Chapter 1 

Solenne

I stack another log onto the fire, watching embers lean into the dark like restless spirits scraping at the glass. The hearth spits and cracks, a feeble, desperate sound. Shadows flicker and writhe over the rough stone walls of our cottage, twisting the familiar shapes of our home into monstrous silhouettes. 

The fire is a dying heart; it struggles in the face of the cold seeping through every crack and crevice, a damp, grave-like chill, relentless as the winter itself. My hands tremble—a shiver born of cold or fear, I don’t know which. 

Quietly, I whisper the old words, a prayer stitched with curses, a plea to whatever might listen: hold back the vrakken, keep their claws away from this place. I remember the elder’s tales, of vrakken hunger so profound they could smell the warmth of a beating heart through a stone wall, a scent they craved more than any other.

Snow hammers the roof like the drums of war, each pounding beat a staccato tattoo that fills the silence between whispered fears. Mira, small and trembling, huddles near the hearth, her tiny fingers curled tight around the iron and bone charm I pressed into her palm earlier that day.

I want to tell her it will protect us—that the charm shields her from what lurks in the dark—but the words catch in my throat, a lie too brittle to speak. Instead, I pull the thick wool blanket tighter around her shoulders and run a shaky hand over her silky hair.

The air feels thick, heavy with a suffocating dread. Even within the groaning, weather-beaten walls of our cottage, the village’s collective fear bleeds in—unsaid but everywhere. No one dares speak the truth aloud, but the old wives’ tales weigh on every tongue: the Feast of Shadows is coming again. Fresh blood, fresh sorrow—the vrakken will demand it anew.

Suddenly, a brutal, jagged bang shatters the fragile quiet, the sound of an axe splitting bone.

My heart lurches violently; my hands grow cold and clammy. The door rattles under another furious blow, louder, sharper, the wood groaning in protest. A voice slices through the gale, desperate and ragged. “Solenne! Chapel. Now! They’re coming!”

Time fractures. I see Mira’s wide, terrified eyes—our breath a misty dance in the freezing air between us. A cruel thought claws at me: is the charm enough? Will it keep her safe? Will I?

Another savage slam shakes the entire doorframe, more furious than the last, splintering the wood near the latch. The cold wind rushes in through the new cracks, carrying the scent of wet earth and something darker—something metallic and sharp that makes my belly twist. It is the smell of blood on snow.

From the shadows outside, the door is shoved open and a figure stumbles inside—Rodel, his face streaked with snow and a wild, animal terror. Behind him, others cluster hurriedly, faces pale, drawn tight with fear. They clutch bundles, drag weeping children, and pull all of us toward a shared fate none of us want.

“We have to move,” Rodel pants, his voice rough as bark ripping. “The vrakken—they’re close. I saw their shadows on the ridge.”

I wrap my arms tight around Mira, clutch our own useless charms, and snatch the heavy blanket around us. There is no time. No room for hesitation. Together, we spill out into the storm’s waiting maw.

The cold rushes against me like a thousand tiny knives. The wind doesn't just howl; it shrieks, a banshee’s cry that presses into my bones and seems to whisper my name. 

Snow spears into exposed skin, a blinding, suffocating wall of white that erases the world. Tears freeze on Mira’s cheeks, catching the faint light like chips of glass. Her small body trembles violently against mine, and my own breath comes in quick, shallow gasps.

The village dissolves into chaos. Doors slam shut behind terrified families. Children wail broken sobs cut by their parents’ desperate pleas for silence. Everyone stumbles toward the chapel’s flickering light—a shaky, distant beacon wreathed in a halo of protective flame that seems impossibly far away.

The cold slices deeper than fabric. But something colder slinks beyond the storm—an unseen shadow tightening like a noose, waiting for the Feast to be fed.

Struggling against the wind, snow swallowing our feet, we reach the chapel. Its heavy oak doors, burning amber in the candlelight within, are thrown open for us. Inside, a murmur of whispered prayers and trembling sobs ripples through the crowded, suffocating room. The air is rich with the smell of wet wool, fear, and snuffed wax.

The cramped stone walls press in on us. Families clutch charms with white-knuckled desperation. Mira buries her face into my skirts, stifling quiet hiccups of terror. I thread an arm around her thin shoulders, biting down on my own lip to hold back my trembling.

Around us, aged voices whisper the old stories, the litany of Feasts past—of blood spilled to sate the vrakken’s insatiable hunger, of nights when even the mightiest charm failed, turning to cold ash in trembling hands. An old woman near me whispers of her own grandmother, taken from this very chapel, her screams the last thing anyone ever heard.

Above, outside, the storm shifts. The howling cuts abruptly short. The wind seems to hold its breath; the snowflakes hang, frozen midair like shattered glass shards.

The silence that creeps beneath the chapel doors is a living thing; it claws at my bones, thick and heavy—worse than any storm.

The children abruptly stop crying. Faces press to the frosted glass of the high windows, eyes wide in mute terror. Adults hold still, breaths caught in their chests, ears straining for the unseen threat that now waits just outside our sanctuary.

A single, ragged scream splits the silence from the far side of the village. A child calling a mother’s name, desperation twisting the sound into something inhuman before it is abruptly cut off. Footfalls rush past outside, pounding through brittle ice.

The wind screams again—a savage, shrieking sound tangled with gnarled, guttural voices that are not human, and the sharp, sickening scrape of metal claws on fragile bone.

The chapel shudders beneath the storm’s renewed wrath. The candle flames flicker wildly in the sudden, violent draft. One by one, they gutter and die, swallowed by shadows pooling like ink, plunging the room into a deeper gloom with each extinguished light.

I press Mira closer still, the heavy silence grinding between us like sharpened stone.

Without warning, the doors shudder violently, the thick oak groaning under a titanic, impossible force. A thunderous crash splinters the fragile quiet into a thousand shards.

The chapel plunges into impenetrable, absolute darkness.