Chapter 2: The Icy Embrace of Death

Ichika's eyes snapped open. Ice. "Where am I? Antarctica?" He stood, disoriented, in a world devoid of sky, stars, and warmth. A pale moon, anemic and distant, hung in the oppressive black expanse above. A biting wind, sharp and unforgiving, whipped across the barren landscape, its icy fingers piercing his naked flesh.

"Shit! My fingers!" Numbness, a creeping paralysis, crept into his extremities. Frostbite, a cruel and insidious thief, threatened to claim his fingers, a crippling loss in this unforgiving environment. "I need warmth, water, now." He began to walk, driven by a primal instinct for survival, conserving energy, his mind focused on the immediate necessities of self-preservation.

He walked in a straight line, guided by an inner compass he couldn't explain, a sense of direction that defied logic. "Is this what climbing a mountain without equipment is like?" he mused, a desperate attempt to distract his mind from the encroaching cold, the gnawing fear. "No, no sane person would do this. Only someone with a death wish, someone courting oblivion…"

He estimated he had walked for a minute, perhaps less than a kilometer. How far was he from his starting point? He had no way of knowing. His mind began to wander, his thoughts drifting back to the "city" he had glimpsed in his dream, a place of stark, unsettling clarity.

His journey continued, a naked struggle against the unforgiving elements, a desperate dance with death. He found no sign of civilization, no flicker of hope, only the relentless cold and the gnawing fatigue. "Ha… I want…" His breath hitched, his words failing him, his voice frozen in his throat. He looked at his hands and feet, now tinged blue, the color of impending frostbite. He could no longer feel them. He was nearing the precipice, teetering on the edge of oblivion. He had to move faster, but where?

Where could he go? "Tree! I found trees!" In this desolate wasteland, this frozen purgatory, he had stumbled upon a cluster of trees, a beacon of hope in the desolate landscape. Hope, fragile and fleeting, surged through him. He ran, ignoring the pain that screamed through his numbed limbs, the only thought in his mind the promise of shelter, the illusion of safety.

"Ha?" Reaching the trees, he found not wood, not warmth, but a black cloak, a mocking substitute for the fire he craved. "Fucker, I…" He collapsed to his knees, not in surrender, but from the sheer, bone-deep exhaustion. He dragged himself forward, driven by a primal instinct to survive, a desperate refusal to succumb.

Finally, he reached the cloak, a thin barrier against the encroaching cold. "Pant… Thank… I don't have to worry about revealing it anymore." He donned the cloak, its oversized form a minor inconvenience compared to the warmth it provided, the illusion of protection it offered. "I have to move on. Next goal: fire."

Warmth was not the ultimate goal. He couldn't afford to wait, to succumb to the seductive embrace of hypothermia. The night might last forever, a frozen eternity, or it might erupt into a fiery inferno, a different kind of torment. He didn't know. He only knew he had to keep moving, to fight against the encroaching darkness.

Further on, through the swirling snow and the oppressive silence, he encountered a colossal tree, ...a giant among the frozen sentinels. "This could be over 1000 meters tall, maybe even more!" He stared at it, expressionless, his mind numb with cold and fatigue. It was surrounded by an impenetrable fog, a veil of mystery that obscured its true nature.

"Maybe this is the world tree, or maybe just a really tall tree?" In this world of reincarnation, where the familiar rules of reality seemed to bend and break, anything seemed possible. But for now, shrouded in fog and mystery, he could only speculate, his mind grasping at straws of hope.

As he walked, or rather, as he stumbled onwards, a sense of unease settled upon him, a chilling premonition. He felt as though he was being watched, scrutinized by unseen eyes. The feeling intensified, a chilling paranoia that gnawed at his already frayed nerves, a constant whisper in the silence. "Stop thinking! Damn it!" He cursed himself for his weakness, for allowing fear to creep into his heart.

"What would others do in this situation?" He questioned his actions, his choices, as if seeking external validation in this desolate landscape. Was he on the right path? Should he even be alive? Should he have taken the cloak? He didn't know. The only certainty was the paranoia, the feeling of being hunted, a prey animal in a world of unseen predators.

"No, keep yourself together!" His mind was under siege, a battleground between his will to survive and the crushing weight of the environment, the relentless assault of the cold.

After what felt like an eternity, he stumbled upon a forest – a frozen forest, eerily still, a place where even the wind held its breath. Snow fell silently, a perpetual, unending winter. His body was nearing its absolute limits, his mind barely clinging to consciousness, a flickering candle in the face of a blizzard. He needed shelter, a respite from the relentless cold. Perhaps, if he could summon the last vestiges of his strength, he could gather wood, attempt to coax a flame from the unyielding elements.

