that way.”
“Not normal cold.” He hands her the next set of photos; shaky camera stills from a search-and-rescue volunteer’s phone. A figure in the snow. A blurry silhouette standing just outside visibility range.
She swallows. “I saw something like this earlier.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You saw a person?”
“A shape. Moving against the wind.”
He nods grimly. “Yeah. That tracks.” He pulls another folder from the pile. “Here. Trackless movement.” He opens it.
Inside are photos of snowfields where something clearly passed. Bending branches, disturbed air. But no tracks in the actual snow.
“I’ve been chasing this thing north,” he says. “It’s careful. Smart. It knows how weather works and uses it.”
Nellie studies the pattern of disappearances marked in red on Isaac’s map. A line tracing upward through the forest, curving toward the ridge she was on earlier. “It’s following something,” she murmurs.
“Yeah,” he says. “Food, mainly.”
“Okay… what are we dealing with?”
Isaac scratches the back of his neck, the gesture he always makes right before dropping bad news. “A Breccian Wight,” he says finally. “Cold-climate predator. Death-spirit, technically.”
Her breath catches. “Death-spirit?”
“Human once. Died in a whiteout or avalanche, usually. Something violent, cold, and sudden. Their spirit gets… stuck. The cold reshapes them. Makes them hungry.”
“For what?”
Isaac meets her eyes.
“Warm bodies. Warm breath. Warm… everything.”
She grimaces. “Fantastic.”
He continues, flipping to another page. “The wight can mimic voices it hears right before the moment of death, tries to lure the living in. That’s what you heard and luckily for you, you didn’t listen.”
“A death-spirit that hunts in snowy terrain. But, that doesn’t explain the no-tracks situation.”
Isaac leans back in his chair. “It’s an unnatural creature, what do you expect? A greeting card.”
Nellie rolls her eyes.
“Either way,” he continues, “it’s dangerous. And it’s not something you should be out here chasing alone.”
She bristles. “I wasn’t alone. I had —”
“No backup,” he interrupts. “No partner. No plan. Just you and a snowmobile.”
“It is enough,” she snaps quietly.
Isaac studies her. “Maybe for regular cases.” His voice lowers. “But this isn’t regular.”
She looks away, jaw clenched. After a moment, she murmurs, “Aren’t you one to talk?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to explain to your uncle how you became rabbit food for a wight.”
Nellie nods solemnly. She closes the last folder and sets it aside. “So,” she says, eyes lifting to him, “what do we need to kill one of these things and end the cycle?”
Isaac doesn’t hesitate. He pushes away from the table and drops to one knee in front of the battered footlocker wedged between the bed and the wall. The lid creaks loudly as he flips it open, revealing the familiar organized chaos inside. Weapons, tools, wards, and supplies packed with the efficiency of long habit.
“Heat and destruction,” he says, pulling out a compact blowtorch and checking the fuel level. “Fire weakens it. Real fire, not just cold-weather flares.” He sets the torch on the bed, then pulls out a heavy camping axe with a reinforced blade. “Next, we find its nest,” he continues. “Somewhere cold enough to preserve it. Cave, hollow, rock cavity, wherever the temperature doesn’t fluctuate much.”
She swallows. “And the anchor?”
He meets her eyes. “Frost-bonded corpse. The body it died in. We destroy that, the wight becomes killable.”
“Okay. Then that’s the first target.”
He zips a salt pouch into his jacket and glances toward the window. The light outside is already high overhead. “That thing is going to be a hell of a lot more dangerous after sunset. We hit it before dark, or we risk it getting stronger.”
She grabs the flare gun from the bed and checks the chamber. “Works for me. I don’t like my monsters extra murdery.”
He snorts faintly, then hesitates. He looks at her more carefully now. “Can you track it?” he asks. “The anchor. With your abilities.”
She nods. “Yeah. I think so. I felt something near the ridge already. Like a pull. I just need to get closer.”
He exhales, tension easing slightly from his shoulders. “Good. That gives us an edge.”
They pack quickly after that, falling into an old rhythm. Isaac shoulders the axe and torch. Nellie loads salt rounds into her shotgun and tucks the flare gun into her pack. But even as they move, he keeps looking at her. Not obviously and not enough for her to call him on it right away. But too often.
Finally, she catches his reflection in the motel mirror and turns. “You don’t have to look at me,” she says quietly, “like I’m going to break.”
Isaac freezes mid-motion, one hand on the strap of his pack. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. Then, very carefully, he sets the axe down. “Kid,” he says softly, “you were abducted and nearly sacrificed last time I saw you. I’m allowed to check.”
Her throat tightens.
He shifts his weight, jaw flexing. “Besides,” he adds, gruffer now, “Sam Winchester would hunt my ass down if something happened to you.”
A shaky laugh slips out of her. “Yeah… that tracks.”
Isaac grunts. “Damn right it does.”
They share a brief, quiet look. All the words they don’t say wrapped up in the space between them.
Then she clears her throat and straightens. “Okay. Plan.”
He nods once, all business again. “We find the nest. You track the anchor, we’ll disrupt the frost-bonded corpse, and then we kill the wight.”
She zips her bag closed. “Which gives us maybe four hours. Six, if we’re lucky.”
He grabs his coat and flicks off the motel light. “Then let’s not waste daylight.”
• • •
Isaac’s snowmobile is an old workhorse, scratched to hell, dented along one side, and loud in a way that suggests it’s survived more than a few questionable decisions. It currently sits on a small trailer attached to Isaac’s truck. Nellie follows Isaac in the Impala, heater blasting, hands tight on the wheel as the sky continues to darken prematurely under the storm-heavy clouds.
They soon roll back into the ranger station lot up the mountain.
Isaac cuts the engine and hops out of the truck cabin. “Alright,” he mutters. “Let’s see if the government’s feeling generous today.”
