FROZEN BARRENS | MARCH OF SNOW & ECHOES | BRISK MIDDAY
Snow hushes to a silver veil as the first light crests the Dolmen hills.
The night yields without disturbance, no whisper of Shadow, no stir of cairn denizens. Snow builds in quiet drifts, softening the outlines of the pines and cairns alike until the world seems wrapped in a single pale cloth. By morning the air has steadied to a clean, cold clarity, the faintest breath of thaw rising from the east.
Kaelith is already up, scanning the horizon where a ring of stone teeth breaks the skyline: the Dolmen of New-Dawn. His hand cuts the air in a silent signal, and the column begins to form once more. Packs are drawn tight, embers buried, tracks obscured.
The Northward the march resumes.
The morning march is steady and untroubled, cold air filling lungs, the constant sift of snow settling on cloaks and lashes. By midday the pale sun crests behind veils of cloud, throwing a thin wash of light across the Barrens. The column crests a final ridge of frost-hardened earth and finds itself looking down upon the vale of the Dolmen of New-Dawn.
From the hilltop vantage, the stones stretch in ordered ruin: a circle of massive uprights jutting like broken teeth, lintels toppled or half-buried, their faces carved by time and winter into runes that refuse to be forgotten. Shadows pool black at their bases despite the sun’s feeble light. For a moment the company halts, breath steaming in the thin air, taking in the place spoken of in half-remembered verse and whispered fear.
And then the wind shifts, cold, sudden, carrying with it a whisper that does not belong to snow or stone. The Dolmen waits, its silence heavier than a battlefield. Ahead lies not merely stone, but the threshold of something older, and far more dangerous.