The snow had not stopped in three days.
Thick, unrelenting sheets of white fell from the sky, cloaking everything in silence. The wind howled through the mountains, biting at exposed skin, numbing fingers, freezing breath before it could even leave the mouth. And through it all, three figures pressed on—silent, huddled, and burdened.
A man with a black beard streaked with frost. A woman whose pale face was flushed red by the cold. And a child, no more than an infant, cradled in her arms beneath layers of fur and wool.
The child, though still small in body, thought like no infant should. He did not cry. He did not laugh. He thought. And on the third day of endless snow, he thought grimly:
"Close to none. That's the chance we have of surviving this. Three days in this blizzard, and it's only getting worse. The snow's getting thicker. The wind sharper. We've found caves the last two nights, but if luck doesn't return... we won't make it another."
He let out a sigh—only in his mind. His body was still too weak to do much more than shift or reach.
"Am I going to die without even knowing my name?"
Just as the thought surfaced, his father—he had started thinking of the bearded man as his father—murmured something to the woman. The child caught the sound but not the meaning. The language was still foreign to him, but he had begun, slowly, to understand fragments. In the past three days, he had come to recognize two distinct phrases.
One, the word his father had spoken as he brought his blade down upon the dragon: a phrase of cold, finality, and power. A word not uttered, but cast like a spell.
The second, simpler, softer, was what he had said to the woman by the fire after they cooked the dragon's meat. That one had felt like command, yes—but also compassion.
Now, night was falling again. The dim gray sky began to bleed into full yellow, and still, no cave had been found. Luck had abandoned them.
The father scanned the landscape with stern, watchful eyes, then stepped toward the nearest tree. A small axe hung from his belt, and he took it in hand, moving with tired determination.
He began chopping wood.
The child observed from his mother's arms, noticing something strange. The trees were not completely dead—some had green in their needles, even this high in the mountains. Odd. Everything else was frostbitten and lifeless.
Still, the man worked. Stroke after stroke, he hacked at trunks and limbs, stacking what he could find. Hours passed. The snow deepened. Finally, with numb hands and exhausted bodies, they built a small camp beside a stone wall that offered some shelter from the wind.
Fire had to be made.
The man reached into his pocket and drew a small stone. It looked ordinary, but the moment he chanted a phrase—another of those ancient words—the rock began to glow with red, molten light, like lava encased in glass.
He struck it with the blunt side of his axe.
A brilliant spark erupted, leaping onto the wood. Flames burst to life. Heat returned to the air, wrapping the trio in a fragile bubble of warmth amid the frozen death of the mountains.
The man looked at the woman.
She looked back and bowed slightly, respectfully.
He spoke—another command, short and quiet.
The woman hesitated, then complied, sitting down on a mat of fur, thick and dark, likely from some beast. The child, nestled in her arms, stared at the fur.
"What is this from? A deer? No... not here. This high up, deer can't survive. A wolf? Maybe. But it doesn't feel right. I can't imagine wolves in these peaks."
He puzzled over it. Since waking into this world, he had been haunted by such things—images, knowledge, thoughts that came unbidden. Places he had never seen. Creatures he somehow knew. Words he did not speak, yet recognized.
It made him feel older than he was.
It made him feel... borrowed.
A wave of hunger pulled him from his thoughts. He stirred, reaching a small, weak hand toward his mother's breast. She looked down at him, surprised for only a moment, then gently adjusted her cloak and brought him close. He latched on, drawing what little milk she had left.
The father watched them silently. A moment passed, then another.
He smiled.
Not wide. Not cheerful. But something warmer than anything the child had seen in three days of ice and fire.
Then he spoke again, this time to the woman. A question.
She looked at him. Then at the child.
She hesitated.
Then she said, with quiet certainty:
"Umar."
The bearded man's eyes widened just slightly.
Then he grinned. A real grin, full of pride and triumph.
"Umar Khan," he said, louder, his voice echoing into the dark woods, "The Sixth Prince of the High Peaks!"
*************
Just then, a sound came from outside the camp. Not a meow, not a roar, but something in between—a scream that echoed like a woman's cry in the night. It made Umar's small heart skip a beat.
The smile faded from the father's face, replaced by irritation. He stood in a slow, deliberate motion, reached for his long sword, and stepped out.
The mother looked back at Umar, who was still latched onto her breast. She gently detached him, set him down on the fur, and rose to follow.
Umar blinked and thought, "Comfy."
As both parents disappeared beyond the flap of fur at the camp's entrance, the sound outside grew louder. Umar listened carefully, trying to make sense of it. "Some kind of cat? A jackal? No... maybe a fox?" he mused. But none of those explanations satisfied him.
The sound began to fade, but still lingered like a whisper through the trees. Left alone in the camp, Umar's attention turned to his surroundings. The interior was rectangular, built with rough-cut logs stacked horizontally to form a sturdy wall on all four sides. Thick furs had been draped across the top as a makeshift roof, sagging under the weight of snow. The ground was lined with flat bark and animal pelts, insulating them from the cold earth.
One side had a gap covered by a flap of hide, acting as a door. There were sharpened sticks propped against the back, likely used to defend or hunt. Some meat, salted and dried, hung in a corner tied to wooden pegs.
The light from the fire flickered against the wooden walls, casting shadows that danced with the wind's rhythm. It was quiet now. Silent enough for the child to almost drift off.
Then the flap burst open.
The father and mother re-entered—bloodied, silent, eyes wide. Their gaze locked on the child. Before Umar could process what was happening, a massive shadow loomed behind them.
A creature crawled through the flap.
Towering even on its knees, the beast was at least one and a half times the father's height. Its limbs were thick and powerful, shaped like a man's but longer and covered in fur as white as the snow outside. Its face was terrifying—a twisted hybrid of monkey and man, with eyes too intelligent to belong to a beast.
It crouched, forced to remain on its knees by the low roof, yet still dominated the space. The firelight caught in its pale fur, giving it a ghostly, spectral glow.
Umar froze.
His tiny fingers clenched the fur mat.
His mind, however, was alive with words and images not his own.
"A Yeti," he thought, half in terror, half in awe.
The creature's breath steamed in the warm air, and for a moment, time stood still. Then it growled—a low, deep rumble that made the wooden walls tremble.