Tobias Cartwright's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Tobias Cartwright pushed open the door of the snow-covered inn and stamped the cold from his boots. He had followed the expedition's last known road for weeks. Fourteen men had vanished into this country, and one of them was a man he had wronged. He meant to learn what became of them, or stop pretending he could live without knowing. The innkeeper looked away too quickly when Tobias asked about strangers. That night Tobias climbed to the attic and found a man curled behind a stack of crates, thin as rope, clutching a brass compass with the initials RK scratched into its face. The man flinched hard and begged him not to speak the name aloud. Tobias knelt and kept his voice low. "I came looking for you. For all of you." The survivor stared at him, then pressed the compass into his palm. "Then you've found the only one left," he whispered, "and they will come for us both before morning."