The cold was a living thing that winter, swallowing the plains whole and settling deep into the bones of the land. In his isolated cabin, Gideon Hail kept a world of ghosts and quiet routines, a man who had traded the company of others for the heavy silence of solitude. The rumors about his patch of earth—haunted, cursed, blood-soaked from old wars—suited him just fine. They kept people away. His life was pared down to the essentials: fire, food, rifle, and the long wait for morning. It was a existence built on forgetting, until a sound that was not the wind shattered the deep silence of the night.
It was a scraping, a desperate drag against his doorstep. When Gideon opened the door, the brutal cold rushed in, but what followed was a vision of human ruin that struck him harder than any memory of battle. A woman collapsed forward, barefoot and shaking, her skin a map of purple and white against torn hides. Snow clung to her black hair like shattered glass. She was nearly consumed by the freeze, yet her eyes held a fierce, unbroken light. She did not plead for sanctuary with words of pity. With a voice cracked raw from cold and exhaustion, she offered the only thing she had left: “I can serve… if you want… just not outside.” It was not an offer of passion, but of pure, stark survival—the final currency of someone stripped of everything else.
Gideon felt the weight of her words settle in his chest, a recognition of a pain he knew intimately. This was not pity, but a grim understanding. He stepped aside. “Get in, before the cold finishes the job,” he said, his voice low. That simple act of mercy fractured the winter’s hold. As she crawled across the threshold, he saw what pursued her: fresh tracks of multiple men in the snow, closing in. He had not just let in a freezing woman; he had welcomed her war into his home. Dragging a chair against the door, he prepared for a siege he never asked for, understanding that the peace he had built was now forfeit. The fire hissed in the stove, the only warmth in a world turning dangerous by the minute.
