Ninety-Two Days Before the Ice

The cold had stopped hurting.

That was how Rhys Darby knew he was dying.

An hour ago, every inch of him had screamed. Now there was only a heavy, creeping quiet, and a thin white wind threading through the tears in his winter gear. Each breath fogged and froze before it left his lips.

Both legs lay pinned beneath the wreck of the snow crawler. He couldn't feel them anymore.

Ten years. Ten years since a solar storm tore through Earth's magnetic field and the temperature fell off a cliff. Ten years since cities vanished under snow, oceans hardened into glass, and mutated beasts crawled out of the white, growing bigger and hungrier with every winter.

Rhys had survived all of it. More than survived: he had built New Goshen from salvaged generators and sheer stubbornness, steel walls above, hydroponic levels buried below. Two thousand families slept inside it tonight.

Which was why he had believed in the valley.

The report had come yesterday. A geothermal pocket far to the north, ground warm enough for roots to take hold. The first living soil in a decade. Rhys had gone himself. You didn't send other people's sons toward a miracle.

There was no valley. There was only a snow beast the size of a house, waiting with its jaws open.

His team, veterans every one, died in under a minute. Rhys killed the monster anyway, with the last of the explosives. He had won.

He just hadn't been meant to walk away.

Then, through the wind, came the growl of an engine.

Rescue. The thought hit him like heat. He dragged his eyelids open and lifted a trembling hand.

"Wait. Is that Rhys?"

Every muscle locked. He knew that voice.

A second snow crawler rolled out of the white. The passenger door opened, and a woman stepped out in a spotless fur-lined coat, as if she had never once been cold.

Lexi Stowe. His wife of nineteen years. A woman who had not set foot outside New Goshen's walls in a decade.

The driver climbed down beside her. Curry Barker. Her first love. The man she had sworn, again and again, Rhys would never have to worry about.

Curry slid an arm around her waist as though he had done it a thousand times. "Wow. You really are hard to kill."

"He won't last much longer," Lexi said. "If the blood loss doesn't finish him, the cold will."

No fear in her voice. No grief. Only impatience, like a woman waiting on a late delivery.

"H-how..."

"How?" Lexi laughed softly. "There was never a valley, Rhys. The scavengers found that beast weeks ago. Only one of them made it back."

Rhys remembered. The lone survivor, shaking, swearing he'd seen a monster. Then, two days later, retracting every word.

"He was Curry's man."

The false report. The perfect coordinates. The expedition Lexi had begged, with tears in her eyes, only he could lead. Rhys's blood ran colder than the wind.

"Don't take it personally." She shrugged. "Nineteen years is plenty. We don't need you anymore."

She raised her hand. A plain gold ring gleamed on her finger.

Rhys's pupils shrank.

His family heirloom. The one that had vanished weeks ago, just as supplies ran low. He had blamed himself. He had assumed he'd dropped it in the wastelands.

It was no ordinary ring. It held a dimensional space no one else in this frozen world possessed. It had carried him through every crisis he had ever faced.

"So this is why you never panicked when the food ran short." Lexi held it to the pale light, greed shining in her eyes. "All these years you never told me what it could do. Now it's ours."

Rhys clenched his fists until his nails split his gloves.

"Oh, one more thing." Curry smiled, almost kindly. "Chris isn't yours. He's my son."

The words cut deeper than the beast's claws.

Tears froze on Rhys's lashes. He had carried that boy on his shoulders through the first snowfall. Taught him to hold a rifle. Loved him. Even that had been a lie.

"Come on," Lexi said. "Chris is waiting. New Goshen needs to meet its new leader."

"Of course, love. But first, one last thing."

The engine roared. The crawler slammed into the wreckage pinning Rhys, and twisted metal screamed across the ice, dragging him toward the edge of a ravine. His broken fingers slipped from the steel.

He fell.

Far above, two silhouettes stood at the rim, laughing.

As the last warmth bled out of him, Rhys screamed his final vow into the dark.

Even if I have to come back as a ghost, I will make every one of you pay!

"Rhys! Are you deaf?"

A hand shoved his shoulder. He staggered back. Before his mind could catch up, a palm cracked across his cheek.

"What are you waiting for? Just sign it!"

The woman glaring at him was Lexi Stowe.

But she was younger. Smoother. Her skin glowed with a well-fed warmth he hadn't seen in a decade.

He wasn't listening. His eyes had landed on the calendar behind her: a glossy page, a cheerful bank logo, and a month in bold black letters.

August 2026.

His heart began to pound. He was warm. His legs were whole. His cheek burned, and he had never been so grateful for pain.

Ten years ago.

The Great Freeze would begin in ninety-two days.