"Fifth Wave: Ice."
The words echoed like a whisper across a still grave. There was no thunder. No sudden roar or rupture. Only a silence so complete it felt like sound itself had died.
Then came the cold.
It was not cold like winter. Not the sting of snow or the bite of arctic winds. This cold had no temperature. It was an absence, a subtraction of heat, of movement, of meaning. It was the chill that clung to deep space, to forgotten tombs, to thoughts buried beneath centuries of silence.
There was no wind. No color. No light.
Everything around Damien began to slow. Not visually. Not physically. Existentially.
Even time seemed to resist motion.
His breath, once steady, thickened in his throat. The air crystallized in his lungs, not with frost but with stillness. He tried to exhale, and nothing came. His thoughts dulled, their flow sluggish like honey frozen mid-pour.
It wasn't that he couldn't think, it was that his thoughts had to fight to move.
