A farmer went into the woods for firewood—but he found something chilling encased in ice.
He scattered grain for the chickens, the feed speckling the snow like seeds on parchment. The sheep shifted restlessly near the fence, their unease mirroring his own. Henry worked quickly, the cold seeping into his fingers despite the gloves.
With the animals settled, he turned toward the woodpile—and stopped.
What had been a towering stack of neatly split logs now stood pitifully low, barely enough to keep the fire burning through the day. He rubbed his hands together for warmth, exhaling a plume of white breath.
When he had gone through that much wood, he couldn’t say, but there was no time for wondering. “Guess it’s time to get to work,” he murmured to the empty yard.
He trudged to the shed, took up his axe, and hitched the sled behind him. The wind whispered faintly through the treetops—a reminder that the clock was ticking before the snow arrived.
With the axe resting across his shoulder, Henry set off into the forest, unaware that the morning’s chore would soon turn into something far stranger than he could imagine.
The forest met him with its usual stillness, the crunch of his boots and the occasional darting squirrel the only signs of life. He walked toward his favored chopping spot, thinking of the old tales his grandmother used to tell—stories of guardian creatures watching over the land.
He never gave those tales much weight, yet in moments like this, with the hush of winter wrapped around him, he sometimes wondered.
That was when something caught his eye.
Through a knot of snow-laden branches ahead, a faint light shimmered—unnatural against the washed-out whites and grays.
Frowning, Henry set his axe down and moved toward it. His boots sank into the snow as he pushed into a small clearing. There, half-buried beneath a drift of snow and ice, was… something he could not immediately understand.
