The Forsaken Heir of the Frozen End

Chapter 5 The First Monster

The second crash from upstairs shook the entire mansion hard enough to rattle the chandelier above the living room. Charlotte let out another terrified scream while instinctively backing away from the staircase. Ben grabbed the edge of the sofa with trembling hands, his face completely drained of colour, and even Victor Beckham’s carefully controlled composure began cracking beneath the pressure.

Another sound followed immediately after. A slow, dragging noise. Something heavy moved across the second-floor ceiling directly above them. Pascal’s eyes narrowed sharply.

The Frost Wretches had entered the house far earlier than they should have been capable of doing. In the previous timeline, low-level Frost Creatures usually avoided heavily populated areas during the opening stages of the apocalypse. They hunted isolated victims first while larger nests formed beneath abandoned districts.

But this creature had targeted the Beckham residence directly. That meant one of two things. Either the accelerated timeline was affecting monster evolution…Or something inside this house was attracting them. Neither possibility was good.

Victor immediately stepped toward a locked cabinet near the dining area and entered a passcode with practised speed. Seconds later, the metallic door clicked open, revealing a compact handgun along with several boxes of ammunition.

Charlotte stared at him in disbelief. “You had a gun this whole time?”Victor loaded the weapon calmly despite the tension in his expression. “I own several.”Pascal was not surprised.

Powerful men are always prepared for disasters long before ordinary people even imagine them possible. Unfortunately, guns alone would not save them for very long. Not against what was coming. Another scraping sound echoed overhead.

Closer this time. The creature was moving toward the staircase. Ben swallowed visibly. “Dad… what exactly are we dealing with?”Victor glanced briefly toward Pascal. The look lasted less than a second, but Pascal understood its meaning immediately.

Victor wanted answers. And more dangerously…He believed Pascal might actually have them. Pascal avoided his gaze. Revealing too much now would only create unnecessary complications.“Does it matter?” Pascal said quietly. “Whatever that thing is, it killed a man outside in seconds.”

Charlotte’s breathing became uneven. “We need to call emergency services.” “They won’t come,” Pascal answered again. This time, Charlotte snapped completely.“How do you keep knowing these things?” she shouted. “Ever since this morning, you’ve been acting like you expected all of this!”

The accusation filled the room heavily. Ben slowly turned toward Pascal as well. Fear still lingered in his eyes, but now suspicion had joined it. Pascal could almost feel the atmosphere shifting around him. In normal circumstances, his family would have dismissed him immediately. They had spent years treating him like background noise inside their lives.

But the apocalypse changed human instincts quickly. People naturally gravitated toward anyone who appeared informed during a crisis. And right now, Pascal looked far too calm compared to everyone else. That alone made him dangerous. Before he could respond, the upstairs hallway lights suddenly went out.

Darkness swallowed the second floor instantly. Then came the sound, a low clicking noise.WetUnevenLike frozen bones grinding together. Charlotte covered her mouth in horror. The sound slowly approached the staircase. StepDrag.StepDrag.

Ben’s breathing became faster. “Dad…”Victor raised the handgun toward the staircase without answering. Pascal’s mind raced rapidly. A single Frost Wretch was manageable. The real danger came if the creature managed to infect someone. Frost contamination spreads through physical wounds frighteningly fast during the early stages of corruption.

Within hours, victims lost body heat permanently. Within days, they stopped being human. The scraping noise stopped suddenly. An unbearable silence settled over the mansion afterwards. Not ordinary silence.The kind that presses against human nerves while every instinct screams that something is watching nearby.

Pascal slowly moved backwards toward the kitchen entrance. He needed distance.Weapons.An exit strategy.Because if more Frost Wretches surrounded the house, staying trapped here would become suicidal.

Then Charlotte made the worst possible mistake.“Who’s there?” she called shakily toward the darkness upstairs. Pascal closed his eyes briefly.Stupid.Frost Wretches hunted through sound, movement, and heat signatures during early-stage evolution.

Drawing attention to yourself only accelerated their aggression. The response came instantly. A blur of white exploded from the darkness above. Charlotte screamed as the creature launched itself over the staircase railing with terrifying speed. Its elongated limbs smashed against the marble floor while icy vapour erupted outward across the room.

For one horrifying second, everyone saw the creature clearly. Its body resembled a human corpse stretched beyond natural proportions. Frost-covered veins pulsed beneath translucent skin while jagged ice protruded from parts of its spine and shoulders. The creature’s mouth hung unnaturally wide, revealing layers of needle-like teeth coated in frozen blood.

Most horrifying of all were its eyes. Completely white.Empty.Like something wearing human flesh without understanding humanity itself. Victor was fired immediately. The gunshot exploded through the mansion. The bullet struck the creature directly in the shoulder, spinning it sideways across the floor.

