The Frozen Mark

My fingers, numb even through thick gloves, closed around something impossible beneath the ice. A metallic disc, etched with symbols that felt older than the earth itself. The cold had finally given up its ghost, and it was far from benign.

My boot slipped on the ice-slicked shale, and I pitched forward, a raw grunt torn from my throat. The world blurred into a white, cold mess, the taste of frozen pine needles suddenly sharp on my tongue. My gloved hands, numb even through two layers, scraped against the unforgiving rock, stinging with a dull ache. Snow, fine as dust, dusted my eyelashes, making the world a grainy, bleached film. I pushed myself up, chest heaving, the air biting deep into my lungs like shards of glass. This ravine, they called it the 'Whispering Gully,' though it only ever screamed with the wind. Another useless lead, I’d thought, stumbling down this treacherous path for the third time this month, the grey light already fading into the bruised purples of late afternoon.

My breath plumed out, a ragged cloud that was instantly snatched away by the gale. The cold was a living thing here, an entity that worked its way through layers of wool and Gore-Tex, finding purchase in my joints, making them stiff, protesting. Every step was a battle against the ankle-deep powder, a slow, arduous churn. The silence, punctuated only by the wind’s mournful howl and the faint, grating crunch of my own progress, pressed in, heavy and full of unspoken things. It wasn't the kind of quiet that offered peace; it was the kind that held its breath, waiting. My gaze, weary and bloodshot, swept over the snow-covered rocks, the skeletal branches of birches reaching like arthritic fingers.

Then, a glint. Not ice. Something else. A dull, almost oily gleam beneath a thin sheet of clear ice, a small anomaly in the monochromatic expanse. My heart, a sluggish drum against my ribs from the exertion, gave a sudden, hard thud. It wasn't the glint I was looking for, not a silver locket, not a bright red scarf. No, this was different. This was wrong. My fingers, still clumsy with cold, fumbled for the edge of the ice sheet. It was brittle, a thin skin over something solid. I used the heel of my boot, a carefully measured tap, then another, until a spiderweb crack appeared, spreading outwards. The sound was like a sharp intake of breath in the vast silence.

I knelt, ignoring the bite of the ice through my thick trousers. My mittened fingers worked at the shards, pulling them away, revealing the smooth, dark surface beneath. It wasn't wood, or stone, or any kind of manufactured plastic I knew. It was metallic, yes, but not like iron or steel. This felt… warmer, somehow, despite the freezing temperature. As the last sliver of ice lifted, I saw it fully. A disc, no larger than my palm, made of a dark, almost charcoal-coloured metal. And etched into its surface, with an impossible precision, were symbols. Swirls and lines, not quite script, not quite pictograms, but a language I felt rather than read, a sense of ancientness that prickled the hairs on my neck. It vibrated with a faint, almost imperceptible hum against my palm, a low thrumming that felt like static electricity against my skin.

What the hell? My mind, usually a jumble of anxieties and theories, went blank, replaced by a singular, consuming awe. This wasn't some lost hiker's trinket. This was… something else entirely. It felt heavy, a weight far beyond its size, solid and uncompromising. I turned it over, hoping for a clue, a name, a date, anything. The other side was smooth, featureless, except for a raised concentric circle that felt like a worn fingerprint. I traced the alien symbols on the front again, their edges cool and sharp. Each one seemed to twist and coil, like an archaic serpent devouring its own tail. It held no reflection, absorbing the meagre light, a black hole in the white world.

---

### Ida’s Arrival

A shout, thin and strained by the wind, broke through my stupor. "Pat!" My head snapped up. Ida, a bundled form against the snow-laden pines, was picking her way down the ravine, her face a mask of worry. She was wearing her old crimson parka, the one with the frayed cuffs, and a thermal flask clutched in her gloved hand. She slipped, caught herself with a flailing arm, a frustrated sigh escaping her lips. "God, this place is brutal. You alright? I thought… when you didn't answer…"

She reached me, breath pluming like smoke from a dragon's nostrils, her cheeks red with cold. Her eyes, sharp even behind the fogged lenses of her glasses, immediately fixed on the disc in my hand. Her brow furrowed, a flicker of professional curiosity replacing the worry. Ida was the one with the maps, the research, the grounded common sense that tethered my sometimes wild speculation. She’d been my reluctant partner in this increasingly desperate hunt for answers about the disappearances that had plagued this valley for years. Always in winter.