They head inside together, boots squeaking on melted snow. The same ranger from earlier looks up from his desk, already looking exhausted.
“Back already?” he asks.
Isaac jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Need to request short-term recreational equipment access. Snowmobile. Officially speaking.”
Nellie leans casually against the counter. “Search consultant and field support. Faster coverage that way.”
The ranger squints at them both, suspicion warring with fatigue. “You do realize how dangerous it is up there right now?”
“Yep,” she says pleasantly. “That’s why we’re not walking.”
He exhales sharply and rubs his face. “You’re supposed to log any off-trail travel.”
The older hunter nods. “We will.”
He hesitates a second longer, then reaches for a ring of keys beneath the desk. “Bring it back in one piece.”
Isaac grins thinly. “Define ‘piece.’”
A few minutes later, the second snowmobile is hauled out from the station’s covered bay, newer than Isaac’s, cleaner, but still clearly built for abuse. The wind shrieks louder, whipping snow across the lot in thick skating ribbons.
They gear up quickly. Nellie adjusts the straps on her pack and swings onto the station snowmobile, visor snapping down over her eyes. Isaac secures the torch and axe across his back and climbs onto his own.
He glances sideways at her. “You good to lead?”
She nods once. “I’ll feel the pull when we’re close enough.”
He doesn’t question it.
Both engines roar to life, their sound swallowed almost immediately by the storm. She peels out first, the snowmobile lurching forward and carving a clean path into the white. Isaac follows close behind, his headlight bouncing in her wake. The ranger station disappears behind them within seconds.
Tree shadows stretch long and warped across the trail. Snow whips across the path like shaken ash. The temperature drops fast enough that she feels it creeping through her layers.
The farther they go, the heavier her chest becomes. That faint pressure behind her eyes returns, subtle at first, then sharpening, tugging her attention uphill and deeper into the woods.
“Yeah,” she murmurs into the wind. “You’re close.”
The snowmobiles rumble to a stop at the ridge overlook, engines idling loud against the smothering quiet of the storm. The last known GPS ping sits just beyond a stand of twisted pines, their branches bowed low under heavy frost.
Nellie kills her engine first. The silence that follows is immediate and absolute.
Isaac pulls up beside her, lifting his visor. “This is the spot,” he says, nodding toward the narrow trail branching into the woods. “Where the last group radioed in.”
She steps off her snowmobile, boots sinking deep. She pulls her pack tighter across her shoulders and lets her breath settle. Snowflakes whirl in a disordered dance around her, as if the air itself is holding its breath. She inhales slowly, then closes her eyes Her sense isn’t a neat or predictable thing. It’s more like feeling for a loose thread in a tangled knot, knowing something is there but needing to tug it just right to find the right direction.
She lowers her gloved fingers toward the snow, hovering an inch above it. “Alright,” she whispers. “Come on… show me something.”
At first, all she feels is cold. Then, a flicker, a distant hum. A faint vibration under the surface of the world, like something buried deep is resonating just enough to brush the edge of her perception. Her brow furrows. She pushes deeper. The hum sharpens. Becomes a thread, thin, brittle, but undeniable.
She gasps softly.
Isaac immediately steps closer. “Nellie?”
She holds up a hand. “I’m okay… I think I found something.”
He watches her carefully, not interrupting, not pressing, just grounding her with his presence.
She opens her eyes. They’re sharper now, focused on some invisible point deep within the trees. “It’s faint,” she says, still catching her breath. “Whatever the anchor is… it’s not close. But it’s connected to something out that way.” She gestures toward a slope leading north-east. “Feels like… like the cold is being pulled in that direction.”
“You sure?” he asks, not doubting, but confirming.
“No,” she admits. “But it’s the only thread I’ve got.”
He considers that for half a second before nodding once. “Then we follow it.”
“That’s it? No arguing?”
“I argue when you’re wrong. Not when you’re doing something you’re good at.”
Nellie climbs back onto the snowmobile and revs the engine. Isaac does the same. The trail she indicated is narrow, choked with trees, but navigable. The snow thickens around them, flakes falling faster, wind biting harder. Visibility drops in sudden bursts.
But she keeps following the thread, that fragile pull humming at the edge of her senses, urging her forward. Every time it wavers, she coaxes it back, hoping, praying, it’s the right path. Behind her, the other hunter keeps steady pace, trusting her completely.
Finally, the trees thin just enough to reveal a steep descent leading toward a deeper, darker part of the forest.
Her grip tightens on the handlebars. “This is it,” she says into the wind. “Whatever’s out here… it’s down that way.”
He pulls up beside her. “Then let’s finish this before nightfall.”
The snow thickens as they continue, snow whipping harder now, stinging through every seam in her coat. Her snowmobile hums beneath her, engine straining against the cold. The trees start thin as they push deeper into the ridge, giving way to a low, uneven stretch of forest where jagged rocky outcrops punch through the snow like blackened ribs.
She slows first. The thread in her chest tightens suddenly, sharp as a hooked wire. She lifts one gloved hand and signals back over her shoulder. Isaac kills his engine instantly and coasts up beside her, boots hitting the snow without a sound as he dismounts.
“You feel it,” he says quietly.
She nods once. “Yeah. We’re close.”
The air here is wrong. Not colder, but heavier. Like the cold has weight. Like it’s pooling instead of drifting.
They leave the snowmobiles and move in on foot, slow and careful now. Every step crunches too loud in the hush pressing down around them. The outcrops rise like hunched shoulders from the ground, dark stone glazed with unnatural frost. Small hollows dot the rock faces, shallow, imperfect pockets where snow has barely touched. Isaac moves ahead, hand on the axe strapped across his back. Nellie trails just behind, senses stretched thin, following the pull like a heartbeat she can’t quite locate.
