Felix trudged through the heavy, damp ground, his small boots sinking several centimetres into the thick white layering of the fresh snow. Each step was a battle against the elements, punctuated by a tired, ragged puff of breath that froze in the air. He paused at intervals to rub his numb palms together, blowing a desperate burst of warmth between them, but the biting chill was relentless. Squinting against the flurry, he looked up to find the village streets deserted; the snowfall was now a silent white wall, far too fierce for anyone to venture out for play.
Just how much further must I go? Felix cried out in his mind, forcing his legs to continue their gruelling trek.
The onset of the snowfall season had brought a wave of sickness to the Bardeen household. Nellie lay gripped by a searing fever, while Bastro was sidelined by a hacking cough and a bone-deep cold. The timing couldn't have been worse; a monster raid was looming on the horizon, and as the village's only capable blacksmith, Bastro was buried under urgent orders for the knights' equipment.
With his iron ore crates bone-dry and his health in a dire state, Bastro had no choice but to turn to his new "observer." Now, the trainee of the forge was the family's only hope. Tasked with a man's burden, Felix pushed through the storm on his way to secure the iron bars that the village's defence desperately needed.
"I suppose it's a left here," Felix muttered, squinting at the crude, charcoal sketch Bastro had scrawled to guide him. He stood trembling at the mouth of a narrow alleyway—a place his instincts warned him to avoid at all costs. Yet, the alternative was a sprawling detour through the biting, glacial wind. Steeling himself and shoving down a surge of harrowing memories, he plunged into the shadows.
After a few disorienting turns, a dilapidated storefront loomed through the haze of white. Slumped behind the counter was a man who appeared to be more corpse than shopkeeper, his frame so gaunt he looked starved for weeks. Yet, the fact that he sat motionless in the freezing gale without so much as a sweater suggested a freakish endurance.
"I'd like to buy ten iron ores," Felix said. His voice was thin, swallowed instantly by the heavy silence of the snow. The man's head lolled up, his eyes scanning the empty air at adult height.
"I said, I'd like to buy ten iron ores," Felix repeated, injecting a sharp edge into his tone. The shopkeeper's eyes finally dropped, landing on the small boy with a look of dismissive irritation.
"This isn't a playground, kid. Beat it," he grumbled, shrugging back into his stupor.
Felix didn't flinch; he was becoming weary of being sidelined by his own height. "My father, Bastro Bardeen, sent me," he stated nonchalantly. He let his gaze wander toward the street as if bored. "I suppose I should go back and tell him that you—"
"Ah! My mistake, dear customer!" The man practically bolted to his feet, his lethargy vanishing in an instant. "You should have led with that! Sir Bastro's son? Ten ores? Right away!" He scurried into the dark recesses of the store with frenetic energy and returned moments later, the heavy stones thudding onto the counter.
Felix settled the payment and tucked the ores into his satchel. As he turned to leave, the man leaned over the counter, his face softening with genuine concern. "Um... are you sure you can carry those on your own, little customer?"
Felix felt his face flush a deeper crimson than the frostbite had already painted it. With a stubborn set to his jaw, he adjusted the heavy weight on his shoulder, took a determined step into the snow, and shot the man a silent, defiant thumbs-up.
Felix's return was a grueling, mechanical crawl. His steps were slow and rigid, his small frame straining under a weight far greater than the iron ores themselves. The alleyway loomed ahead once more, but having already conquered its shadows once, the stifling narrowness felt less like a threat and more like a weary shortcut.
I really should charge that man for this free labour—
The thought never finished. A sudden, explosive crack echoed through the confined space as a heavy rod collided with the back of Felix's skull. The world tilted violently. With a sickening thud, he collapsed into the freezing slush, the iron ores spilling uselessly around him.
From the deepest shadows of the brickwork, two predatory figures materialized. Their grins were wide, jagged things that glinted with a terrifying hunger in the dim light. Without a word, one of them stooped down, hoisting Felix's limp, unconscious body over a burly shoulder like a sack of grain. As the snow continued to fall, muffling any potential cry for help, the two men melted back into the impenetrable darkness of the district.
