Page 8 of Inevitable Endings
It stretches in all directions, a blank, frozen wasteland beneath a sky that isn’t quite black but not light either, just an eternal, suffocating gray. There is no wind, no sound, just the quiet crunch of my footsteps as I move forward.
I don’t know where I’m going, but my body does. My bare feet should hurt, should be frozen, but I feel nothing. The cold bites at my skin, yet I don’t shiver.
Something about this place is wrong.
I stop. In the distance, a pocket watch swings from a tree branch, ticking in an erratic rhythm that doesn’t match time as I know it. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound is too loud, filling the silent world around me.
I step closer, drawn to it like it holds answers I don’t even know I’m searching for. My fingers brush the cold metal—
A gunshot rips through the silence.
The sound slams into me like a physical force, my breath stalling as a sharp wind kicks up out of nowhere. The snow is no longer untouched. It’s red. Blood blooms beneath my feet, seeping through the ice.
I whirl around, my pulse thundering.
There, in the distance, a man kneels in the snow, his head bowed, his hands bound behind his back. His dark hair is matted with blood, and a shadowy figure stands behind him, a gun pressed to his skull.
The snow beneath my feet shifts.
At first, I think it’s just the wind, but then I sink—my stomach lurches as the ground gives way beneath me. The frozen surface fractures like glass, splintering into jagged veins of black ice that stretch in every direction. A warning. A trap.
I try to move, but my legs won’t obey.
‘‘Help me!’’ I scream, but my voice is swallowed by the howling wind.
I lurch forward, desperate to reach him, but with every step, the ice thins beneath me. The cracks widen. My breath comes fast and sharp, fogging in the frozen air. I’m running out of time.
A second gunshot.
The ice shatters.
I plunge into the freezing abyss, the water swallowing me whole.
It’s not just cold, it’s a death grip. The kind of cold that rips the breath from your lungs, that turns your bones to lead. My scream dies in a rush of bubbles, lost to the dark depths.
I thrash, but the more I fight, the deeper I sink.
Above me, the jagged hole in the ice shrinks. The light grows fainter. Shadows dance across the fractured surface, and I see him, Aslanov, standing on the ice, looking down at me.
Except… he’s not moving.
His eyes are empty. Hollow. Like he’s already gone.
I try to scream his name again, but the water steals the sound from my lips.
Another gunshot.
Everything shatters—
Aslanov
The echo of the gunshot rings in my ears.
I’m on my knees in the snow, my arms yanked behind my back, the bite of cold metal digging into my wrists. The winter air burns my lungs with each shallow breath, thick with the scent of gunpowder and blood. The world is silent. Too silent.
Snow drifts down in slow, heavy flakes, coating the ground in an untouched white, except for the dark stains seeping through it. Blood. My blood. It runs from a wound I can’t see, soaking into the ice beneath me.
A sound.