Her breath fogs in short, tight bursts. “That one,” she murmurs.
He follows her gaze. A narrow hollow sits between two slabs of stone, shielded from the worst of the snowfall. The frost there is thicker. Denser. Alive in a way normal ice isn’t. They approach together.
The smell hits first. Cold rot. Old sweat trapped in fabric. The faint, metallic ghost of blood. She steps closer and the pressure slams into her chest so hard she nearly stumbles.
“That’s it,” she whispers. “That’s the anchor.”
He crouches and pulls out a flashlight, angling the beam into the hollow. The light reveals a human shape curled into the stone pocket like it tried to crawl into the earth for warmth. The corpse is locked in frost, ice fused through clothing and skin alike. Mouth open in a frozen scream. Eyes glazed over, reflecting the beam like pale glass. The jacket is the same bright red as the one in the rescue photos.
Her stomach twists. “It’s him,” she says softly. “The missing hiker. The one they hadn’t found yet.” She lowers into a crouch, breath shallow, eyes tracing the frost pattern webbing through the corpse. The ice isn’t just on the outside, it radiates from within, like something passed through the body and left winter behind.
Nellie’s voice shakes despite her effort to steady it. “This is where it was born.”
“And where it feeds from,” Isaac says grimly.
The forest groans faintly as wind snakes through the rocks. Far off, something answers with a whisper that doesn’t belong to the wind.
She stiffens. “It knows we’re here.”
He rises slowly, axe sliding into his grip. “Good. That means we’re doing it right.”
She looks at the frost-bonded body one last time, at the man who never made it off the mountain. She then drops her pack beside the hollow and moves fast, pulling the salt canister free with numb fingers and twists the cap off with her teeth, spitting it into the snow.
“Cover the extremities first,” Isaac mutters, already pulling blowtorch from his bag.
She circles the hollow, shaking salt in a wide, deliberate arc. The white grains hiss faintly as they hit the ice, melting small, angry channels through the frost. The corpse doesn’t move. But her chest tightens. Hard. The thread she followed here snaps taut inside her ribcage like a wire pulled too tight. Her breath hitches. She can feel it now. Not just the anchor. The wight. It isn’t close, not yet, but she feels its awareness slam into the corpse the instant the salt touches bone. A surge of cold fury ripples up her spine.
“Oh — shit,” she breathes.
The older hunter flicks the igniter and the blowtorch roars to life in a burst of blue flame. Heat blooms aggressively against the frozen air.
She staggers suddenly, one hand flying to her chest.
He snaps his head toward her. “Nellie?”
She swallows hard, eyes wide now. “It felt that. The moment I salted it.”
Far off, snow crashes from branches like something forcing its way through the trees at impossible speed.
She grabs his arm, panic cutting through her voice just enough to make it deadly serious. “We need to move. Now. It knows exactly where we are.”
He doesn’t argue. He angles the torch toward the corpse. “Then we burn fast.”
The flame licks across the edge of the jacket.
The ice screams.
It’s not a sound exactly, more like a pressure spike, a vibration that rattles through the stone and into her teeth. The frost shatters in sharp, violent fractures as heat tears through it. She keeps salting in frantic, sweeping motions, ring after ring around the hollow, reinforcing the circle as the corpse begins to blacken under the flame.
The pressure spikes again.
Closer now.
Running.
“It’s coming!” Nellie snaps.
Isaac grits his teeth and turns the blowtorch higher. The body ignites in patches, fabric shriveling, skin cracking under sudden violent heat. The frost collapses inward, hissing violently as it breaks. The wind howls through the outcrops in a sudden, hard gust.
“It’s detached!” she yells. “It’ll be vulnerable now, but it’ll be furious!”
He swings the torch aside and yanks the axe into his grip.
“Good,” he growls. “I’m in the mood to return the favor.”
They run.
The snowmobiles sit at the tree line, half buried under fresh powder. Nellie reaches hers first, boots slipping as she vaults onto the seat. Isaac is half a step behind —
The wight hits him out of nowhere.
It slams into his side like a frozen freight train, hurling him off his snowmobile in a brutal spray of snow and impact. He rolls hard across the ground and crashes into a low drift with a groan.
“Isaac!” she yells, heart detonating in her chest.
The wight rears back, shrieking, no longer wearing any human sound. Just ice, wind, and rage.
She spins, rips the shotgun from her back, and fires. BOOM. Rock salt detonates across the creature’s chest, blasting frost and shadow outward. It staggers, not wounded, but fully enraged now. Its head snaps toward her.
“Nelllliiie—”
“Don’t,” she snaps, pumping the action and firing again. “Use. My name.”
The blast knocks it sideways just enough to buy her seconds, precious seconds.
Isaac groans behind her, struggling to push himself upright.
She makes a choice. She swings onto Isaac’s snowmobile, cranks the throttle, and roars forward. Not fleeing the area, but cutting hard around the nearby tree line in a tight, reckless arc.
The wight lunges after her instantly. Good. She doesn’t go far. Just fast.
She whips the snowmobile around the clustered pines in a sharp, brutal curve, carving a tight half-circle through the drifted snow. The engine screams in protest. The machine fishtails violently beneath her. Behind her, the wight is committed to full pursuit, no caution.
At the last second, she bails. She throws herself sideways off the snowmobile and slams into the snow as the machine continues riderless straight ahead. The wight charges after it and the snowmobile crashes full force into a thick pine, pinning the creature between twisted steel and bark in an eruption of sparks, snow, and shuddering metal. The impact locks it in place. Perfectly.
Isaac comes charging out of the storm like a man possessed. Blood streaks down the side of his forehead. His eyes are livid. His axe is already raised.
“You —” he bellows at the woman mid-stride, “— ARE PAYING FOR THAT!”
