The sun set over Sævik on November 29th.
It did not rise again.
No one was surprised at first. Polar Night in this part of Iceland lasted weeks, after all. But by December 12th, something felt... off. The darkness was heavier. The air tasted of copper. And the aurora—normally vibrant with emerald curtains and violet swirls—had turned a pale, sickly yellow.
Eydís Jónsdóttir noticed it first. She kept the only gas station open year-round, even when tourism dropped to nothing. She claimed the wind no longer came from the sea, but from the mountains. It whispered like a child learning to speak.
She told the priest. He told her to stop drinking the glacial vodka.
Then the children came back.
They appeared on December 14th, just after midnight, walking through the snow in single file from the direction of the fjord. Eleven of them. All in mismatched clothes. No coats. No shoes.
No breath.
Mothers screamed. Fathers fell to their knees. Not because they feared the children, but because they recognized them.
Every one of the children had been dead for years.
They did not speak.
They did not cry.
They only stared—with eyes too wide, too still. Faces pale from something colder than frostbite. And yet, none of them showed signs of injury. No bruises. No blood. No decay. Their lips were dark, cracked with cold, but they moved like they'd never died at all.
Ása Hrafnsdóttir was the first to embrace one. Her daughter, Lilja, had drowned beneath broken ice three winters ago. They'd found her coat caught in the river bend but never her body. That night, Lilja walked up the gravel path and stood by the gate, her tiny hands blue with cold.
Ása burst from the door, wailing her daughter's name.
She wrapped her arms around Lilja's small frame and whispered prayers into her hair. Lilja didn't return the hug. She didn't blink. She simply stared past Ása at the woods.
At something no one else could see.
---
By dawn—what should've been dawn—the eleven children had been taken in by various homes. Not out of fear, but blind hope. Mothers wept into their necks. Fathers made hot cocoa and soup, though the children refused to eat.
None of them spoke.
They only watched.
---
Pastor Stefán called an emergency gathering at the old chapel, the only place in Sævik that still had wood heating and enough seats for twenty.
"I've never heard of anything like this," he said, voice low, face gray. "I've called Akureyri. No answer. I tried the coast guard. Static. We may be dealing with something… not of this world."
Gudjón Þorsteinsson, the fishmonger, laughed once. "Not of this world? You think they're ghosts?"
Stefán didn't answer.
"They're our kids," Ása snapped, her voice brittle. "My Lilja. She's home now."
The room fell into awkward silence.
---
That night, the northern lights turned red.
And one of the children—six-year-old Emil, who had died in a house fire four years prior—walked into the snowy field behind the school.
He stared at the sky for hours.
And smiled.
The next morning, the town awoke to the unmistakable sound of a bell.
The church bell had not tolled in years. Its rope was frozen and tangled, buried under the weight of an old, cracked bell tower. It was a relic of times long past—before the community had shrunk to a mere handful of families—and the bell had not sounded in over a decade.
But it rang.
Stefán hurried to the church, followed by a small group of townsfolk, drawn like magnets by the chiming. They arrived to find the door ajar, the inside bathed in cold, blue twilight. The bell rope had been pulled taut, tugged by invisible hands.
In the center of the altar, the children were gathered.
They sat in a circle, staring at the cracked wooden pews as if waiting for someone to sit among them. Emil was at the center, his small hands folded on his lap, his body stiff with stillness. Lilja sat beside him, her legs crossed in a way that looked unnaturally poised for a six-year-old.
They were all there—eight children in total, sitting in perfect symmetry. Only three remained missing: Ólafur, the eldest, who had drowned during a storm; Ingibjörg, who had died of a fever at two; and Freyja, whose body had been found in the ice-choked river a year ago.
"How… how did they get here?" Eydís whispered, clutching her coat tighter, her breath visible in the freezing air.
Pastor Stefán took a deep breath, his voice low. "They're not our children. Not anymore."
---
The children refused to leave the church. They did not respond to anyone who spoke to them. They simply watched.