"What is that?" she asked, her voice hushed, the question less an inquiry and more an exclamation of disbelief. She leaned closer, the scent of her cinnamon tea and damp wool suddenly a comforting anchor in the wilderness. She reached out a mittened finger, not quite touching, but hovering over the strange symbols. "It's… not from around here. Not any kind of Indigenous craft I've ever seen, and I've read all the local history.

I shook my head, my own voice a bit rough. "No, it's not. I've never seen anything like it. Found it buried deep, right here." I gestured to the disturbed snow where I'd dug it out. "It almost feels… alive. It hums." I held it out for her to take. Her fingers brushed mine, and a shiver went through me, not from cold. She took the disc, her expression morphing from curiosity to something deeper, more analytical. She turned it over, tilting her head. "Humming? Really? I don't feel… wait."

She paused, her eyes widening behind her glasses. She pressed her thumb onto the raised concentric circle on the back. For a brief second, a faint, internal light, like embers under ash, seemed to flicker within the dark metal. It died almost instantly. "Did you see that?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the wind. "A pulse. Like a tiny, almost imperceptible surge of light. What the hell, Pat?" Her voice was quiet, but I heard the urgency, the tremor of genuine apprehension beneath it. This was new, even for us.

"I… yeah, I saw it. What do you think?" I asked, my own thoughts racing. My mind tried to grab onto something familiar, some historical context, a scientific explanation, anything to ground this unsettling artefact. But there was nothing. Just the deep, ancient cold and this impossible object. Ida pulled a small, laminated map from an inside pocket, careful not to let the wind snatch it. She spread it on a flat rock, holding it down with her elbows, her breath condensing on the plastic.

"Okay, so this ravine… the old stories talk about it, right? The 'Spirit Passage' or something. But the actual local history, the verifiable stuff, only ever mentions a prospector's cabin, long gone, further up." She tapped a faded circle on the map. "Nothing this far down, nothing this… strange." She pulled out a small, waterproof notebook and a stubby pencil, sketching the symbols from the disc with surprising speed and accuracy, her fingers working deftly despite the cold.

"Wait," she said, her voice sharp, a sudden intake of breath. "These markings. They’re not local. But I've seen them. Or something like them. In that old university text, the one about pre-colonial trade routes, remember? It mentioned a highly stylized form of astronomical notation from a group far, far to the west. But this… this is different. More ornate. More… precise. Like a key." She looked up, her eyes bright with a sudden, fierce intellect that always surprised me. "It’s a star map, Pat. Or part of one. Not for navigating *here*, but for understanding something *out there*."

My jaw tightened. "A star map? In the middle of nowhere, buried under a metre of snow? That’s… too much, Ida." But even as I said it, a part of me thrilled at the sheer impossibility. This wasn't just a missing person's case anymore. This was bigger. This was beyond anything we'd ever imagined. "Could it be related to the disappearances? All of them. The ones no one could ever explain, that just… vanished from the face of the earth?" My voice was barely a whisper, a fearful hope.

Ida shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. "It feels that way, doesn't it? The sheer improbability. But… listen." She pointed to a symbol, one that looked like a jagged, broken star. "This one. The text described it as 'The Broken Constellation.' A bad omen. Always associated with… with unexplained loss. And it’s radiating from the center of this disc, almost like it’s the origin point." She looked up, her gaze sweeping the horizon, towards the higher, more dangerous peaks shrouded in mist and snow. "There are tracks, too. Fresh. Not animal. And not just ours. Something else, leading… that way."

---

### Tracks in the Snow

I followed her pointing finger, my eyes straining in the dimming light. My heart gave another lurch. Sure enough, emerging from a clump of skeletal alders not far from where I'd found the disc, were distinct impressions in the fresh snow. They were deeper than a person’s, wider, with an odd, almost claw-like pattern at the front, distinct from any boot tread. They led straight up, towards the most treacherous, unmapped section of the forest, an area officially closed off to the public due to unstable terrain and frequent avalanches.

"Are you serious?" I breathed, the words misting. "What made those? Some kind of weird snowshoe? They don't look… human." The cold had begun to truly settle into my bones now, a deep, pervasive ache. The wind picked up, swirling snow in dizzying eddies around us. The world was shrinking, closing in, the edges of our reality blurring with the impossible. Ida shook her head, her face pale. "I don't know, Pat. But they’re fresh. Maybe an hour, two at most. Someone, or something, just came through here. Heading for the old logging trail, if I'm reading this right."

