POV: Ava
The cold didn't just settle against my skin. It moved through it, past muscle and bone, reaching for something deeper, something essential, as though it intended to hollow me out entirely and fill the space with itself. Standing on the threshold of the Harrow Steel Mill, I understood for the first time what people meant when they said a place had no soul. The darkness beyond the entrance didn't simply lack light. It actively consumed it.
The massive front door yawned open behind me, and the spotlight still burned at my back, and I stood between the two like something that hadn't yet decided what it was. I could feel the weight of the hunting knife against my hip, the stag-horn handle pressing into my palm with a familiar, grounding solidity. I had carried it the entire walk here. It had been the one concrete thing, the one piece of the plan that still existed in my hand rather than only in theory.
