The freezing snow drained what little warmth remained in my body, and every breath brought a pain that seemed to tear through my lungs. But I barely felt any of it. All my senses were consumed by the new pulse coming from the notebook in my palm.
The lethargy of a full belly. Digestion amid evolution. And... the tiny yet painfully conspicuous azure ice-crystal mark in the corner of its cover.
A mark.
From the ancient god awakening beneath the glacier. Like the scent a beast left at the edge of its territory, declaring ownership, or... permission to hunt.
It saw us. No, it "noticed" the notebook. The notebook stole a trace of "nourishment" from that hurried clash, and in return, it was branded with an indelible mark.
We were in deep trouble.
Far worse trouble than Mentor, Deep Nest, or even the Silent Council. This was an entity utterly beyond my current understanding. The notebook's greed had landed us in a catastrophe.
I had to leave Greenland immediately. This was no longer a refuge. It was about to become a battlefield where a god would descend.
I struggled to my feet and looked around. Endless white, a deathly still wind. The dogsled I had arrived on was long gone. I had only my legs to rely on.
With a fierce will to survive and my strength gradually returning, I began trudging in the direction I remembered coming from. My steps were heavy, leaving a long trail through the deep snow, like signposts leading to destruction.
The notebook in my backpack was unusually quiet, its evolving pulse subdued but steady. It seemed very "satisfied." As for the potentially catastrophic consequences of that mark, it did not care in the slightest. A hound cared only about the meat before it, not