Beneath the Silent Glacier

The outpost rose from the ice like a cluster of metal bones, half-buried in wind-carved drifts. It sat on the western edge of a nameless Arctic island, a point on the map that might as well not exist. The crew called it Frostbite Station—mostly as a bitter joke. Several squat buildings, made of corrugated steel bristling with frostbitten bolts, clung to a foundation of ancient blue ice. Every winter storm rattled the walls so violently that the men often wondered if steel could endure the cold at all.

The latest storm had passed two days earlier, but the freeze it left behind cracked the breath in the air. Larsen stood outside the main hut, checking the supports that disappeared into the glacier. Some said he did this to ensure the outpost survived. Others suspected it was to convince himself that something in this frozen wasteland still obeyed the laws of physics.

Mara trudged toward him, her hood encrusted with ice. “Seismic readings are strange again,” she said. “Low-frequency rumbling. Deeper than anything we’ve recorded.”

Larsen didn’t look up from the bolts. “The company thinks it’s the reservoir.”

“They think everything’s the reservoir,” Mara replied. “But this…” She tapped the tablet against her chest. “This is different.”

He finally met her gaze, noticing the spark of curiosity he knew too well—the same spark that drove her to take month-long shifts here, surrounded by nothing but wind and white. “We can look after breakfast,” he said. “No one drills while half-frozen.”

Behind Mara, Kipp staggered out of the barracks, arms folded tightly against the cold. His cheeks were raw from windburn, and his eyelids stiff with sleep. “Is it true?” he asked. “Another reading?”

Mara nodded. “And deeper.”

Kipp grimaced. “Can’t be oil. It doesn’t move like that.”

“It doesn’t move at all,” Mara said. “It’s not seismic movement—it’s resonance.”

Old Shaw appeared, silent as a shadow. No one knew how many seasons he’d spent here. His beard was as white as the island, his eyes sharp and sunken. He leaned on the railing and said nothing, but Mara felt the weight of his gaze. He always listened—especially when strange things were said.

Larsen clapped his gloves together. “Breakfast,” he ordered. “Then we check the site.”

The drilling platform lay half a kilometer from camp, flagged and snapping sharply in the wind. The crew followed on snowshoes, Kipp stumbling as the surface cracked beneath him. Sunlight slanted weakly across the horizon, painting the world pale.

Mara knelt at the base of the rig, brushing frost from the seismograph. “Look here,” she said, pointing at clusters of deep red peaks. “The last wave bounced off something thick. And old.”

“How old?” Larsen asked.

“Older than the glacier.” She hesitated. “Maybe older than the island.”

Shaw exhaled softly—a warning hidden in the sound.

They powered up the thermal drills. The initial layers cut easily—packed years, compressed decades—but as the drill hit the deep strata, vibrations shifted. The monitors clicked with sharp metallic echoes.

“Metal?” Kipp whispered.

“Not possible,” Larsen said. “Not at this depth.”

“And yet,” Mara said, pointing, “it’s ringing like something hollow.”

Ice hissed and steamed under the drills, filling the air with the wet scent of thawing centuries. Then the ground shuddered softly, and a muffled crack echoed upward.

The drill broke through.

A blast of air rose from below—colder than the Arctic itself, alive with intent. Larsen swung his lamp down into the black. Nothing. Just a cavern so vast that the light never reached the bottom.

“Lower the harness,” Mara said, clipping herself onto the cable.

“Kipp, you go with her,” Larsen instructed. Kipp’s face drained of color. He nodded.

The descent was slow. Lamp beams scattered across the walls of blue ice older than recorded time. The cavern curved inward, hollowed as if something massive had once pressed against it. The air was thick and still.

“Look,” Mara whispered.

Half-exposed and half-fused into the ice wall, a colossal humanoid hung. Limbs impossibly long, a torso massive like a ship hull. Pale flesh, perfectly preserved, with ribs splayed outward like timbers.

