Kiera Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The drag marks were vanishing, and Kiera Thornwood had maybe two hours to follow them before dark. She knelt at the edge of the tree line and pressed her palm flat on the ground. Two furrows cut the snow, wide as a body. Her partner had made them, dragged by something she never saw. Now fresh flakes filled the tracks. She could still read them, but not for long. Kiera counted her supplies fast. Bow. Twelve arrows. A knife. Half a day of jerky. She had left the warm cabin at first light, timber walls fading behind her, thinking she would follow a clear trail. She had not planned for snow. She had not planned to lose him at all. She stood and moved into the deep woods. The furrows led downhill through thick pines. Snow fell harder here, and the marks grew shallow. She walked faster, then jogged, eyes fixed on the ground. Twice the trail nearly disappeared. Twice she found it again by the broken ferns along its edge. Then the furrows stopped. Kiera halted. Ahead, the snow lay smooth and white. No drag marks. No prints. She turned in a slow circle. Nothing. Her breath came ragged. The last sign was gone, buried, and the light was already going gray. She forced herself to stop searching the ground. She looked up instead. A low branch hung snapped and dangling, out of a walking man's reach. Something tall had passed here. Below it, half hidden under a drift, she saw a dark shape. Kiera dug with both hands. Her fingers closed on wet fabric. She pulled out her partner's glove, torn at the wrist, dark stains frozen into the leather. She turned it over. Inside, tucked deep, was a folded scrap of birch bark. He had wedged it there himself. She unfolded it with shaking hands. Three claw marks scored the bark, and below them, scratched with a knife point, an arrow. It pointed down the slope, toward a black gap in the rocks she had not seen before. A cave mouth. Kiera looked at the arrow, then at the cave. Her partner had been alive enough to leave it. Alive enough to point. The snow had taken his tracks, but he had left her a new trail, one the storm could not bury. She closed her fist around the glove. The drag marks were lost for good. It no longer mattered. She knew where the thing had taken him. Kiera nocked an arrow and started down the slope toward the cave.