KamiKowa: That Time I Got Transmigrated With A Broken Goddess

Xavier studied the faces around him one more time, feeling the weight of their trust settle on his shoulders like fresh snow. The wind carried that strange mix of smoke and something else—something that made his skin prickle despite the heavy coat.

"We go through," he said finally. "But we do it smart. Single file behind the wagons, weapons ready, and if anyone sees something that doesn't feel right, we stop."

Dalen nodded slowly. "Right then. Mount up, everyone. Stay close to the wagons."

As the group prepared to move, Ashley stepped closer to Xavier, her crossbow already loaded. "You feel it too, don't you?"

"Feel what?"

"That wrongness in the air. Like the cold isn't just weather anymore."

Xavier glanced toward the distant smoke columns, now barely visible through the increasing snowfall. His headache had shifted, the constant pull toward Hearthome now mixed with something else—a pressure behind his eyes that made him want to look anywhere except ahead.

"Yeah. I feel it."

Naomi appeared at his other side, her purple hair already collecting snowflakes. "So we're really doing this? Walking toward the obviously cursed village?"

"You voted for it too," Ashley pointed out.

"I voted for getting to Hearthome alive. This just happens to be the fastest route."

Xavier swung up onto Smoke's back, the gray gelding snorting and pawing at the snow-covered ground. "Stay between us and the wagons. If something happens, you get behind the heaviest cover you can find."

The caravan started moving again, the three wagons creaking through the deepening snow. Xavier rode point with Ashley, while Naomi stayed close to the middle wagon where Marta and Henrik kept their crossbows ready. The other survivors spread out in a loose formation, everyone's eyes scanning the treeline.

The smell grew stronger as they traveled. Smoke, yes, but underneath it something sharp and metallic that made Xavier's teeth ache. The wind had died to almost nothing, making the crunch of snow under hooves, the squeak of wagon wheels, someone's nervous cough seem brutally loud.

"Temperature's dropping," Ashley said quietly. Her breath came out in thick clouds that dissipated slowly, as if the air itself was reluctant to move.

Xavier checked his hands. Even through thick gloves, his fingers felt stiff. Smoke's ears kept swiveling forward, then back, then forward again, like the horse couldn't decide where the danger was coming from.

"How much further?" Naomi called from behind them.

"Quarter mile, maybe less," Gareth answered from his position near the lead wagon. The scout's weathered face looked pale above his beard. "Should be able to see the first houses soon."

They crested a small rise, and Xavier felt his breath catch.

Below, the village's familiar shapes—houses, a mill, a small temple—were rendered alien, suffocating inside a shell of ice so thick and opaque it looked like clouded glass.

And the smoke wasn't coming from chimneys or burning buildings. It rose from objects frozen mid-flame—a cart that had been on fire when the ice claimed it, wisps of black vapor seeping through cracks in the frozen shell. A barn door hung open, revealing hay bales that glowed dull red inside their icy prison.

"Mother of flames," Dalen whispered. "What happened here?"

"Flash freeze," Ashley said, her voice tight. "Instantaneous. But this isn't natural sublimation... this is Essentia. High-tier..."

Naomi rode up beside them. "Do you have any idea what a perfectly preserved village would be worth to the right collector? The artifacts alone—" She stopped, shaking her head. "Sorry. I babble about money when I'm terrified."

"At least you're honest about it," Xavier said, though his own voice sounded strange in the dead quiet.

Because that was the worst part. The silence. No birds called from the frozen trees. No wind stirred the icicles hanging from the eaves. Even their own voices seemed muffled, as if the air itself had thickened into something that didn't want to carry sound.

"We could still turn back," Henrik said from the second wagon. "Circle around through the forest."

Xavier studied the village below. The road ran straight through the center, past what looked like a market square. If they moved fast, stayed together, they could be through in twenty minutes. If they turned back now, they'd lose half a day finding another route, and they'd still have to wonder what had destroyed this place.

More importantly, whatever had done this was still active. The ice was fresh, maybe hours old. If they were going to encounter it anyway, better to do it now when they could see what they were dealing with.

"We go through," Xavier decided. "Fast and quiet. Nobody touches anything, nobody stops to look around. Straight down the main road and out the other side."

As the caravan descended into the village, the air grew heavy, pressing in on them. The ice covering the buildings was perfectly smooth, as if it had formed all at once rather than accumulated over time. Through the cloudy surface, Xavier could make out shapes—furniture, tools, even what looked like a cat frozen mid-leap from a windowsill.

"Where are the people?" Marta asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Marta's question echoed Xavier's own search. His eyes swept the village again, hunting for bodies, for the familiar chaos of a massacre. He found nothing. No blood staining the ice, no doors kicked from their hinges. Just... absence. As if everyone had been erased between one moment and the next.

"Maybe they evacuated," Naomi suggested, though she didn't sound convinced.

"Evacuation doesn't explain this," Ashley said, gesturing at a water trough that had been frozen solid with ice spilling over the sides like a waterfall caught mid-flow.

They reached the main street, their horses' hooves ringing against cobblestones that were slick with a thin layer of ice. The buildings pressed in on both sides, their frozen windows like dead eyes watching the caravan pass. Xavier's headache was getting worse, the pull toward Hearthome now twisted into something that felt more like a warning.

"Look at the patterns," Ashley said suddenly.

Xavier followed her gaze and saw what she meant. The ice wasn't random. It flowed in spirals and whorls, as if it had been shaped by some intelligence rather than natural forces. On one building, the frozen coating formed what almost looked like writing in a language Xavier didn't recognize.

They entered the market square, and Xavier felt Smoke tense beneath him. The horse's ears flattened against his head, and he started sidestepping, clearly wanting to turn back the way they'd come.

"Easy, boy," Xavier murmured, but his own nerves were stretched tight. The square was a perfect circle of cobblestones surrounded by shops and houses, all encased in that same ice. Market stalls stood frozen in place, their goods preserved under layers of cloudy crystal.

And in the center of the square, sitting motionless on a throne carved from jagged ice and frozen rubble, was something that made Xavier's blood turn cold.

The figure was massive—fifteen feet tall at least, with the proportions of a man but built from bones and shadow. Its armor was tattered robes that might once have been white but now hung in frozen shreds around a skeletal frame. Where its head should be was a helmet of solid ice, smooth and featureless except for two dark hollows where eyes might have been.

Across its lap lay a greatsword longer than Xavier was tall, its blade black as midnight and covered in frost that never melted.

It wasn't breathing—if it even had need of breath. It sat like a statue carved from nightmare, unmoving and utterly wrong.

"Everyone stop," Xavier said quietly, but his voice carried clearly in the unnatural silence.

The caravan came to a halt, horses shifting nervously and people staring at the figure on the ice throne. For a long moment, nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even the smoke from the frozen fires seemed to hang motionless in the air.

"Is it dead?" someone whispered.

Xavier studied the figure, his combat senses screaming contradictory warnings. It wasn't moving, but it wasn't dead either. Dead things felt empty. This thing felt like a coiled spring, like potential energy waiting for the right moment to unleash itself.

"No," he said finally. "It's waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Ashley asked, her crossbow trained on the motionless figure.

Xavier's headache spiked, and for a moment the world seemed to spin around him. The pull toward Hearthome twisted into something else—recognition, maybe, or inevitability.

"For us," he said.

As if in answer, the figure's head turned. The sound was a hideous grind of ice on bone. Hollow sockets locked onto Xavier. And in his mind, he felt a touch—cold, alien, and utterly aware.

The thing that had destroyed the village had never left.

And now it knew they were here.