Deep in the ribs, a mineral glowed. Cold light pulsed—dim and steady, like a heartbeat too slow for anything living.

“What is that?” Kipp whispered.

“A mineral,” Mara said, awe threading her voice. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Shaw’s voice crackled over the radio. “Do not touch it.”

Larsen responded, “We’re not taking any risks.”

But corporate orders were clear: anything valuable must be retrieved.

Hours later, after a tense debate, the team began carving through the frozen ribs. Each strike echoed like tapping the hull of a sunken ship. When the mineral finally dislodged, the ice trembled. A low groan rolled through the cavern—deep and impossible.

Kipp froze. “The ice?”

“Probably settling,” Larsen replied, unconvincingly.

Mara held the mineral, cold enough to burn. The pulse within throbbed gently.

“We’ll call it the Heart,” Kipp suggested quietly.

They hauled it up, sealed it in an insulated crate, and locked it in the equipment shed. Silence hung heavy during dinner. Even Shaw stared at the wall, listening.

By nightfall, clouds gathered ominously on the horizon.

Metal walls rattled as snow hammered against the siding. Deep within the glacier, a sharp crack rang out, resembling bone under pressure. Mara lay awake, sensing faint but insistent vibrations beneath her. Something else stirred—a rumble from below.

Far beneath the ice, in an unseen cavern, the giant's ribs shifted. Frost cracked along its chest as its hollow cavity slowly expanded, vapor filling the space between its frozen lungs. It was as if something inside remembered how to breathe.

Night engulfed the outpost in a single gust.

The storm hit faster than predicted, slamming into Frostbite Station. The walls quivered. By evening, the wind screamed across rooftops, with snow striking the siding like stones. Larsen herded everyone into the common hall. "No wandering. No one steps outside."

Around the propane heater, shadows stretched and shrank, uneasy and alive. Then came unsettling sounds—scraping, with long, uneven drags along the exterior wall. Kipp snapped his head up, wide-eyed. Thumps followed, heavy and muffled, as if something walked against the wind with impossible strength. Hollow breaths whispered between the cycles of the heater.

"Probably loose siding," Larsen said, though his confidence didn’t match the worry in his eyes.

“No siding weighs that much,” Kipp muttered.

A metallic groan shook the wall, and dust sifted from the ceiling. Mara instinctively clutched the table.

"That wasn’t the wind?" she asked.

Shaw lifted his head, still. "Wind doesn’t knock," he murmured.

For hours, the storm circled them, brushing against the outpost and testing its defenses. Shadows flickered across narrow slit windows. Kipp swore he heard footsteps—slow, deliberate, and too far apart for a man.

They slept in shifts, barely managing to doze. At dawn, the storm faded into a distant growl.

Outside, the air was shockingly still, with pale, bruised light spilling over the snowdrifts—smooth except for a deep scar leading to the equipment shed.

"The door’s open," Mara said, her voice thin.

The metal door hung crookedly, with no signs of forced entry; the latch was unfastened. Inside, the Heart's crate sat empty, insulation cracked and brittle.

"It’s gone," Kipp whispered. "It took it."

"We don’t know what ‘it’ is," Larsen admitted.

Mara noticed faint indentations in the snow. Brushing aside the powder, she froze. A footprint. Three thick, hooked toes nearly reached her knee—much larger than her own foot.

More prints wound around the outpost. The edges of the tracks steamed faintly, as if heat had been sucked from the snow.

"It doesn’t produce warmth," Mara said softly. "It takes it."

Shaw crouched, his expression unreadable. "Ice remembers old things, sometimes too well."

Larsen exhaled. "Save the stories for later. Start searching."

They combed the perimeter in widening circles. The prints circled the buildings, paused near windows, and studied the camp. Mara noted subtle trenches and deep ruts, as if something colossal had dragged itself before finally standing.

The trail led to jagged pressure ridges. A slope revealed a long rut in the snow. A gust lifted the fog, revealing motion.

