Anaya – The Ice Witch of a Dead City
The world had gone silent.
Not the soft silence of snowfall, nor the peaceful quiet of early morning prayers along the Ganga.
This silence was hard.
Cold.
Unnatural.
Anaya stood at the edge of Varanasi — her home, her memories, her grief — now frozen in time.
Buildings shimmered beneath a thick layer of frost.
Trees stood like crystal sculptures.
Cars were trapped mid-motion, icicles dripping from their frames.
People…
People were statues, their final expressions locked in ice.
And the monsters — the towering orcs with red skin, the ones who had devoured her daughter alive — were frozen in grotesque positions.
Claws raised.
Mouths open.
Eyes wide with surprise.
Anaya exhaled, and the breath that left her lips was not warm.
It was a mist of pure frost.
She took a single step forward, and the ground cracked beneath her sandal.
Her sari fluttered behind her, the fabric stiff with frozen dust. Her fingers tingled with a cold that did not belong to nature. It crawled under her skin, curled around her heart, and whispered with the voice of the Dragon God of Ice.
You wished for vengeance.
I give you the means.
Anaya did not respond.
She simply walked.
The city was dead — but she was not mourning anymore.
Grief had been replaced by something colder.
---
The Walk Through the Frozen Grave
She passed a small market stall, the vegetables covered in frost. A man stood behind it, frozen mid-run, eyes wide.
She touched his arm gently.
The frost deepened, turning his skin crystalline.
"Forgive me," she whispered, though she wasn't sure who she was speaking to — him, the world, or herself.
A radio on his counter crackled suddenly — the only sound in the frozen landscape.
"…reports are still coming in—nuclear detonations detected in several countries—cities wiped out—Pune, Delhi, Chicago, Seoul—"
Anaya turned her head slightly, listening.
"—officials warn that the fallout may—"
She walked away before the sentence finished.
The news didn't matter.
Her grief had already destroyed her world long before the bombs did.
---
Home
Her house stood untouched, a lonely structure encased in frost. She pushed the door open; it creaked, ice breaking along the frame.
Inside, everything was just as it had been before the monsters tore her life apart.
Her daughter's shoes by the door.
A drawing taped to the wall.
A tea cup still sitting on the table.
Anaya reached for the cup but stopped.
Her hand trembled.
Then she lowered it.
"No more tears," she said softly.
The words froze in the air.
She stepped back outside, looking once more at the frozen city.
India was not her home anymore.
It was a battlefield.
And she was no longer a mother, or a teacher, or a grieving woman.
She was something else.
Something the world had forced her to become.
A witch of ice.
She raised her hand, the frost swirling around her fingertips like living entities awaiting command.
"Let it all begin," she whispered.
And the snow around her bowed.
Elsewhere: The Master of the Ordeal
Back at the shattered center of the world, Mr. Orbis observed the glowing horizon with an expression unreadable and ancient. The faint outline of the portals flickered behind him, slowly closing like dying eyes.
Erebus — the shadowed existence — stood at his side, face bowed.
"I hope," Orbis said quietly, hands folding behind him, "that I have offered you more souls than you need."
Erebus kneeled deeper, voice trembling with reverence.
"You have, my lord. I will train them well."
From the sky above, Apopis — in her human form — drifted down like a falling petal carried by invisible winds. Her slit pupils opened, watching the nuclear fire spreading across continents.
"Does this satisfy you, Lord Orbis?" she asked with a twisted smile.
Orbis glanced at the burning planet.
"No," he said.
"But it is a start."
Victor — Pain After Death
Victor remembered the wolf.
The teeth.
The cold breath.
The feeling of his body falling but his head staying behind.
Then darkness.
But the darkness wasn't peaceful.
It hurt.
A burning, tearing, suffocating pain that felt like his soul was being dragged through needles and crushed under invisible weight. He tried to scream—
—but no sound came.
His lungs filled with fire, then ice, then… air?
Suddenly the pain dulled, as if distant hands were lifting it from him.
A warmth touched his skin — no, not skin… something softer.
He felt something wet touch his cheek, then slide, then stop.
Was something… licking him?
Victor tried to open his eyes.
Nothing.
Only blackness.
He tried to shout, "Who's there?!"
What escaped his mouth was—
"…whiip… whii…"
A whimper.
Victor froze.
That wasn't his voice.
He tried again — another whine, weak and high-pitched.
His arms didn't move.
His legs didn't move.
His fingers… he didn't feel fingers.
He began to panic, breathing fast.
He was cold.
So cold.
Yet instinct—deep, ancient instinct—pushed him in one direction:
Heat.
He followed it blindly.
Crawling?
Dragging himself?
He wasn't sure.
His body felt tiny, clumsy.
Soft.
Then his mouth bumped into something warm.
Round.
Furry.
And from it, something leaked.
Warm.
Thick.
Sweet.
Milk.
Victor recoiled in shock — but the cold stabbed him like knives.
Hunger screamed inside him.
A primal desperation, not human hunger, but something more… animal.
So he latched on and drank.
His tiny heart calmed.
A soft body curled around him.
More whimpers answered his own — some bigger, some smaller.
Victor froze.
Was he… among animals?
No.
It was worse.
A deep, rumbling growl filled the space — protective, warning, close.
A familiar growl.
The same kind he heard before dying.
The wolf.
But this time… he understood it.
Not as a word.
As a feeling.
A command.
"Stay close. Warm. Safe."
Victor trembled.
Not because he was afraid.
But because he was beginning to understand the impossible truth:
He wasn't human anymore.
He was newborn.
Blind.
Weak.
Helpless.
And by the size of the body curled around him, the fur shielding him from the cold—
Victor had been reborn…
…as a wolf pup.