The Place Between Worlds

The cough had worsened overnight.

Vince woke cold, wet with sweat despite the chill, his limbs heavy as if sand had been poured into his veins. When he tried to stand, his knees gave out. He managed a few steps from his shelter—half-built, drafty still—but collapsed near the trench, coughing into the crook of his arm. The sound was rough, raw. Something deep was wrong.

He heard soft footsteps approach.

Eldan.

The old man knelt beside him, touched his shoulder. "Veshan?"

Vince shook his head, barely. "Fine," he rasped. "Just—cold."

Eldan didn't argue. He crouched lower and pressed a hand to Vince's forehead. His mouth drew into a tight line.

A few moments later, Vince was back by the fire pit, wrapped in an extra hide. Someone had brought hot broth. He didn't see who. His thoughts fogged, but his eyes stayed fixed—not on his body, which betrayed him, but on the village beyond.

The huts. The walls. Still crooked. Still too many.

Too little time.

He couldn't build today. Maybe not tomorrow. But the work couldn't stop.

Vince pushed himself upright and reached for a stick. He dragged it through the dirt, slowly but with care. Lines. Angles. Circles. Shapes that looked like nothing to anyone at first—but to him, it was a map.

The village. The layout. He scratched tiny "x" marks into spots where roofs sagged the worst. Drew arrows where wind crept through broken seams. A grid of need.

Eldan crouched beside him, watching with sharp eyes.

Vince pointed to one hut sketch. Tapped it twice.

"Bad," he whispered.

Then motioned with his hands: slope, brace, patch.

Eldan watched his fingers. Then repeated the motions himself. Slope. Brace. Patch.

Vince gave a thin smile and nodded.

The old man stood. "Veshan say… this one," he called toward the workers already gathering near the path. "We fix this first."

Some villagers hesitated—but then Joran moved. The boy with sharp eyes and quicker hands. Then Maeren, the woman with the infant, nodded and handed off her child to a girl beside her. She picked up a coil of dried vine rope and started walking.

Eldan looked back at Vince.

Vince drew another mark. Another hut.

Then another.

He couldn't raise a wall today. But he could lay the plan.

Not with force. Not with command.

Just with lines in dirt, and a voice carried through another man.

And the villagers listened.

Because now, Veshan's strength wasn't in his arms.

It was in the shape of what he saw before anyone else did.

It started as a whisper.

Just a flicker of white drifting sideways past Eldan's shoulder. Then another. And another.

By the time Maeren looked up from the half-woven panel of reed and bark she was tying, the air had turned silver.

Snow.

Not the heavy, blanketing kind. Not yet. Just the early dust—sharp flakes that vanished when they touched warmth, but lingered on rooftops, on stone, on bare skin.

But it was enough.

Enough to send a ripple through the workers in the square. Enough to tighten jaws and quicken hands.

Eldan turned to Vince, who sat wrapped in his hide blanket near the fire pit, breathing slow and shallow. His eyes were open, watching the sky as if the snow had betrayed him personally.

Vince didn't speak. He didn't need to.

Eldan crouched low beside the map Vince had etched into the dirt, now partially smudged from boots and frost. He pointed at a cluster of three huts near the village edge—ones Vince had marked earlier as "worst shape."

"Now," Eldan said aloud, to no one in particular. "These now."

He stood up straighter, voice rising. "Joran, take rope. Maeren, bark. Brik—come."

The tall man with a lopsided beard—Brik, who had once watched Vince with narrowed eyes—moved without a word, hoisting a beam onto his shoulder.

A few others followed, wordless but purposeful.

There was no debate.

Snow had spoken.

By the hour's end, the flakes thickened. Not enough to bury—but enough to coat. Enough to freeze fingers, numb toes, make everything heavier.

A gust knocked over a stack of half-dried bark panels. Maeren cursed and caught them before they scattered into the mud.

Joran rubbed his hands and stared at the sky. "Big storm?" he asked.

Eldan shook his head. "Not yet. But soon."

They worked faster.

Someone brought coals to Vince, wrapped in a thick clay bowl, so his fingers wouldn't stiffen. He reached out with one hand and used a stick to correct a beam's placement, tapping the dirt with two short knocks. Eldan relayed the instruction.

The villagers obeyed.

Because time was thin now.

Because snow had started.

And in this world, the first snow wasn't a greeting.

It was a warning.

By dusk, the snow had stopped—but the wind had not.

It howled low across the slope, curling between the huts like a hunting dog scenting something weak. Smoke twisted sideways from every fire. Reed mats flapped violently. One blew clear off a roof, tumbling like a wounded bird across the square.

Maeren caught it mid-run, heart hammering.

Then they heard it.

A crack. Not loud—but sharp. Final.

It came from the northern edge of the village, near the slope where no new repairs had yet reached. Where the ground dipped and the wind always seemed to strike first.

Vince's eyes snapped open from where he sat propped near the fire. "No," he muttered, already trying to sit upright.

Eldan was already running.

Others followed—Joran, Brik, Maeren, even two of the children trailing after with wide eyes and frozen feet.

By the time they reached the hut, it was too late.

The wall had folded in. Not the roof—just the wall. Enough to send half the structure caving inward, pulling the woven supports down with it. Straw and reed, soaked and brittle, lay scattered in a messy heap.

Someone screamed.

Not from pain—from panic.

Brik leapt forward, tearing at the debris. "Move! Move!"

Joran grabbed a length of bent wood and yanked it clear. Eldan dropped to his knees and began shoving handfuls of straw aside, fingers shaking.

Inside, beneath the fallen thatch, a thin hand reached up. Bare. Wrinkled.

Still moving.

"Edrin!" Maeren gasped.

The elder.

One of the oldest in Breden. Half-blind, mostly silent. No family left. A man who hadn't spoken in a full season—but still sat by the fire every evening like a stone that refused to vanish.

He had not asked for help.

They had not gotten to his hut yet.

A sharp gust hit again, sending another part of the roof slumping. Snow spilled in through the gap. Cold, white, uncaring.

Brik shielded the opening with his back as Eldan reached inside.

"Hold it!" he shouted. "I see him—he's alive!"

Vince arrived last, limping with help from a stick and a younger boy under his arm. He saw the scene—the half-collapsed hut, the frantic digging, the snow swirling through broken reed walls—and felt the weight of it settle hard in his chest.

He hadn't reached them in time.

Not all of them.

A sharp cry came from inside the wreckage. Not from Edrin.

From Eldan.

"Help me!" he shouted. "I can't—his leg—"

The wind screamed.

And the last standing corner of the hut groaned under the strain.

The reed wall began to bend.

Crack.

Then—