The Door

The other officers heard what he said and then exclaimed, "What the hell are you talking about?" Their voices were a mix of skepticism and unease, echoing in the confined underground space as they crowded around the window, peering out into the impossible scene.

Suddenly, a cold breeze grazed their faces, cutting through the stale air like a knife, making them shiver uncontrollably, their breaths visible in the sudden chill. Goosebumps rose on their skin, the unnatural frost seeping into their bones despite the reinforced walls that had once felt secure.

Kai approached to check, pushing past them with a growing sense of dread, and as he saw it, he froze in disbelief. Snowflakes swirled lazily from the darkened sky, blanketing the ruined landscape in a pristine white layer that mocked the calendar—this was supposed to be the middle of summer, a time of sweltering heat and relentless sun, not this frozen nightmare.

The officers turned to him, their eyes wide with expectation, looking at him as if he knew what was going on, as if his supposed "Awakened" status made him an oracle in this madness. Overwhelmed by their stares, Kai tried to step backward, his foot catching on a loose cable, and he tripped and fell hard, the impact jarring his spine. Boom—another sound thundered nearby, a deep, resonant explosion that rattled the station's foundations and sent dust sifting from the ceiling.

Suddenly, they noticed something upward, a massive silhouette blotting out the swirling clouds. It looked like a square at first, but with edges even where a square shouldn't have them—jagged, irregular protrusions that defied geometry. "No, it has edges even where a square doesn't... Uh, is that a big fish? I think they called it a stingray," one officer stammered, squinting against the flurry. It did look like it, a vast, flattened form gliding through the air with eerie grace, but then they saw it had two massive legs dangling at its sides, useless appendages that seemed just for decoration, swaying limply as it soared.

The creature made a loud noise, a guttural roar that vibrated through their chests, and shot something so fast they didn't notice until it landed—a projectile of pure ice that exploded on impact, freezing everything in the vicinity in a crystalline prison, the ground crackling with frost that spread like a living thing.

One of the officers then said, his teeth chattering, "We need to leave this place right now, or we'll get frozen to death like that." He pointed to the iced-over remnants outside, where shapes—perhaps people or debris—were entombed in glittering tombs.

As they said that, they looked at Kai, urgency etched in their faces. "Awakened, help us—let's leave here right now!"

Kai was terrified, his heart pounding like a drum in his ears, the cold seeping into his soul as much as his body. He quickly realized he really needed to lock into reality and must survive, shaking off the numbness that had gripped him since the Rumbling began, forcing himself to focus on the raw instinct to endure.

They quickly packed some guns, grabbing rifles and pistols from the armory racks with frantic hands, and piled into their jeep, the engine roaring to life amid the growing storm. As they started driving, tires crunching over the fresh snow, the cold intensified, the wind howling like a beast in pursuit, but the flying creature was still getting closer, its shadow looming larger on the horizon.

Suddenly, they hit a beast—a mid-sized horror that lunged from the drifts, its body a twisted amalgamation of fur and frost—and crashed the jeep, metal screeching as it flipped onto its side in a spray of snow and sparks. They scrambled out, coughing and bruised, but the driver was dead, impaled by a giant rod that had speared through the windshield, his blood freezing in crimson rivulets.

Panic erupted, and they started running in different directions, scattering like leaves in the wind, each man driven by blind survival as the snow whipped around them.

Kai ran as fast as he could, his legs pumping through the deepening drifts, breath burning in his lungs, the cold nipping at his heels like invisible predators. As he ran and ran, pushing past exhaustion, he suddenly saw something in front of him—a shadowy, ethereal mist swirling in the air, forming what looked like a door made of shadow mist, tendrils of darkness curling invitingly yet ominously.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do, his mind racing with terror—wondering if this was something that would kill him or give him the powers people had been talking about, the elusive gifts that turned ordinary folk into warriors against the apocalypse.

While thinking, he saw ice coming toward him at incredible speed, a glacial wave surging from the creature's direction, freezing the ground in its path with lethal efficiency. Desperate, he lunged halfway inside the door, the shadowy mist enveloping him like a cold embrace. But the ice had already gotten to half of him, encasing his lower body in a numbing tomb, while the other half phased through the portal.

He felt himself phase in and out of reality, a torturous limbo where existence flickered like a dying flame—the ice keeping him trapped, trying to kill him with its unrelenting grip, but he couldn't fully die as half of him was still inside the door, anchored to some otherworldly force. He kept phasing in and out nonstop, and whenever he phased back to life, he was in agonizing pain, his nerves screaming from the frostbite that burned like fire, his flesh cracking and blackening in the brief moments of awareness.

His mind had nothing but pain from the frostbite, a relentless torrent that erased all thought, leaving him in a void of suffering. He felt like this was worse than death, an eternal cycle of torment that shattered his sanity, with no escape in sight.

Time kept passing by, but Kai did not know how much time had elapsed—he couldn't tell if it was seconds ticking by in frantic bursts, minutes dragging like eternity, hours blurring into numbness, days fading into oblivion, weeks stretching into madness, or months dissolving into an endless void. His sense of reality had shattered, leaving him adrift in a timeless limbo where the world outside ceased to exist, replaced by the relentless rhythm of his suffering.

All he felt was pain one second—a searing, all-consuming frostbite that gnawed at his flesh, freezing his nerves into shards of agony that made him want to scream, though no sound could escape in the flickering haze—and then pain gone the next, a fleeting reprieve of nothingness that offered no relief, only the dread of its inevitable return. It was an endless loop of torment and void, cycling in rapid, merciless seconds, each phase blending into the next until his mind frayed at the edges, thoughts fragmenting into primal instincts of survival and despair, his identity eroding under the weight of the unrelenting cycle.