The only sound was the scrape of the wind against the windows, like whispers—like voices. The air was thick with the scent of something rotten beneath the freezing cold.
Ása, her hands shaking, tried to reach her daughter, but Lilja did not move when her mother knelt in front of her. She did not hug Ása back when she pulled her into her arms.
Lilja did not speak.
Instead, she whispered something only Ása could hear: "They watch."
The wind rattled the windows violently, as if something was outside, pressing against the glass.
---
As the day grew darker—if you could call it day—the townsfolk began to notice strange occurrences. The dogs had gone silent. No animals moved in the woods. The very land seemed unnaturally still, as though all the living things in Sævik had been frozen under the weight of an unseen hand.
The children did not eat.
The children did not sleep.
They only watched.
And then, that night, at the stroke of midnight, something more insidious began.
Ása lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the house creaking as if it had come to life. The faint light from the streetlamp outside barely pierced through the heavy curtains. Then, she heard it.
A voice.
It was Lilja's voice.
"Mamma... Mamma, you left me."
Ása sat upright, her heart hammering against her chest. The room was freezing. The air tasted sharp, as if something cold had seeped into the walls themselves. She reached for the lamp on her nightstand, and when she flicked the switch, the glow of the lightbulb buzzed for a moment before flickering out completely.
A shadow passed by the window, crossing quickly.
Ása grabbed her coat, pulling it over her nightclothes, and stumbled into the hallway.
The house was still.
Not a sound. Not a movement.
Then, from outside, she heard the bells again.
And the sound of children laughing.
The next morning, the snow had turned red.
No one knew why. No one could explain it. But when Eydís stepped out of her house to tend to the gas pumps, she found the snow around the station stained a deep crimson, as if something—or someone—had dragged itself through the white powder. No tracks. No path. Just the blood-red streaks.
The air felt heavier too, thicker with every breath.
Ása tried to go to the church but stopped at the edge of the village, staring at the darkened windows of the chapel. A cold fear gnawed at her insides, twisting her stomach into knots. She could hear the wind picking up again, howling through the mountains—but there was something else too. A whisper, so soft at first it might have been imagined.
"Come. Come to us."
She gripped her daughter's cold, thin hand tighter, as if the warmth of her touch could protect them both from the encroaching chill.
The children were gone.
At least, all but one.
Freyja.
---
Freyja, whose death had been a mystery, whose body had never been found. The same girl who, four winters ago, had been presumed lost forever, claimed by the frozen river that wound through the village. And yet, here she was. Standing in the doorway of the church, her pale, freckled face peering out from beneath a hood of tangled hair.
She was the last.
Ása approached the church carefully, her pulse quickening. The others had been reluctant to enter—something about the silence inside made them uneasy. Stefán, the priest, stood at the threshold, murmuring prayers to himself, his face pale and distant.
The children—those who were still here—had taken their places at the altar again, sitting with their legs crossed, perfectly still. Watching. Silent.
But Freyja didn't sit.
She walked toward the altar with the steady, fluid motion of a doll on strings. Her eyes met Ása's, empty but intense. No recognition. No warmth.
The bell rang.
Stefán gripped the cross in his hand, eyes widening. "It's started."
---
By evening, the town was quiet, save for the soft rustling of snow beneath the wind. It wasn't the kind of quiet that came with peace—it was the silence before something unimaginable. Eydís had locked herself inside the station, clutching the radio and speaking to anyone who would listen, but the signals were dead.
The children had begun to move. Slowly at first. They wandered from house to house, door to door, and not a single one of them spoke.
But they looked inside.
They peered through windows, their faces pressed against the glass, their breath fogging the panes.
And then, the laughter started.
It wasn't the sound of joy. It wasn't innocent. It was hollow, empty, like the sound of something that had forgotten how to be human.
