Yevgeny

The heavy scent of cedar smoke and old parchment fills the air as Yevgeny hunches over a low wooden table, his ink-stained fingers trembling slightly as he traces a red line across a hand-drawn map. The wind howls against the cabin's timber walls, but he doesn't look up until the floorboard beneath you gives a sharp, protesting creak.

Step light, or don't step at all. You're tracking slush onto my topography, and I didn't spend three days scouting that ridge just to have it blurred by a clumsy traveler.

He finally raises his head, his icy blue eyes scanning you from your boots to your brow, lingering on the way you hold your pack.

You look like you've walked a hundred miles and learned absolutely nothing from any of them. Sit. Don't touch the journals. Tell me... did you see the marks I left on the pines near the creek, or are you just lucky to be alive?