The weather did not meet him halfway.

  Cold lay dense in the hollows, pressed flat by a sky that offered no light worth measuring. Snow had fallen clean overnight, not deep, but settled just enough to hide what it chose and reveal only what forced itself through. Wind moved along the higher cuts in short, cutting passes, never long enough to settle, never gone long enough to trust.

  Harbek adjusted his collar and leaned into the grade, boots finding purchase where stone rose close to the surface. The cold worked at him quietly. Not biting. Not cruel. Just persistent—drawing heat downward, dulling the edges of movement if he let it.

  He didn’t.

  Each step was counted. Each breath placed where it would do the most work. He kept his pace below effort, below strain. Winter punished waste before it punished mistakes.

  The mountain watched. It always did.

  The herd had moved again.

  Not scattered. Not spooked. Moved.

  Harbek followed the line where the snow had been pressed thin by many bodies passing through too close together. Hoof marks overlapped where they should have staggered. The spacing was wrong—compressed, hurried, but not panicked.

  He slowed, letting the shape of it speak.

  They had taken a steeper route than usual, climbing where the ground broke uneven and the wind scoured snow down to stone. Herds avoided this in winter. Too much risk. Too much energy spent for too little return.

  Unless they were being pushed.

  Harbek traced the line with his eyes, then stepped aside and circled wide, looking for the signs that should have been there—flare marks, sudden turns, the chaotic scatter of flight.

  There were none.

  Whatever had moved them had not rushed them. It had not charged. It had pressed.

  He felt it then—not fear, not yet—but the quiet tightening that came when familiar rules stopped behaving.

  The climb cost him more than it should have.

  The trail narrowed along a stone face where snow clung in shallow shelves. Harbek took it slow, testing each step before committing weight. He angled sideways, keeping his center close to the rock, one hand braced against the stone for balance.

  The belt caught without warning.

  Leather pulled sharp against his hip, then gave. Not the strap—one of the hooks. Metal snapped free with a sound too small to echo, too loud to ignore.

  Something fell.

  Harbek froze, listening past the wind.

  A faint clatter. One strike. Then nothing.

  He looked down.

  Below the ledge, the slope dropped away into broken stone and drifted snow, already scoured by wind. Whatever had fallen lay somewhere beneath it, unseen and already claimed by cold and angle.

  He knew what it was without checking.

  A small firestarter. Useful. Replaceable—but not without time.

  Harbek crouched and judged the descent.

  He could get to it. Probably. Ten minutes, maybe more. Longer if the snow shifted. Longer still if the wind decided to matter.

  He straightened.

  Ten minutes lost here could cost hours later. Or warmth. Or footing when it mattered.

  The weather did not care which tool he missed.

  He tightened the belt where the hook had torn free, rebalanced the remaining weight, and stepped back onto the trail without looking down again.

  Some losses weren’t warnings.

  They were adjustments.

  The herd trail did not behave the way it should have.

  Harbek followed it longer than he meant to, not because it pulled him forward, but because it refused to settle into anything that made sense. Hoof marks overlapped where they shouldn’t have. Lines doubled back without panic, then broke wide as if the animals had been urged rather than chased. Snow lay pressed flat in places that showed no churn beneath it, no scatter of stone or torn brush.

  Driven—but not fleeing.

  He stopped and crouched, brushing a thin layer of crust aside with the back of his glove. Beneath it, the ground was compacted unevenly, pressure sunk deep in one direction and barely touching in another. The weight had been wrong. Too deliberate in places. Too careless in others.

  Predators left patterns. Even the desperate ones did.

  This did not.

  He followed the signs upslope and found where the herd had split—not scattered, but divided cleanly, as if guided around an obstacle that hadn’t left a shape behind. Smaller prints angled away first. The larger ones followed later, slower, pressed deeper into the snow.

  He straightened, scanning the tree line.

  Nothing watched him.

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  That, too, was wrong.

  There were no drag marks. No blood spray. No circling tracks where something had tested the edge of the group. Whatever pressure had been applied here had been applied with confidence—and then withdrawn.

  As if the point had already been made.

  Harbek exhaled slowly through his nose and let the breath fog the air once before clearing it with a sharp blink. He did not move on immediately. He let the place exist around him, counted heartbeats, measured distance, listened for the small sounds that returned when danger passed.

  They did not return.

  This was the point where preparation stopped being insurance.

  Harbek knew the line well—not a place on a map, but a shift in how choices were weighed. Beyond it, caution stopped buying safety and began trading it away. Beyond it, every step forward demanded something back.

  Time. Heat. Margin.

  He adjusted the strap of his pack and felt where the weight settled. Familiar. Accounted for. His bow rode steady against his shoulder, serviceable for the woods he knew—for wolves, for boar, for anything that hunted because it had to.

  Not for this.

  He looked once more along the broken trail, committing angles and distances to memory the way he always had. He could push farther. He could learn more. He could confirm what his hands and eyes were already telling him.

  And then he would have to carry that knowledge home through weather that did not care whether he arrived.

  Harbek stepped back instead.

  Not retreat. Recalibration.

