Frostbound Vigil

Steam-thin breath coiled around him as he pressed closer to the icy pane, trying to catch the scent of burning resin drifting from the city’s distant fires. The overturned glass at his heel bled its velvet aroma into the velvet drapes, merging with the cold air in a way that rewound him to nights when Vojta teased him with secret sigils on winter windows. Now only the carved question lingered—Where Vojta?—etched by a hand that moved quickly, urgently, as if chased by the same flames clawing through the skyline. "He left a trail only you can read," someone had whispered in the corridor behind the carved door moments earlier, their badge glinting like a quiet command. That line still tightened his pulse. He traced the frost with a knuckle, hunting for embedded patterns, ancestral marks he once dismissed as superstition. Something in the mirrored glow of moon and fire suggested the story running in reverse, as though Vojta’s departure folded time upon itself. And still, after all these signals, Vojta remained unfound.