Three days east of Thornstud, and the world had forgotten what warmth felt like.
Gabriel walked ahead, his pace steady despite the frozen ground cracking beneath his boots. Behind him, Tess's breath came harder. Shorter. The altitude was already affecting her.
He didn't slow down.
The landscape had shifted from dead forests to skeletal ones. Trees stood like monuments to something that had died long ago, their branches reaching upward as if begging the sky for mercy it would never grant.
The cold bit at exposed skin. At least, it should have.
Gabriel felt nothing.
Tess pulled her thermal cloak tighter as another gust of wind swept through. She watched Gabriel's back, the way his shoulders never hunched against the wind, the way frost never seemed to settle on his hair.
"You're not cold," she said. Not a question.
Gabriel didn't turn. "No."
"That's not normal."
"I know."