Ása couldn't take it anymore. She gathered up her courage, throwing on a coat and heading toward the church once more. This time, she wasn't alone. Gudjón and his wife, Sigríður, followed, their faces pale with fear.
"Something's wrong," Gudjón muttered. "This isn't right. This isn't them."
At the church, the doors were locked—strangely, without explanation.
Eydís, who had accompanied them, looked up toward the steeple, her breath catching. There, high above, the bell tower swayed in a way it hadn't for years. The rope was frayed, ready to snap, but it was still swinging—without anyone pulling it.
"They're waiting," Eydís whispered, as if the wind had spoken it aloud.
---
Inside, the children had arranged themselves in a circle on the cold, wooden floor, their bodies stiff, their eyes vacant.
Freyja was no longer with them. She was gone.
They had moved to the center of the circle.
And in the center, a figure stood.
Not a child.
Not a human.
A shape. Tall. Covered in shadow. It wore the guise of a man—or perhaps something worse. The darkness it cast seemed to pool, sucking in the light from the lamps around the room.
Stefán's voice came in a whisper, barely audible, as he stepped forward, trembling. "That is not the sun."
The shadow—something more than shadow—stirred.
It watched.
The town of Sævik had always been isolated. Its inhabitants used to joke that the only things that moved here were the sheep, the sea, and the wind. But now, it felt as though even those things had stopped, frozen in time.
Ása had not seen her daughter since that night. Since Lilja had stopped speaking.
Gudjón and Sigríður had returned to their cabin after the sighting in the church, but neither had been able to sleep. Gudjón kept hearing scratching at the windows, a soft tapping, like tiny hands pressing against the glass. Sigríður had nightmares, waking up in the dark hours, crying out for someone she couldn't remember.
The children—they still didn't eat, didn't speak. But now, they were doing something else.
They were walking.
Not in the streets. Not near the houses.
They were walking into the woods.
Ása could see them from her window. Every night at midnight, the children gathered in front of the village and began walking. Single file, as though they were being led by an invisible hand. They moved in perfect synchronization, their bodies stiff but purposeful, their heads turned toward the black trees that grew at the edge of the world.
She wasn't sure why she followed them. Perhaps it was because she still believed that one of them—Lilja—would turn around and smile at her.
But when she reached the forest, the path grew too dark. The wind stopped howling. The trees twisted unnaturally, as though they were reaching toward her, trying to pull her into the depths of the earth.
The children were gone.
---
Inside the church, things were much worse.
Stefán had locked himself in the sanctuary, praying for the first time in years. The bell hadn't stopped tolling since midnight. Each chime felt like it carried the weight of the entire town, echoing through the valley in a rhythm that seemed to drag the heart of the earth itself.
But the shadows were growing inside.
The children hadn't returned.
And neither had Freyja.
Ása finally found the courage to enter. The door to the chapel creaked open with a sound that echoed too loudly in the silence. She stepped inside, holding her breath. She had not known what to expect, but what she found was worse than anything she could have imagined.
The altar was no longer a place of worship. It was a place of ritual.
The children—silent as always—were kneeling, facing a figure in the center of the room. The shape was dark and formless, as though the shadows themselves had bent and coiled together into something almost human.
The bell rang again, louder now. It didn't stop. It reverberated deep into her chest, a sound that reached the marrow of her bones.
Stefán stood beside the figure, his eyes vacant. He looked as though he were in a trance.
The figure spoke. But not in words.
It whispered in a language she couldn't understand. Its voice, low and guttural, sounded like it came from beyond the earth itself. Then, with a shudder, it turned toward her.
The thing, the shadow, looked at her with eyes that were not eyes at all—just black voids. A single word escaped its lips, and the world seemed to freeze.
"Leave."
---
The wind outside began to howl again. A shrill scream echoed across the hills, carried by the icy gusts. Eydís—who had been hiding by the edge of the church—screamed. She ran, stumbling, as the ground beneath her feet began to crack.
The children had turned. Their eyes, once empty, now glowed with an eerie, unnatural light.
