Eternal XI

Several ice sculptures sat or lay in the snow. Men and women alike wore the same stiff, hollow expressions, their gazes—almost frozen solid—spearing the sky, devoid of life within. Freya passed by the ice sculptures with a hint of sorrow and silently brushed down their cold eyelids.

Just as the scout had said, neither Emerald nor Anika had any obvious wounds. Their skin had turned gray and white, shriveled from the loss of moisture, while ice and snow covered them and the corpses of the warhorses kneeling beneath them. From the surface, they looked like people who had frozen to death in the snow. But how could five or six people coincidentally freeze to death together? Besides, Anika and Emerald were both Gold Initiate warriors. Such low temperatures should have had no effect on them at all.

Freya noticed the hollow look in Emerald and Anika's eyes. In her memories, there was one way of dying that produced a similar gaze: having one's warmth stolen by a Ghost. At that thought, she suddenly remembered the night they fled Ridenburg, when Brando used the White Stag to guide them.

Beneath the hazy night sky, a majestic creature radiating a faint white light had opened a path through the forest. But what she remembered most clearly were the people who had died at the hands of the Ghosts. Their faces had been deathly pale, their bodies drenched in sweat, and their expressions just as hollow, as if their souls had been taken away.

Freya raised her head, suddenly wary. She and the others were already deep in a silver-gray forest. Howling snow winds swept through the bare branches, making eerie noises like monsters roaring through the woods.

"They're ghosts and mountain spirits. The spirits in these forests can drain people's souls. This