Then the axe comes down. CRACK. The creature’s head leaves its shoulders in a violent explosion of ice and shadow. The body convulses once, twice. Then collapses in on itself as frost fractures inward and the shadow evaporates into drifting vapor.
Nellie staggers to her feet, lungs burning, adrenaline shaking her hands as she races toward the older hunter.
He plants the axe in the snow and turns on her instantly. “You wrecked my damn snowmobile!”
She lets out a shaky laugh. “You’re welcome?”
“That thing had three more years of bad decisions left in it!”
“And now it died a hero!”
They stare at each other.
Then he exhales hard and pulls her into a fierce, one-armed, bone-crushing hug. “You ever pull a stunt like that again,” he mutters roughly, “I’m killing you myself.”
She laughs breathlessly into his shoulder. “Duly noted.”
Behind them, the crushed remains of the snowmobile crack and settle in the cooling air.
The second snowmobile waits where she left it, powder-draped and idling softly in the shelter of the trees. The snow has eased to a light fall now, flakes drifting downward in slow, shimmering curtains as the sky bruises deeper into evening.
Nellie trudges beside Isaac as they reach it, every muscle in her body finally remembering what exhaustion feels like. He climbs onto the remaining snowmobile and offers her a hand. She takes it and swings up behind him, arms wrapping forward around his jacket for balance.
The engine revs and they pull away from the trees, the forest slowly loosening its grip as the trail widens.
For several minutes, they ride in silence. The adrenaline drains. The ache sets in.
The sky darkens in layers, pale gray giving way to steel blue, then to the first hints of indigo. The storm clouds thin just enough for the world to look colder instead of hidden.
He glances down at the dash and frowns, glancing again. “…That’s not ideal,” he mutters.
“What?” she asks.
He taps the gauge with a gloved finger. The needle hovers just above empty. “We’re running on fumes.”
She exhales slowly. “Of course we are.”
He angles his head toward the fading horizon. “We don’t have endless daylight left. I want to be off this mountain before it’s fully dark, wight or no wight.”
She nods. “Yeah. Fair.”
A few seconds pass.
“There’s a ranger outpost about two miles west of here,” she says carefully. “I noticed it on the map earlier. Supplies, fuel reserve, emergency shelter.”
He stiffens slightly. “Two miles west is not ‘on the way.’”
“It’s not far either,” she counters. “If we keep pushing forward and run dry in the middle of nowhere, that’s worse.”
He grunts, clearly annoyed by the logic of it. “And what if the station’s empty?”
“Then we camp and you complain about it until morning,” she says lightly.
He lets out a huff that might almost be a laugh. Almost. Another glance at the fuel gauge. Then a long sigh. “Alright,” he says. “Outpost first. But we do not linger.”
She squeezes his jacket once. “Deal.”
He twists the handlebars and veers west, following the faint cut of a side trail half-lost beneath fresh snow. The engine sputters slightly as if protesting the extra distance.
Darkness continues to creep in around them slowly and inevitable. But ahead, faint and far, a dull amber glow flickers between the trees. It grows steadier as they push through the thinning trees, the snowmobile’s engine sputtering ominously beneath them. The trail opens into a small clearing cut into the mountainside and at its center sits the ranger outpost.
Lights are on.
Not emergency strobes.
Not abandoned-generator flicker.
Occupied.
Isaac slows immediately, hand tightening on the handlebars. Nellie straightens behind him, senses flaring, not psychic this time, just instinct. And that’s when she sees them. Tracks. Boot prints crisscross the snow around the building, fresh and numerous. Snowmobile treads. Drag marks where gear’s been hauled inside.
“People are here,” she murmurs.
She mutters under his breath, “Fantastic.”
They coast to a stop just outside the tree line, engine idling low. For a moment, neither of them moves. After everything they’ve just been through — the wight, the storm, the chase — walking into a lit building full of unknown people feels suddenly more dangerous than facing a monster.
She leans in slightly. “We stick to the cover.”
He nods once. “Always.”
They guide the snowmobile the rest of the way in slowly, deliberately, and park near the side of the building, killing the engine. They dismount together, movements careful but calm, weapons concealed under coats, packs shifted to look like standard search-and-rescue gear.
He raps once on the outpost door. The lights inside pause. Footsteps approach. A moment later, the door swings open to reveal a bundled-up ranger with a knit cap pulled low and a thermos in hand.
“Evenin’,” he says, surprised. “Didn’t expect anyone else tonight.”
Isaac lifts a hand casually. “Didn’t expect to be here either. Snowmobile’s damn near empty. Figured we’d check before we risked walking.”
The ranger studies them for half a second and then steps aside. “You’re in luck. We’ve got fuel. Come on in, it’s ugly out there.”
Warm air spills out as they step inside.
The outpost is small but crowded, gear piled along the walls, medical kits open on a folding table, a map pinned up with bright red markers. Four search-and-rescue volunteers sit around a heater drinking coffee from mismatched mugs, and another ranger is crouched near the back checking a generator readout.
One of the SAR members glances up. “You two out working the trail?”
“Yeah,” Nellie answers easily as she peels off her gloves. “Doing our own searching further up the ridge. Weather chased us down faster than expected.”
A woman nods sympathetically. “It always does.”
The older hunter jerks a thumb toward the door. “Just need to top off and we’ll clear out. Don’t want to crowd you folks.”
The first ranger sets his thermos down. “You’re welcome to warm up a bit. We’re bunking here overnight. Sarge didn’t want us pushing further in this visibility.”
“Probably smart.”
The second ranger looks up from the generator. “Fuel’s out back. I’ll walk you through.”
Isaac tips his head. “Appreciate it.” He follows the ranger back outside toward the fuel tanks, leaving Nellie behind in the warmth of the outpost with the search-and-rescue team.
