The riverbed cut through the snow like a scar, carving a subtle channel through the tundra. Kade wasn’t sure why the snow didn’t accumulate in the depression, but he wasn’t questioning it. The mountains remained to his left, jagged teeth jutting upwards against a washed-out pale sky. They didn’t block his path, but they gave him an unmistakable landmark in addition to the riverbed.
By midmorning, something felt… wrong.
The cold continued, biting into him with sharp acuity, but the light ahead shifted. The horizon blurred, not with a new storm or falling snow, but with some strange shimmer, like heat rising off stone. Kade slowed, squinting.
Ash’s attention sharpened, “That’s not a storm or any weather we’ve ever seen.”
“I know,” Kade murmured.
By the time he reached the edge of the sh
