The first thing that hit him was the sound of his own footsteps.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Snow packed under his boots as Areus trudged west, the forest slowly thinning around him. The wind came in low breaths, sliding between the trees, slipping under his cloak, biting at the skin of his neck. The cold never really went away. It just settled deeper.
After a while, another thought pushed through the numbness in his mind.
I should've taken something from them.
He stopped.
Ahead, the world was just more white and gray, streaks of rock breaking the snow like old bones. Behind him, somewhere beyond the trees and the curve of the land, lay the river and three dead men… four, if he counted the cannibal.
He looked down at his empty hands, then at the sword at his hip.
No food. No water. No idea how far "west" actually was.
His jaw clenched.
"Idiot," he muttered to himself.
He hesitated only a moment longer before turning back.
The walk uphill felt longer than it had on the way down. His legs were already tired, thighs aching with each step. His breath came out in short clouds. More than once, the thought crept in:
What if something else is there now?
He didn't like the idea of returning to the scene of his first kill. Part of him wanted to pretend it had never happened. But pretending didn't change the hunger twisting in his stomach, or the way his fingers had started to go numb at the tips.
Survive first. Fall apart later.
He found the river by sound again.
The bodies were still there, scattered around the bank like discarded puppets. Snow had started to gather on them, softening edges, trying to bury what had happened under a fresh, clean layer.
The cannibal he'd killed lay where he'd pushed it off, one arm twisted behind its back. Its eyes were half-open, staring at nothing.
Areus swallowed and looked away.
He forced his hands to move.
The wounded man who'd told him about Coldreach still lay on his side, face relaxed now in the blank way of the dead. Areus knelt beside him and searched his belt with clumsy, shaking fingers.
He found a small leather pouch with a drawstring. Inside: hard, dry pieces of something—rations, maybe. They smelled faintly of fat and smoke. He didn't care what they were.
He forced himself to take only two pieces, shoving them into his mouth.
They were tough enough to hurt his jaw, but they dissolved eventually into something heavy and salty in his stomach. Warmth didn't return, but the dizziness faded a little.
He kept searching.
A waterskin, half-full and frozen around the edges. A flint and steel in a little bone case. A short, wickedly curved knife strapped to a boot.
Areus took the flint and steel immediately. The knife too. It felt wrong to strip a dead man, but the dead man didn't need warmth anymore.
He moved on to the others.
The man with the broken neck had a wool scarf. Areus unwound it from the stiff body and wrapped it around his own throat, pulling it up over his mouth until his breath warmed the fabric.
The third had a small bundle tied under his cloak—a compact roll of cloth and leather. Areus unknotted it and shook it open.
A bedroll.
Thin, but better than snow.
He stared at the three of them when he was done, his arms full of things that used to belong to living people. Guilt pressed against his ribs for a moment, then faded beneath something sharper.
"If it were me," he said quietly, "I'd rather my stuff kept someone else alive."
The words sounded weak in the cold air, but they were all he had.
He wasn't going to bury them. The ground was frozen solid, and his fingers already burned where the snow had soaked through his gloves. Instead, he dragged them together near the rocks, grunting with effort.
It was clumsy, disrespectful, probably pointless.
Still, when he was done, they at least didn't look like they'd died scattered and alone.
He covered them with what snow he could scrape together.
It wasn't a grave, not really. But it was something.
He stood over the shallow mounds, their shapes already blurring under fresh snowfall. Three men he'd never known. One monster he'd killed. And him—alive, armed, and walking west with their possessions. The road ahead was empty. The sky was endless gray. He turned his back on the river and began to walk again, each step carrying him further from what he'd been, closer to whatever came next.