Through We Endure. (RWBY x OC)

The Boy of Stone Skin

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The first tendrils of consciousness arrived not with a gasp, but with a dull ache. An ache that seemed to permeate every fiber of his being, a cold so profound it stole the very concept of warmth from his mind. He opened his eyes, or at least attempted to. Vision, if it could be called that, revealed nothing. Only an absolute, unending darkness pressed in on him, thick and suffocating. Panic, icy and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of his non-existent awareness.

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Then, a sound. A creak, slow and mournful, like a skeletal hand scraping across a dusty floorboard. It came from... somewhere. He couldn't place it, couldn't tell if it was above, below, or all around. The sound echoed in the vast emptiness, amplifying the loneliness gnawing at his core.
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He tried to move, to call out, anything to break the suffocating silence, but another, deeper realization washed over him. He couldn't. His limbs felt heavy, unresponsive, as if encased in lead. Fear, cold and sharp, turned into a cold, suffocating terror.
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Then, a faint sliver of light pierced the darkness. It grew, slow and steady, revealing a jagged tear in the inky blackness. The light spilled through, illuminating a scene of utter desolation. Shattered beams of wood, splintered and rotten, lay strewn about in a tangled mess. Cobwebs, thick and dusty, draped themselves across the fragments like macabre shrouds. This, he realized with a jolt, was where he was. Trapped within the broken remains of a log cabin, lost in the seams of a forgotten time.
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The air inside the cabin was thick with the smell of decay and damp earth. A thin layer of dust coated everything, undisturbed for what could have been centuries. But the most overwhelming sensation, the one that sent a fresh wave of shivers down his spine, was the cold. It wasn't just a simple lack of warmth; it was a bone-deep, soul-chilling cold that seemed to seep into his very core. He couldn't feel his breath, couldn't tell if he was even breathing.
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Then, he brushed against something soft and yielding. His senses, dulled by the cold, took a moment to register the feel of it – snow. Snow had drifted in through the gaping hole in the roof, blanketing the floor of the cabin in a thick, uneven layer. It was cold, impossibly cold, the kind of cold that stung exposed skin and made teeth chatter uncontrollably. But for some reason, the touch of it sparked a flicker of memory, a fleeting image of a blazing fireplace and the warmth radiating from its crackling flames. The memory was hazy, fragmented.
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The memory faded as quickly as it came, leaving him alone with the biting cold and the gnawing fear. He wasn't a grown man trapped in a forgotten cabin, he realized with a jolt. No, the memories, fragmented and hazy as they were, spoke of something entirely different. He was a child, an infant even, his tiny body vulnerable and exposed.
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