She exhales softly and turns toward the others. The SAR volunteers are huddled near the heater, boots steaming slightly as they thaw. One of them, a woman with a windburned face and tired eyes, offers her a mug of coffee.
“Looks like you two had a hell of a day,” she says.
The hunter accepts it gratefully. “You have no idea.”
She chuckles. “We’ve been stuck rotating grid sectors since dawn. Lost one of our own out there earlier, didn’t die, thank God, but hypothermia almost took him.”
Nellie’s grip tightens just slightly on the mug. “That must have been rough.”
“Yeah. He kept saying he heard someone calling him before he collapsed.” The woman shrugs. “Probably delirium.”
She forces a small smile. “Storm does weird things to people.”
Another SAR member, younger, nervous energy still stuck in his shoulders, glances at the door. “Your partner kind of intense, yeah?”
She exhales an amused breath. “That’s his default setting.”
Only a few minutes go by before Isaac and the ranger come back in from the darkened woods. As the hunters prepare their departure, the power cuts out with a sharp, sudden silence, no flicker, no warning. One second the outpost is warm and lit, the next it’s swallowed by darkness. The world holds its breath. A startled curse ripples through the room. Emergency lanterns flicker on along the walls a second later, bathing the cramped outpost in dull amber light.
Nellie, who had been leaning against the wall chatting with a cluster SAR workers, straightens instantly. And then, there is rustling outside, slow and measured. Something moving through snow along the far side of the building.
One of the SARs mutters, “Please tell me that’s a deer.”
Another says quietly, “Deer don’t sound like that.”
Isaac is already shifting into a different posture, not obvious, not aggressive, but coiled. She feels it in the way the air seems to tighten around him. She meets his eyes across the room. He felt it too.
One of the rangers swears under his breath. “Generator must’ve iced over again.”
The other one by the map table snaps his flashlight on. “I’ll go check it.”
Nellie sets her mug down slowly. “You might want backup —”
The ranger is already shrugging into his coat. “It’s probably nothing. Happens all the time out here.”
Outside, the rustling sound shifts.
Closer.
Not animal scattered. Not random.
Deliberate.
Isaac’s jaw tightens. “That’s not just the wind.”
The ranger pauses, finally sensing the change in the room. “You two hear something?”
She answers carefully, keeping her tone neutral. “Just… movement. Around the building.”
He exhales through his nose. “Great.” He reaches for the door.
Before he opens it, Isaac steps slightly into his path, not blocking him, but close enough to be noticed. “If it’s not just ice on the fuel line,” he says evenly, “you don’t want to be out there alone.”
The ranger studies him for a moment. Then another loud rustle scrapes along the outer wall.
Snow slides off the roof in a heavy hiss.
That does it.
“…Alright,” he sighs. “Fine. I’ll take help. But you two stay close.”
Nellie is already reaching for her jacket. “We were planning on it.”
They reach the generator enclosure, a half-sheltered metal housing bolted into the rock face. Snow is banked high around it, drifting unnaturally against the side.
The ranger kneels, brushing snow away with gloved hands. “Damn thing’s been acting up all night —” He stops cold.
Isaac’s flashlight catches the damage at the same moment. Metal panels are twisted inward, not crushed by weight, but bent as if something grabbed them and squeezed. Wires hang loose and severed. The casing is ripped open like it was clawed apart. The fuel line has been torn free, not frozen.
The ranger swears under his breath. “That’s… that’s not ice damage.”
The hunter grip tightens on his weapon. “No. It’s not.”
The wind shifts. Snow skitters across the ground. Somewhere just beyond the arc of their light, something exhales. Not breath, not steam. A slow, dragging sound. Like frost sliding over bark.
His head snaps up. “Get back,” he says quietly to the ranger.
The other rises slowly, tension finally catching up to him. “What the hell did this?”
Snow skitters in a tight, unnatural spiral across the ground. The thing slams out of the darkness. It doesn’t crash through the trees like the first one did. It slides through the snow, a blur of shadow and frost and jerking limbs and hits the ranger full in the chest. He goes down hard with a strangled shout, skidding across packed snow. The wight rears back over him, towering, shoulders crooked at the wrong angles, its body shedding cold like smoke. Its mouth opens and the sound that pours out isn’t a scream, it’s a directed shriek, sharp enough to feel in Isaac’s teeth.
He doesn’t hesitate. He charges. The axe flashes as he brings it down across the wight’s upper arm. The blade bites deep, ice explodes outward, but the creature barely staggers. It snaps toward him, head cocked, eyes burning with starving fury.
And then it speaks. “Hun—terrr…” It lunges.
Isaac is barely fast enough to duck as frost tears through the air where his head had been a split second earlier. He pivots, slams his shoulder into the creature’s side, and they both go down in a whirl of snow and shadow. The ranger scrambles backward, gasping, dragging himself toward the outpost lights. The hunter slams the wight’s head into the ground and brings the axe down again. The creature catches the handle mid-swing. Ice crawls instantly over the grip. He rips it free and stumbles back as the creature surges to its feet.
That’s when he realizes something is wrong.
“Nellie!” he shouts over the storm.
No answer.
Fear punches through his ribs, sharp and immediate. She was just behind them. She should be here.
The wight tilts its head, as if listening — as if amused.
And then, in a voice that almost sounds like mocking wind. “Huuunttterrr…”
Isaac’s chest tightens. “Son of a bitch,” he mutters. “There were two of you.”
This one steps closer to him, slow and deliberate, radiating cold in heavy waves. Its frost-blackened hands flex eagerly. It doesn’t need to lure anymore. It just needs to kill.
His voice cuts through the snow one more time, “Damn it, Nell! This ain’t the time to play hide and seek!”
“I’m right here!”