But instead of dying…The Frost Wretch shrieked. The sound barely resembled anything human. Charlotte collapsed against the sofa, crying, while Ben stumbled backwards in panic. Pascal reacted instantly.“Don’t let it touch you!”

The creature slammed against the dining table before springing upward again, unnaturally fast despite the bullet wound frozen into its body. Victor fired twice more. One shot missed entirely. The second shattered part of the creature’s jaw. It still did not stop moving. Pascal grabbed a heavy metal fireplace poker from beside the hearth and stepped forward before anyone else could react.

Ben stared at him in disbelief. “What are you doing?!”

Pascal ignored him completely. His body already remembered this terror. The chaos.The blood.The survival instinct that erased hesitation. The Frost Wretch lunged toward Charlotte. Pascal intercepted it midway. The creature turned violently toward him the moment he entered its path, white eyes locking onto his face with animalistic hunger.

For the briefest moment, the monster froze. Pascal’s heart skipped once. It recognised him. That was impossible. Yet the creature’s movements clearly hesitated after seeing him. And somewhere deep within its distorted throat, a strange clicking sound emerged, almost like confusion.

Pascal did not waste the opportunity. He swung the metal poker directly into the creature’s skull with every ounce of force he possessed. A sickening crack echoed through the room. The Frost Wretch crashed sideways into the marble floor. Frozen black blood splattered across the tiles.

Victor fired again immediately afterwards. This time, the bullet pierced directly through the creature’s eye socket. The monster convulsed violently. Then stopped moving. The entire mansion fell silent except for Charlotte’s sobbing breaths. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Because the corpse lying across the floor had shattered reality itself.

Monsters existed. And humanity was no longer alone. Ben stared at the dead creature with trembling eyes. “What… what is that thing?”Pascal slowly lowered the bloodstained poker. The cold radiating from the corpse spread unnaturally across the floor, forming thin layers of frost beneath it.

“That,” Pascal said quietly, “is why society is going to collapse.”

Victor looked sharply toward him again.“You know exactly what it is.”Pascal remained silent. Victor stepped closer slowly, handgun still raised loosely at his side.“Who are you really?”

The question made Charlotte look up immediately.“What kind of question is that?”Victor never looked away from Pascal.“You’ve predicted every major event today before it happened,” he said coldly. “Communication failure. The storm. The danger outside. Even that creature.”

Ben’s expression changed gradually. Confusion became unease. Because now that Victor had spoken the thoughts aloud, the pattern became impossible to ignore.

Pascal looked too prepared. Too calm.Too experienced.Like someone remembering events instead of living them for the first time. Pascal’s grip tightened around the poker. This situation was becoming dangerous. If they became afraid of him now, they might attempt to control him before he could leave. And he absolutely refused to become trapped here again.

Before anyone could continue questioning him, the Frost Wretch’s corpse suddenly twitched. Everyone froze instantly. Thin streams of black frost began spreading outward from the creature’s wounds like living veins across the marble floor. Pascal’s eyes widened.“Move away from it!”

Victor reacted immediately, pulling Charlotte backwards. But Ben hesitated. And that single second nearly killed him. The creature’s dead arm suddenly snapped upward and grabbed Ben’s ankle. Ben screamed. Black frost exploded across his skin instantly, spreading beneath his pant leg like an infection racing through veins.

Pascal moved without thinking. He swung the poker downward with brutal force, crushing the creature’s arm completely before kicking the corpse away from Ben. Victor fired three more rounds directly into its skull. This time, the Frost Wretch finally stopped moving entirely.

But the damage was already done. Ben collapsed onto the floor, clutching his leg in agony. Dark frost veins spread visibly beneath his skin. Charlotte rushed toward him immediately. “Ben!”Pascal’s stomach tightened. Frost contamination.Already.The infection usually took hours to spread this aggressively. Another sign the timeline had accelerated beyond reason.

Ben looked up desperately, pain twisting across his face. “It burns…”Charlotte turned toward Pascal instinctively. Not Victor.Not emergency services.Pascal.Because somewhere inside her fear, she already believed he understood this nightmare better than anyone else.

“What do we do?” she cried.

Pascal stared at Ben silently. In his previous life, Ben eventually awakened an extremely powerful Frost Core after surviving early-stage corruption. That power later transformed him into one of the most feared survivors within the northern territories. But Pascal also remembered the horrifying cost. The transformation nearly drove Ben insane.

And countless people died because of it. Pascal slowly knelt beside him. Ben grabbed his sleeve desperately. “Help me…”Those same words echoed painfully inside Pascal’s memories. Please help me. Please don’t leave me outside. Please let me back in.

For one terrible moment, Pascal genuinely considered walking away. The thought horrified him because it felt easy. Too easy. The apocalypse was already changing him faster than expected. Before Pascal could decide anything, all the lights in the mansion suddenly went out. Complete darkness swallowed the room instantly. Then, somewhere outside, beyond the storm…Something enormous roared.