"Some storms do not rage—they
whisper. And when they whisper long enough… the dead listen."
At 3:01 a.m., it began to snow in Nairobi. This was not ash,
not ice but actual snow.
What was mysterious about it is that, it didn't fall like
flakes. It spiralled sideways—in defiance of gravity—then rose back toward the
clouds like smoke drawn in reverse.
Eric stood at the threshold of the Last Sanctuary, its
stained-glass windows vibrating as if responding to an ancient, low-frequency
sound. Inside, he could feel heartbeat-like pulses beneath the stone floor.
"[System Update: New Atmospheric Anomaly Detected –
Reversal Snowfall]"
"[This event
is not registered in Earth's climate history.]"
"[Cognitive
Disruption Risk: Medium to High]"
"[Avoid prolonged exposure without mental
shielding.]"
"It's not real snow," said a voice behind him.
Eric turned, startled. A boy—no older than sixteen—stood
barefoot, wrapped in bandages that steamed in the cold.
"It's memory ice," the boy said. "These are crystallized
echoes of decisions not yet made."
The boy extended his hand.
"I'm Tano. Seeker Class: Inverted Oracle. You're Eric. You
burned the Mirror Path last hour, didn't you?"
Eric blinked. "How do you know that?"
"Because the snow remembers. And I read it."
"You? The snow?"
"Follow me," Tano said.
They walked out into the inverted snowfall.
Outside, the snow now sang. It was faint—too faint to be
sound. But Eric felt it in the base of his skull. Words. Echoes. Fragmented
speech.
"...he is still unlinked..."
"...Key Fragment is bleeding energy..." "...Hour 67 breach detected... initiate
lockdown…"
Eric stopped.
"You hear them too?" Tano asked.
"What are they?"
Tano crouched beside a snowdrift. He pointed at it.
"These aren't snowflakes. Look closely."
Eric bent forward. He looked and, inside each flake was a
moving image. The images were of people he didn't recognize—dying, hiding,
speaking, weeping.
"They're all from different timelines," Tano said.
"Shattered echoes. The weather's no longer just environmental. It's
communicative. It's trying to warn us… or trap us."
Eric stood, unease tightening in his chest.
Then came the scream from above. It was a deafening,
piercing howl that shattered the sky, sending mirrored fragments spiralling
downward. Where the shards landed, trees turned to ice statues, birds froze
mid-flight, and time seemed to pause in a 15-meter radius.
His system detailed the stats promptly:
"[Apocalypse Event 004 Initiated – Cryo-Wail Zone]"
"[Estimated
casualties: 15,200.]"
"[Origin
Point: Mount Kenya.]"
"[System Message:
First Ice-Tongue Entity Active.]"
"What is that?" Eric whispered.
"One of them woke up," Tano said grimly. "And it remembers
you."
"Come with me!"
They found the body near the river bend.
At first, it looked like a statue—crouched, shielding
something in its arms.
Tano approached and inhaled sharply.
"This is Seeker 09. His system signature is still
active. He froze during the last Wail."
Eric touched the frozen figure. Immediately, his Second
Sight activated—not forward or backward—but sideways in time.
He gasped.
He saw the frozen Seeker hours from now, whispering
frantically to Eric.
He saw the same man years ago, being trained in a hidden
facility labelled "Ark Node 3 – Rift Valley Vault."
And he saw the Seeker's final moment:
The man screamed. Ice formed in his lungs. But before death,
he whispered one thing:
"Give this to
04-02. The Architect can't know you have it."
Then Eric's real-time vision cleared, and the body cracked.
Inside his arms sat a shard of obsidian, still warm to the touch. It was etched
with symbols.
"[Key Fragment Acquired –
Resonant Threshold Fragment 1/3]" the system identified it.
Eric had thus found the first of the three fragments.
As Eric pocketed the
fragment, the temperature plummeted. Their breath crystallized in seconds. Tano
gasped.
Then the air shifted again. Something huge was coming. It
was not a storm. It was a presence.
A dozen shapes emerged from the swirling air. They were
tall, thin and robed in frost and shadow. They had no eyes, no mouths. Only
grated slits in their chests, through which whispers escaped.
They were the Ice-Tongues.
"[System Alert: Entity Class: Apex Echoform – The
Rememberers]"
"[Language:
Future dialect fusion, non-chronological.]"
"[Response
protocol: Do not speak unless questioned directly.]"
One stepped forward and whispered into Eric's mind.
"He still holds the
broken echo."
"He was meant to die in Hour 71."
"Why is he ahead of his pattern?"
Another turned to Tano.
"You weren't
authorized to assist him."
Tano paled.
"Run, Eric."
"What?"
"They're protocol-bound. They can't interfere directly. But
they can unmake patterns. If they realize what you are—"
One Ice-Tongue raised its arm. A sound-spear formed in mid-air;
composed entirely of trapped screams.
Tano tackled Eric as it flew.
The spear struck a tree behind them. The tree didn't burn.
It didn't freeze. It ceased to have ever existed.
The two kept running until Eric's legs ached. His lungs
burned with frozen air. But still they ran until they reached a glacial wall
rising where a petrol station once stood.
The wall was miles tall, glimmering like crystal teeth.
"There," Tano gasped, pointing.
A door appeared, outlined in black fire.
Eric touched it.
His system flared:
"[Ancestral Memory
Locked Behind Firewall. Skill Required: Ethereal Pulse]"
"[Unlock cost: 1 Core Vow.]"
Tano looked at him. "You have to give something."
"Like what?"
"Something you'll never get back. Something you can't lie
about."
Eric hesitated. And then spoke:
"I vow… that I never wanted to be a hero. I only wanted… to
be seen."
The wall glowed, then split.
Inside, they saw a single throne of ice, upon which sat a
skeleton.
The skeleton opened its jaw—and spoke- with Eric's own
voice.
"You are not the
first Eric. You are not the last."