The pale horse did not tire.
Its rider—less certain.
Grimm's breath came in measured clouds, his ribs rising and falling like an exhausted forge. The wastes stretched endlessly about him, a white desert of frozen breath and skeletal light. Ahead, the lone silhouette of a man crested a ridge, black against the moon.
The cultist had been running for three days. Running from what he'd seen. Running from the forest, and from the truth that had followed him out of it.
But Grimm would not stop.
G'norr would not allow it.
The voice came not through the air but through the marrow of Grimm's skull—ancient, layered, a resonance older than human breath.
"Faster," it beckoned. "The flesh weakens. The will does not."
The horse obeyed before its master did; hooves cracking the ice as though crushing brittle glass. The land below them folded inward: the black horizon of a village, small and half-swallowed by the hills. Smoke rose in crooked lines, ghostly and slow, as if the town itself were exhaling.
The fleeing cultist vanished into its throat.
Grimm reined his mount to a halt. Steam flared from its nostrils, curling into the night air like pale tendrils of some living fog.
He surveyed the settlement—houses bowed beneath snow, windows shuttered, no sound but the creak of cold wood.
A town asleep.
Or pretending to be.
A wind cut across the brim of his long black hat, flinging flecks of snow toward the spire that crowned the hill—a thin, stone belltower whose shape seemed to tilt wrong when stared at too long.
Direction.
Grimm dismounted. His boots struck the ground with the dull weight of finality. From his hip, he drew his weapon—the Wraith Breaker, its surface a patchwork of runes that glimmered faintly, feeding on the distant moonlight. The gun did not gleam so much as pulse.
He ascended the staircase, its steps slick with frost. The walls breathed cold.
Then came the scream.
It shattered the hush like glass, rising from above—the sound of a throat both human and not. Grimm's eyes flared white, catching motion: a flailing silhouette, body twisting as it plummeted past him.
He moved aside.
The corpse struck the lower stairs with a sickening crack, limbs folding backward as the spine gave way.
Silence.
Grimm's jaw tightened. He climbed faster. The wind grew colder with each step, until it seemed the very air was resisting him.
At the summit, a wooden hatch waited. It creaked open under his hand, revealing a world of unholy stillness.
The moon shone full over the tower.
The bell above him swayed, though no wind touched it.
He emerged. The roof was slick with frost and shadow.
No hiding place—only the bell, and the six-hundred-foot drop yawning into the pale abyss below.
Behind the bell, a shape stirred.
The cultist.
He held a woman before him, the knife's edge pressed against her throat. Her eyes were wide, the color of dying sky; her tears had frozen to crystal on her cheeks.
"Let her go," Grimm said, the words low and even.
The man's pupils were wide and trembling, his mouth trembling with a grin too large for his face. "Talk, is it? You think words matter now?"
"Release her," Grimm replied, lifting the pistol. "And I'll grant you a quick death."
"A quick death?" The man laughed—short, brittle, full of madness. "You think you own death, rider? You serve it."
He pressed the blade closer. The woman whimpered, blood blooming where steel kissed skin.
"The negotiation has ceased," Grimm said.
"Then you'll watch her die."
"I believe you."
The cultist drew back to strike. Grimm's finger flexed. A flash—white fire cracking the air.
The bullet struck the knife's base, shattering it into shards. The cultist's scream cut short, his throat erupting crimson. The woman stumbled free, clutching her neck.
She stared at Grimm, horror and awe mingling. "You could have killed me!"
Grimm said nothing. His eyes glowed faintly, the white of them reflecting the dying man's blood.
"Leave," he ordered.
She ran.
The cultist convulsed on the stones. Grimm approached.
He knelt, gripping the man's throat in an iron grasp.
"Whom do you serve?"
The man choked a laugh, black froth spilling from his mouth. His breath stank of copper and grave-dirt.
"W-wendigo..."
The word struck like thunder behind Grimm's eyes.
For a moment, the world tilted. He saw shapes moving in the periphery of thought—thin, pallid figures devouring the dead beneath green auroras.
"What purpose does it seek?"
The cultist's grin widened. "She... will become... one..."
His head lolled.
The laughter turned to a wet gurgle, then ceased.
For a heartbeat, the sky pulsed—like something vast had blinked.
The voice of G'norr rippled through Grimm's mind.
"Wendigo. To the north."
Grimm closed his eyes. "Understood."
He hurled the body from the tower. The corpse fell wordlessly, the sound of impact dull and distant.
Below, the woman—her face pale with horror—looked up to see the rider mount his pale horse.
The reins cracked.
Snow swallowed sound.
Only the whisper remained: a voice too old to be mercy, carried on the wind.
"The flesh weakens. The will does not."