Khandu’s pleas for mercy, thin and reedy, abruptly ceased. The scraping sound behind the iron door continued for a few more heartbeats, then faded into a profound quiet. The cold intensified, pressing in from all sides, leaching warmth from the very stones of the manor. Nimka stood, her palm clamped over her lips, an icy revulsion twitching in her gut. A thread of primeval satisfaction coiled tight against the sick heaving of her belly. Behind the iron plate hung a vast, patient hunger. The draft did not merely bite; it consumed.
Footsteps thudded, heavy and urgent, along the corridor. Oghul, his voice thick with a sudden, uncharacteristic fear, bellowed, “Khandu! What in the blighted ice are you doing in there? Open this door!” His approach was heralded by the clink of a heavy axehead striking the stone floor, a sound that echoed the chilling scrape from inside. Nimka watched her father, his face mottled with purple and grey where the Hollow Frost had begun its slow creep even beneath the thick Zhal-Mastiff fur he wore. He wasn’t just angry; the unbroken quiet from the slaughter-room set his temples twitching.
“Answer me, boy!” Oghul roared, raising the heavy, ice-crusted woodsman’s axe. He brought the flat of its blade down against the iron door with a resounding clang that made Nimka’s teeth ache. Still, no answer. “Then I’ll open it myself!”
He positioned the axehead into the narrow gap between the door and the frame, just above the stout bolt Nimka had slid shut. With a guttural grunt, Oghul put his full weight into the haft, levering. The seasoned timber frame groaned. Sparks flew as metal grated on metal, then a sickening crack echoed through the hall. The iron bolt sheared clean through the dry pine casing. The slab swung inward, exposing the dark chamber.
A single, guttering tallow lamp cast long, distorted shadows across the scene. The air inside was beyond freezing, a crystalline cold that seized the lungs. There was no blood, no gore, only an impossible stillness. In the center of the room, where the chopping block usually stood, was Khandu. He stood fixed in posture, a flayed statue of black rime, stripped of hide with every red rope of tendon, muscle, and marrow preserved stiff beneath a glaze of frost. His mouth was wide in a silent scream, his eyes — twin chips of obsidian ice — stared sightlessly at the high ceiling. The chill held him in mid-convulsion, a preserved trophy. No other body lay on the flags, only an odor of torn meat and high-altitude gale.
Oghul’s axe clattered to the floor, forgotten. A strangled gasp tore from his throat, a sound of profound, guttural horror. “By the spirits… Khandu!” He stumbled back, his stolen pelt tightening against his ribs, offering no defense against the draft pouring from his son's calcified frame. A knot of retainers, drawn by Oghul’s shouts, peered over his shoulders. Their gasps quickly escalated into shrieks of terror, their faces contorted into masks of disbelief and primal dread.
“The Hollow Frost has taken him!” a woman wailed from the threshold, clawing at her cheeks. “It’s the curse! The Zhal-Mastiff’s wrath!”
Screams tore loose from the huddled workers. The claustrophobic walls of the Yashgar Cliff-Manor, once a sanctuary against the brutal Qarlik winter, now felt like a tomb. “Run! We must flee!” another voice rose in shrill terror. “To the bridges! Before it takes us all!”
A dozen laborers scrambled past Oghul, boots sliding across the slick flags toward the upper levels. They bounded up the spiral stairs, scrambling toward the outer spans that crossed the canyon. Nimka remained by the doorway, her gaze fixed on her brother’s rigid silhouette. A strange sense of detachment settled over her, the Nimka of now observing the monstrous work of the Nimka of before. There was no satisfaction, only a quiet confirmation of a plan unfolding.
Moments later, a collective wail of despair ripped through the air, reverberating down the canyon walls. It was a sound of absolute, hopeless finality. The retainers had reached the outer gate only to find the canyon crossing severed. A shelf of packed ice had fallen from the upper horn, shearing away the timber spans and snapping the hemp stays. The canyon below now gaped, a thousand-foot drop into the freezing void. Below lay only fog and a sheer drop into the gorge. They were trapped, sealed within the manor, a feast for the growing cold.
Ignoring the shouting overhead, Nimka stepped across the threshold. Bitter cold and the brine of torn sinew filled her throat. She approached Khandu’s rime-coated shape, her boots grinding against the frosted stone. Dark threads of congealed veins webbed the exposed muscle. No strike had strayed; every strip of hide had been peeled with surgical calm. The past life had left nothing to chance.
As she lifted a hand toward a barb of ice on his brow, movement stirred in the rafters overhead. Her head tilted up, her breath frosting in the air. There, crouching silently on a timber beam, was a creature of nightmare. It was massive, easily the size of a yak, its form a terrifying amalgamation of exposed, crimson muscle and skeletal frost. Its thick limbs bore exposed tendon, its ribs showed bare, and its jaws parted in a soundless snarl. Stripped of skin, the beast glinted with a dark rind of hoarfrost that smoked with vapor. Its eyes, twin points of glacial blue light, locked onto Nimka’s.
The cursed hound stood manifest in red flesh and mountain chill. Its gaze held no aggression, no hunger aimed at her. Instead, as Nimka watched, rooted to the spot, the colossal, skinless beast slowly, deliberately, lowered itself from the rafters. It dropped onto the stone floor, its peeled haunches flexing under the impact. Then, with an eerie, profound deference, it bowed its massive, horrifying head to her, its glacial blue eyes still fixed on her own, awaiting its master’s next command.