An elderly woman spent the whole summer and autumn fixing sharp wooden stakes across her roof. Neighbors were convinced she’d lost her sanity… until winter finally arrived

clear path into the village.

He had given the phenomenon a name:

Vortex wind.

The villagers had never heard of it.

But Thomas had spent years studying the possibility.

He believed the valley was becoming more vulnerable with every tree that disappeared from the North Forest.

The storm that had just destroyed so many homes was not a coincidence.

It was a warning.

And Mrs. Gable’s strange roof had been Thomas’s answer to it.

She hadn’t been building a fortress