The world explodes into fire. A sudden roar of ignition tears through the storm as a jet of flame erupts from the darkness behind the creature, slamming into its back in a violent wave of orange and white.
The wight howls.
Not a voice.
Not a mimic.
A raw, animal scream of pain as fire chews through frost and shadow alike. It staggers forward, flailing wildly, slamming into a tree hard enough to send snow crashing from its branches. Frost boils off its body in thick, hissing clouds.
Isaac skids backward, stunned for half a heartbeat. Then he sees her. Nellie steps out of the snow-swirled shadow near the back corner of the outpost, the compact flamethrower pack blazing against her spine, eyes locked on the writhing creature.
“Miss me?” she calls over the roar of fire.
The wight shrieks again and bolts. It tears into the tree line in a desperate blur of burning shadow, crashing wildly through branches as the flames gutter out in sparks behind it. Silence crashes down hard in its wake.
He stares at her like she just walked out of a nightmare with a grin and a flamethrower.
“You —” he starts, chest heaving. “You left the group.”
She shrugs as she kills the flame. “You left a flamethrower unattended on the snowmobile.”
“That is not the same thing!”
The ranger groans from the snow.
Isaac instantly turns, kneeling beside him. “Easy, easy. Don’t try to move yet.”
He is shaking hard, clutching his side. “That thing — what the hell was that thing?!”
Nellie moves in fast, already shouldering his weight gently. “Shock and adrenaline. We’ll get you warm.”
Together, the hunters lift him carefully and start guiding him back toward the outpost. A distant, furious shriek echoes once throughout the woods. The door slams shut behind them as they drag the injured ranger inside. The SAR team surges forward immediately.
“What happened out there!?”
“Is it an animal!?”
“Why is the generator wrecked!?”
Isaac keeps his voice calm, firm. “Something hit him near the equipment. Big. Fast. He needs medical attention now.”
The SAR medic drops instantly to their knees beside the ranger, cutting open his coat and checking him over. “He’s got a deep cut, maybe a concussion.”
“Stretcher,” Nellie says immediately. “Now.”
They move in practiced rhythm, adrenaline sharpening every motion. The injured ranger is lifted and carried to the back room where sleeping cots have been set up.
Isaac locks the door and throws the latch.
“Whatever that was,” one of the SARs whispers, “it wasn’t a bear.”
“No,” Nellie agrees quietly. “It wasn’t.”
He joins her near the door, voice low. “Second wight. Burned but not dead. It fled east.”
She nods. “It’s pissed.”
“And wounded,” he adds. “Which makes it reckless.”
Their eyes meet. Same thought. It won’t leave the mountain.
The SAR medic looks up from the ranger. “He’s stable. Needs warmth, hydration, and rest. He’s not moving anywhere tonight.”
Nellie exhales slowly. “Good.”
Isaac turns to the group. “We’re going back out.”
That turns every head in the room.
The technician swears. “You’re insane.”
“Maybe,” she replies lightly. “But that thing is still out there. And now it knows where you sleep.”
A long, heavy silence falls.
Finally, one of the SARs whispers, “You’re saying it’ll come back.”
The older hunter’s voice is flat. “I’m saying it already tried.” He sighs, glancing at Nellie with hesitation “We need to level with you, at least enough to keep you alive.”
Everyone turns toward him.
One of them scoffs weakly. “Level with us about what? That the ranger almost got jumped by Slender Man in a blizzard?”
Nellie steps forward, hands open, calm but unyielding. “What attacked the ranger out there wasn’t an animal. It’s not something you can trap, tranquilize, or scare off with flares.”
The room tightens.
Another SAR whispers, “Then what was it?”
She exhales once. “Not natural.”
No one laughs.
Isaac continues, “It’s been hunting this mountain for weeks. The hiker you’ve been searching for? That wasn’t exposure. He was killed.”
A stunned silence follows.
“You’re saying —” the medic begins.
“I’m saying,” she cuts in gently, “that what’s out there knows how to trick people. It knows how to sound like someone you trust.”
A soft scrape of snow slides along the outside wall. Everyone flinches. From somewhere beyond the outpost, carried faintly through the storm. “Ryan?”
One of the SARs stiffens violently. A man near the door, early thirties, red eyes from exhaustion, swallows hard. “That’s… that’s Mason’s voice.”
Nellie’s heart drops.
Outside, the voice comes again. Clearer now. “Ryan, help me — I can’t feel my hands —”
Ryan takes an unconscious step toward the door.
She moves instantly. She plants herself directly in his path and grabs the front of his jacket with both hands. “Do not open that door,” she snaps.
He blinks at her, dazed. “That’s my partner.”
“That is him,” she states fiercely. “It’s the thing trying to lure you.”
The voice outside grows more desperate. “Ryan, I’m freezing — please…”
His breath shudders.
She softens her grip just slightly, but her eyes are iron. “It mimics. That’s how it hunts. It chooses the voice that will make you move.”
Isaac steps up behind her. “And once you step out there with it, you won’t come back.”
The room holds its breath.
The voice outside twists again, closer now, angrier beneath the fear. “Why won’t you answer me!?”
Ryan’s knees buckle. The medic catches him as Nellie finally lets go.
Outside, the voice cuts off abruptly.
She exhales slowly. “It’s wounded. Which means it’s getting reckless.”
The older hunter nods. “It already tried to hit the generator. It tested your defenses. Now it’s testing your hearts.”
A long, horrified understanding settles into the group.
One of the SARs whispers, “It’s going to keep doing that.”
“Yes,” Nellie says. “Until someone answers it.”
Isaac shifts his shoulders, decision hardening in his posture. “Which is why we’re ending it tonight.”
The technician shakes his head. “You can’t go back out there.”
“We can,” she replies quietly. “And we will.”
The medic looks up from the injured ranger. “And if you’re wrong?”
