CHAPTER FIVE - WALL’S COLD EMBRACE
863 Words
We reach the kill zone by dusk.
An old frozen transit hub—collapsed rails, shattered domes, perfect hiding grounds. Skin walkers swarm it.
Scarface gives the order. “Clean sweep. Antennae only. No risks.”
That’s when I understand.
They’re watching me more than the enemy.
The fight is brutal.
Skin walkers pour out of the ruins, screeching, wearing faces I don’t recognize but somehow know.
George fights like lightning incarnate, sparks tearing through the dark, burning holes in the snow.
I move differently.
I don’t chase.
I stand still—and the cold obeys.
Blue, heated Ice lashes out in sharp arcs, blue, like the wall, freezing limbs, sealing mouths mid-scream. The ground becomes a weapon beneath my feet.
When it ends, the silence is heavy.
Bodies litter the snow.
Jane approaches one frozen corpse and hacks off its antennae, holding it up.
“Proof,” she says.
Then she looks at me.
“So what’s yours?”
I stare at her. “What?”
“Proof you’re on our side,” she says calmly. “Kill one with your hands.”
The world goes quiet.
George steps forward. “No. We saw her fight, she killed multiple already. if not for her, most of us would be dead!"
Jane doesn’t look at him. “You want her protected when we get back behind the Wall? Then she proves it now.
A skin walker twitches nearby, half-frozen, barely alive.
It looks at me.
Begging, I hear it's real voice in my head, "don't please," it says.
I shake my head. “I won’t. I feel a strange sense of pity. Distorted, yet there."
Jane sighs. “Then you’re a liability.”
I walk toward the creature anyway—but when it tries to turn away, I reach for it, it burns instantly, screaming as thermal blue ice consumes it completely.
No mercy.
No choice.
Everyone stares, some in awe, some in fright.
Jane looks horrified.
Scarface’s face drains of color.
“Collect the antennae,” he orders hoarsely.
As we move out, I feel it again—that pressure beneath my skin, heavier now.
The Wall is waiting.
And I know, deep down, it won’t welcome me home
The Wall appears at dawn.
It doesn’t rise out of the horizon so much as replace it—an endless vertical sheet of ice and steel that swallows the sky from kilometers away, I feel it in my bones. The hum. The, the pressure Like something vast is holding its breath.
No one celebrates among the hunters. There was nothing but quiet stillness.
Hunters usually do when they survive long enough to see it again. They joke, they shout, they drag their feet just to prove they made it back.
This time, we walk in silence.
George stays close to me, closer than he has since we crossed the gate.
His shoulder brushes mine with every step, deliberate, grounding.
Every so often, I feel a faint pulse of warmth through his sleeve—electricity leaking when he’s anxious
.“You’re shaking,” he says softly.
“I’m not cold.” I respond.
“I didn’t say you were.”
I exhale slowly. “It feels like the Wall knows I’m coming.”
George lets out a quiet breath. “It’s just a wall.”
I glance at him. “You don’t believe that.”
He hesitates. Then, honestly, “No.”
Scarface signals a halt before the outer checkpoint. Drones hover above us, their blue lenses scanning for heat signatures, anomalies, contamination.
One dips lower when it reaches me.
It lingers.
I hold my breath.
“Problem?” Scarface snaps.
The drone emits a low tone, then rises again.
No explanation.
That’s when I notice the others.
New faces among the hunters—survivors who weren’t part of our original unit but converged on the return route. Reinforcements. Observers.
One of them catches my eye.
She’s tall, broad-shouldered, her head shaved clean except for a thin braid running down the back. A long scar cuts through her eyebrow. She watches me with open curiosity instead of fear.
Name’s Lyra,” she says as she falls into step beside me. “Cryo-thrower. You froze half the transit hub, right? We saw in our various feeds, it was fantastic!"
“I didn’t mean to.” I respond calmly.
Lyra snorts. “No one ever does.”
Another hunter joins us—a quiet man with dark skin and mechanical implants along his jaw and neck. His eyes glow faintly amber.
“Don’t mind her,” he says. “She collects interesting people.”
He nods at me. “I’m Tomas. Recon.”
George stiffens slightly. “She’s not—”
“Property?” Tomas finishes calmly. “Didn’t think so.”
Something in my chest loosens.
Lyra glances at George. “Lightning boy fights pretty,” she says. “Messy. Effective.”
George smiles weakly. “Thanks. I think.”
We reach the gates.
They open slowly, layers of reinforced ice sliding apart with a sound like a glacier cracking. Cold air rushes out to meet us, familiar and wrong all at once.
Home.
- Writer