Felix's eyelids felt like lead, each attempt to open them a gruelling struggle against a throbbing, white-hot pain at the back of his skull. As consciousness slowly seeped back, his senses began to piece together a grim reality. The ground beneath him was vibrating with a rhythmic, jarring motion, and his vision was obscured by a dark, suffocating tilt that suggested he was slumped against something heavy.
Through the haze, the low, guttural murmur of men's voices reached him, competing with the howling roar of a snow blizzard. He forced his eyes to focus, tracking the sound to the front of what he realized was a moving cart. Beyond the wooden slats, a dark and damp forest blurred past, the morning light strangled by the storm.
"—Morpine village will be visible soon," one of the men rasped, his voice dripping with a predatory grin. "Let's sell these two ducks in the black market there."
Panic surged through Felix, sharper than the cold. He was being hauled toward Morpine, miles from the familiar paths of Buskon. How did this happen? he wondered, his mind spinning. His eyes scanned the cramped space and landed on a small, huddled figure in the opposite corner—a younger girl, still unconscious and pale against the rough wood of the cart.
Felix tried to shift his weight, but the coarse bite of rope around his wrists and ankles held him fast. He felt a wave of helplessness wash over him; his limbs felt heavy and drained of strength. He lay still for several agonizing minutes, listening to the kidnappers' low, crude laughter while searching for any sliver of an opportunity.
I can't just wait, he resolved, bracing himself. He strained against the bindings on his wrists, expecting them to cut deep into his skin. To his utter shock, the cord snapped with a sudden, dry pop under the first real sign of pressure. He stared at his freed hands, momentarily stunned by the unexpected break.
Emboldened, he reached down to the ropes securing his legs, but these were made of much sturdier stuff. No matter how hard he pulled, the fibres wouldn't give. Cursing silently, he forced his trembling fingers to fumble with the complicated knots. After a minute of frantic work and desperate focus, the final loop gave way.
Before Felix could formulate a plan, the scaled, lizard-like beast pulling the cart erupted in a shrill, piercing shriek—a sound of pure, primal terror. Answering that cry, a monstrous roar shook the very air, vibrating through the wooden floorboards.
Felix scrambled to the front, peering through a narrow gap in the cart's siding. Looming in the middle of the road was a colossal white bear, a creature far too massive to be a common snow bear. Its serrated canines jutted from a dripping maw, and its claws were like curved obsidian daggers designed for rending flesh.
"Tsk, what the hell is a Frost Grizzly doing this far down?" one of the men spat, his voice tight but surprisingly devoid of fear.
"Well," the other replied with a cold, mercenary shrug, "if those brats don't fetch a high enough price, this beast's hide should more than make up for the losses."
One of the kidnappers threw a sharp, backward glance at the children before they both vaulted from the cart. Felix watched in stunned silence as they drew their weapons: one gripped a long, ornate wand that hummed with latent energy, while the other expertly notched an arrow into a heavy recurve bow. In that moment, the terrifying truth clicked—these weren't just desperate thugs. Felix was trapped between a monstrous apex predator and two battle-hardened combatants.
Back in Buskon, Vomon—the knight who had once aided Bastro at the village gate—trudged through his routine patrol. The snowfall was a relentless, icy curtain that gnawed at his patience. "Dammit," he grunted, kicking a heavy drift of powder aside. "The monster raid is breathing down our necks, and this cursed weather is doing its best to bury us first."
He paused, tilting his head back toward the bruised, charcoal-grey sky. He raised a hand to catch a single, delicate snow crystal. His arms were swathed in thick fur, but his palms remained bared—flesh turned a deathly, frost-bitten white and calloused deep by years of white-knuckle sword drills. The flake vanished against his skin, melting into a cold bead of water.
