The cold bit into his bones, deeper than flesh, deeper than thought. He trudged. Or rather, dragged himself through the fury of the elements. Every shift of weight onto his left leg reverberated as a dull, heavy thud in his hip joint, twisting his torso in a spasm. His left arm hung lifelessly at his side – a dead, alien appendage, feeling neither the stinging blows of snow nor its own weight. Only a deep, phantom numbness, as if the limb were encased in permafrost.
White. Endless, furious white. The blizzard didn't whistle – it howled with a thousand icy voices, plastering his face, forcing itself into his mouth and nostrils, trying to steal the last scraps of warmth. He mechanically scraped the back of his right hand across his face, clearing the icy crust from his one seeing eye – the left one, the color of damp, filthy ice. Opposite it, beneath a deep, crimson scar that crossed his forehead and descended to his cheekbone, gaped emptiness. The right eye was just a murky, gray sphere, devoid of light or purposeful gaze, forever staring into nothingness. His hair, once perhaps colored, was now white as ground bone, cropped short but matted with sweat, blood, and frozen ice. His face, no older than thirty, was etched with wrinkles of exhaustion and pain, weathered to bloody cracks framing thin, bloodless lips. Beneath the torn, dark-stained, frozen jacket, the unnatural hollow of his ribs, bound in filthy rags, was visible.
He threw his head back, trying to pierce the snow-laden air. Above him – only impenetrable, heavy gloom. Bottomless and absolute. Not a single star.
A thought pierced his consciousness, sharp as an ice needle. 'Empty... Utterly empty. Not a glimmer. Not a hope. So... it's over. Everything. Only I remain... alone. In all this... icy void.' Loneliness, vast and unthinkable, crashed down with a weight like that snow-capped mountain looming somewhere hundreds of kilometers ahead. 'The last one. Like the last leaf on a dead tree. Only the tree... is the whole world.' The mountain. Why had he been heading towards it? Purpose had dissolved in the fog of past... years? Seasons? Time that had lost all meaning. He had simply survived. Roamed the ruins of a world that had been dying slowly even before him. Without a plan. Without hope. 'Ate what I found. Slept where I fell. Ran... always ran... From Them. From hunger. From the cold. From myself... From memory...' Memory was dim, like that blind eye, a streak of pain and loss too agonizing to contemplate. He simply existed. Breathed. Walked. Because to stop... meant to surrender. And he... walked.
Crimson. On the blindingly white shroud of earth, each agonizing step left behind distinct, screaming imprints. Bright crimson. Blood. His blood, slowly seeping from wounds beneath the bandage-soaked chest, from his shattered leg, mingled with the trampled snow, forming ruby trails. Trails of evidence, leading straight to him.
He stumbled. Not over a stone – over his own wasted shadow. He crashed face-first into a snowdrift. The cold burned his skin like fire. He lay there, unable to rise immediately, breath rattling in his throat, each inhale a ragged groan tearing at broken ribs from within. 'Ribs... again... Every time...' Hunger and thirst, his two eternal companions, seized his throat in a spasm. Thirst. It burned, parched, turned his tongue to leather. He turned his head, opened his mouth, and buried his lips in the snow beside his face. He didn't drink it – he ate it, ravenously, wildly, gulping harsh crystals, choking on icy grit. It melted in his mouth, offering illusory moisture, instantly mixing with warm, salty fluid. He coughed – a wrenching, agonizing cough – and a new crimson pattern bloomed on the white snow before his face. Pain twisted him, squeezing out tears that froze instantly on his cheeks.
'Get up...' hissed through his mind, a faint echo of a fading will. 'Must... get up...'
But his bones felt like lead, his muscles like wet rags. Exhaustion was total. It lived in every cell, every breath, every beat of his wounded heart. It was heavier than all this snow. 'So long... So long I've just... walked...' Where? Why? Questions without answers. Survival for survival's sake. Emptiness.
And then, through the all-consuming howl of the wind, it broke through. First as a distant, distorted echo, then clearer, sharper. Shrieks. Unhuman. Piercing, like the shriek of tearing metal, full of insatiable hunger and primal fury. Growling. Muffled, gurgling, as if from a thousand throats at once. Them.
He froze. Pressed his cheek to the icy bed. The sounds grew, multiplied, overlapped. Shrieks turned into a shrill chorus, growling into a solid, swelling roar that vibrated in the frozen ground, resonated in his bones. They were coming. Following his bloody markers. Drawn by the heat of his agony.
They were closing in. With inhuman speed. The sounds weren't just audible now – they crashed in from all sides, merging with the storm's howl into a single, soul-freezing anthem of pursuit. Roars, screeches, the pounding of countless feet breaking the snow crust – it all condensed, tightening the ring. He couldn't see them in the snow-blur and pitch darkness. Only heard. Felt their stench – coppery, rotten – even through the snow. Sensed the vibration of their approach with his entire wounded being.