Her gaze flicks to the door. “If we’re wrong,” she says, “then this thing gets bold. And it starts knocking.”
No one argues after that.
Isaac gestures her over, voice hushed. “We don’t split up.”
She lifts her chin. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“It is now officially never the plan. It’s night. The thing’s wounded. That makes it desperate and mean. And it already tried to hit civilians. We find the second anchor. It has to be close. Things like that don’t stray far from what tethers them. But we weaken it before it gets another chance to use those voices.”
She nods once. “Agreed.”
His eyes drop to the compact flamethrower pack still strapped across her back. “…Hand it over.”
She blinks. Then slowly pouts, exaggerated, theatrical. “Aww,” she says. “But I looked really badass using it.”
He does not smile. “You looked reckless,” he corrects. “And you nearly set half the outpost perimeter on fire.”
“It was very controlled fire.”
“It was fire, Nellie.”
She sighs dramatically but reaches up and slides the straps off her shoulders, swinging the pack into his waiting hands. “Fine. Be that way.”
He hooks the straps on his arm. Then, without ceremony, he pulls the axe from its loop on his back and holds it out toward her. She looks down at it. Then back up at him.
His voice drops, quieter now, edged with something fierce and proud. “You once split a vamp in half with that thing.”
Her lips curve despite herself. “Well, it was easy once you decapitate.”
“And you were half his size,” he shoots back. “Which means you’re far more lethal with this than you are with a flamethrower.”
She takes the axe. The familiar weight settles into her hands like an extension of her own will. Something old and steady locks into place inside her posture.
He exhales once, relieved. He adds dryly, “Also, I don’t want you setting anything else on fire.”
She squints at him. “You’re still mad about the snowmobile.”
“I will always be mad about the snowmobile.”
She grins. “It died doing what it loved.”
“Being destroyed by you?”
“Exactly.”
Despite himself, the corner of Isaac’s mouth twitches. Then the humor drains away. He nods toward the back room where the injured ranger lies. “We end it fast. Quiet. No more test runs at their expense.” His hand is barely on the latch when —
BANG. The entire door buckles inward. Wood splinters violently. The metal frame screams. Everyone in the room flinches at once as snow detonates through cracks in the doorway. Another impact hits immediately after. BANG. The hinges tear partially loose. The emergency lanterns swing on their hooks. Shadows leap wild across the walls.
“Oh God —” one of the SARs gasps.
The wounded wight doesn’t bother knocking again. The door rips free of the frame in a storm of shattered wood and frozen metal and crashes across the floor in a burst of snow and debris.
Cold explodes into the room. And with it, the wight surges inside. It moves like a broken marionette dragged by rage, too fast, too wrong, shedding frost in choking waves. Its burned side still smolders faintly, fire damage glowing like dying embers beneath ice.
The SARs scream. One stumbles backward into a table. Another drops to their knees in shock. The creature lunges into the room and Nellie doesn’t think. She throws her hand out. A hard, invisible force slams out of her chest like a concussion blast. The air warps. Snow explodes backward through the doorway. And the wight is suddenly ripped off its feet, hurled bodily through the open entrance like it was struck by a moving truck. It hits the outpost steps in a spray of ice and shadow and vanishes back into the dark.
Isaac doesn’t hesitate. “Everyone stay put!” he barks, already moving.
She is right beside him.
They burst through the ruined doorway without slowing. Snow whips sideways in blinding sheets. The outpost’s emergency lights glow faint and distant behind them, warped through the moving white like a beacon in a nightmare. The wight slams into the ground ahead of them, skids, rolls, and rips itself upright with a sound like ice tearing from stone. Burned, warped, and furious. Its scorched side still smolders faintly beneath reforming frost.
“Huuuunnnterrrr…” it rasps.
Isaac steps forward, flamethrower already in his grip. “Eyes up. Stay tight.”
The wight doesn’t rush them. It vanishes into the storm.
Nellie’s chest tightens. “It’s circling.”
Snow churns to their left. Too fast. It slams out of the whiteout and collides with Isaac shoulder-first, driving him backward across the snow. He fires the flamethrower on instinct, a roaring jet of flame tears through the storm, forcing the creature to recoil in a shriek of boiling frost.
She moves. The axe flashes. Steel bites into the wight’s side in a violent spray of ice. The creature backhands her with supernatural force, hurling her across the snow. She slams hard onto her back, the impact knocking the air from her lungs. Stars burst in her vision. It looms over her, frost pouring off it in choking waves. Its clawed hand reaches for her face. She tightens both hands around the axe handle and rolls at the last second, dragging the blade across its leg as she goes. Ice ruptures. The wight shrieks again.
The older hunter floods it with fire from the side. The flames don’t kill it, but they herd it.
“Drive it downslope!” Nellie yells.
Isaac does exactly that, cutting off its route back toward the outpost with controlled bursts of flame. The wight snaps and howls, retreating through the trees in furious, wounded leaps.
She forces herself upright and runs. Not away, but towards a pull. A thread flares again at the edge of her senses, dangerously clear now.
“There!” she shouts.
A shallow break in the rocks juts from the snow twenty yards downslope. Frost there glows faintly blue white, too thick, too deliberate. The second anchor. The wight realizes it the same instant she does. It abandons Isaac entirely and barrels toward the hollow at full speed.
Nellie gets there first. She drops to her knees and rips the salt canister open, throwing a wide arc of white into the hollow with shaking hands. The frost recoils violently and the corpse beneath twitches. The creature hits her a heartbeat later. She’s thrown sideways across the snow, but the anchor is already corrupted.
Isaac roars and charges through the drifting frost cloud, flames blasting from the thrower and hitting it from the side with one final concentrated burst of fire. The heat strips away its frost shield.
