It took Isaac the better part of another ten minutes to reach the palisade; the men from the village cleared out a path to the gate each day, yet the movement of the snowdrifts kept the path under several feet of snow even so- let alone the new snowfall filling in the lonely channel through the sea of frost. Still, Isaac was able to make it without too much trouble; it was slow going, but hardly impossible- merely strenuous.

Thus he arrived at the gate to the palisade, panting for lack of breath- and lack of breathable air- to greet the man standing guard. The town watch was small, merely ten people, and only worked during the night, yet some defense was necessary for a town so far out of the way, small though it might be. The guards rotated every hour, five on guard at any one point, whilst the other half were thawing themselves in the small gatehouse. Isaac knew almost all of the guards well, so he quickly recognized the man standing guard. “Joe? Where’s the other guard?” Isaac asked, confused- normally two men guarded the gate.

“Out looking for the source of this confounded noise, lad,” Joe responded, looking towards the boy briefly, then gazing back out into the darkness past the gate. “A better question would be why you’re out here tonight, hmm?”

“You said it yourself. I couldn’t sleep, then I heard that ‘confounded noise,’ as you put it,” Isaac answered, shivering.

“Even so, lad, what do you hope to accomplish by coming out here? We’re the ones who are paid to check out things like this, not you. Trying to steal my job, eh?” Joe grinned at Isaac.

“Well… you do know I’ve always wanted to be a guard. I definitely don’t want to be a miner, and I just don’t have the head for numbers Uncle’s business needs,” Isaac replied wryly, ruefully shaking his head.

“Aye, I know you do, lad. I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again, what my father told me,” Joe looked back outside the palisade gate. Wistfully, he continued, “set your head to it, son, and you’ll be able to do it. Just figure out what it is that you want to do. If you want to farm the Serad, set yourself to it and you’ll be able to. If you want to fish the Sothwick, well, you’re the only one stopping yourself. The only thing you can’t do is fool your mother,” Joe finished, grinning slightly. “He was right, too, never could fool that woman. If I ever did something bad, she’d have caught me before day’s end.”

Sighing, he turned back to Isaac. “You’d best get to sleep, lad. You’ve a great deal of work so long as the snow still falls.”

Nodding, Isaac turned to go, but stopped before he’d taken ten steps. Looking over his shoulder, he murmured, “Thanks, Joe. It’s always good to talk to you.” Not knowing if Joe had heard him or not, he started on his long trek back- fifty feet in three feet of snow, at night and during a blizzard, no less, was a difficult walk.

Joe sighed once again, a peculiar expression on his face as he gazed at the boy’s receding back- then he heard the door to the gatehouse open. “Took you long enough, you lazy gits,” he grumbled, still focused on Isaac.

When Isaac awoke in the morning, he found himself stiff and cold- nothing surprising there. What was surprising was that he felt pleasantly refreshed, almost as if he’d actually had a good night’s sleep after a day that didn’t involve copious amounts of menial work- neither of which were true. With a light chuckle, he began pulling on his clothes in preparation for the day.

Once he had finished, he left his room to greet a diminished fire- Hmm, Uncle must not be awake yet, he thought to himself. It was odd, but not unprecedented- Gregor slept in one or two days a month, for no apparent reason. I guess the noise last night might have kept him awake, too, he mused. Oh well, it was my turn to cook breakfast anyways. On that note, he began to stoke the fire, and prepared a few pans to cook the morning meal with.

Twenty minutes later, Gregor still had yet to leave his room- and Isaac had begun to fret. However late his uncle slept in, he never failed to wake for breakfast. So, gritting his teeth, Isaac gently shoved open his uncle’s door- to find nothing. No sign of his uncle, aside from the, as always, mussed up bedsheets. With a sigh, Isaac began to shut the door- and then something caught his eye. Upon his uncle’s nightstand laid a stone, atop an envelope.

Isaac’s eyes locked onto the stone; a strange thing it was. It was a green, opaque gem, its depths cloudy and somehow… alluring. Slowly he walked towards it; even more slowly, he reached out for it. Yet, something in his head screamed at him; some instinct warned him away. Shaking his head violently, he wondered what had come over him, rapidly leaving the room. Inside, the stone yet sparkled.

After eating his breakfast for one, Isaac went back to his normal routine- or at least, tried to. He stoked the fire one last time, and finished gearing up for the frozen outdoors; yet, as he pushed the door open, he felt almost no resistance. “That must mean…” he muttered, then looked up, “Thank goodness, it’s finally over!” The sixteen days of snowfall had come to an end! Finally, he wouldn’t have to work himself to the bone simply to stop himself from freezing! That said, he would still be worked to the bone, he just wouldn’t be an icicle whilst doing it.

Slowly Isaac did his chores for the day- mainly, as always, simply carrying large sacks of coal back to the house, in order to replenish their stock. Yet, his uncle never returned to the house, at least not when Isaac was there. By the fifth sack, Isaac noticed another odd thing; the size of the coal pile was neither increasing nor decreasing, aside from what he took himself. Normally there would be a few dozen townspeople gathering coal; today it was only him- a fact that was incredibly out of sorts with the fact that it was the first day without snowfall in weeks. Combined with the miners not restocking the coal pile, which typically they did every hour, Isaac started to grow truly worried.

The first thing he did was run to the mines; none of the lamps at the entrance were lit- lamps that remained lit at all times, typically. Unwilling to venture into the dark depths, Isaac turned away, instead running to the nearest building, pounding on its door- no response. He repeated his actions with the next house- no response. The next, nothing, the next, nothing, nothing and nothing and nothing. Nowhere did anyone respond. Exasperated and terrified, he ran towards the gatehouse, to rouse the guards; yet, a gruesome sight stopped him in his tracks- Joe, throat torn out, laying dead on the cold, hard ground, a burgundy pool spread throughout the pristine white snow around him. Further back the door to the gatehouse laid on the ground in similar manner, streaked with blood.