They were no longer hers.
---
The town of Sævik had never been the same.
---
The snow that covered Sævik was no longer just a cold, white blanket—it had become a suffocating presence, as if it were trying to bury the village whole. People had stopped leaving their homes. The roads were blocked, and the air felt too thick to breathe, laced with the weight of something pressing down on them.
Ása hadn't slept in days. She hadn't seen her daughter, Lilja, or any of the children, but she could feel them. Their eyes were everywhere. She could hear them in the wind. She could hear their whispers when she lay still in the dark. The last time she had tried to approach the woods, the ground had buckled beneath her feet, pulling her into the cold earth. She hadn't tried again.
But something was changing in her.
Something was awakening.
---
The church had become a place of terror. The bell still rang, though no one had touched it. Every chime was a death knell. Every echo reverberated through the town, shaking it to its core. The townsfolk were hiding in their homes, clinging to what remained of their sanity, but no one was safe. The dark presence was creeping into every corner of their lives.
Gudjón had been the first to crack.
He had locked himself in his cabin, muttering to himself about things he had seen in the woods, things he had heard in the whispers of the wind. His wife, Sigríður, had gone missing days ago, her body nowhere to be found.
No one dared speak her name.
---
Ása gathered what little courage she had left. The town was in ruins. The children were no longer children. They were conduits. Beacons. Whatever dark force had taken hold of them was spreading, and it was only a matter of time before it consumed everything.
She walked to the church alone.
The wind howled louder now, the trees swaying as though they were alive, as though they were watching her. She knew she couldn't stop whatever was coming, but she had to try. She had to understand.
The door to the church was open. Not just ajar—open.
Inside, the shadows seemed to grow deeper with every step she took. The air was thick with cold and something worse—something alive, pulsating with power.
And there, standing in the center of the church, was the shadow figure. It wasn't just an entity anymore. It was growing. It was changing.
The children sat around it in a circle, their bodies unmoving, their eyes glowing with unnatural light.
Ása tried to speak, but no words came out. The figure turned its head toward her. It had no face—just empty blackness where its features should have been.
And then, the voice came again. Not a voice, really. More of a presence that filled her mind.
"You are not welcome here."
Ása stumbled backward, her heart pounding in her chest. She had heard stories of things like this—things that lived in the dark spaces between worlds, feeding off fear, feeding off souls. But this was different. This wasn't just an entity. It was a convergence. A gathering of darkness.
And it wanted her.
---
The bell tolled again.
Not the soft, mournful sound it had been. This time, the bell rang with a fury, louder and more violent, as though it were being struck by a force greater than anything the town had ever known. Ása clutched her head as the sound filled her mind, vibrating in her skull. The church seemed to shake with the force of it. The walls groaned, and the air grew colder, darker.
She turned, desperate to escape, but the door slammed shut behind her, trapping her inside.
The children stood now. Their eyes locked onto hers, their expressions blank but somehow knowing. Their mouths opened, but no words came out. Only the soft, ethereal whispers that filled the room, like an incantation too ancient to understand.
"You will join us."
Ása's heart skipped a beat. They weren't just speaking to her. They were speaking to the town.
She reached for the cross on the altar, her hands trembling. It had been years since anyone had cared about the old rituals, but the sight of it gave her a sliver of hope. Perhaps there was a way to push this thing back.
But before she could make a move, the figure shifted. It stretched upward, taller than any man, casting its dark shadow over everything.
It was coming closer.
---
Outside, the wind picked up again. The town of Sævik, once filled with the sounds of life, now echoed only with the silence of death. No one dared venture out anymore. No one dared make a sound.
The children had become the vessels.
And the shadow had become the master.
---
Ása's breath came in ragged gasps as she backed away from the figure that towered above her. The air in the church was suffocating, pressing down on her chest like an invisible weight. The children were standing in a perfect circle around the altar now, their eyes glowing brighter with every passing second. The whispers—they were no longer just whispers. They were becoming louder, filling the room, filling her mind, pressing into her skull as though trying to push through her very thoughts.
