The wind cut through everything like shards of glass as Ashfall pulled his cloak tighter around himself, the ice gnawing at his face even beneath the protection of his mask, while the storm roared, filling his ears with a rasping scream that seemed to come from all directions at once.
The far north of World Seven stretched endlessly before him, a desolate wasteland of jagged black ice spires and rolling snow dunes, carved not from sand but from centuries of relentless storms and absolute silence. Above them, the sky was pale and lifeless, a blank white horizon that offered no end, only cold, only emptiness.
Three shadows moved across this frozen expanse.
Ashfall led the way, with Uka and Erat following in single file, their boots crunching softly through the crusted snow. The temperature gauge on Ashfall's wristplate had stopped hours ago, frozen solid at minus forty-three, and he no longer trusted that it worked at all. He doubted that anything worked in this place, save for the cold that gnawed at their bones.
"Remind me," Erat muttered, his breath fogging the scarf that covered his mouth, "why we couldn't get assigned to a library post instead?"
Ashfall did not answer. Every nerve in his body was stretched tight, every sense alert to the frozen world around them.
Uka chuckled softly, a low, rough sound tinged with the accent of World Four. "You complain too much. A library doesn't need a Timer, but a place like this…" His gloved hand swept across the empty white expanse. "Places like this hide things."
The word carried weight, and Ashfall understood exactly what he meant.
In theory, the mission had been simple: observe, document, survive. Patrols from the southern settlements had reported strange disappearances, whispers of figures moving through the blizzard without leaving footprints, and the instructions were straightforward: approach, record, retreat.
Simple in theory. But nothing was ever simple when the Stars of Madness had touched a world.
By midday, the ruins emerged from the snow. Half-buried and entombed in frost, the skeleton of an industrial station jutted from the ice like the bones of a frozen giant. Rusted towers leaned at impossible angles, twisted by centuries of storms, while a shattered rail line disappeared into nothingness, its carriages scattered and encased in black ice.
Ashfall raised his hand, and the group froze.
"Eyes up," he whispered through their earpieces.
They drew their pistols, black steel with silencers as long as forearms, the only weapons Timers carried, the only tools they had in a world like this.
Ashfall led the way, letting his hand brush along the frost-coated walls. There were no footprints, no signs of scavengers, and not even the wind seemed to have entered the wrecked building. It was too silent, as if the station had been severed from the flow of time itself.
"Ash," Uka rasped, his voice tight with unease, "do you see it?"
Ashfall lifted his gaze through a break in the clouds, and far above, faint specks glimmered — Stars. Too sharp, too alien to belong in this sky. Higher still, half-veiled by haze, the massive outline of a Clock loomed, indifferent to the world below. Its hands moved almost imperceptibly, yet Ashfall could feel their rhythm, pulsing through the air, the snow, and into his chest.
"Yeah," he muttered. "I see it."
They moved deeper into the building. The walls were thick with frost, and posters in dead languages peeled from the surfaces while tools lay scattered, blackened and frozen where they had been dropped decades ago. But ruin alone was not enough to explain the atmosphere. Every corridor carried scars of violence. Deep scratches gouged the steel, frozen handprints smeared with dried blood marked every surface, and a child's shoe lay half-crushed, embedded in frost.
Erat muttered under his breath, his voice trembling, "This isn't our job. Whatever did this… it's still here."
Ashfall's eyes darted to every shadow and corner. "Exactly why it is our job," he said. "We are not hunters. We are witnesses. We record. That is what survival means here."
Uka grunted, his jaw tight. "And then we get the hell out."
From below came a dragging scrape, metal against stone.
All three froze, pistols raised. The scraping sound repeated, closer this time, deliberate and wrong.
Ashfall signaled toward the stairwell, and they descended carefully, their footsteps echoing too loud in the oppressive silence.
The basement opened into a vast hall. The ceiling sagged with icicles like jagged spears, and the floor had fractured inward, shards of black ice jutting like bones from the frozen ground. Shadows pooled in every corner, and a low, guttural groan filled the hall, reminiscent of metal grinding against frozen flesh.
At the center, something stirred.
At first, it seemed like a statue, frozen mid-motion. Then the frost shifted, cracking with a sound that reminded Ashfall of splintering bones.
A figure that had once been human emerged. Its limbs were elongated unnaturally, joints twisted at impossible angles, and its coat clung to a warped frame. The face was masked in ice, fissures cutting jagged lines across its features, while its mouth stretched impossibly into a frozen scream. From its chest emanated a faint red light, pulsing in rhythm with the distant, invisible ticks of the Clock above.
This was a Mythborne, born from fear and madness, a twisted embodiment of the nightmares of a world that had once looked up at the wrong sky.
The creature tilted its head, ice cracking down its neck with a sound that echoed like gunfire across the chamber. A wet, broken laugh followed, resonating unnaturally in the frozen hall, and its limbs twitched like shards of shattered glass.
Erat whispered, trembling, "Stars above…"
Ashfall did not move, did not blink. The rules of a Timer echoed in his mind like scripture: do not engage, do not reveal, record, endure.
But the Mythborne lunged.
Ashfall threw himself aside as talons of frozen bone tore through steel, ripping walls like paper. Uka fired three times, the muffled cracks disappearing into the silence, bullets sinking into the creature's ice and flesh without effect.
Ashfall rolled and rose on one knee, firing twice into its glowing chest. The red light flickered, a heartbeat, then dimmed slightly.
Erat screamed as the Mythborne seized him, lifting him with impossible strength. His pistol clattered into the frost.
"Shoot it!" Erat howled.
Ashfall's finger froze. Not from fear, but from calculation. Timers were not fighters. Their only role was to witness. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't help him.
The Mythborne's maw split wider. Erat's scream ended abruptly, replaced by a sickening silence as blood spread across the floor, freezing instantly into jagged red patterns.
Ashfall's pulse thundered in his ears as Uka grabbed his shoulder, dragging him back while firing relentlessly. Bullets embedded themselves in the creature's head, yet it only laughed louder, the red light in its chest burning brighter, a beacon of something unnatural in the frozen darkness.
"We can't kill it!" Uka barked. "Ash, move!"
Ashfall gritted his teeth. Erat was gone, the mission was shattered, yet he remained. His eyes stayed locked on the pulsing red light, and his fingers gripped the pistol tight.
The vow in his bones flared hot, even as the cold gnawed at him: he would survive, he would record, he would remember every detail.
The Stars above glimmered wrong and patient, each blink a whisper of madness, while the Clock's hands ticked slow, inexorable, indifferent to life and death. Somewhere, hidden in the storm, more Mythbornes would awaken.
This was only the beginning.