A towering silhouette limped across the ice—distorted, elongated, and hollow. Ribs jutted from its torso like a wrecked vessel, and one arm dragged behind it.

Kipp stumbled back. "It’s moving on its own!"

"It’s not," Shaw said. "Not with that body. Something inside it doesn’t breathe anymore."

Mara felt her throat tighten. "It’s using the giant’s body. Wearing it like a shell."

The figure paused, then lurched through icy spires toward the frozen strait.

"If it reaches the mainland," Larsen said, "there’s no predicting what will happen next."

"What do we do?" Mara asked.

"Stop it. Harpoons. Polar bear guns," Larsen replied.

Mara nodded. "If the Heart controls it, destroying or returning it may be the only way."

Kipp swallowed hard. "We have to get close?"

"Close enough," Larsen affirmed.

Shaw tightened his coat. "You won’t be fighting the giant. You’ll be fighting whatever has awakened inside it."

No one argued.

The tracks stretched ahead—massive and steaming—leading into the fog and toward the horizon. Snowmobiles roared, swallowed by the glacier expanse, as the sun hung low, pale, fighting the fog to illuminate jagged crevasses.

The temperature dropped sharply, and their lungs burned. Kipp’s hands trembled, even Larsen's calm demeanor frayed. Mara tracked the shadow from the day before, kneeling beside a fissure, one arm probing deep into the ice.

"Stop here," Larsen ordered. "Don’t get closer yet."

Mara leaned forward. "It’s looking for the Heart. Whatever controls it is inside."

Kipp's voice trembled. "We can’t shoot it. Look at its size!"

Larsen dismounted, a harpoon slung over his shoulder, followed by the others. Tension coiled in every step.

Mara pointed. The giant’s head jerked—stiff and unnatural. Its mouth gaped open, exhaling frozen vapor. Inside its hollow chest, something small and many-limbed clung to the ribs, tugging on frozen tendons like strings, steering the giant's body.

Kipp stumbled back. “It’s… inside it!”

Larsen fired. The harpoon slammed into the giant's shoulder. No blood issued forth, only frost that cracked like spiderwebs. The giant lurched, unbalanced. Snowmobiles wobbled; one flipped, tossing a miner to the ground. Mara caught a glimpse of the Heart embedded in the parasite, pulsing rapidly.

“Steady!” Larsen shouted. “Take the shot when it opens!”

The giant swung its bulk, its jerky steps leaving deep, steaming grooves in the snow. The parasite inside pulled the limbs like a puppeteer.

Mara realized that if they didn’t act fast, the giant could reach the mainland by nightfall.

Larsen crouched and fired the final harpoon into its spine. The giant shuddered, groaning like cracking ice before it toppled, its ribs grinding against each other.

The parasite slipped free, dragging the glowing Heart with it. Its limbs scuttled over the frost and rock, claws sparking against the ice. Mara approached cautiously. Tiny skeletal arms had fused into the crystal. They weren’t merely holding it—they were part of it. The parasite had grown from the Heart; the giant was merely a shell.

“It’s… born from it,” Mara whispered.

Larsen nodded. “Then it ends here.”

They struck the Heart with harpoons, chisels, and anything metal they could find. It shattered with a crystalline scream. A wave of cold erupted, searing the air and freezing the ground. The parasite froze mid-motion as the giant collapsed inward.

They took a breath; silence hung heavy in the air. Relief was short-lived. Beneath the glacier, the snow shivered. Seismic alarms wailed at the outpost. Deep forms stirred in untouched hollows.

Mara swallowed hard. “This… isn’t over.”

Larsen tightened his gloves and scanned the horizon. “No. It’s just beginning.”

The glacier stretched endlessly before them. Shapes waited beneath the surface, and the miners, aware of what they’d awakened, felt the fragile weight of survival. Shadows lengthened as the sun dipped low. The wind whispered warnings, carrying the faint echo of colossal forms stirring below.