It started with silence.
Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that makes your skin itch—unnatural, deliberate, like the world itself was holding its breath. Peterborough was never a loud city, but this… this was different.
Even the pigeons had stopped cooing.
Chris Mantle sat in the kitchen of a flat he didn't pay for, wearing clothes that didn't fit him quite right, staring at a fridge that hummed too loudly in the silence. It was early morning, maybe 6 or 7, though it was hard to tell anymore. The light outside was overcast, pale, washed-out. Like the sun was too tired to shine properly.
He hadn't slept. Again.
There was a note on the fridge, barely hanging on by a magnet shaped like a flamingo.
"We're sorry. We love you. You're safer here."
It wasn't signed. It didn't need to be. The handwriting was his mum's, rushed but tidy, written in that slightly slanted way she did when she was trying not to cry.
There was no goodbye. No instructions. No explanation.
They were just… gone.
Chris closed the fridge. There was nothing inside but a half-used tub of butter, some expired milk, and a single slice of salami pressed against the back wall like it was trying to escape.
He hadn't eaten since yesterday, but he didn't feel hungry. Not really. His stomach had long since stopped complaining. His body had entered that strange, floaty state of tiredness where everything felt too far away, even his own thoughts.
Outside, something shattered.
Glass—maybe a shop window.
Chris flinched, but didn't move. He just stayed where he was, staring at the cracked linoleum floor beneath his bare feet. It felt colder than it should have, and that cold crept up his legs, settling somewhere in his chest.
He wasn't dumb. He knew the world had changed. Something had shifted—permanently.
It had started five days ago.
The news broke late at night, as it always did when governments wanted to avoid mass panic. A single encrypted file leaked onto a Russian forum. Then two more. Then videos. Satellite photos. Classified documentation stamped with agency seals that nobody could fake. Within hours, it was everywhere. TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, even Facebook was ablaze.
By sunrise, the world knew:Earth wasn't what they thought it was.
Chris remembered that moment in painful clarity. He had been walking home from the gym—a habit he kept up mostly out of boredom—and saw the headline flashing across a television in a shop window.
"BREAKING: U.S. Acknowledges Hidden Continents Beyond the Ice Wall. World Governments Confirm Ongoing Investigations."
He'd laughed.
Genuinely laughed.
He thought it was some new viral marketing campaign for a movie or a game. The language was too dramatic, too absurd. "Hidden continents." "The real Earth." "Beyond the wall." It sounded like some YouTube conspiracy bullsh*t.
But then the emergency alert hit every phone in the city.
And every TV screen.
And every radio station.
And no one was laughing anymore.
Now Peterborough looked like the ghost of itself.
Chris finally moved, grabbed a coat from the rack near the door, and stepped outside. The air smelled like oil and ozone. Clouds hung low in the sky, thick and unmoving. There was a buzz to the world—a low, vibrating hum that clung to your bones.
He walked.
Not because he had somewhere to go, but because staying still made the silence louder. His trainers crunched over broken glass. A car had crashed into a lamppost down the street, doors left wide open. There was blood on the steering wheel.
Nobody was inside.
The Tesco Express had its shutters pulled halfway down, bent and useless. Inside, shelves were bare. Someone had left a trolley full of canned beans in the parking lot, overturned and leaking tins like a trail of breadcrumbs.
He passed a group of people standing in front of a boarded-up café, watching the sky like they expected something to fall out of it. One woman was crying. A man next to her was holding a Bible upside down.
No one spoke.
He ended up near Cathedral Square, where a large screen had been mounted hastily to one of the office buildings. A crowd had gathered, despite the cold, all of them staring up at it. The footage looping on the screen was the same one that had gone viral:
A drone's-eye view of Leviathan's Gate.
A narrow, black sea channel carved through an impossible wall of ice. The camera shuddered with every gust of wind. Waves crashed against the cliffside like thunder. And beyond the Gate—blurry shapes. Towering spires. Trees that moved like they were breathing. Light sources with no sun.
Chris stopped walking.
He watched the footage again. Then again. Every loop made him feel smaller.
There was something wrong with the sky in the video. The clouds were all spinning in a slow spiral, as if orbiting an unseen point just out of frame. Lightning flickered horizontally. The ocean below wasn't blue, but some sickly mixture of green and black. The water moved like it was alive.
Then, in one loop, something massive stirred beneath the surface.
The camera didn't get a good look. Just a glimpse of texture. Not skin—scales. Dark and wide as an apartment complex. Then the feed cut out.
No audio. Just static.
Chris exhaled slowly. He hadn't realized he was holding his breath.
Someone in the crowd vomited behind him. A teenager started sobbing into his hoodie. A man in a business suit stood perfectly still, piss pooling at his feet.
Chris walked away.
By the time night fell, the sirens had started.
