The wind howled like a living thing, a beast of ice and fury that tore through the skeletal remains of what was once a city. I hunched against it, my patched furs doing little to stop the cold from sinking into my bones. My breath fogged in front of me, freezing into tiny crystals before the gale snatched them away.
Above, the sky was a slab of endless gray, a shroud that hadn’t lifted in decades—not since the sun died. Below, the ground was a mirror of jagged ice, encasing the ruins of skyscrapers and streets in a tomb of frost. Towering walls of ice loomed where buildings once stood, their surfaces carved by wind into cruel, glittering shapes.
This was Cryhaven—or what the warlords called it, anyway. A frozen prison where survival wasn’t a choice, but a sentence.
I’m Sera Voss, twenty-four winters old, born to the frost and bred to obey. Most days, I managed to keep my head down, to blend into the gray mass of scavengers scraping by in this hell. But today, my hands shook as I clutched the empty ration pouch at my waist.
Warmth credits—slivers of synthetic heat packed into metal vials—were the only currency that mattered, and mine were gone. Kael, my little brother, had burned through the last of them two nights ago, his coughs rattling through our cramped underground shelter. I’d watched the vial’s glow fade, promising myself I’d find more before the cold claimed him.
The market, if you could call it that, sprawled beneath a cracked overpass, half-buried in snowdrifts. Hollowed-out survivors huddled around flickering barter stalls, their faces gaunt under layers of grime and frostbite scars.
Underground shelters lined the edges, dug into the permafrost—rabbit holes where we hid from the worst of the blizzards. I kept my hood low, my scarf pulled tight over my mouth, as I moved through the crowd. Eyes down, steps measured. Invisible.
That’s how you survived under the warlords’ rule. Their climate enforcers patrolled the fringes, their furs bulky with stolen warmth, their batons glinting with ice. They watched for any sign of defiance—too long a stare, too sharp a word. Punishment was swift: a beating if you were lucky, a one-way trip to the outer wastes if you weren’t.
I sidled up to a stall rigged from scavenged metal, its vendor a wiry man with frost-crusted whiskers. “Got any credits?” I muttered, keeping my voice low. My gloved hands slid a shard of pre-frost glass across the counter—a trinket I’d pried from a frozen ruin last week. Worthless to me, but some clung to the past like it could warm them.
He eyed the glass, then me, his gaze lingering too long. “Barely a scrap’s worth,” he grunted, but slid a single warmth credit vial from under his coat. Its faint amber glow pulsed weakly, half-depleted already. My stomach twisted—hardly enough for a night, let alone the week Kael needed. But I nodded, tucking it into my pouch before the enforcers could spot the trade.
A shadow loomed to my left. I stiffened, catching the glint of a visor in my peripheral vision. An enforcer, his bulk blocking the dim light as he scanned the crowd. My pulse spiked, but I forced my shoulders to slump, my movements slow. Invisible. Just another broken soul in a sea of them. He lingered, his baton tapping against his thigh, before moving on. I exhaled, the breath freezing on my scarf.
The cold bit deeper as I trudged back toward our shelter, the vial a faint weight against my hip. Kael would be waiting, curled in the dark of our burrow, his thin frame shivering under threadbare blankets. Sixteen winters, and already the frost was carving hollows into his cheeks.
I’d promised our parents I’d keep him safe—before the enforcers took them, before I learned to bury everything that made me burn. That promise was all I had left, even if it meant scavenging until my fingers bled or trading scraps for slivers of heat.
A blizzard was brewing; I could feel it in the way the wind sharpened, slicing through my furs like a blade. Snow swirled thicker now, stinging my exposed skin as I ducked into a tunnel leading to the lower shelters.
The walls here were pure ice, slick and unyielding, reflecting the dim glow of communal warmth hubs—warlord-sanctioned heat sources rigged to keep us just alive enough to serve. I passed a cluster of workers hauling ice blocks, their chains clinking under enforcer watch. Their eyes were empty, frostbitten hands trembling. I looked away. Guilt was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Our shelter was a narrow crevice carved into the permafrost, hidden behind a slab of rusted metal. I pushed it aside, the cold searing my palms even through gloves, and slipped inside. The air was barely warmer, heavy with the damp chill of underground. Kael lay in the corner, his cough echoing off the icy walls. His eyes, too big for his pale face, flickered up as I knelt beside him.
“Got something,” I said, pulling the vial from my pouch. Its weak glow illuminated the hollows under his cheekbones, and for a moment, I saw our mother in him—the same stubborn set to his jaw. I pushed the thought down, deep where the frost couldn’t touch it.
“Enough?” he rasped, voice thin.
“For tonight.” I didn’t lie, not outright. Not yet. I cracked the vial’s seal, releasing a faint hum as warmth seeped into the air—too little, too fleeting. Kael’s shivering eased, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Beyond our shelter, the blizzard’s howl grew louder, a reminder of how fragile this life was.
I settled beside him, my back to the icy wall, and stared at the vial’s dying light. Something stirred in me, a flicker I’d buried since I was a child—a heat that whispered of more than survival, of fighting back. I crushed it down, hard. Defiance got you killed. I’d seen it with my own eyes. For Kael, I’d stay invisible. I’d obey.
But as the frost pressed in, that flicker lingered, unbidden, like an ember refusing to die.