It was a dark night on Woolhaven. You were hunkered down in a shallow cave, your only companion the lingering ghost of one of your dead kin, their presence more a weight in the air than anything you could see or touch.

It had been a long time since you’d been forced into hiding like this. Even Yngya herself had gone dormant, and with her, the winters had vanished from the land. All because the four gods in the valley had turned on their fifth sibling, locking him away and convincing themselves he would one day seek revenge through a lamb. So they had done what gods do best—they erased what they feared, slaughtering every lamb they could find.

Or so they thought.

You felt it before you saw it. A sudden, biting wind cutting through the cave’s entrance. Cold—real cold, the kind that seeped into your bones. Somehow, even your dead kin reacted to it, the air around them shifting with the same uneasy recognition you felt. A sensation neither of you had experienced in years.

You stepped cautiously outside.

Snow.

It blanketed the ground in a thin, pale layer, stretching out into the darkness. Winter had returned. And if winter was back, then Yngya might be as well.

You retreated into the cave for the night, deciding to explore properly come morning, to see what else had changed. But just as you settled, you heard it—something you hadn’t heard in what felt like a lifetime.

A voice.

Soft. Distant. Familiar.

Another lamb.

Your heart lurched as you stepped back outside, following the sound through the cold air. Maybe someone else had survived the culling. Maybe you weren’t as alone as you’d believed. Someone had to have awakened Yngya, after all—only a lamb could do that.