I could not feel my hands anymore, the cold had seeped itself into my very soul, and I had trouble processing my thoughts. I had wandered for miles, the scent of ash still lingering on my clothes. The village was close, Harmonia had made it there before.
I looked down at my diseased arm, the red spots had now formed a honeycombed pattern, reaching the upper part of my chest and part of my neck.
Somewhere in the blizzard's murk, I heard footsteps—many of them—the crunch of boots circling Jacob's fallen form. But when I turned, there was nothing but whiteness, blank and voracious.
Perhaps the others had gone ahead. Perhaps they had followed Harmonia. My breath rose as a trembling cloud. The ash-stink on my coat curled into my nose, warm and wrong, a reminder of the fire devouring the only home we had known. The village lanterns glimmered far ahead, soft at first, then fizzling into jagged streaks as my vision wavered.
"Harmonia," I called softly, though the wind stole the shape of her name.
She had walked these roads before me. She always walked ahead. She always knew where to go.
I sank to my knees in the snow, the Cold biting through my clothes with a hunger I could only faintly reminisce about. The diseased arm throbbed again; each honeycombed spot glowing faintly beneath the skin like the embers buried in ash. I peeled back a layer of sleeve, and the flesh beneath it quivered. For a moment, I thought something pulsed under it.
I swallowed hard. "I'm almost there," I whispered to no one.
The path unwound before me in wavering lines. A lantern flickered atop a wooden post at the village entrance—its flame bending backward, as my very presence was destined to be shorn from light. Beneath me, the snow looked stained by a familiar crimson liquid.
I rose unsteadily, clutching my ribs. My breath rasped; each inhale felt smaller than the last.
Harmonia stood at the edge of the village, her back to me, her silhouette stretched impossibly tall by the lantern glow. Snow spun around her but never touched her. The storm parted at her feet, curling away from her presence like a living thing afraid to approach.
"Harmonia," I called again, louder.
She answered me, although her words were all but intelligible. The muddled resonance that had once been her voice had devolved into a cacophony of winter winds. Her gaze dropped to the stained snow, and then my stained hands. Harmonia's touch gave no warmth; For as I looked down at the pallid hands, I had realized that they were not mine. The dismally bloodied wounds I had carried from escaping the fire had not been mine either. All around me, the snow carried Harmonia's essence, drowning the world in her.
She stepped toward me. The snow did not crunch under her feet, and there were no footsteps. I knew what she was going to say, and I knew what awaited me. She opened her arms as if offering refuge. I had seen that gesture once before, in a nightmare older than memory.
For I knew, as the bloodstained hatchet fell from the serpent's hands, that there was only Christ to cry now. I understood why she had walked ahead of me all this time.