Bjorn opened his eyes slowly, stretching out his arms as a faint yawn escaped him. A strange chill clung to the air in his tent, and as his mind cleared, he realized that the usual warmth of the campfire had faded. A prickling sense of worry crept over him. Did the fire go out?
It was early morning; he could tell by the muted light filtering through the tent walls. But something was off. Arne had been supposed to wake him for the last watch. His hand instinctively moved to the ice axe lying beside his makeshift pillow, gripping its handle tightly as he took one last look at Anna, who lay sleeping soundly, unaware of the creeping cold that had seeped into camp.
Yesterday's eerie silence felt even more troubling now. Something's wrong, he thought, unzipping the tent quietly and stepping outside.
The air was thick with a bone-chilling fog, so dense it swallowed up the edges of their camp. The clearing was deathly silent, the usual early-morning sounds of forest life conspicuously absent. The fog drifted lazily, a heavy, unnatural mist that Bjorn had never seen at this hour in these woods. His instincts flared. Mornings in this forest were usually clear, alive with the soft calls of birds and the rustling of small animals. But today, everything was cloaked in oppressive quiet.
Arne was nowhere to be seen.
Bjorn scanned the camp, his grip tightening on his modified ice axe. What he held wasn't an ordinary climbing tool. Over the years, Bjorn had adapted it into a versatile weapon, replacing its old handle with a series of strong, interlocking pipes salvaged from Altera. The head of the axe was now a mechanical piece that could transform into a spear with the press of a button, springing open to reveal a lethal, extended point.
Moving slowly, Bjorn prowled around the edge of the tents, each step careful and measured. There were no signs of struggle, no broken tents or disturbed snow, nothing to indicate a fight or a hasty departure. Just a pristine, unsettling blanket of snow covering the ground.
And then he saw him.
Arne was crouched to the right of the camp, near the edge of the tree line. Bjorn paused, narrowing his eyes as he took in Arne's unusual position. Arne's body was curled over, knees drawn up, his head tucked down. His hands were raised above his head, palms facing each other, almost as if in a prayer.
Bjorn's breath caught. He took a slow, steadying step closer, his senses on high alert. Why would Arne be sitting like that, and so close to the perimeter? The uneasy quiet of the forest loomed around him, pressing in with an unnatural heaviness.
"Arne…" Bjorn whispered, though he couldn't shake the feeling that his voice might echo through the silence like a beacon.
Arne made no response to Bjorn's presence, save for a soft, rhythmic humming that slipped from his mouth in slow, unnatural waves. It was low and haunting, as though it came from somewhere beyond him, a sound that seemed to chill the air around him even more. Bjorn felt an icy shiver run down his spine as he looked at his friend's blank, hollow eyes staring forward, fixed on something beyond sight. This frozen, trance-like posture was uncanny—he'd only seen something like it once before, in the belly of Altera, where the unlucky few were trapped in some strange half-existence, their eyes empty and fixed.
Without wasting another moment, Bjorn kicked him hard in the side, hoping the impact would snap him back to the present.
"Ukh—" Arne grunted as he collapsed sideways in the snow, his body limp as he hit the ground. Silence fell for a breath before he stirred, his face twisting in confusion. "Why did you hit me?" he asked slowly, his tone uncharacteristically vacant.
Bjorn, caught off guard, stared at him. "What?"
Arne's voice grew sharper, though still slow and unnervingly controlled. "I said, why did you hit me, Bjorn. Was I unclear the first time?"
Bjorn's pulse quickened as he took a step back, his hand still gripping the handle of his ice axe. "No... but what the hell were you doing just now?"
Arne's gaze drifted, his eyes unfocused. "I went to take a piss. Then... I was going to wake you. Oh, and something happened about an hour ago..." He trailed off, his gaze meeting Bjorn's with sudden confusion as though seeing him for the first time. Arne's face was pale, and the dark circles under his eyes seemed even deeper in the dim morning light.
"It's early morning, Arne," Bjorn finally said, the words slow and deliberate, as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
A flicker of shock crossed Arne's face. "It was... It was still night when I left. Around one, maybe two in the morning," he murmured, a tremor creeping into his voice. A thousand questions flashed through his mind, each one adding weight to the dread settling in his gut.
Bjorn exhaled, steadying his breath. "When I found you, you were... well, you looked like you were praying or something. Kneeling there, with your hands held up like that." He mimicked the strange position he'd seen. "You looked... I don't even know how to explain it. It was like you were somewhere else entirely."
Arne's eyes narrowed, struggling to grasp the strange reality unfolding around him. He didn't believe in gods or the old myths yet he couldn't explain what had just happened. "Bjorn, I don't know what's going on here," he admitted, his voice low. "But let's get that fire going again. The others will be waking up soon, and we'll need it." He paused, forcing a half-hearted smile. "Maybe things will make sense with a little warmth."
Bjorn nodded, the tension lingering as they moved back toward the remnants of last night's fire. Kneeling by the coals, they worked in silence, adding kindling and nursing the embers until new flames took hold, casting flickering light over the group's tents.
As the hours passed, the camp slowly stirred to life. Mikkel, Bjorn, and Arne gathered by the fire, their expressions grim as they reviewed the strange events of the past days—the unnerving silence in the forest, the shadow that had slid past Arne's vision, the branches that had broken without a trace of footprints in the snow, and now Arne's peculiar episode, which he struggled to explain even to himself.
"All this thinking's leading me nowhere," Bjorn said, his voice laced with frustration as he ran a hand through his hair. "This whole place feels wrong, like it's pressing in on us."
Mikkel nodded, his gaze shifting to the edge of the clearing, where the dense trees stood like silent sentinels. "We don't know what's waiting for us out here. And whatever it is, I don't want us lingering around for it."
A final, heavy silence fell over them before Mikkel spoke, his voice resolute. "We're not setting up any more camps until we reach the Great Summit."
The others exchanged glances, feeling both relief and apprehension. The Great Summit marked the end of these woods, a massive cliff that bordered the forest and formed a natural boundary surrounding both Altera and their home. No one had ever ventured beyond it; it was a place of rumored danger, known for strange gravitational phenomena and disorienting effects on the mind. The Great Summit had long served as the unofficial edge of their world. Its towering cliffs, sharp as the blade of an axe, looked out over lands no one had ever dared to cross, the last vestiges of their known reality before the unfathomable beyond. Arvid claimed to have seen gravity itself twist along those cliffs and watched prey lose their footing as their bodies turned at impossible angles. It was a place as mysterious as it was foreboding—a natural barrier that seemed to defy the laws of the world they thought they understood.
"We pack up, then," Bjorn finally said. "And let's move fast. I want to be on the trail by ten."
By mid-morning, everyone had packed up, the camp quickly vanishing under layers of snow as they stamped out the last embers of the fire. The group arranged themselves in their previous formation, but this time, a silent understanding passed between them. They moved with an unspoken urgency, each step heavy with the feeling that something was watching, lurking just beyond their vision.
As they set off into the dense forest, Bjorn adjusted his grip on his ice axe, his senses on high alert. Ugle walked quietly beside Mikkel, the older hunter's presence a silent reassurance. They moved in near silence, with only the soft crunch of their footsteps and the muffled, rhythmic breathing of their companions breaking the stillness. The trees loomed above them, dark and unmoving, each shadow seeming to stretch just a little farther than the last, each rustle of the branches sounding like a whisper in a language they couldn't understand.