  He turned away from the split trail and marked the point only in his head—three paces from the bent pine, two stones showing through the crust, the slope falling away sharper than it looked. He would recognize it again.

  When he walked on, his steps were measured, deliberate, and entirely unhurried.

  Behind him, the snow continued to hold its shape.

  Ahead, the weather gathered itself.

  And somewhere between the two, the margin grew thinner than it had been yesterday.

  Harbek didn’t stop because he was tired.

  He stopped because the numbers no longer worked.

  He set the pack down where the wind broke against a rise in stone and unstrung the bow, resting it across his knees. The wood was sound. He’d cared for it properly—oiled when needed, kept from warping, the limbs balanced true. For what it was meant to do, it was a good bow.

  That was the problem.

  He checked the string first, fingers tracing the fibers for fray or stretch. It had held through wet and cold without complaint. He flexed one limb, then the other, feeling how the resistance came on—smooth, predictable, familiar.

  Too familiar.

  He imagined the draw under pressure. Cold in the fingers. Breath short. No time to choose angle or footing. He imagined weight coming through brush instead of away from it, not circling, not testing.

  He lowered the bow slightly.

  At full draw, the arrow would carry well enough. Enough for deer. Enough for boar, if he placed it clean and the beast chose to bleed rather than charge. Enough for anything Emberhollow had ever asked him to face with it.

  It would not be enough to stop something that did not care if it was wounded.

  Harbek reached into his pack and withdrew a short coil of spare cord—thin, tightly twisted, meant for repairs rather than load. He ran it between his fingers, feeling how little it gave. Strong for its size. Not strong enough for this.

  He set it aside and pulled another length free, thicker, stiffer. A trade cord. Good tension, poor resilience in cold. It would hold until it didn’t—and when it failed, it would do so all at once.

  He didn’t string it.

  Instead, he sat there longer than necessary, the bow unstrung across his knees, staring not at the trail but at the space beyond it—where the signs stopped behaving and the ground began lying by omission.

  Behind him, a crunch of snow broke the quiet.

  One of the younger apprentices, Hale, stood a short distance upslope, not close enough to intrude, not far enough to pretend coincidence. He held a bundle of split kindling under one arm, eyes fixed not on Harbek but on the bow in his hands.

  “That yours?” he asked, nodding toward it.

  Harbek didn’t look up. “It is.”

  Hale shifted his weight. “Didn’t know you carried one.”

  “I don’t,” Harbek said, and meant it.

  The boy frowned faintly, gaze dropping to the unstrung limbs, the cords laid out beside them. “Looks… light.”

  Harbek’s mouth twitched once, not quite a smile. “It is.”

  A pause. Snow hissed faintly as wind worried at the crust.

  “You fixing it?” Hale asked.

  Harbek gathered the cords and slid them back into the pack. He set the bow against his shoulder again, unstrung. “I’m learning what it isn’t.”

  That seemed to satisfy the question, if not the curiosity. The boy nodded once and continued downslope without another word, already carrying the moment away with him.

  Harbek watched him go, then looked back to the bow.

  For the first time since he’d begun preparing, he allowed the thought to settle fully—not fear, not certainty, just acknowledgment.

  If this came down to force, not patience, he would need leverage.

  And leverage was not something a bow could give him.

  He stood, shouldered the pack, and tightened the strap once—hard enough that the leather creaked in protest.

  The weather was turning.

  He could feel it now.

  Harbek knelt where the snow had pressed thin over the ridge, the bow laid out before him. Fingers worked cords, testing tension, knot by knot, listening to the slight give and snap that told him more than the eye ever could. He tried different wraps, small variations in angle, each one teaching him something about balance and force– what the bow could endure and where it would fail if he asked if to do more.

  The ridge was still. Wind rolled thin over the snow, carrying the cold through his gloves and into his bones. He ignored it, letting the chill press lessons into him, steadying him the way he always needed. The bow felt different in his hands than it had yesterday, lighter, tauter, but still not enough. Not for what was coming.

  A movement in the distance caught his eye. Runa appeared along the path, her hood thrown back, a dusting of snow along her braid. She leaned against a low pine, watching without stepping closer. “Always fiddling with that thing.” she said softly, a small smile, curling at the corner of her mouth.

  Harbek didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. She already understood: the bow, the cords, the endless adjustments—his way of keeping ready, keeping calm, keeping measured.

  Runa stepped back along the path, letting him work in silence. Harbek’s hands moved steadily, methodical, almost ceremonial. He worked through the cords one last time, testing tension, tracing knots, noting friction points. The bow hummed faintly under the pressure, responding to the adjustments in ways it hadn’t yesterday.

  The wind shifted again, carrying a scent through the air that made Harbek pause—faint, out of place. Nothing more, but enough. The ridge spoke in quiet ways, warning, reminding. He didn’t react beyond the pause, only letting it settle into his bones, storing it for later.

  He straightened, bow resting across his forearm. Cord tension checked, adjustments noted for next time. He looked toward the herd, toward the forest beyond, toward what had been felt but not yet understood.

  Whatever it was, the ridge held its quiet warning. He would be ready.

  And for now, that had to be enough.