The Curse

Blood on the Snow

"Winter is the season where the dead speak louder."

The blood was warm.

That was the first thing I noticed as it soaked through the leather of my boots. The second thing was that it wasn’t pooling randomly — it was spreading in thin, deliberate lines, curving into letters.

S-E-L-E-N-E.

The night was too cold for fresh blood to steam, but there it was, faint wisps curling upward into the frigid air.

I stumbled back, my heel scraping the pavement. “What is this?” My voice was steady, but my pulse wasn’t.

Kael stepped forward, placing himself between me and the writing. “Stay behind me.”

“Where is it coming from?”

His jaw was set. “You don’t want to know.”

“I asked—”

“Not now.”

---

Before I could argue, the sound came — low, guttural, like ice cracking beneath heavy footsteps. Then, without warning, the street around us changed.

One blink, and the city was gone.

The buildings, the concrete, the hum of streetlights — all swallowed in a white expanse. Snow stretched endlessly in every direction, the sky an unnatural silver-grey. My breath fogged instantly, sharp in my lungs.

“What did you—”

“I didn’t do this,” Kael said, scanning the horizon. His hand was on that strange black weapon again. “They pulled us into their ground.”

“They?” My voice came out colder than the air.

“The ones hunting you.”

---

A shadow moved in the distance — tall, lean, inhuman. It prowled toward us with long, deliberate steps, leaving no footprints in the snow. Its head tilted unnaturally, as if it were scenting the air.

I felt the same prickling at the back of my neck I’d felt in the alley, only sharper. The same wrongness.

Kael’s stance shifted, the air around him almost humming. “When I say run—”

“I’m not running.”

His gaze flicked to me, black eyes unreadable. “You will.”

---

The creature broke into a sudden, impossible sprint. One moment it was fifty yards away — the next, it was so close I could see its face.

Only… it didn’t have one.

A smooth, pale stretch of nothing where eyes, nose, and mouth should have been.

I froze. For all my years of being fearless, my body didn’t know how to process something like this.

Kael moved first. His blade — if that’s what it was — caught the creature in the side. Black smoke hissed from the wound, curling upward into the air like ink in water.

The thing screamed, the sound somehow inside my head instead of in my ears. My vision blurred. My knees buckled.

I felt Kael grab my arm, steadying me. “Don’t look at it!”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t.”

---

The ground beneath us cracked. Snow gave way to ice, the fissures spiderwebbing outward. Something below the surface was moving — something huge.

Kael swore under his breath, yanking me back as the ice shattered completely.

From the break, another creature emerged, but this one… this one I knew.

Blonde hair matted with ice. Blue eyes clouded but familiar.

“Leo?” The name slipped out before I could stop it.

He had been my best friend when I was eleven. The one person who stayed close to me despite the whispers. The one who drowned in a frozen lake when he was fourteen.

The one I had buried.

---

But he was here now, standing barefoot in the snow, lips tinged blue.

“You left me,” he said, voice like frost on glass.

“No…” My throat tightened. “Leo, I—”

“Everyone who loves you dies, Selene. But I didn’t have to.”

Kael stepped between us. “It’s not him. It’s a mimic.”

“It’s him,” I whispered.

“It’s wearing him.”

---

Leo’s head tilted, too far to one side. “I thought you were heartless. But you do care.”

Before I could respond, he lunged. Not at me — at Kael.

The two hit the snow hard, Kael’s blade catching the pale light. The mimic’s strength was inhuman; Kael was fast, but the thing wearing Leo’s face was faster.

I should’ve run. I didn’t. Instead, I grabbed the first thing my hands found — a jagged shard of ice from the broken ground — and swung it into the mimic’s back.

It screamed, twisting toward me. Its eyes — Leo’s eyes — went black.

---

The world stuttered. One moment I was staring into those black eyes; the next, the mimic was gone, snow scattering like torn paper. Kael was on his feet instantly, scanning the horizon.

“They’re trying to break you,” he said. “They’ll use every face you’ve ever loved.”

“That was him,” I said, my voice shaking despite myself.

Kael’s gaze softened for just a second. “No, Selene. He’s gone. They just know where your wounds are.”

---

The silver-grey sky above us darkened suddenly. The wind picked up, biting harder at my skin.

“They’re not done,” Kael muttered.

“Then neither am I.”

A laugh — deep, echoing, too close — rolled over the snow. The sound made my bones ache.

The snow beneath my feet shifted again, swirling upward in a cyclone around us. And then, without warning, the white faded to black.

---

When my vision cleared, we were back in the city. Same street. Same faint glow of the streetlight. Except that the blood on the ground was gone.

My hands were empty, but my fingers still felt cold where they had gripped the shard of ice.

Kael looked at me, his expression unreadable. “You held your ground better than I expected.”

“That’s not a compliment,” I said, though my chest ached from the adrenaline.

“It’s not meant to be.”

---

I started to walk, desperate to put distance between myself and whatever had just happened. But Kael’s voice stopped me.

“Selene.”

I turned.

“You need to understand something,” he said. “The curse isn’t killing people because you’re unlucky. It’s killing them because something is feeding on it. And the closer you get to me, the hungrier it’s going to get.”

“Then maybe I should stay away from you,” I said, though the words felt heavier than they should have.

“You can’t,” he replied quietly. “Because I’m the only one keeping it from taking you.”

---

We stood there for a long moment, the city around us humming faintly. I wanted to tell him he was wrong. That I’d survived this long alone.

But then I remembered Leo’s eyes — how real they’d looked before they went black.

And I remembered the voice in the snow.

You do care.

Kael stepped closer, lowering his voice. “If they can’t kill you… they’ll make you love something enough to die for it.”

And before I could reply, he added, almost to himself,

“That’s how they got me.”