The Housemaid's Trek
MatureYou're a kitchen girl on the run, hiding a stolen artifact from the warlord's hunters—and the only way out is a mountain trek they fear to climb.
You're the housemaid who knows every secret of the glacier-cliff estate—the tunnels beneath the floors, the cook's hidden still, the lord's fear of the high passes. When a stranger hides a stolen relic in your bundle and the bloodhounds are loosed, you become the most wanted soul in the north. Hunted by trackers who know the estate better than you know yourself, you must use every servant's secret to survive a brutal ascent where avalanches, crevasses, and the warlord's own mutated war-beasts stalk your every step. But the artifact holds a power that could shatter the warlord's hold—if you can reach the fabled sanctuary on the far side of the ice. A survival-thriller of impossible choices, where every mile you climb costs a piece of your humanity.
The story begins
The shriek of iron hinges cut through the cookfire's warmth. You froze, a linen bedsheet half-folded in your arms, the stranger's stolen prize a cold, heavy heartbeat against your ribs where they'd shoved it into your laundry bundle not an hour past. Boots thundered down the stone corridor—the warlord's hounds, their barking a wet, furious chorus.
Marta appeared in the doorway, flour-dusted hands gripping her apron. Her eyes dropped to your bundle, then snapped to your face. She knew. The old woman had a hundred winters in her gaze. "The north gate," she said, her voice low and flat as a blade. "The one behind the smokehouse. It's unlatched." She stepped aside, and the hounds' baying grew louder, closer.
You had two strides to the back pantry before the first claw scrabbled against the hall tile. The wind outside howled through a crack in the wall, sharp and biting, smelling of snow and distance. Your breath fogged, and the weight of the artifact seemed to grow heavier, waiting to be claimed.
What happens next is up to you.
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