The world ended not with fire or fury—but with silence.
Not the kind born from peace, but the kind that followed the last scream. The final broadcast. The final bullet fired into a sky that no longer answered.
And when the silence came, it brought the cold with it.
They called it The Last Winter—a catastrophe so vast and unnatural that science, faith, and politics all failed to explain it. Within weeks, the planet's atmosphere buckled. Temperatures fell to impossible lows. Oceans froze mid-tide. Forests stood like skeletal tombs, and cities collapsed beneath the weight of unending snow.
Humanity, what was left of it, clung to warmth like a dying ember clings to ash.
In the frozen ruins of what had once been North America, a settlement endured.
Nova.
Built into the underground skeleton of an old hydroelectric facility, Nova was a fragile miracle of engineering and desperation. Its walls groaned under the weight of ice. Its generators sputtered, struggling to pump out enough warmth for the few thousand souls who called it home. Supplies were scarce. Hope was scarcer.
And in the quieter corners of Nova, in the alleys between steel walls and flickering light panels, walked a young man who didn't belong.
Lucius.
No last name. No rank. No recorded family. Just Lucius.
He was seventeen, maybe eighteen, with a face too lean for his age and eyes too sharp for someone who should've still been a boy. Most people in Nova avoided him—not out of hatred, but instinct. In a world where power defined worth, Lucius had none. He wasn't a Pathbearer. No glowing eyes, no elemental powers, no strange markings on his skin. Just a quiet scavenger with a keen eye for finding things others missed.
Yet those who paid attention saw something else in him.
Something not quite ordinary.
Lucius moved like someone who didn't trust the ground beneath his feet. Always listening. Always watching. And unlike most, he didn't dream of becoming a hero, or leading armies, or awakening some long-lost power.
He only wanted to survive.
But survival in this new world was a coin with two faces—one marked shelter, the other violence.
And in recent days, Nova had started to burn cold again.
The alarm blared at dawn—shrill and ragged, as if the ancient speakers were screaming in pain.
Lucius was already awake.
He stood at the edge of the northern gate, wrapped in scavenged winter armor patched with duct tape and reinforced cloth. A cracked visor covered half his face, and a crowbar was strapped to his back beside a hunting knife dulled by years of use.
Outside, the snow was falling sideways—driven by winds sharp enough to flay skin. But it wasn't the weather that had set the alarm off.
It was movement.
Dozens of scouts poured out of the gate. Lucius slipped in with them, unseen by most. He wasn't official. He wasn't authorized. But Nova was stretched thin, and no one could afford to waste a body willing to move beyond the wall.
They followed the tracks into the white wasteland.
A shattered transport lay half-buried in the snow. Its frame was warped and scorched. Blood marked the drifts.
No survivors.
But no bodies either.
Lucius crouched beside one of the tracks. Heavy. Wide. Clean edges. Machine treads. Something had moved through here—large and efficient.
Then he saw it.
Carved into the snow, barely visible unless you knew what to look for—a spiral pattern, precise and slow.
Pathbound.
The word alone could turn hardened men into ghosts.
They were no longer human in the way the rest of Nova was. The Pathbearers—those who had awakened strange abilities after the Last Winter—had become the new rulers of the Earth's remains. Some protected settlements. Others formed brutal empires. Most descended into madness, worshipping the cold that birthed their powers.
And among them, one faction stood apart.
The Heralds of Frost.
Lucius's blood ran colder than the wind.
"They were here," someone muttered behind him.
"No… not just them," Lucius said softly, rising to his feet.
He didn't know how he knew. He just did.
There had been one. Not a raiding party. A single Herald. Tracking. Watching.
And for some reason, it had come this close to Nova.
That night, the council met behind sealed doors. Soldiers gathered in the barracks, whispering. People lit candles in the lower wards, praying to whatever gods still listened.
Lucius didn't return home.
He stood in the watchtower, staring across the frozen plains, toward the remnants of what had once been cities, now silent tombs beneath the storm.
He remembered the first time he saw one.
The Herald.
It had moved like a shadow draped in frost, its face hidden behind a mask of glassy white. It hadn't spoken. It didn't need to. Everything around it—stone, steel, even blood—froze solid when it passed.
He had watched it kill a squad of soldiers without raising a hand.
Lucius hadn't run that day. He had stood still, heart frozen, staring into the eyes behind the mask as the world around them froze to death.
And somehow, the Herald had spared him.
He never told anyone.
He didn't know why it had let him live. He only knew that something inside him had changed that day.
Something was still changing.
He stared at his bare hand, watching his breath curl from his fingertips.
It didn't frost over.
Not like the others.
The wind howled louder. The aurora stirred in the clouds.
Somewhere, far beyond Nova, a storm was rising.
And Lucius felt it calling him.