Her hands shook as she gripped the edge of the altar, her fingers scraping against the stone. It felt cold—colder than anything she had ever touched, like it had been frozen for centuries. The shadows of the church seemed to shift, contort, as though the walls themselves were alive, trying to swallow her whole.
She looked back at the children. They were no longer the children she knew—their faces were pale, hollow, their expressions blank. But there was something else in their eyes—something that wasn't quite human. Something ancient. Something dark.
"You will join us," the voice whispered again, this time not in her mind but echoing through the very air around her. It was a low, guttural sound that made her skin crawl.
She knew she had no choice but to face it. She had no choice but to try.
Without thinking, Ása reached for the cross on the altar. Her fingers closed around the cold metal, and for a fleeting moment, she felt a surge of hope. It was an old symbol. A symbol of faith. A symbol of protection. But as soon as the cross touched her hand, a violent wave of energy surged through her. Her body convulsed, and she screamed out in agony as the power surged through her veins.
The children's eyes turned toward her, their mouths opening in unison, their voices rising in a chorus of whispers.
"You cannot stop what has already begun."
Ása fell to her knees, clutching the cross with all her strength. The figure—the shadow—loomed above her, its shape shifting like a cloud of ink, its eyes glowing with an unnatural light. She could feel its presence in every corner of the room, pressing in on her, suffocating her, overwhelming her.
Then, a voice—her daughter's voice—cut through the darkness.
"Mama…"
Lilja. Her sweet, innocent Lilja. Ása's heart ached as she looked up toward the sound. There, standing in the doorway, was her daughter, her pale face illuminated by the soft glow of the moonlight filtering through the stained glass windows. But Lilja's eyes… they were no longer her own. They were empty, black, lifeless—filled with an inky darkness that seemed to consume everything in its path.
"Mama, come to me."
Lilja's voice was soft, almost melodic, but it was not the voice Ása had raised. It was the voice of something else. Something that had taken her daughter and twisted her into something unrecognizable.
Ása's chest tightened, and she struggled to stand. Her knees felt weak, and her head was spinning. But she forced herself up, staggering toward her daughter. Her heart screamed for Lilja, for the child she had lost to this darkness, this cold sun that had infected their village.
But as she moved closer, the air around her grew colder. The shadows deepened, and the whispers grew louder, swirling around her like a storm. The cross in her hand pulsed with a strange, violent energy, as if it, too, was being pulled into the dark force that held the children captive.
Lilja's smile widened.
"Come to me, Mama."
Ása reached out, her fingers trembling as she tried to touch her daughter's hand. But just as her fingertips brushed against Lilja's skin, something changed.
Lilja's body shuddered, and her eyes, once empty, began to bleed. Dark tendrils of shadow leaked from her sockets, twisting and writhing like serpents. The ground beneath Ása's feet cracked, and she was thrown back against the altar, her body slamming into the cold stone.
The shadow figure loomed over her now, its presence suffocating. The children, their faces now grotesque masks of horror, stepped forward. They circled around her, their eyes glowing brighter and brighter with each passing second. They were no longer children. They were something worse. They were the vessels.
Ása gasped for air, but there was none to be had. The very air in the church seemed to be draining away. Her chest tightened, her vision blurred. She could feel the darkness closing in, wrapping around her like a vice.
"You cannot escape."
The voice was everywhere now, filling the room, filling her mind. It was the voice of the entity. The voice of the cold sun.
And then, for a brief, terrifying moment, Ása understood.
This wasn't just about the children. This wasn't just about the town. The entity had not come to consume Sævik. It had come to become it.
The town, the children, the church—they were all pieces of a puzzle. The shadows were not just shadows. They were fragments of the past. Fragments of something older than time itself.
And now, the final piece had been placed.
