The Place Between Worlds

Since the day Vince had woken—three nights after collapsing in the white—nothing more had stirred.

No tracks.

No howl.

No shadow at the treeline.

Just snow.

Eldan had checked the slope where Vince had fallen. Twice. The second time with Brik and Maela. They found only what had always been there: broken frost, old prints, a patch of churned earth where Vince's body had hit. But no claw marks. No drag. No blood. Not even a scent.

Whatever had been there… had gone like breath into cold air.

Vince said little.

He ate what they gave him, helped where he could. Still moved slower than before. But his eyes tracked the trees more than the people. And sometimes, when the wind stirred too suddenly, his hand twitched near his side, as if remembering something sharp that wasn't there.

Others noticed.

But no one asked.

Maybe they thought it was illness. Or grief. Or just the winter.

Only Eldan watched longer. Quietly. But even he said nothing more.

The children had returned to the fire circles. The mothers began repairing the broken reed mats near the north end. Ferren had set snares again, and Branik helped shift firewood into tighter bundles. Life—such as it was—pressed forward.

The monster had left no mark.

No howl had come again.

No eyes in the night.

No omen in the snow.

Only Vince remembered.

And only in silence.

The snow had settled again, soft as breath.

Vince sat near the low stone hearth, hands wrapped around a bowl of root broth gone lukewarm. The steam no longer rose. His fingers barely moved. Around him, the shelter breathed slow—wood creaking, fabric rustling as wind pressed against the seams.

Anelka passed now and then, her steps quiet, hands full of cord and dry herbs. She didn't speak, just offered a glance each time she passed. Not worry. Not warmth. Just… presence.

Across the fire, Eldan tied a string of bone and twine—charms meant to hang over infant beds. His hands worked with rhythm, but his gaze was not on the work. It flicked up, once, toward Vince.

Then down again.

Vince didn't return it. He stared into his bowl, not seeing it.

"Wind soft," Eldan said eventually, voice quiet. "No drift last night. No break in trees."

Vince nodded once.

"Tracks… still gone," Eldan added. He signed gently. "No return."

Another nod. Slower.

He stirred the broth without drinking.

After a long silence, Eldan said, "You see nothing… since?"

Vince shook his head. Not harsh. Just… enough.

"Eyes open," Eldan said. "Mine. Yours." He tapped his temple, then his chest. "Still watch."

Vince finally looked up. His throat worked once, like words might rise—but didn't.

He simply raised his hand in a loose gesture. Fingers open, then curled shut. Like closing a door.

Enough.

Eldan didn't push.

Instead, he leaned back on his elbows and stared at the ceiling for a while. His fingers moved in slow rhythm on the mat—counting something unseen. Maybe the days. Maybe the breaths.

After some time, Vince stood. The motion was slow, but without pain now. He wrapped his coat tighter and walked to the entrance flap.

Eldan rose too. "Cold out."

"I know," Vince rasped.

He stepped into it anyway.

The wind met him like a sigh. Bitter, but not cruel. He walked past the huts, past the sleeping goats and bundled wood piles, toward the outer rim of the village.

There, the trees stood like old sentries. Watching.

He stared back.

Just trees.

He turned slightly, just enough to glimpse the place where he'd fallen days ago—beyond the ridge, where the snow still held a slight dip, as if memory had weight.

Nothing moved there.

Not even wind.

Still, he watched.

Then, after some time, he spoke—not loud, not soft. Just enough for the cold to carry it nowhere.

"I know you were real."

His breath fogged and faded.

And he turned back to the village.

The fire circle had dimmed to its ember-heart by the time Vince took his place near the northern watch post—a ring of snow flattened where boots had paced before. He didn't need to be there. Eldan had offered to take his turn, voice low, concern threading each word. But Vince had shaken his head.

His body had healed enough. The pain in his ribs came only with laughter now—not that there'd been much of that.

