The white silence of the city was overwhelming. Between the frozen towers and skeletal ruins, Ashfall and Calethia moved like insects across a canvas of endless snow, their footsteps muffled, their breaths steaming in the air. The skyscrapers loomed over them, most cracked and half collapsed.
It was while crossing the wide, six-lane road that the first sound of danger revealed itself. It wasn't a roar, not a scream, but the dull thunder of concrete breaking under its own weight. A chunk of a building, maybe ten stories above them, slid free from its frozen skeleton and crashed into the snow just ahead, sending up a wave of icy dust that rolled toward them.
Both of them froze, staring at the pile of debris still trembling from the impact.
"Guess we're not the only ones moving here," Ashfall muttered, his eyes scanning the silent windows above.
Calethia shifted uneasily, her breath visible in the frigid air. "The wind can't pull down pieces like that. Something must be up there..."
He followed her gaze, every window like a black eye staring back at him. His gut twisted, the same instinct that had saved him more times than he could count. Something unseen was moving between the towers. It was too quiet and too deliberate to be a storm.
They walked further, but the unease didn't fade. It crawled under his skin, every hair on his neck stiff. When the silence grew too loud, Ashfall finally broke it.
"Let's take cover in there," he said, nodding toward a high-rise whose ground floor still seemed intact. "Better to know what's hunting us than to wait for it in the open."
Calethia hesitated but followed. The glass doors were long gone, shattered across the floor, and the lobby greeted them with nothing but shadows.
Inside, the air was no warmer, no safer. It was like stepping into the lungs of a corpse; cold, stale, and suffocating. Snow had drifted through broken windows and cracks in the walls, scattering pale light across the ruined furniture. The silence was even heavier here, each step echoing against the vast emptiness.
"Feels like walking into a grave," Ashfall whispered.
"Feels like it's been one for a long time," Calethia replied softly, her voice strained as her eyes swept over the room.
They searched cautiously, relying only on the dull glow of ice, because they had no flashlights. A collapsed staircase blocked the way upward, steel and concrete bent into unnatural shapes. The elevators were nothing but gaping holes, black voids dropping into endless dark.
"Guess we're stuck with the first floor," Ashfall muttered.
"Not much of a choice," Calethia agreed.
They moved through the corridors, opening doors one by one, the crunch of frozen carpet beneath their boots. Offices, storage rooms, a cafeteria: each space was littered with relics of a time long gone. Coffee mugs frozen mid-spill, papers scattered like autumn leaves, chairs overturned as though people had stood up in panic and never returned.
Ashfall stopped in the doorway of what had once been a break room. The skeletons were slumped over tables, hands still clutching pens, food trays, or nothing at all. Ice glazed their bones, giving them the look of statues abandoned mid-action.
Calethia exhaled slowly, her breath trembling. "They… they froze like this. As if time itself just stopped."
Ashfall stared for a moment too long. A part of him wanted to feel disgust, grief, even pity, but instead he just felt hollow. Death had long since become an echo in this world, and these people were only another verse in a song he couldn't stand anymore.
"Doesn't matter how they died," he said flatly, though his voice betrayed a flicker of unease. "What matters is that we don't end up like them."
Calethia turned to him, her expression unreadable. "You ever wonder why all this is happening?"
The question lingered. He had asked himself the same thing too many times, and each time the answer twisted in his chest like a knife.
"Every day," he admitted quietly. "And I hate the answers I come up with."
They moved on, but the silence pressed heavier against their ears. No rats, no insects, no Mythbornes; not even the faintest sign of life. It was wrong. Worlds touched by the Clock of Apocalypse were supposed to swarm with monsters and madness. But here… here the city was frozen, empty, almost untouched except by time.
Before Ashfall could dwell on the thought, the world shifted.
A low, vibrating sound echoed through the walls, shaking the ice, rattling the bones in their bodies. He recognized it instantly. The second toll.
The Clock of Apocalypse struck two.
The sound pierced their skulls, deeper than hearing, as if the whole world itself was groaning. Ashfall gritted his teeth and clamped his hands over his ears, but the vibration still cut through bone and blood, threatening to split him in two.
Calethia did the same, stumbling against the wall, her face pale with pain.
The toll lasted only moments, but its effect lingered. The ceiling groaned above them, cracks spreading like veins across the plaster. Dust rained down.
"We need to get out of here!" Ashfall shouted.
They sprinted through the hallway as the building roared behind them. Ceiling tiles and beams crashed to the floor, each step threatening to be their last. When a support column snapped, the ground shuddered, throwing both of them off balance.
"Up there!" Calethia cried, pointing to a window half-buried in ice.
Ashfall didn't think. He lowered his shoulder and rammed into the frozen frame until it shattered outward, shards of glass scattering into the snow. Without hesitation, he climbed through and leapt, landing hard in the snowbank outside. Calethia followed a heartbeat later, rolling to her feet just as the upper floor collapsed behind them with a thunderous roar.
They scrambled back, panting, as the skyscraper groaned like a dying beast. Floor after floor gave way, crashing down with a sound that shook the street. But somehow, the skeleton of the building remained standing, a fractured husk refusing to die completely.
Ashfall wiped the snow from his face, his breath coming in ragged clouds. He turned to Calethia, who leaned against a rusted car, her chest heaving.
"Still think hiding inside was the smart choice?" she asked bitterly, though there was no true anger in her voice.
"Better than waiting out here to get crushed," he snapped back, though part of him knew she was right.
The moment stretched, silence creeping back in, when a new sound shattered it completely. A whistling, sharp and sudden.
Ashfall's instincts screamed, and he shoved Calethia aside as something massive plummeted from above. The snow exploded as a rusted car slammed into the ground where they had stood, metal twisting, glass shattering. The blast of air and ice knocked him to his knees.
"What the hell..." he started, but froze as his eyes followed the trail upward.
High above, at the jagged edge of the skyscraper's broken roof, a shadow had moved. A figure—or something worse—peering down at them for a split second before retreating into the ruins.
Ashfall's heart hammered against his ribs. Whoever—or whatever—that was, it wasn't random. Someone had thrown that car. Someone was watching them.
Calethia's eyes were wide as she followed his gaze. "Did you see it?" she whispered.
"Yeah," Ashfall said, his jaw tight, his fists clenching at his sides. "And I've got a bad feeling about that."
The silence returned, heavy as the snow around them. But now it was different; more like a suffocating waiting.
For the first time since stepping into the city, Ashfall realized the truth: they weren't alone here.