---
Ása's vision darkened as the shadows closed in. Her body went numb, her thoughts slipping away like sand through her fingers. The children were chanting now, their voices rising in a terrifying harmony, as the figure in the center of the room stretched upward, becoming one with the darkness that filled the church.
And then, there was only silence.
---
The storm had settled, but Sævik was not calm.
The church stood still, a quiet monument to the madness it had witnessed. Outside, the blizzard had frozen mid-motion—snowflakes suspended like ash in a glass globe, the wind hanging in eerie silence. Time seemed broken.
And Ása was gone.
Not dead. Not entirely.
Down beneath the altar, past the shattered floor and into the bowels of the earth—Ása floated in black ice. Her body lay in perfect stillness, suspended in frozen water that had not been there before. Her eyes open. Breathing… just enough to keep her tethered.
The children were gone from the church. The whispers had ceased. And Sævik? It slept.
But not peacefully.
---
Two Days Later
Detective Ylva Arnardóttir had seen her share of strange cases. But the report she'd received—"all children vanished," "entire town in stupor," "a mother cracked open the church floor with her bare hands"—sounded more like a horror novel than a police bulletin.
She arrived in Sævik with a search team, helicopter blades slicing through the silent sky, breaking the unnatural stillness. The townspeople stood still in the streets, blinking slowly, like waking from anesthesia.
"Where are your children?" Ylva asked a woman.
The woman smiled with cracked lips. "They're safe. They're in the sun."
Ylva's blood ran cold. The sun hadn't broken the clouds in days.
At the church, they found the ruins of the altar and the hole beneath it. The floor caved in, leading to ice that shouldn't have been there. Below, her flashlight caught Ása.
"Alive," she whispered. "How the hell is she alive?"
They extracted her with great effort, chiseling through ice that seemed to regrow around her. Ása gasped once the air hit her face, as if emerging from a nightmare.
Her first word was:
"Lilja."
---
Hospital, Akureyri
Ása woke with cracked lips and frostbitten fingers, strapped to monitors. She whispered the events to Ylva. She told her about the shadows, about the children, about the cold sun—and how the entity had taken her daughter's voice. How the town let it happen.
Ylva didn't believe her. But the readings on Ása's body? Hypothermic, yet alive. Pulse irregular. Brain activity—hyperactive during REM cycles, consistent with lucid dreaming. As if she'd been somewhere else.
And then one of the search team went missing.
And then another.
And then the hospital power failed—just for three minutes.
But when the backup lights turned on, all the children in the pediatric wing were gone.
Only one word, etched into the frosted window:
"Rís."
(Rise.)
---
Sævik - Now
Ylva returned to the village with a thermal drone. They swept the area. No signs of children. But beneath the church, something was moving. Slow, rhythmic pulses of heat and light—like a second heart had been born inside the earth.
She asked the villagers again.
"Where are your children?"
The butcher answered, staring at the sky. "They're learning to speak the new tongue."
The sky above Sævik was cloudless now. A pale sun hung above. Not yellow. Not warm.
But white.
Too white.
---
Final Descent
Ása escaped the hospital.
She returned to the town, bleeding through her coat, whispering to herself, "She's still there. I heard her."
Back at the church, she didn't hesitate. She walked into the hole. The ice no longer resisted her.
Down below, she found them.
The children, motionless, faces turned upward, eyes open. Frozen like statues—but blinking. Breathing. Dreaming. She touched Lilja's face, and her daughter opened her mouth, soundlessly mouthing words.
Ása leaned in close.
Lilja whispered: "It wants you to take our place."
And behind her, the entity stirred.
Not a shape anymore. Not a shadow. It wore a face now. Ása's.
---
The real Ása turned to run, but the walls of ice closed in. Her screams echoed as the copy stepped out of the ice, climbed into the church, and emerged into the sunlit world.
It wore her skin.
It smiled with her lips.
It walked into town, where the people welcomed her.
Because the town never wanted to be saved.
It just wanted to be remembered.
---