The silence left by the transport was heavier than any sound. For a full minute, Runne just stood there, a statue in the heart of a howling gale.
The wind tore at him, pulling the heat from his body with savage efficiency.
'Perfect. Just perfect,' he thought, the words a bitter taste in his mouth. "Dropped in the middle of nowhere with a good luck and not so much as a return ticket."
He clenched his jaw, forcing his body into motion. His training kicked in, a ghost of Martha's voice in his ear: "Never stand still. A stationary target is a dead one."
He pulled a compass from his belt pouch. The needle trembled, but pointed steadily enough. South.
'Alright, Veyne. Just a walk in the park. One foot in front of the other.' With a final, useless glance at the empty sky, he began his trek.
He trudged through snow already deep enough to suck at his boots with every laboured step. The world was a blinding vortex of white.
There was no horizon, no sky, no ground, just the swirling snow and the relentless howl of the wind.
He walked for what felt like an hour, maybe more, when a frantic flapping sound cut through the gale's roar.
Runne shielded his eyes, looking up. A swarm of dark shapes burst through the white curtain—birds.
'Birds? Flying in this storm?' he wondered, his tired brain struggling to process the sight. 'And all bunched together like that… skuas and petrels… they never fly together. Something's spooked them. Something big.'
His hand instinctively went to the pulse rifle slung over his shoulder, fingers finding the cold metal of the trigger guard.
The bad feeling from the airport, the one that had laid dormant for a decade, was stirring again. He kept moving, but his steps were now cautious, his head on a swivel.
That's when he felt it. A low hum, a vibration coming up from the ground, through the soles of his boots.
He froze. 'Okay. That's not the wind,' he thought, his focus sharpening. 'That's new.'
He changed direction, heading toward the source of the vibration. The hum grew stronger, a tangible presence in the air that set his teeth on edge.
He crested a small, snow-swept rise and looked down into a massive ravine. An ancient riverbed, long since frozen over. The ice at the bottom, however, pulsed with a faint, sickly green light.
'That colour…' The thought sent a jolt of ice through his veins. 'It's the same green light from the airport. From the nightmare.'
The light and the sound were coming from further down the ravine, from a gaping black wound in the rock face. A cave. Its entrance was huge and unnaturally smooth.
He stood there, the wind whipping at him, his heart hammering against his ribs. Every instinct screamed at him to turn around.
'Nope. Absolutely not. This is where the story ends for the stupid bastard who walks into the scary glowing cave,' his mind raced, a frantic, sensible panic taking over.
But the logic that followed was cold and inescapable. There was no transport coming back. There was only the storm, or the cave.
'Screw it,' he thought, a wave of grim determination washing over the fear. 'Better to die knowing than to freeze out here wondering.'
He began the treacherous climb down into the ravine, his boots slipping on the glowing ice, his rifle held tight against his chest.
He was a boy, sent to the end of the world to investigate a noise, and he was walking willingly into the mouth of a monster.
***
Runne took one last look at the swirling white chaos of the blizzard behind him before stepping into the blackness of the cave.
The howling wind was instantly cut off, replaced by a profound, echoing silence and the deep, resonant hum that now seemed to vibrate in his very soul.
The air inside was still, cold, and heavy, carrying the scent of ozone and something else… something ancient, like dust from a tomb that had been sealed for millennia.
The only light came from the sickly green glow pulsing from deep within, casting long, dancing shadows that writhed like living things on the unnaturally smooth walls.
'Okay, Veyne. Deep breaths,' he thought, his own breath misting in front of him. 'Just a cave. A very big, very scary, glowing green cave.'
He unslung his rifle, the weight of it a small, inadequate comfort. He moved forward, his boots echoing unnervingly in the vast space. He followed the winding tunnel deeper, until it opened into a cavern so vast it defied comprehension.
And there it was. A shimmering, tearing wound in the very fabric of reality, hanging in the centre of the cavern.
'A Rift,' he breathed, the thought a mix of pure terror and awe. 'It has to be. But they said… they said they were all gone.'
He felt a gentle but insistent pull, a physical force that seemed to tug at his very centre. 'I'm feeling it,' he thought, a jolt of panic and confusion hitting him.
Then, fragmented words bloomed inside his mind, faint and struggling to form, like a voice reaching across an impossible distance.
'…key… has found… the lock… must… open…'
The voice was a whisper of a whisper, yet it chilled him to the bone. The Eclipse Veil. The name surfaced in his mind, unbidden and terrifying.
"Who's there!?" he shouted, his voice small and pathetic in the enormous cavern.
SKREEEEE—
A wet, tearing sound ripped through the air, coming from the Rift itself. Runne watched in horror as the green surface bulged outward.
A pale, discoloured snout, slick with gore, punched through the shimmering barrier. It squealed, a high-pitched sound of agony and effort, as it forced its head into the cavern.
It was a nightmarish creature, vaguely like a boar or a pig, but emaciated and wrong. Its skin was pallid and hairless, stretched so tight over its bones that Runne could see the outline of its skull.
As it struggled, more of its body pushed through, revealing a hideously deformed, twisting spine that was visible through its malnourished flesh.
But it was stuck. The Rift's energy binding it, its energy clinging to the creature's back half. It thrashed wildly, only half-birthed into their world, squealing in a piteous, terrifying rage.
'What is that thing?' his mind screamed. 'It's... it's stuck. I have to get out of here. Now.'
That single, selfish thought was all it took. He didn't wait to see if it would break free. He turned and ran.
Adrenaline surged through him, cold and sharp. He sprinted back through the tunnel, his boots slamming against the rock, the creature's agonised squeals and the Rift's deep hum chasing him from behind.
He burst out of the cave mouth and back into the full fury of the blizzard, not stopping, just running, scrambling up the side of the ravine.
He ran blindly through the snow, his lungs burning, his legs screaming. He didn't know where he was going, only that he had to get away.
He stumbled, falling hard into a deep snowdrift, the air knocked out of him.
'This is it,' he thought, his energy gone, the cold already seeping deep into his bones. 'I'm dead.'
But then a new sound cut through the howl of the wind. The deep, familiar thrum of a Wombat's engines.
A brilliant floodlight cut through the swirling snow, and Runne looked up to see the dark, blocky silhouette of the transport hovering not fifty metres away.
A miracle.
Hope, fierce and desperate, surged through him. He pushed himself up, waving his arms frantically. "Here! Over here!" he screamed, his voice torn away by the wind.
The Wombat's rear ramp was already lowering. The pilot stood there, his face pale and wide-eyed. Runne scrambled towards it, his legs clumsy with exhaustion and relief.
The pilot grabbed his arm, pulling him aboard into the red-lit bay. "I saw the light from up there!" the pilot shouted over the engines.
"That green glow from the ravine… I couldn't just leave you, kid. What the hell did you see?"
Runne didn't answer, just spun around and pointed frantically back towards the cave, his breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps.
"Go!" he choked out, grabbing the pilot's sleeve. "Go! We have to go! There's a—a Rift! And a thing—a monster!"
"Whoa, whoa, kid, calm down!"
"No!" Runne shouted, his voice cracking with hysteria. "You don't understand! We have to report it! We have to fly, now!"
Seeing the pure, undiluted terror in the 18-year-old's eyes, the pilot didn't argue. He slammed his hand on the control panel beside the ramp.
With a hydraulic hiss, the door sealed, shutting out the storm and plunging them into the relative safety of the transport. The Wombat banked sharply, turning back towards the distant, hidden safety of the base.