Frostbitten Hearth

It’s dark. It’s cold. Memories lash at Adam with the same ferocity as the tiny crystals of ice hurled at him by the wind.

It can’t be much farther. He can feel the heartbeat vibrating through the ice. Is it calling to him? And if so, is he truly the one meant to answer?

He already knows.

Adam glances behind him, though he won’t see anything through the storm. Still, something in his soul shivers like a rabbit catching the shadow of a hawk.

He cannot see his pursuer, but he knows the Hunter is close. Close enough, perhaps, that Adam might feel his footsteps through the ice as clearly as he feels the beating of the heart ahead.

One step after another.

So cold, so dark.

An endless march through an endless night.

Adam thinks of the Hunter. Does he suffer as Adam does? Does he imagine the snow and ice infiltrating his bloodstream? Perhaps his skin betrayed him long ago for all the pain he forced it to endure. Perhaps his skin is long dead. Perhaps he is long dead—nothing but a corpse carried forward by the momentum of fear and hatred.

Adam scoops snow with his frostbitten hands and stuffs it into his mouth. As he swallows, a vision rises in his mind like driftwood rising through the surface of a foul lake: endless corridors of a forgotten tomb, floors covered with crushed bone. He walks through them in a fever, scooping up pale dust, shoveling it into his mouth, swallowing until his body matches the color of the dead he devours. The consumed bones in his guts once again regaining their former, whole form, their sharp ends penetrating his flesh and skin. The small white spears protruding, tearing his body.

Bile burns his throat. He collapses to his knees, hands clamped over his mouth, fighting not to empty his stomach onto this cursed plain. He has lived on nothing but snow—days, weeks, or whatever passes for time in a place where the sun is dead and night has no end.

“I am losing my mind,” he thinks. This is not a path for mortals. Even gods hesitate before stepping onto it. And Adam is no god.

One step after another.

Something juts from the snow to his right. A tree? No—a rifle. Another lies beside it, and another. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Abandoned? Arranged? Some pattern the mortal mind cannot untangle. A graveyard. A monument to a battle no one remembers. Does Adam walk across the burial ground of warriors whose lives were cut short by their enemy?

He feels—more than sees—silhouettes standing among the weapons, vague shapes carved from gale-driven snow.

What do they whisper? What do they sing? He almost recognizes the words…

Step by step, from cold and dark to dark and cold.

The heartbeat grows stronger now. Faster.

Can it feel him?

Adam almost laughs. Of course it cannot feel him. He is a dead man. A ghost. A shadow of something that once was.

Or… what if it is the other way around? What if he is the Hunter? What if his prey stumbles ahead, crazed and despairing? What if he has simply forgotten the order of things?

Does it matter here?

Step by step.

Dark and cold.

The beating of the heart. The breath of the Hunter on the back of his neck.

Who am I? Who was I? Who will I be? A worm in old wood? A leaf carried by wind? Here, there is no wood for worms, no leaves to float on the wings of wind.

Adam laughs softly. He has just realized he no longer carries his rifle. He cannot remember where he lost it. Perhaps the Hunter will find it. Perhaps he already has.

Is that… light?

He stares into the darkness ahead. He has seen light many times on this path, always a rotten fruit of imagination. Nothing survives here—least of all hope.

And yet… light glows before him.

Can he trust it? Of course not. But—

The heartbeat is so intense now that it no longer sounds like a heart. The ice vibrates with its grim, frantic song. The light seeps from beneath the ice: a sick, red glow felt as much as seen.

There it is. At last.

Around the glowing patch of ice lies a camp—or rather a rubbish heap, judging by the chaos. Ragged tents, shattered equipment, all half-swallowed by snow. How many came here, answering the desperate song of the heart? It does not matter. There is work to do.

His pickaxe is still with him, at least. His rifle may have fled him, but the pickaxe stayed.

He wants to collapse in relief, to rest for even a second—but the Hunter is close. Adam can almost see his dark form skulking in the poisonous glow.

He begins digging without hesitation.

When the pickaxe breaks, he tears at the ice with his nails. By the time he reaches the final layer, his hands are little more than twisted stumps of gore.

Beneath the ice lies a body, perfectly preserved except for the yawning cavity in its chest. Inside rests a heart—unconnected to any artery—yet beating, radiating thick red light.

Adam does not dare look at the man’s face.

He lowers what remains of his hands into the cavity and lifts the heart to his lips… and bites down. He tears and gulps, feeling the thing enter him like alien roots threading through every vessel, every cell.

Tears sting his eyes as he finishes. When he blinks them away, the frozen body is already collapsing, melting into a puddle of what once was flesh and bone.

He lowers himself into the hole, into the wet remains of the one before him. The Hunter is coming for his prize—for his curse. They always come. The ice is already reclaiming the pit. Pain blooms in Adam’s chest. As one wound seals, another splits open.

Hopefully, the Hunter will be quicker than he was.

The debt must be paid.

The circle must continue.

Adam was no god.

Immortality was not bestowed upon him.

But he walks the path, and the path is eternal.

The ice vibrates.

Is that a heartbeat—or footsteps?