Vomon resumed his stride, but his gaze was snagged by a sharp, unnatural glint originating from a nearby alleyway. He stepped into the shadows and found a discarded satchel. Several raw iron ores peered out from the mouth of the bag, their metallic surfaces catching what little light remained.
"Tsk-tsk. Banos is getting sloppy with his stock," Vomon muttered, hefting the bag. He marched toward the rundown shop where Felix had been only an hour before. Finding the shopkeeper slumped in his usual stupor, Vomon slammed the heavy satchel onto the counter.
The thundering thud made the man bolt upright, his chair screeching against the floorboards. "Ah! Who—?" He blinked rapidly, his bleary eyes struggling to focus on the armoured figure looming over him.
"You lazy rascal!" Vomon barked. "Stop leaving your iron scattered in the gutters. I found this dumped in an alley."
The shopkeeper's confusion shifted into a visible, shuddering wave of nerves. "But... Sir Vomon," he stammered, his voice thin and high. "Sir Bastro's son was just here. He bought those ores not twenty minutes ago. He left with them in his hand."
This was a desperate, fleeting window of opportunity. Felix's hands moved with a frantic rhythm as he began working at the girl's bindings. I can't just leave her, he told himself, his internal resolve hardening even as his fingers trembled.
Outside the wooden slats, the world was a cacophony of violence. The Grizzly's thunderous roars collided with the jagged shouts of the kidnappers barked through the storm. Blinding flashes of arcane light from the mage's spells periodically turned the interior of the cart into a stark, strobing nightmare.
With every knot he unpicked, Felix felt his pulse begin to slow—not with calm, but with a suffocating dread. The shadows of the alleyway from his past life came rushing back. He saw Yamato's face—that cold, lifeless stare—looming in the darkness of his mind. His breathing hitched into ragged, shallow gasps; sweat slicked his forehead, racing down his neck despite the freezing air.
A fresh, bone-shaking roar snapped him back to the present. The final knot fell away. Now, he thought, turning to the girl. "Hey! Wake up!" he hissed into her ear, tapping her cold cheeks with desperate urgency.
The girl's eyes fluttered open, but instead of running, she let out a piercing, terrified wail. Her high-pitched sob cut through the howling blizzard and the din of battle like a knife.
Vomon reached the Bardeen forge, the heavy bag of iron clutched in his frost-bitten grip. Stepping inside, the biting exterior chill was instantly devoured by a wave of heart-melting heat. The rhythmic, metallic clank-clank of Bastro's hammer drowned out the knight's entrance, the blacksmith lost in a haze of soot and sparks.
"Ahem. Bastro," Vomon projected, his voice cutting through the ringing steel.
Bastro didn't look up from his work, his shoulders heaving with effort. "Took you long enough just to buy a few—" He stopped mid-sentence, the realization hitting him that the voice wasn't high-pitched and youthful.
"Bastro," Vomon repeated, his tone grave.
The blacksmith wiped a layer of sweat and grime from his temple, squinting through the heat-shimmer to see the armoured figure. "Oh. My apologies, Vomon," Bastro exhaled, his confusion mounting.
"Hear me out. I found this bag of iron ore discarded in an alleyway. I suspect it belongs to Felix." Vomon paused, letting the weight of the statement settle. Bastro's expression became a frozen mask of disbelief, his features tightening as the implications began to gnaw at him. "And based on your reaction, I take it Felix hasn't returned. I checked the village grounds on my way here—they're empty."
The burgeoning anxiety in the room was shattered by the arrival of another knight, who burst into the forge, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The heat of the forge momentarily stole his momentum, but seeing Vomon, he snapped into a sharp salute.
"Captain! We've received an urgent report," the knight blurted out. "A woman claims her young daughter wandered out into the storm two hours ago and hasn't returned. We've scoured every street in Buskon—there's no sign of the child."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the forge. Bastro and Vomon locked eyes, the shared realization of a coordinated disappearance turning Bastro's flickering hope into a cold, hollow despair.