The trees parted slowly as they pushed deeper into the thicket. Snow blanketed everything, dampening their footsteps and muffling their voices. Gray led the way, hand resting on the hilt of his weapon. Behind him, Korr, Adel, and Lira moved cautiously, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow. The air had grown thinner, colder, almost unnaturally so. Every breath felt like it scraped the inside of their lungs.
Just ahead, a faint glow pierced the haze.
"There," Gray whispered, pointing toward a dull orange light.
The group hurried forward until the source came into view. A large transport truck, half-buried in a thick wall of snow, stood awkwardly tilted at the base of a steep cliff. A jagged trail of ice and debris suggested it had fallen from above. The side of the truck was crumpled inward, and a faint campfire flickered beside it, the flames struggling against the wind.
Gray narrowed his eyes. Someone had been here recently.
"That fire is fresh," Adel muttered. "But where are they?"
They approached slowly, weapons drawn. Korr moved around to the other side of the truck. Gray followed the path toward the fire. A small log, half-charred, leaned against a pile of bones. The bones were blackened, scorched from the heat, brittle from the cold. Gray squatted beside it.
"This was recent. A few hours ago maybe," he said. "Whoever made this... didn't survive long."
Adel stepped back, eyes wide. "Those bones are human."
Korr grunted from the side. He had found the rear door to the vehicle, but it was jammed shut, iced over and warped from the fall. He stepped back and rammed it with his shoulder. Once. Twice. With a groan of metal, the door split open and fell to the snow.
A foul stench spilled into the air.
Lira turned her face away, covering her mouth.
Gray climbed in first, boots crunching against shattered glass. The inside of the truck was dim, but not dark enough to hide what remained.
Corpses. Not one. Not two. But six.
They were slumped against the walls, some buckled into their seats, others sprawled on the floor. Blood had frozen over their faces. One had a missing arm. Another had no eyes. The walls bore deep claw marks, and the entire ceiling looked like it had been caved in from something heavy slamming down on it.
Gray frowned.
'Arent there supposed to be seven per group?'
Gray moved through the cabin, inspecting their clothing and gear. Standard issue, like theirs. One figure had a tag hanging from their uniform. Gray lifted it carefully.
"Group Four," he read aloud. "These were students like us."
Adel remained outside, unmoving. Lira entered slowly and stepped over to the driver's seat. Her eyes rested on the splintered steering wheel. A dark smear trailed from it toward the wall. She bent down, fingers brushing a scorched journal tucked under a seat.
"This is torn but might have something," she murmured.
Gray opened it slowly. Most of the pages were stuck together from ice or soaked through with blood, but he found a few entries scrawled hastily in the back.
"Second day. Climbed halfway up the glacier wall. Supplies holding. Morale low."
"Third day. Something is stalking us. It waits until we sleep. We hear its breathing. Ita heartbeat. But why? Why us?"
"Fourth day. It took Mika. No scream. Just silence. We called it the Pale Maw."
Korr exhaled sharply. "What the hell is the Pale Maw?"
Gray shook his head. "Something that is dangerous and shouldn't belong here. Not in this Lumen-dominant territory."
Renn entered the cabin and scanned the walls. He pointed to a strange pattern burned into the metal near the roof. Spiral-shaped, blackened into the steel.
"That's not Lumen work. That looks like Hollow."
Lira frowned. "But Glacierfang isn't Wither strained. It's Lumen strained."
Gray lowered the journal. "Maybe it's spreading from nearby regions. Or maybe its always been corrupted. Just no one had noticed it."
No one spoke for a while. They spent the next hour removing the bodies. It was grim work. The cold had preserved them, but their wounds were gruesome, suggesting they had fought back before they fell.
Gray helped wrap them in whatever tarps remained intact. They dug a shallow pit beside the truck using scavenged shovels and bare hands, their fingers going numb under the ice-packed soil. One by one, they laid the bodies in the grave. The silence that accompanied each body's placement was heavier than the wind.
Korr set down the last body, then stood beside Gray with crossed arms. He said nothing, but the tightness in his expression showed enough.
Lira knelt quietly and whispered a short prayer. Her voice barely rose over the frost-bitten wind, but the words lingered with weight. Adel placed a thin slate of wood above the grave and scrawled "Group 4" on it with a chunk of burnt ember.
Gray looked once more at the wreckage. Claw marks had gouged deep into the interior walls. Something had broken through. Violently. Unrelentingly.
Back at their own vehicle, Lira inventoried the supplies. "We got a couple of extra weapons. Some rations. Medical supplies. A spare fuel cell. Might keep us going for another week if we're careful."
Renn sat silently, flipping through the damaged journal again. "If the Pale Maw is real, then it's out there somewhere. It might not be Hollow exactly, but it's not natural either."
Korr slumped against the truck's wall. "We cannot fight something we do not understand. Not yet."
"Then we prepare," Gray said. "We survive. That's what they couldn't do. That's the difference."
The group climbed back into the truck. Renn started the engine and soon they were rolling down the icy path again, the glow of the fire fading into the fog behind them.
Gray sat near the back corner of the cabin, eyes drifting to the frost-laced window. He tried to breathe deeply, but each inhale felt thinner than the last. The scene refused to leave his mind. The scorched journal. The spiral mark burned into the metal. The journal's mention of something stalking them.
He turned his gaze back toward the cliff from which the wrecked vehicle had fallen. It loomed like a jagged monument, half swallowed by mist and snow. He imagined Group 4 perched near the edge just days ago, maybe full of hope, maybe already afraid.
Gray pressed his fingers against the cold glass. The frost clung to his skin. He wondered what their final moments had been like. Were they cornered? Did they scream? Or did it happen so fast that they never saw it coming?
As the truck continued onward, Gray kept watching the trail vanish behind them.
The endless white fog enveloped the surroundings again. Although he could no longer see clearly outside. He hoped it hid their presence especially from that beast.
He knew that it was still out there.
Hiding. Or maybe waiting. For the perfect time to strike. Killing or luring them and others.
He could only imagine what the other groups had to encounter. He knew that this trip was far from over. Their journey was still just getting started.
And that beast might already know they were here.