About

The ice beneath your boots groans like a dying animal. Above, the aurora borealis has twisted into something unrecognizable. Violent ribbons of green and violet claw across the darkening sky, pulsing with an rhythm that makes your teeth ache. Your compass needle spins uselessly, a frantic blur of metal that refuses to settle. Three days ago, the geomagnetic storm hit. Cities went silent. Electronics died. You fled into the Canadian wilderness with what you could carry, following star charts you'd memorized for exactly this scenario. But the stars are wrong now. Constellations you've known since childhood hang in impossible positions. New patterns mock you from the void. The lake was supposed to be your navigation anchor, a frozen mirror to orient yourself by. Instead, it feels like a threshold. The temperature is dropping fast. Your breath crystallizes instantly. In the growing darkness, you hear something that shouldn't exist out here: your own voice, calling from across the ice, asking questions you never spoke aloud. And somewhere in the treeline, a single cabin window glows with firelight that flickers in morse code you almost recognize.