She pointed to another section of the map, a thin, dotted line winding through dense forest, labelled 'Restricted Access – Hazardous'. The area was notorious, even among locals, for its unforgiving terrain. "It leads to the plateau. The one with the standing stones." Her voice was barely a whisper now, the fear a palpable thing between us. The 'standing stones' were another local legend, a place of mystery, never fully explored. A place people avoided. A place of deep, unsettling folklore, though we had always dismissed it as just that: folklore.

A strange, cold excitement coiled in my gut, battling with a rising tide of pure dread. "We have to follow it, Ida." My voice was firm, resolute, even though my hands trembled slightly as I pulled on my heavier mittens. The wind bit at my ears, even through my hat. I shifted my weight, feeling the crunch of compressed snow underfoot, a thin crust that barely supported my weight. The air was thick with the smell of wet dust and the faint metallic tang of static electricity.

Ida looked at me, her face tight, a mixture of fear and reluctant understanding. "Pat, it's getting dark. And that area… it's not safe. People get lost up there every year, even without… whatever this is." She gestured vaguely at the disc and the tracks. "We should go back. Get help. Tell someone about this. The police, maybe. Or Professor Aris at the university. He’d be fascinated by the symbols."

"And let whatever made those tracks get further ahead?" I challenged, my voice sharper than I intended. The urgency in me was a burning thing, ignoring the cold, ignoring the fear. This was our chance. This was the first real lead in months, maybe years, that felt like it could actually *explain* the inexplicable. To turn back now, to hand it over to bureaucratic systems that would dismiss it, analyse it endlessly, or simply lose it… no. That was not an option. "And the police? Ida, they've written off three people as 'lost to the elements.' What are we going to tell them? 'Oh, we found a glowy space Frisbee and some yeti tracks'? Come on. They won't believe us. Not without more."

She sighed, a long, weary exhalation that fogged the air between us. Her shoulders slumped slightly, the weight of my insistence, and perhaps her own burgeoning curiosity, settling on her. She fiddled with the zipper on her parka, a nervous habit. "You're right," she conceded, though her voice lacked conviction. "They'll just think we're crazy. And my parents would kill me if they knew I was up here, let alone going *further* up there." She adjusted her glasses, peering again at the map, then at the tracks, then back at the disc, which still felt subtly warm in her gloved hand. A tiny, almost imperceptible tremor ran through her, making the plastic of the map crinkle faintly.

"Look," I pressed, stepping closer, my voice softening. "We go for a bit. Just to see where they lead. If it gets too dangerous, if we can't see, we turn back. Promise. But we owe it to… to the others. To find out what happened." I didn't know why, but the words felt true, heavy with a responsibility that had nothing to do with rationality. It was a gut feeling, a cold, hard knot of conviction that had taken root the moment I saw the first glint under the ice. It was a need to understand, to pierce the shroud of winter’s mystery that had claimed so many.

She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine, weighing the risks, the madness of it all, against the pull of the unknown. I saw the struggle, the almost imperceptible flicker of her doubt. She glanced at the disc again, turning it over in her palm. The faintest shimmer of internal light, a mere ghost of a pulse, seemed to emanate from the etchings. This time, I knew I hadn't imagined it. It was a silent, ancient beacon, calling us forward. She exhaled slowly, a puff of white against the encroaching twilight. "Fine," she said, the word a grudging acceptance. "But we stick to the trail. No heroics. And you're carrying the disc. I've got the compass and the flares."

A tight knot of tension in my chest eased, replaced by a fresh surge of adrenaline. We had a plan, however reckless. We exchanged the disc for the compass, the cold metal a stark, unsettling weight in my palm. The track stretched before us, an unnatural scar across the pristine snow, leading into the deepening gloom of the ancient forest. It felt like we were crossing a threshold, stepping out of our familiar world and into something far older, far more demanding. My jacket felt heavy, suddenly insufficient against the intensified cold. The air, thick with the scent of damp moss and rotting pine needles, tasted like anticipation and fear, a bitter, metallic combination. Every muscle in my body already screamed, a premonition of the arduous trek ahead.

Ida adjusted her backpack, the sound of the straps creaking unnervingly loud in the quiet. She took a deep, fortifying breath, her gaze fixed on the indistinct path ahead. "Don't fall," she muttered, her voice tinged with a nervous humour. "I'm not carrying you back." I managed a weak smile, my lips stiff with cold. The faint glow from the disc in my hand, and the distinct, unnerving impression of a third set of tracks, pulling away from the familiar, assured me this was no longer just about finding answers. This was about finding what was *still out there*.