The shelter Fenris made was only just enough to survive the snowstorm. He fashioned it from a series of pine trees, stripping leaves with his hatchet and layering them over the half-triangle of long, straight branches. By nightfall his clothes were peppered with snow, wet from sleet, but at least he had a dry place to rest his head. The fire took him an awfully long time to, pointless as it was for he knew it would dwindle in an hour or two.

The quiet glade he’d settled in held no wolves, nor bears, nor anything else that could harm him, but still he felt uneasy. It was in a small wood a few miles north of the town, a place Fenris knew well; for it was the place where he’d been left to die as a baby.

Of course he did not remember it, but it was the normal procedure for an etched child born into the Northern Haunts. Fenris supposed he’d met each tree before, that they’d watched over him with their spindly branches and thin trunks; that they’d whispered lullabies to him for the day or so he’d laid there, swaddled in blankets and waiting to die. This place was supposed to be his tomb. But here he was, alive and walking towards an even crueler fate.

Now fourteen, he’d been out into the wilderness more times than he could count. This too was customary for boys of the Northern Haunts. First at eight years old, then once a year until the final trials. At first there was always terror. It was the fear of having to go without warmth or kin, subject only to the whims of the elements. But once he'd built the shelter, one the fire crackled and the sun slipped down over the horizon, Fenris felt at peace.

And yet, that night—as the snowstorm came, shifted, and slackened to reveal the yawning cosmos above—Fenris had only one thing on his mind.

The frost giant. The death sentence. How funny the other boys would find it when he did not come home.

Very few parents decided to keep an etched child. It was an abnormality known to create lives of pain and suffering. Etched children were bound to end up wrong, dead or evil. The runes on his body marked him as a boy tainted by dark magic. Fenris’ mother had always told him that the runes—especially in the dark, where they glowed a clear, vibrant blue—were beautiful, that they made him special from all the other boys who wanted to be warriors, but Fenris never believed it. They had no obvious use, so far as he could tell, and did nothing but make him a worse hunter and ridiculed by all those around him.

He slept only for a few hours, but it was long enough for a dream to visit him. The dream was a memory. He’d been very small at the time, walking the mountains with his mother. Back then it had felt impossible to keep up with the long strides of a grown woman, but he knew better than to complain for even the smallest of whimpers would mean a cuff around the ears. There had been a snowstorm like the one he currently slept through; sweeping gusts of wind to disperse the veils of snow. Mother and son walked back to their small camp on what was to be the last night before they returned home. Fenris wanted to stay out a little longer, in search of the caribou they’d been tracking that day, but his Mother had been fierce in her warning.

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“When a snowstorm comes you run from it,” she said. “Meet it head on and you are likely to meet your end.

So they walked back through the mountain pass, between the twins—so they were called—the path thick with snow. They were almost back at camp when they heard a sudden rumble of thunder. Fenris looked to the sky but soon enough his mother grabbed the neck of his pelt and pulled him along.

“Don’t make a sound,” she whispered in his ear. “You don’t say a single word, Fenris.”

He wanted to ask her why, but the warning was severe enough that he allowed himself to be pulled along as two more rumbles of thunder sounded. After that they carried on in a rhythmic motion. It wasn’t until Fenris lost his footing and sat down in the snow that he realised it was not thunder at all. He looked into the mountain pass, where a shadowy figure approached. He could only see the outline, only just, and was about to peer closer when his Mother picked him up and started off in the opposite direction. Fenris did not say a word until they were back in the tent, taking shelter; he did not dare.

“Mother,” he whispered. “What was that out there in the snow?”

He saw her gulp for the first and last time of his life.

“That was a frost giant,” she said. “I have never seen one so close to home before.”

“We should tell the warriors,” said Fenris. “When we get back to the village! They can send a hunting party out to slay it!”

His mother only laughed, keeping her voice very low. “Going after a frost giant is not a thing to take lightly. There was once a time where they ruled these mountains, and each one we killed came at a price.”

“What price?”

“A price of blood.”

It was something Fenris would never forget. His mother was always such a strong woman, such a good hunter, and yet the mere outline of that tall, humanoid figure had caused her to run. Children of the Northern Haunts knew well enough that there were monsters up in the frozen wastes, but to see one so close to their town was unthinkable.

On that last night of their hunting trip he’d slept restlessly, imagining what would have happened should the frost giant find their tent. He’d think of it for many nights to come.