The following morning felt wrong. It wasn't quiet in the way a peaceful dawn should be; it was an unnatural, heavy stillness that seemed to settle beneath the snowfall. It was as if the ridge itself understood that something terrible was approaching long before the people living on it did.
Thin black trails of smoke still drifted from the ruined western camp, cutting ugly lines against the pale grey sky. The sharp, bitter smell of burned wood and wet ash lingered heavily throughout the entire settlement, refusing to dissipate despite the freezing wind that kept clawing through the jagged cliffs. No one laughed anymore. Not after Aldric. The entire atmosphere of the camp had changed overnight. People still moved, still worked, and still tried to rebuild the damaged shelters with numb hands and exhausted bodies, but grief lingered everywhere now—in the long silences between tasks, in the lowered gazes of the workers, and in the empty spaces where Aldric's loud voice should have been.