"Haa… haa…" Exhausted, Ichika found a place to rest, a shallow alcove beneath the skeletal branches of a frozen tree. But one problem solved only revealed a multitude of others, a hydra-headed beast of survival. The wood he had gathered, a meager collection of frozen twigs, was insufficient, and his attempts to create fire by rubbing sticks together, a skill learned from half-remembered tales, failed miserably. He tried again and again, his numb fingers clumsy and unresponsive, but the wood refused to ignite, remaining stubbornly cold and lifeless. He gave up, his spirit as frozen as the world around him. Further effort seemed futile, a waste of precious energy.

His body, starved of energy, entered a state of emergency, a last-ditch attempt to preserve life. His organs began to shut down, one by one, his heart slowing to a sluggish rhythm, his breathing becoming shallow and erratic. He became like a cold-blooded animal, entering a state of torpor, but instead of hibernating, he was simply succumbing, his life force ebbing away.

Both his hands and feet were now frozen beyond saving, encased in a shell of ice and blackening flesh. He had, perhaps, two to four hours before the cold claimed him completely. Moving was no longer an option; his body refused to obey the commands of his failing mind. He fell asleep, the cloak a meager shield against the relentless cold, offering a false sense of security. Without its thin layer of protection, he would have been dead long before he reached this frozen forest.

While he was asleep, his body slowly, inexorably, shut down. And that was the moment he died. There was no grand revelation, no dramatic farewell. Just the quiet cessation of life, the extinguishing of a small flame in the vast darkness. There was nothing else, just a dead, lifeless corpse, destined to become an indefinitely frozen monument to the harshness of this new world. Well, perhaps he wouldn't rot, not in this eternal winter.

"Ahhhh!" A scream, raw and desperate, tore through the stillness of the night. The voice belonged to a child, no more than five years old. The scream, high-pitched and piercing, began to crack, the fragile vocal cords giving way under the strain. The sound abruptly ceased, the child collapsing, seemingly unconscious.

"What's wrong, Ichika?" A woman's voice, laced with panic, broke through the silence. She was not fully awake, her mind still clinging to the remnants of sleep, but she felt a sharp pain in her head, a jarring blow that had jolted her awake. It was the same boy, the reincarnated Ichika, her brother, her son. Hearing his scream, all thoughts of sleep vanished, replaced by a surge of maternal instinct.

"What's wrong, Ichika?" The woman, still disoriented, tried to get up, but in her haste, she tripped, hitting her head on the edge of the bed. Her nose began to bleed, a crimson trickle against her pale skin. But her own discomfort was secondary, insignificant compared to the fear that gripped her heart for Ichika. She scrambled to his side, her movements driven by pure instinct.

She sat down on the bed and gathered him into her arms, trying to comfort him, to soothe the terror that had gripped him. Though she had no personal experience of such things, she knew instinctively what to do, drawing on some deep well of maternal knowledge. "It's okay, Mommy's here," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. She didn't try to fully wake him, sensing that it might only exacerbate his distress. He quieted down, his cries subsiding. The warmth of her embrace, the familiar scent of his mother, calmed the storm within him.

'It seems that I have to visit the Almark tomorrow,' she thought, her mind already turning to practical solutions. She looked at her brother, so small and vulnerable at just five years old. When she was his age, she hadn't experienced such intense reactions, such terrifying nightmares. She didn't understand what had happened, what had triggered such a profound fear. She was no goddess, no powerful being, just a regular human, like her brother, like everyone else in this world.

"Mother, cold… it's cold, so blue. Mother… come… back," Ichika muttered in his sleep, his words fragmented and filled with a chilling desperation. He clung to her even tighter, his small body trembling. He was cold, not just normally cold, but shivering, his skin clammy and pale.

"It's okay, it's okay," she reassured him, her heart aching for his distress. She was eighteen years old, a young woman who had been thrust into the role of mother, a role she embraced with fierce protectiveness. She was, in every meaningful sense of the word, his mother, despite the absence of the biological connection. And who dared say a virgin could not be a mother?

She stayed awake, watching over Ichika, waiting for him to wake, not wanting to disturb him further. The nightmare, she suspected, was connected to the "God Blessing," but she had never heard of a case where the blessed experienced such terrifying dreams. Perhaps this was a consequence of the loss, the trauma of losing their parents. She believed there must be other cases, similar experiences, but perhaps they were simply unrecorded, lost to the vagaries of time. Perhaps the Almark would have some answers, though she doubted she would gain any real insight unless there was more to this than she suspected.

The sunrise, a pale and hesitant glow, crept into the bedroom, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. "The air always makes me feel fresh, am I right, honey?" she asked Ichika, who was still sleeping soundly, his face now peaceful. The light touched his face, a symbol of life, a promise of a new day.

"Aw, you caught me, mother. Good morning," Ichika mumbled, his eyes fluttering open. Yes, he felt the freshness of the air every sunrise, a small pleasure in their simple life. "Mother, what happened? Why are you on my bed?" he asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Nothing, honey. Mommy was just lonely," she replied, offering a simple explanation, hiding the fear and the sleepless night. "Are you ready to get up?" she asked, her body stiff and aching from her awkward position.