Mark Westwood's consciousness slowly revived in the darkness, like an ice floe floating on the cold sea, swaying with the waves. His eyelids were heavy as lead, and every attempt to open them was like a struggle with his will. Finally, a faint red light penetrated his vision, it was the emergency light flashing alone above his head, as if it was the only sign of life in the world.
His limbs were so stiff that he could hardly move, and the seat belt was as tight as steel, making him feel a kind of imprisoned fear. This sense of fear made his heart beat faster and his breathing became rapid. He tried to recall what happened, but the memory was like a frozen river, with only sporadic fragments flashing in his mind: the sirens, the bumps, the screams, and the huge and vague shadow, which lingered on the edge of the memory, and every time he tried to capture it, he would feel dizzy and nauseous.
Mark took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. He is a polar archaeologist, and his mission this time is to lead a team to investigate a newly discovered ruins in the Arctic Circle. However, a sudden blizzard hit their plane, ruthlessly throwing them out of the sky. The only thing he was sure of now was that he had to get out of here, find his team, and find hope for survival.
He used all his strength to finally unbuckle his seat belt. The moment he stood up, he felt that all the muscles in his body were protesting, and the pain came like a tide. With the dim light of the emergency light, he looked around and found that the fuselage of the plane had been torn in half, and the back half had disappeared. His colleagues, Jack, Sarah, and others, were all gone.
"Jack? Sarah? Is anyone there?" His voice echoed in the silent cabin, but only the sound of the wind responded to him. The cold wind from the Arctic poured in from the gaps in the broken fuselage, making a low whistle, as if it was the whisper of an ancient creature, which made his back cold.
Mark forced himself to calm down and began to search for useful equipment in the wreckage. He found a half-damaged emergency kit with canned food, a bottle of water, a knife and a flare. In the ruins of the cockpit, he also found a surviving satellite phone, but the battery was exhausted. These products of modern civilization seemed so fragile and powerless at this moment.
In the corner of the cabin, he found a geological radar, which was a key tool for them to find underground ruins. When he touched the suitcase, a strange current seemed to run through his body from his fingertips, making him shiver involuntarily. He hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to take the suitcase. This device might help him find other survivors or even find a way home.
Mark pushed open the deformed cabin door and stepped into the ice and snow world of the Arctic. The cold wind cut his exposed skin like a sharp blade, surrounded by endless ice fields, glowing with a faint blue light under the faint aurora. In the distance, the towering icebergs loomed in the darkness, like sleeping giants. This desolate scene gave Mark an illusion that he had come to another world, a foreign land far away from human civilization.
He took out a compass and tried to determine the direction. However, the compass needle was spinning wildly, and it couldn't point to any fixed direction at all. This abnormal phenomenon reminded Mark of some strange rumors he had read when preparing for this trip: it was said that there was a mysterious "magnetic anomaly zone" in this polar region, and any modern navigation equipment would fail there. Those rumors also mentioned some even more bizarre things...something he scoffed at at the time.
"Calm down, Mark, calm down." He whispered to himself, trying to calm his increasingly fast heartbeat. As an experienced polar archaeologist, he knew that in this environment, keeping sanity was more important than anything else. However, an inexplicable sense of fear spread quietly like ice, eroding his heart.
Just then, Mark noticed a series of footprints on the snow not far away. His heart skipped a beat - maybe other survivors! He didn't care to think too much, and immediately trudged in the direction of the footprints.
However, as he continued to move forward, an inexplicable sense of uneasiness began to spread in his heart. These footprints...seemed a little wrong. Their shapes were strange, neither like human footprints nor like any Arctic animals he knew. Each footprint was unusually large, as if it was left by some giant creature. What made Mark even more uneasy was that these footprints seemed to start from where the plane crashed, rather than leading there. This meant...something had been here after they crashed.
Suddenly, a low rumble came from a distance, interrupting Mark's thoughts. The sound was low and persistent, as if it came from the depths of the earth, and it seemed to be the call of some ancient creature. Then, the earth began to shake slightly, and snow fell from the nearby glacier.
Mark's face turned pale in an instant. As an archaeologist with a geology background, he knew too well what this meant - glacier displacement! In the fragile ecological environment of the Arctic, even a small disturbance can trigger a catastrophic chain reaction.
He quickened his pace, trying to escape from the glacier that was about to collapse. However, just as he was about to reach a relatively safe place, a deafening roar sounded, and the entire glacier began to crack, and the huge ice blocks collapsed like the bell of doomsday.
Mark felt a strong force pushing him backwards, his body flipped in the air, and then fell heavily on the ice. His consciousness began to blur, and the last image in his sight was the collapsed glacier and a huge and indescribable shadow slowly rising from the depths of the ice...