Prologue: The Finding in the Snow
The world lay still, nearly swallowed by the shadow of the surrounding, snow-laden trees. A strange silence lingered over the northern edge of the Fathering Forest, and somewhere beyond its distant mountains, lost beneath perpetual mist, lay the Grey Veil.
For a long moment, the forest held its ancient breath, and with it every other sound. No birds sang. No branches creaked. Nothing stirred among the thickets. Even the air here lay thick and unmoving.
The neighboring village folk had long claimed there was something queer about the Crest, but this…
This was something else entirely.
Or so, Eron had been told.
A bitter gust swept over the rocky rise, scattering needles of frost across the rider’s gray cloak. At his side, the old Greyhorn shifted gently with the wind’s tug. Eron stayed motionless in his saddle, his watchful gaze drifting over the untouched snow.
Eron frowned.
Other than the unsettling silence, nothing appeared amiss.
The young farmhand’s tale was beginning to sound more like fear than fact.
Somewhere in the distance, crows cried out before taking flight through the trees. Eron exhaled slowly, the cloud of his breath dissolving into the frigid air.
This venture was beginning to look very much like a waste of time.
Nearby, the underbrush rustled.
Without hesitation, his hand closed around the hilt of his sheathed sword.
A heartbeat later, another rider emerged from the forest and reined his horse to an abrupt halt.
Eron relaxed.
“Did you find anything, Rhys?”
Rhys lowered his hood, revealing the face of a young man flushed red from the cold. He shook his head.
“So, I take it you didn’t either?”
Before Eron could answer, a low, thrumming wail rolled across the forest.
Both men froze.
The mournful note was followed by another…
Then a third.
The final call lingered over the silent woods before fading into stillness once more.
Three long blasts of the Greyhorn.
They exchanged a glance.
Rhys’s expression darkened.
“Damn it all,” he muttered. “Terand must have found them…”
Eron answered with only a grim nod.
Without another word, the two Greycloaks wheeled their horses toward the call and spurred them into a gallop, vanishing into the snowbound forest.
When they found Terand, he was kneeling beneath the shadow of a towering pine, his back turned toward them. His dappled gray-and-white horse stood nearby, its tail flicking restlessly against the bitter cold.
They had reached the Travelers’ Crossroads.
The wide trails lay buried beneath muddy snow, churned into slush by countless footprints.
And bodies.
They lay scattered along the crossroads, some face down in the snow, others frozen where they had fallen. There were men. Women. Even children. Their frail bodies nearly lost under the snowfall. All stiff and unmoving.
There was no blood. No signs of battle. No broken wagons. The unmanned carts lay still, their heavy loads untouched, save for the fallen snow. There was nothing to explain whatever had happened here.
But the bodies…
Eron had seen death many times before. But…not like this.
This was something else. Something far worse.
Their flesh had withered tightly against their bones, gray and lifeless, as though each breath, every drop of blood, any trace of life had simply been…stolen away. Their eyes were sunken deep within their sockets, their mouths fixed open in silent torment, their faces frozen forever.
“Bloody hell…” Rhys whispered.
His voice seemed lost to the horror all around them, swallowed by the heavy silence.
“What happened here?”
Terand never looked up.
Eron exchanged a brief glance with Rhys before dismounting. His boots crunched against the frozen earth as he crossed the gravel, stepping over the mangled bodies.
Only when he reached Terand did he notice the man was trembling.
Wordlessly, Eron rested a hand upon his shoulder.
Terand’s trembling slowly eased.
“This man…” Terand breathed, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. “He…he was still alive.”
Eron frowned.
As Terand rose unsteadily to his feet, another body came into view, slumped against the trunk of the pine. The corpse’s head was rolled to one side.
When Terand turned to them, his face was as white as milk, bloodless and horror-stricken. “I found him…” he said quietly. “I found all of them like this.”
His words caught in his throat.
“He spoke just before…he died,” Terand finished, his breath labored.
Eron’s expression hardened, his brow furrowing.
“What did he say, Terand?”
Terand stared silently across the clearing as if he was witnessing it all over again.
“They were searching.”
His voice faltered.
“The ones who did this…”
He gestured weakly toward the dead.
“They were searching for someone.”
Rhys’s patience finally broke.
“Well, bloody tell us then.”
Terand’s eyes shifted, lingering on the corpses. He swallowed.
“I…I’d never heard the word before.”
His eyes lifted to meet Eron’s at last.
“The man said…”
A blast of icy wind rushed through the pines.
“…they were searching for the Dragonborne.”
