Frey’s breath tears from her lungs in bursts of steam. The forest floor seems to turn to liquid beneath her feet; roots and branches claw at her clothes like skeletal hands, trying to drag her down. The firelight of the village is gone, or she’s turned around, but it doesn’t matter.

The Pale is behind her.

Its ghostly tea-kettle shriek splits the night, a horrible, high, boiling wail and Frey’s teeth slam together, terror lancing through her. It’s too close! 

Run, Frey! Don’t look back….run!

But her body feels slow, heavy, as if wading against a river. A branch lashes across her face; hot blood blooms down her cheek. The pain snaps the fog from her mind, but her antlers snag for half a heartbeat on a tangle of pine, then with a panicked cry she wrenches free and launches forward again.

Trees blur past, black trunks, whipping needles, stinging even through her woolen coat. Her vision swims with hot tears.

Is this all I am? Running like I did then? Like a frightened fawn again?

Her brother’s face…his final scream… detonates through her memory. A sob wrecks through her chest.

I can’t run forever. I won’t. I won’t! 

It feels like she’s run for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few moments. Still, the cold presence she felt crawling on the back of her neck has faded…She doesn’t remember choosing to stop, only noticing that she has. Hand braced against rough bark, lungs burning, and suddenly, there is open air ahead of her. The forest is behind.

She wipes her eyes. Drinks in great gulps of air. She looks up and freezes.

The Northern Wastes stretch before her. Endless, starless, lightless.

How… how did I run so far?

But that’s not what steals her breath.

Standing in the snow, not ten paces away is an… apparition? A spirit?

A girl, skin pale as moonlight.

White hair blows in the wind, a small hand clutches a threadbare shawl around narrow shoulders.

Dark blue paint or.. A tattoo maybe, marks a line in stark contrast across her cheeks and the slender bridge of her nose.

Bright blue eyes clear as ice watch Frey from beneath heavy, tired lids...

Before Frey can recover her thoughts, the girl lifts a hand, palm stretched outward towards the forest, fingers held in a strange gesture… and she speaks.