Frostwind tightened the straps on her pack and stepped out of the cozy cottage that served as her field base. Snow crusted the stable roof. Inside her notebook, three months of bloodline checks waited beside one blank page: the location of the snow-mare's valley. Without that, none of it mattered. She spent the morning searching the ridge for any sign. Tracks, broken brush, anything. The wind scrubbed the slopes clean. By noon, she was ready to turn back. Then she saw it. A frost antelope picked its way along a narrow shelf, split hooves clicking on ice. It paused, watched her, and slipped through a gap in the rocks she had not noticed before. Frostwind followed. The gap opened onto a hidden draw, sheltered and still, the air colder by ten degrees. She drove her tall compass marker into the frozen ground at the mouth of the draw. The bronze rose caught the low sun. She had her lead. Now the valley had a door — and she had to find what waited past it before the thaw.

Past the marker, Frostwind moved deeper into the draw. The walls narrowed, then opened. She pulled the small stone dial from her pack and tilted it to the sun. The shadow sat close to the spring line. Days, not weeks. The path forked. A tall pillar stood at the split, two worn faces staring down each branch. Both passages looked the same. Cold air pushed from both mouths. She knelt, checked tracks, found none. Wrong choice meant wasted hours she did not have. Then she saw it down the left branch: a low cairn of banded stones, red and pale and dark, stacked by careful hands. Someone had marked this way. She crossed to it and pressed her glove against the top stone. Frost antelope scat lay fresh behind it. The same animal. The same trail. She took the left passage. The walls climbed. The air bit colder, ten degrees colder still, the way the valley should feel. Behind her, the twin faces watched the empty fork. Ahead, the draw bent and kept going. One path chosen. The dial in her pocket ticked toward thaw.