Ike Frostthread wanted to make the robes for the next Glowflight Festival. To earn that honor, he needed frostglider pelts that held their glow. He had six fresh pelts drying by his hut wall. He watched the youngest one all night. By morning its blue light had faded to a dull gray. He pressed his thumb to the fur. Nothing woke under it. A robe stitched from these would go dark long before the spiritual leader ever wore it. He knew the fault now. He skinned the gliders too slow. The glow lived in the skin oils, and the oils dried the moment the pelt left the body. His father had never trapped gliders for this. Ike was on his own. A sled scraped to a stop outside. Sivara Frostwhisper stood beside it, blowgun slung across her back. On the sled lay a black stag, roped tight, three small gliders lashed along the side rail. She hunted for her village and rarely came this far. She did not knock. She only looked at his gray pelts and then at him. "Dead already," she said. "They dim after I skin them," Ike said. "I can't stop it." She crossed to her sled and cut one glider free. It still glowed, faint blue along its flank. "Mine keep light three days. I take them alive. Cage. Skin them last, warm." Ike looked at his trap boxes stacked by the door, the runed capture boxes he had built to hold gliders alive. He had caught them living, then killed and skinned them at his leisure. That was the error. "The oils set while the animal is still warm," he said. "Skin warm. Rub the flesh side with stag fat. Seals the glow." She said it flat, as a fact, not a favor. They unloaded the stag together. Ike caged his two newest live gliders instead of killing them cold. He skinned them fast while their bodies still steamed, then worked stag fat into the raw side with his palm. The blue held. He set the pelt by the wall beside the dead gray ones. It stayed lit. Sivara watched it glow. "Good," she said, and that settled it. Her dwelling lay far off, and fresh frost was setting. She stayed two days in his hut. Ike used the black stag's obsidian hide to sew her a winter coat, frost-lined at the hood, toggles cut from crystal. He worked while the new glider pelt shone steady behind him. He gave her the coat. She pulled it on and looked up at him. She said nothing. Her face said everything. She kissed him. The glow problem was solved. Ike now had a method that held. He needed more skins and Sivara agreed to stay and help him set the new traps.

Thorn's demand still hung over the ice. A live frost-gorgon, caged and tamed, and Ike had nothing that could hold one. His glider boxes were toys next to that beast. So he lifted the drinking horn at his belt and blew. The long note rolled across the frozen lake and into the trees. The hunters came. Sivara reached him first, blowgun across her back, her buck hunt abandoned at the sound. Veyla followed, bow in hand, moving without wasted steps. Seren came last, spear tip still faintly purple with Venara toxin, a Gloomstalker trail left cold behind them. Ike told them what Thorn wanted. No one laughed. "We don't kill it," Veyla said. "We catch it." She said it like a closed door. "Then we need a pit," Seren said. "Far side. Narrow ground." They built it on the lake's far shore, where two ridges pinched the ground into a narrow passage. Ike laid out the design. He had trapped all his life, but never anything this size, and the others trusted his eye for triggers and trip-lines. They dug deep into the permafrost. They dropped frostbound logs for walls and hung weighted bars above the mouth. They strung the trigger lines taut. It took two full frost cycles. The hunters worked without rest, grinning at the size of it, asking Ike where each line should run. Then they found the gorgon. It fed in a hollow below the ridge, a mountain of gray armor on six pillar legs, the dome of its skull studded with glowing purple eyes. It was taller than their huts. Ike's mouth went dry. They spread wide and closed in. Veyla banged her spear shaft on frozen log. Seren shouted and waved. Sivara drove it from the flank, careful, never close enough to be crushed. The gorgon swung its great head and bellowed. It would not turn toward the pit. "Push harder," Ike called. "Give it one way to run." They tightened the ring. Sivara flashed her skin bright blue, a wall of light on the one open side. The gorgon panicked. It wheeled and charged straight down the narrow passage, legs hammering ice. The trigger lines snapped. The weighted bars dropped behind it with a crack that shook the ground. The beast slammed the log walls and roared. The pit held. Six purple eyes glared up through the bars, but the frostbound logs did not give. They had a live frost-gorgon, caged and whole. Ike sagged against a post, arms shaking. The hunters whooped and clapped his shoulders. They looked at him now the way village folk looked at his father, like someone who could teach them. "It's trapped," Veyla said. "The rest is Thorn's problem." Ike stared at the furious beast. He had done the impossible thing Thorn asked. But taming it, harnessing it to a sled, that was never his trade. Now Thorn had to make the monster pull.