This will be an insertion for Unseen, Ages of the Seed Vol 3. The main characters in Unseen experience the same circumstances from very different perspectives. This is how Darkness lived through Ch.1.

Trapped

Cold.

I am cold. So very cold.

Has there ever been a cold like this? So all consuming. My world is frozen. I would shiver but I cannot remember how.

Why can’t I see? Could I ever see? Yes, I remember a time far from now when I saw…

A salamander flying by, the brilliance of its mating plumage a stark contrast to the grey dead earth it so wisely avoided.

A river, choked with ash and detritus, swollen by the spring melt.

A person, human like me. A girl, pointing at…at something. Something important. Something hideous?

One of those…things, those travesties. The torn bodies and warped minds that think like man but owe mankind no allegiance. A great beast, never seen but always heard. It tracks me forever waiting for me to fall.

It is right behind me. She points. To warn me?

As if I couldn’t feel the heat of its breath on my neck, hear the wet rasps as it drew in the frigid air and expelled hot rancid death.

Screams. The girl. Terror on her face. I run to her, I fall, slipping through the ash and mud, flailing, sliding towards the torrent of aquid destruction; the barrier that protects my savior from my pursuer.

Plunging into the swollen rapids, tumbling, thrashing, struggling to the surface. Can’t breath. A limb strikes me, I grab it. Why? It shoots through the foamy grey as chaotically as I do.

Crashing against a rock, a submerged trunk, pain breaks me and I breathe. The filth of the river fills my lungs as I tumble sinking to the depths.

Darkness as I tumble helpless in the fury of the river. Darkness as I feel my mind grow dim.

The image again, remembered, the girl, pointing. Pointing behind me?

Pointing at me.

Screaming at me.

“Monster! Monster! Monster!”

No! That is not me! I am a man! I am man!

I am … cold.

The ice fills my veins, seeps into my marrow.

I am so very cold. Has there ever been a cold like this?