The tunnel split in two like a wound.
Evin stood at the fork, the lantern trembling in his grip. The left tunnel whispered — faint voices, murmured syllables, fragmented sobs. His name. Rell's voice, thin as paper. Someone else crying. Words he couldn't make out.
The right tunnel was silent.
Silent and cold.
So cold his breath fogged instantly, white mist curling into the air.
The old man's words echoed in Evin's mind:
"Follow the cold. Not the echoes."
He swallowed, throat tight, and turned right.
The cold hit him in a slow wave, not sharp but blooming deep under his skin. His joints ached almost instantly. Frost filmed the walls. The floor shimmered with thin ice that cracked under his boots with a delicate crunch.
The remnants shifted uneasily inside him, whispering in overlapping fragments.
Deep.
Wrong.
Cold that remembers.
Turn back.
The last words weren't their voice. They were too soft. Too familiar.
Evin froze.
"Rell?"
Only silence answered.
He clenched his fists around the lantern handle — hard enough that the metal dug into his skin.
"No," he muttered. "Not you. Not real."
The cold tunnel swallowed his voice.
It didn't echo.
Didn't carry.
It just died in the air.
He moved forward.
The walls sweat condensation that froze instantly, forming delicate webs of frost that spread like veins. The lantern's flame shrank into a tighter, colder glow, burning not bright yellow but pale blue around the edges.
His breath rasped in the narrow corridor.
The remnants muttered like restless sleep.
Not safe.
Not empty.
He walked here.
Evin frowned.
"He?" he whispered.
The remnants didn't clarify. They rarely did unless it was already too late.
He kept walking.
The cold deepened with every step until it hurt to breathe. His fingers numbed around the lantern handle. He rubbed his free hand against his cloak, but it did nothing.
His shadow behaved strangely, stretching ahead as if dragged forward by something he couldn't see. When Evin stopped, his shadow kept moving for a heartbeat — then snapped back into place like a rubber band pulled too tight.
"Stop that," he whispered.
The shadow twisted around his feet, as if in apology.
Or fear.
He wasn't sure anymore.
The cold path curved sharply and brought him alongside a thin crack in the wall. Faint light — not lantern light, but something sickly and shimmering — seeped through the fissure.
And from the crack came sound.
Sobbing.
Real sobbing.
Wet, broken, human.
Evin's throat closed.
"Rell…?"
No answer. But the sobbing rose into a familiar cadence — the same way Rell had cried quietly, trying not to wake him when they hid in the catacombs and Rell thought Evin wasn't listening.
Evin stepped toward the crack.
The remnants shrieked at him.
NO.
NOT HIM.
FAKE.
STAY COLD.
Evin staggered back, gasping.
His hand flew to his temple.
The voice in the crack changed.
Shifted.
Became higher-pitched, then lower, then fractured like bone under pressure.
His own voice came from the crack next.
"Help me."
Evin bit down hard enough on his tongue to taste blood.
"No," he whispered fiercely. "You don't get to use my voice. You don't get to use him. Not this time."
The crack went silent immediately.
Too immediately.
As if the thing behind the wall realized it had been caught.
Evin shook violently and forced himself down the cold path again.
The tunnel dipped.
The temperature dropped sharply enough that his teeth hurt. Frost coated his cloak. His boots crunched through patches of ice. The air turned thin — like breathing inside a glass jar.
His vision blurred briefly.
Walls bent.
The ceiling seemed to dip and rise in waves.
He blinked hard and the distortions faded — mostly.
He kept walking, but the tunnel seemed to change shape around him. Sometimes he was sure the floor slanted upward… only to find he was still descending. Sometimes the walls felt close enough to brush his sleeves… then widened into vast empty space.
None of it stayed constant.
His breath fogged and swirled in strange patterns, drifting sideways instead of up.
His head throbbed.
"Get it together," he whispered.
The cold didn't answer.
He saw the old man's signs again:
a chalk slash on the wall
a worn scrap of cloth tied to a protruding root
footprints in the frost
The footprints were recent — edges sharp, not softened by falling frost.
Evin knelt, studying them.
They were small, light, not deep enough for a healthy adult.
But then again — the old man was half bone.
"This is the right way," Evin murmured to himself. "Has to be."
He forced himself onward.
The tunnel opened into a chamber of ice.
A wide space covered in pale-blue crystals and frozen pools. Stalactites dripped water that froze before hitting the ground, forming long, delicate spears.
Evin stepped inside and immediately felt watched.
Not by shadows.
Not by voices.
By the cold itself.
As if the air had eyes.
His lantern flickered wildly, throwing fractured shapes across the chamber. His shadow stretched in all directions at once, multiplying and then collapsing into one.
"Not normal," he whispered.
The remnants hissed.
MOVE.
He froze.
"What—?"
MOVE!
He jumped sideways just as a huge slab of ice cracked from the ceiling and crashed to the floor where he'd been standing. The impact sent shards flying into the walls and sent a shockwave through the chamber.
Evin stumbled backward, nearly falling.
"Thanks," he muttered breathlessly.
The remnants didn't respond.
He skirted around the fallen ice sheet and hurried toward the opposite exit where the old man's footprints continued. His boots slid across the frost. The chamber groaned above him as more ice shifted.
"Hurry," he whispered to himself. "Hurry—"
He reached the narrow passage just as another crack echoed overhead. He dove through. The moment his foot left the chamber floor, the entire ceiling gave way.
The tunnel behind him collapsed.
Ice crashed down, sealing the chamber entirely.
If he'd hesitated even a second—
he'd be buried alive.
Evin braced himself against the wall, chest heaving, lantern dimming to a tiny flame.
"No going back," he whispered.
The remnants murmured in agreement.
The passage narrowed again, colder than ever. Evin's fingers burned with numbness. His breath rasped painfully. Frost clung to his eyelashes.
He leaned on the wall to steady himself, head spinning.
Silence pressed against his ears.
Then something broke it.
A faint mechanical sound from far below.
clack… clack… clack…
Like gears turning.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Endless.
Evin swallowed hard.
"What is that…?"
The remnants whispered:
Not him.
Not her.
Not alive.
His stomach twisted.
The cold wasn't just cold.
It was hiding something.
Something ancient.
Something that moved.
Evin lifted the lantern again — and stepped forward into the deeper dark.