Branik stayed with him at first. They stood a small distance apart, saying little. Breath fogged the space between them. Branik would glance his way from time to time, but said nothing more than a grunt of acknowledgment when the second hour passed.

When Branik finally nodded and returned to sleep, Vince remained. Silent. Motionless.

Above, the sky had cleared—sharp with stars, the kind that cut the dark into clean edges. Below, the forest loomed, quiet and wide. Not a twig cracked. Not a wind stirred.

There had been no sign of the creature since that night. No prints in the snow. No broken branches. No sound. No scent. Like it had never been there at all.

But Vince knew better.

Stillness could lie.

He watched the trees.

Watched until his eyes burned and his mind began to curl inward, searching shadows for meaning. His breath slowed, fell into rhythm with the hush around him. Somewhere inside, he expected it—the flicker of white, the shape through mist, the voice that wasn't voice.

But nothing came.

Still, he did not go inside.

Instead, he reached beneath his coat, drew out the square of bark he'd started carving days ago. A piece of scrap from a fallen post, clean and flat on one side.

The charcoal nub he used left a jagged trail.

He did not draw the village. Not the people. Not the fire or the matriarch's charm. Only one thing.

The beast.

He didn't try to capture its body—only its eyes. Just those. Cold. Vast. Like a judgment passed from the oldest corner of the earth.

He scraped the curve slowly. Line by line. His hands worked without thought.

Then, on the back of the board, in his own language, he wrote a single phrase:

"It did not kill me."

He stared at the words a long time.

Then flipped the board over and pressed it flat into the snow beside his feet. Not to bury it. Not yet.

Just to feel how the cold took it.

And whether the silence would answer back.

Behind him, the village slept.

Ahead, the forest waited. Still. Watching.

And Vince watched back.

The fire had withered to coals, amber breath pulsing in the ash like a dying heart. Vince sat beside it, wrapped in silence deeper than the dark outside. Around him, the village slept—soft breathing, shifting weight, the slow chorus of survival in its most fragile form.

But he remained awake.

Not because of pain. Not hunger.

Because something in him had not yet settled since the moment the white beast vanished into the snow.

No one had found tracks. No scent. No broken branches or prints. Just Vince, facedown in the frost, and nothing else.

The thing had come.

And the thing had gone.

"Sa'riin vathor… en draekh."

The sound still pressed against his ribs like a bruise from within.

It wasn't language. Not really. But meaning clung to it. The way thunder carries warning before lightning ever strikes.

What had it said?

A sentence? A name? A curse?

Vince didn't know. He only knew it was for him.

And still, he'd told no one.

Not Eldan. Not Anelka.

Because the fear that lives in cold-buried bones spreads faster than flame. And this village had no room left for fire.

He stared into the dying coals, and a line from childhood surfaced, uninvited but steady.

"Chi è segnato, non può sfuggire al destino."

He who is marked cannot escape his fate.

His aunt used to say that when the church bells rang for someone not yet dead. When the pigeons scattered wrong. When the air thickened before bad news arrived.

Vince had never believed in omens.

But now?

Now he wasn't sure.

What if that creature hadn't come to end him—

but to name him?

Not with words.

But with silence.

With absence.

A warning, maybe.

A summons.

Or worse: a mirror.

He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers brushing over skin still too warm for the memory of snow. The matriarch's charm rested there. She had called him hearth. A center. A weight.

But what if the thing in the woods had seen something else?

Not a hearth.

A fracture.

Vince closed his eyes.

He could still feel its breath, slow and unhurried, as though death itself had paused to consider him.

Not yet, it had said.

Or maybe:

Soon.

The wind outside rustled low across the roof like whispering pages of a book not yet opened.

And Vince, sleepless and marked, whispered again:

"Chi è segnato…"

He did not finish it aloud.

But the rest echoed in the stillness:

He sat there until the coals cooled, and dawn teased the sky with gray.

Still breathing.

Still chosen.

Still waiting to understand what for.