Palemon walked toward Necropolis, snow crunching beneath his boots, seeing the familiar ridges of black-and-white rock and the settlement itself, nestled in the cleft of the fork they formed, sheltered from the cruel winds.

Hundreds of crude conical huts stood alongside the occasional wooden house formed from ships’ timbers, yet the area appeared deserted. The ragged furs on the huts’ whalebone frames blew in the chill air. Mist swirled into the valley, occasionally obscuring everything before rolling back out in the next gust.

Everything was so washed with white that the scene felt hazy and unreal. A thought sparked in his consciousness; he knew for a moment that he was dreaming. But then the idea swiftly fled, replaced with a nagging worry that churned at his stomach.

Still a distance from the settlement, Palemon wondered where all the people were. He turned around to gaze in a sweeping circle. Then, as another gust cleared a section of mist, he saw a collection of figures clad in furs. Several hundred men, women, and children were assembled outside the entrance to a cave.

With a growing sense of dread, he watched the crowd, still as statues, and realized he was witnessing a funeral service. Necropolis had no timber to make pyres, and at this time of year the ocean was frozen for miles in every direction. When one of Palemon’s people journeyed to the next life, his or her body was carried deep within these frozen tombs. Snow was packed around the pale corpse, eventually to harden into ice.

Palemon started striding toward the crowd. Squinting into the mist as he approached, he could now see the cavern’s wide mouth, as well as the sad faces of the people staring down at the ground. They were only a stone’s throw away, but even as he lifted one foot and then the other, struggling to walk more briskly, the sinking ground underfoot kept slowing him down. He looked at his feet and found that with every step he was plummeting deep into the snow, forcing him to lift his boots ever higher. The quicker he tried to walk, the more he sank.

His heart hammered in his chest as he tried to call out, but he was robbed of breath, barely managing a choking croak. Instead he looked at the scrawny women, still and silent, the marks of tears cutting through the grime on their cheeks. He saw children standing alone, looking numb and pale. Strong men trembled, faces filled with anguish. Where there should have been people in groups, they instead stood in ones and twos: husbands without wives, parents without children, few of the elderly at all.