That’s all the opening she needs. She charges, the axe comes down in a brutal two-handed swing driven by fear, fury, and pure survival. CRACK. The blade bites deep into the wight’s neck. Ice erupts outward. The creature convulses, clawing blindly. She rips the axe free and swings again. CRUNCH. The head tears free in a violent rupture of frost and shadow. The body shudders then collapse inward as the shadow implodes into drifting vapor and shattered ice.
The older hunter cuts the flame and stumbles a step forward, chest heaving. Nellie drops to one knee in the snow, breath ragged, axe buried to the hilt beside her. They look at each other through the falling snow. It’s done.
She gestures a heavy head toward the anchor. Isaac doesn’t need psychic abilities to know what she was telling him. He uses the last of the fuel to light the body, watching it char black as the night around them. They watch it for a minute before they start walking back towards the outpost.
Nellie is the first to step in, axe hanging low at her side. Isaac follows, face drawn with exhaustion and soot-streaked snow.
“It’s over,” she says simply.
The words hit the room like a released breath.
A few people sag against walls. One person sits down hard on a bench. Someone else laughs shakily and immediately starts crying.
The medic rushes out from the back. “It’s dead?”
The older hunter nods. “It won’t be back.”
She looks at the group, her tone shifting, gentler now, but no less serious. “The person you were searching for… was already gone. We confirmed it.”
Heads bow. Someone swears quietly.
“The generator is destroyed beyond a field fix,” he adds. “And you’ve got one injured ranger who shouldn’t stay on the mountain overnight.”
The second ranger straightens. “We can move him with the stretch sled.”
“We’ll help you,” she says immediately. “All of you.”
They don’t argue.
It takes coordination, patience, and care. The injured ranger is bundled into layers and secured onto a transport rig. Fuel is siphoned from every remaining reserve. The last working snowmobiles are lined up outside the outpost under a quiet, steady snowfall. Nellie checks straps with trembling hands. Isaac secures engines with practiced efficiency. Once everything is ready, she turns back to the group.
“There’s one more thing,” she says.
They all look at her.
Her voice is steady now. Final. “What attacked you tonight… can’t go into any report. Not to the station. Not to the press. Not to your families.”
The group stiffens again.
One SAR bristles. “You’re asking us to lie.”
The older hunter steps in beside her. “We’re asking you to survive the paperwork that follows this. And keep your jobs. And not have the FBI or a three-letter agency crawl through every inch of your lives.”
She continues softly, “Your cover story is this: the generator was vandalized during a storm. Something large, possibly a bear, attacked the ranger during inspection. You evacuated because the outpost became unsafe.”
The medic hesitates. “And the voices?”
“Disorientation,” she answers instantly. “Exhaustion. Hypothermia. Trauma. All true. All documented. All believable.”
A long moment passes.
Then Ryan, the SAR who almost opened the door earlier, nods. “I won’t say a word.”
One by one, the others follow. Not because they fully understand. But because they remember the sound outside the door.
Engines roar to life and the convoy begins its slow descent down Monarch Ridge, snowmobiles spaced carefully, lights cutting thin tunnels through the falling dark.
Isaac drives one. Nellie rides another at the rear, watching the outpost disappear behind them into shadow and snow. The wounded ranger is stable. The SARs are shaken but alive. And the mountain, at last, is quiet. She lets herself finally feel the exhaustion settle into her bones, as the distant glow of the main ranger station grows closer.
• • •
The diner smells like burnt coffee, sugar, and fried grease. The holy trinity of survival after a long night. Nellie sits curled into one side of a vinyl booth, boots kicked off underneath, hands wrapped around a mug of entirely too-big hot cocoa piled high with melting whipped cream. Across from her, Isaac nurses his coffee like it personally offended him.
“You’re going to give yourself a sugar coma,” he mutters.
She takes another long sip anyway and sighs happily. “Worth it.”
Outside the window, the world is quiet. No snowstorm. No monsters. No screaming radios. Just the late night and a long, miracle of being done.
He watches her over the rim of his mug. Not checking for injuries this time. Just… watching. After a moment, he clears his throat. “You did good out there.”
She freezes slightly. “What?” she asks, like she didn’t hear him right.
“You did good,” he repeats, gruffer now, like the words scraped his throat on the way out. “Fast thinking. Smart choices. You kept people alive.”
She blinks at him. “…Did you just compliment me?”
“Don’t get used to it,” he says immediately. “It’s a rare astronomical event.”
A small, quiet smile tugs at her mouth anyway.
He takes another sip of coffee, then adds, “It was… good. Hunting with you again.”
Nellie’s chest tightens. “Yeah,” she says softly. “It was.”
Silence settles between them, not awkward. Just full. Then Isaac squints at her. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you stole my flamethrower.”
She perks up. “Borrowed.”
“Without permission.”
“With style.”
“And you deliberately crashed my snowmobile.”
She lifts her mug in a tiny toast. “It died a heroic death.”
“That machine carried me through three states and one ex-girlfriend.”
She winces. “Oof. Okay. That one does sting.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You are a menace.”
She grins. “You raised me wrong.”
“I didn’t raise you at all and somehow that’s worse.”
They share a quiet, tired laugh, the kind that only comes after thinking you might not survive the night.
The waitress swings by, eyebrow lifting at the nearly empty cocoa. “You want a refill, hon?”
Nellie glances at Isaac. “He’s pretending to be grumpy, but he’s buying.”
She sighs like a man resigned to his fate. “Put it on my tab.”
The waitress chuckles and walks off.
She watches the steam rise from her mug. She then looks up at him through the steam. For all his rough edges, all his growling, all his constant pretending not to care too much. In this moment, he looks exactly like what he is to her. Family, chosen, stubborn, unbreakable.
The cocoa arrives. The snowy night droning on outside. And for a little while longer… they just sit there. Alive.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse