A lifeless-looking teen with long black hair and bruise covered skin was currently walking. His feet were trembling with every step, and his eyes were as cold as he was.
The lifeless teen was marching in a silent fugue, his mind drifting away unbothered by the sound of kids wailing and women crying. Infact, it seemed as though he lost all hope of living, like he wanted to die.
Afterall, he was part of a coffle.
He had long since fallen into a hollow stupor, his mind has been retreating deep inside his skull, to escape the blistering cold of the arctic. However, the heavy thud of a body hitting the cold snow jolted his neck and out of his trance. The man was no longer alive, and now a liability.
"Weak"
Eitan was right, in this world only the strong survive, and the weak are a sacrafice to be made for the Tehom.
The higher ups call them "Noble Sacrifices", without them the Nefilim - those demonic sky shattering horrors, will be unleashed upon the world.
The gates were the only thing holding the Nefilim back - breaches in reality that bled the cold of the Tehom into the world. To keep those cracks from widening, the higher ups fed the disposables to these gates, for them to be never seen again.
Suddenly, the sound of shaking chains and cold wind was disturbed by the tremor of an unknown voice.
"Hey... are you still alive over there?"
The voice was thin, mixed with a wet cough. It came from the girl chained behind him. She couldn't have been older than fourteen. Her frame so slight, like the Arctic wind would shatter her.
Eitan didn't turn, actually, he couldn't his neck was shackled with an iron collar keeping his gaze forward. Eventually he said with an hoarse voice, While dragging the body of the nameless man.
"Does it matter? Why do you even care?"
The girl didn't pay him any mind and continued.
"I heard... I heard that if you run fast enough once you're inside, the Nefilim won't catch you." she whispered, a desperate delusion.
Eitan closed his eyes.
"The strong survive, but us, the weak have no choice but to hope. Don't run, save your breath, you'll need it to scream."
The girl looked at him with a blank expression and continued to move forward.
They both continued to walk, aimlessly, as the snow beneath their feet was turning brown from the mass of dirt the Disposables created.
***
Time passed, like always there wasn't anything note worthy, just a bunch of ice and snow covered on a never-lasting vast plane.
Eitan continued walking when suddenly, the coffle seemed to slow down, and then came to a complete stop.
'What? why did we stop all of a sudden?'
As if answering his question, a loud alarming shout was heard all through-out the coffle. The shout came from a strikingly handsome young-man that seemed to be in his early twenties. He weilded a simple-looking but sharp longsword in one hand and of course, a round shield on the other. The handsome man was wearing shiny armor, in fact his breastplate was so polished, that it reflected the horrible image of the coffle.
Seeing himself through the reflection, Eitan lost his breath for a split second.
The guard stood out from the rest of the guards, maybe for the fact that he was handsome, or that he was riding a horse.
'Curse these handsome shitloads'
Eitan himself, wasn't exactly handsome but he wasn't horrible-looking either.
"Move it, you miserable wretches! pick up the pace! We only have a few more hours to reach the gate, if we dont, i'll personally make all your deaths miserable!"
The coffle quickly shuddered, and seemed to be getting faster. Only Eitan didn't seem to panic from the threat of the guard.
Jarringly, Eitan felt a slight jolt through-out his back. Then, he heard a high-pitched squeak coming from behind him. It seemed as though the thin voiced girl has stumbled into his bruised back and sent a shockwave through his entire spine. The chain between them, which had been sagging in the mud snapped taut with a violent clatter.
The iron collar around his neck jerked back, cutting off his airway for an agonizing second. Eitan's boots that were worn thin and slick with frozen filth, slid across the mangled slush. He flailed, his free hand clawing at the empty, frigid air to keep from being dragged down by the combined weight of the girl behind him and the corpse at his side that has been ripped free from his grasp.
It seemed as though the world was trying to choke the life out of him before he even entered the Tehom.
The girl, finally aware for what she has caused, started to quickly apologise. Her eyes glinted with a worrisome look.
"Oh no! I'm so sorry I didn't mean for any of this to happen."
Eitan didn't answer, he simply looked forward with disdain watching as the handsome guard is made the horse trot their way.
The horse's hooves were massive, shod in polished steel that crunched through the ice like it was nothing but eggshells. As the handsome guard pulled the reins, a spray of frozen filth hit Eitan's cheek, but he didn't blink. He couldn't. He was still winded, his lungs burning for the air the iron collar had stolen.
"Is there a problem here?" the guard asked. His voice was smooth, lacking the gravel of the other guards. It was the voice of someone who had never gone a day without a warm meal.
The girl was trembling so hard the chains rattled against her hollow chest. "I-I slipped, My Lord! The ice.."
"I didn't ask for a weather report," the guard interrupted, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his shiny longsword. "I asked why the line has stopped. If you can't walk, you're just dead weight."
Meanwhile, Eitan finally managed a jagged, shallow breath. He didn't look up at the horseman. He reached down into the slush, his fingers blue from the frigid air, and gripped the stiff cold arm of the nameless corpse again.
He didn't apologise, he didn't beg, he just pulled.
***
Hours later, a red glow slowly grew from a faint shimmer in the distance to a a blinding tear in the earth. It wasn't a door, it was a wound.
The Great Northern Gate pulsed with a low, rhythmic thrum that Eitan could feel in his teeth. It smelled of ozone and ancient, frozen dust. As the coffle drew closer, the wind changed, it was no longer the biting cold of the Arctic, but the gelid, soul-sucking chill of the Tehom.
The red glow of the breach bled onto the snow, turning the brown slush into a color like drying blood. The "Handsome" guard pulled his horse to a halt a few meters from the swirling vortex, He didn't look at their faces, he just watched the chains to ensure the "delivery" was made.
"End of the line, Trash, Make your sacrifice count. Or don't. The Tehom will take you either way."
Eitan felt the girl behind him freeze. Her apologies had died out long ago, replaced by a rhythmic, terrified clicking of her teeth. The chain between them rattled a frantic, metallic heartbeat.
Eitan tightened his grip on the stiff, frozen arm of the nameless corpse, the skin feeling like rough parchment against his palms.
He took one last breath of the "real" world a breath that tasted of salt and horses and stepped forward.
His worn boot left the trampled dirt of the Arctic and touched the shimmering, crystalline frost of the Abyss. The light of the sun didn't just fade, it was extinguished. As the violet-red veil of the Gate swallowed him whole, the iron collar around his neck grew ice-cold, and the silence of the Tehom rushed in to meet him.