Astral Flow

Chapter 25

As soon as the duo step off the boat and onto the pier a chilling wave of air rushes over them, the cold air biting and making their breath visible.

It struck Ryder as strange, how had the temperature dropped so drastically just by taking a few small steps.

Had they crossed a threshold of some kind? Like back in the tomb?

Wanting to confirm his suspicions he turned to head back onto the ship, now horrified to see it had vanished into thin air.

Where once there had been a ship, now there were naught but waves rocking up against the pier.

Ryder quickly took in a breath of the biting cold air, attempting to calm himself and rationalize what just happened.

Perhaps this was truly the work of another threshold of some kind, and that's why everyone else went missing... though that doesn't explain why everyone did.

Surely some would've stayed behind, waited for a signal or something.

There had to be something more going on here, especially with the eerie serene calmness of this place.

Not even the darkness was reacting to it, in fact it was silent.

"Ryder, what do we do?" Melia asked, her voice shaking a bit as she was now clearly out of her depth.

Truth be told they both were.

"Well we move forward for now, it's all we can do after all." he replies, trying to keep a brave facade as he draws his sword. "Just be ready for anything, we don't know what's waiting for us."

With a nod Melia prepares her sword as well, the two beginning their rescue mission.

Upon making it to the end of the port the first sight they're greeted with is a snow covered port town, covered in a dense fog making it nigh impossible to see beyond one to two buildings ahead.

Each building looked abandoned, falling apart, as if this place had been forgotten for decades.

The only sounds that could be heard as they walked into the central plaza were simply their own footfalls.

There was one strange structure in the plaza though, in what looked like a dried out fountain.

It was... a tree? No, perhaps it was better to say a strange stretched out corpse.

Its skin was a sickly greenish brown, the arms reaching far higher than any humanoid should be able to, its fingers sticking out like twisted and broken tree branches... and then the eyes...

The eyes were two soulless husks, the sclera being pitch black and iris being bright red.

Whatever this thing was it wasn't alive anymore, clearly frozen stiff and gazing up to whatever might've been in the sky at the time.

After finally being able to break his gaze from the horrid thing Ryder looks back at Melia, finding her now standing there and shaking profusely.

Was it from the cold, or the nightmarish display before them? Either way he couldn't blame her, he'd been feeling sicker and sicker the longer he gazed upon its visage.

"Come on, let's get inside before we freeze." he says, gently taking her by the hand and guiding her away from the plaza.

She was brave, that much was for certain, after all not many would willingly be the first to head to the mainland.

This though, this was different from the island, it was bound to hit everyone harder... especially those who weren't ready for this kind of atmosphere.