novelraw Chapter 120: The First Freeze
Chapter 120: The First Freeze
The first freeze came with sound.
You would think that snow and ice were silent... like the world was literally frozen and unable to do anything. But that wasn’t the case at all.
Ice was really, really loud if you just sat back and listened. It didn’t have the howl of wind or the rattle of rain, but it was a much deeper, creepier sound. Almost like a crossover between the older music and something that came out of a horror movie.
The kind that made the tower feel alive under their feet.
Somewhere in the drowned city below, the surface began to seize. A crack shivered out like a rifle shot, sharp and brittle, then settled into a groan that ran along the panes of glass as though the building itself were grinding its teeth.
The five of them sat in the penthouse living room, each in their own silence as they got lost in their heads. Cups of comfort steaming faintly in their hands. It was almost soothing for the creature inside of Sera to smell the hot chocolate, the coffee, and the peppermint tea.
It didn’t matter what was going on outside. As long as the horde was close by, the creature was satisfied.
But outside, the world was no longer water. It was quickly becoming something else. Like the mouth of God blew across the ocean and froze everything that it touched.
The ocean was freezing.
Sera watched the change through the glass.
It spread across the harbor like a skin, thin at first, then thickening, hardening, until the reflections stopped moving and the city below looked painted into place. The cracks gleamed white against black water, feathering out in sudden lightning bolts that crawled across the surface and vanished beneath the snowflakes already drifting down.
The snow made everything wrong.
By day, snow was expected. By night, it turned the world into a lantern. It fell and clung to the ice, reflecting back the stars in the sky along with its own glow, even the pale smudge of the moon contributed to making the night turn to day.
It was too bright.
Too quiet.
Elias lifted his head first, his eyes narrowing at the unnatural light. His breath ghosted pale in front of him. The penthouse wasn’t that cold, but there was still a sting to the air that the windows weren’t able to keep out. "Snow shouldn’t look like that."
"It’s not the snow," Zubair said, practical as ever. "It’s the ice. It’s reflecting every scrap of light back at us. Snow just helps it along."
Lachlan huffed a soft laugh, rubbing his gloved hands together. "Like living inside a snow globe. Shake it and watch us all rattle around."
"Not funny," Elias muttered, but his voice was thinner than usual, tired around the edges.
Alexei sprawled deeper into the couch, one arm over the back, his mug balanced in his other hand. "Is little bit funny," he countered. His eyes flicked to Sera, daring her to weigh in.
She didn’t. Not at first. She traced a finger around the rim of her hot chocolate watching the heat and the cold battling against each other in real time.
The creature in her wasn’t unsettled—it was calm, as if this change had been inevitable all along. For her, the cold was no different than the dark: simply another thing to endure.
But she knew better than to let that show. She was bundled in layers same as the rest of them, thick sweater under her coat, boots laced to the ankle. She refused to stand out as something apart. Not yet.
"Looks like home to me," she said finally, voice flat. "Cold, quiet, and bright when you’d rather it wasn’t. I wonder what the Northern lights would look like now that there is no more light from the city to interrupt the show."
That earned a few glances, but no one pressed.
-------
When the groaning started again, louder this time than before, they all went still.
It rolled through the structure like a warning.
Ice was heavy.
It was hungry—it didn’t just sit on water, it reshaped it.
Zubair set his cup down and rose without a word, moving to check the seams of the stairwell door, then the vent covers. His hands were steady, efficient, not the movements of a man afraid but of one who had long ago learned to listen to his environment.
Elias drifted to the nearest window, eyes scanning the spiderweb of white cracks that now streaked the harbor ice. "It’s thickening fast. Too fast."
Sera joined him, shoulder to shoulder, though she kept her eyes forward. "You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to apply logic to it. It’s happening, and it’s not going to stop any time soon. That’s all you need to know."
He didn’t argue, which was rare. He just stared harder, lips pressed tight.
Lachlan, maybe sensing the tension, leaned forward in his chair and tapped his mug against Alexei’s. "Cheer up, Snowflake. At least you finally got weather that matches your name."
Alexei grinned around the rim of his coffee. "Da. But when I control ice, it is beautiful. This?" He gestured toward the glowing white world outside. "This is ugly ice. Cheap knockoff. Not mine."
Sera’s eyes flicked toward him. "Yours?"
He tilted his head, a grin sharpening on his face as he winked at her. "I’ll show you one day."
The words landed between them like a marker laid down on a map.
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By midnight, the snow had deepened into a steady curtain. The city below was frozen solid, streets gone, rivers replaced with white expanses where you could almost pretend nothing had been built at all.
They tested the radios, but there was nothing but static.
Zubair tried the satellite phone next.
This time, it worked, a thin thread of connection cutting through the dead air, but when he cycled through the channels there was only silence. No other voices. No signals. No reassurance that there was anyone left to call.
He clicked it off and set it aside without comment.
Silence reclaimed the room, but it was a different kind than the night before. It wasn’t as anxious; they weren’t waiting for the glass to break and the water to take them out.
This was the silence of men conserving their strength, of accepting what was in front of them.
Sera stretched her legs out in front of her, the firelight from a lantern pooling faintly over her boots. She didn’t try to fill the space with words. Neither did they.
Every so often the ice would crack, sharp and sudden, and they would all glance at the windows like men who knew better than to assume they were safe. But when the sound faded, they leaned back again.
The snow kept falling, brightening the night until it looked like dawn would never come.
And this time, none of the even bothered to pretend to sleep.