Chapter 58 Shadows In The Snow

• The snow had thickened overnight, blanketing Talawan’s slum outskirts in an almost unnatural stillness. Even the wind, which usually howled through narrow alleyways and battered the skeletal remains of shanties, was quiet — as if the world itself was holding its breath.
• Sergeant Elian Vargo hated this kind of silence. It wasn’t peace. It was the quiet that came just before something terrible made itself known.
• His gloved fingers tightened around his rifle as he gestured for his squad to follow. Five soldiers in white-tinged winter gear moved like ghosts through the narrow, frost-clad alleys. The call had come in an hour ago: multiple civilians missing after a feral hunt the night prior.