I see the ridge in a blur of white and wind. The air was so cold it felt like a memory you could taste. A flare shot up, bright orange against the gray sky, then the voices—low, almost whispering, as if they were sharing a secret. I caught a glimpse of a stone, half hidden by the snow, with a faint symbol carved into it. It felt like someone was trying to leave a mark, but the note was torn in two before we could read it. That's all I can piece together.

I don’t have the exact numbers, just a sense of it—north‑west of the ridge’s bend, where the snow thinned and the wind carried a hint of metal. The stone was about a foot wide, set in a pocket of ice. I can’t say who carved the symbol; maybe a scout from the earlier squad, or someone who was supposed to be there and didn’t. The voices were low, almost humming, like the wind itself, so I can’t place them. They could have been comrades trying to keep morale up, or maybe the echo of a message we sent out that never got a reply. We might need to dig around that spot, look for any other scraps or hidden caches that could explain the gap.