Ambulances. Police. Then military vehicles. No one was giving orders anymore. The internet was being throttled. You could still get online, but sites were sluggish, and certain words triggered instant blocks. People whispered about cities being "sealed," martial law, power outages.
Then, just before midnight, the government made an announcement:
"For the preservation of humanity and the future of Earth, the Council of the Central Ice Wall has been formed. We stand united as one species. Further information pending."
Chris didn't even know what that meant.He just knew that the old world was over.
And nobody was coming to save him.
Chris didn't remember how long he wandered after that. The streets had lost their shape. It was like walking through the hollowed-out shell of a memory. Familiar landmarks were still there—the Costa, the train station, the weird statue that looked like a man giving up on life—but none of them felt real anymore.
People passed him like ghosts. Some wore military gear, some wore pyjamas, some were barefoot. Everyone looked lost. Everyone was looking up.Like they expected the sky to crack open.
Maybe it already had.
Chris eventually found himself on the outskirts of the city, by the edge of a long-abandoned industrial park. He didn't remember choosing to walk this way. His feet had just taken him here, like instinct. Or gravity.
The buildings were low and brutalist, old government concrete with broken windows and faded signage. Everything smelled like rain and metal and dust. But one building had a light on.
Just one.
It wasn't warm or welcoming. It buzzed a cold fluorescent blue and flickered in intervals, like a dying eye. Above the door, spray-painted sloppily in black:
"Ministry of Adventuring – Southern Dispatch Office."
Chris stared at it for a long time.
Then he opened the door.
Inside, the air was stale, heavy with the scent of mold and printer toner. There were maybe a dozen other people inside. Young, mostly. Poor-looking. Nobody was talking. A digital screen behind a cracked glass desk read:
SURVIVAL RATE: 0.00%AVERAGE DEATH TIME POST-DEPLOYMENT: 3 DAYS, 7 HOURSREWARD UPON SIGNING: £50,000 GBPDEBT FOR EARLY TERMINATION: £750,000 GBPALL CONTRACTS ARE FINAL.
Chris blinked.
A man next to him—a kid, really, couldn't have been more than seventeen—was shaking so badly that the clipboard in his hand was rattling. His eyes were red, and he kept whispering, "It's real, it's real, it's real," under his breath like a mantra.
At the far end of the room sat a government worker, or what passed for one. She looked exhausted. Thin, dark skin, hair tied back into a tight bun, eyes sunken behind round glasses. She didn't even look up from her tablet when Chris approached.
"You here for the bounty or the warmth?" she asked flatly.
Chris hesitated. "Both?"
She finally looked up. "Then you're like the rest of 'em."
She handed him a form. Actual paper. Pen attached by a fraying string.
"Print your name. Sign. Don't come crying to me when your heart explodes."
Chris stared at the paper.
At the words: "APPLICATION FOR EXPEDITIONARY ADVENTURER."
He swallowed. "Why are you still here?" he asked, quietly. "If it's this bad. Why not run?"
She tapped her temple. "Some people die from Magicka. Some people go mad. Me? I'm the lucky one. I'm already broken." She smiled thinly. "Besides, someone's gotta process the paperwork when they bring your spine back in a bucket."
Chris stared at the paper a little longer.
He hadn't eaten in two days. He had no money. No home. No answers. He didn't even know if his parents were alive. The world was ending, or maybe just beginning again in the worst possible way. He had no plan.
But he did have one thing left.
Curiosity.
Chris picked up the pen. His hand was steadier than he expected.
NAME: CHRIS MANTLEAGE: 18NATIONALITY: UNKNOWNEDUCATION: NONESKILLS: TRAVELLED LOTS, CAN CARRY SH*T, NOT DEAD YET
He signed.
The worker took it back, glanced it over, and shrugged. "Congratulations," she said. "You're now a disposable state asset."
She slid a small metal briefcase across the desk. Inside were three things:
A sealed packet labeled "Standard Magicka Induction – Tier Zero."
A black identification card that already had his name printed on it.
A watch.
It looked… old. Bulky. Like something from the 1980s had been ripped from a Cold War spy film. The screen was green-tinted, low-resolution, grainy. It wrapped almost halfway up his forearm.
"What the hell is this?" he asked.
The worker raised an eyebrow. "That thing? No idea. Found in a crate shipped from the German ice route. Some legacy tech. It's yours now. Good luck figuring it out."
"Is it… sentient?"
She snorted. "I hope not. Those things creep me out."
Back outside, Chris sat on a curb with the briefcase open beside him, rain starting to fall in uneven droplets. The watch was heavier than it looked. He strapped it on, and for a second, nothing happened.
Then the screen flickered to life.
BOOTING…[█████] LOADING MEMORY CORE…WELCOME BACK, COMMANDANT.
Chris blinked. "What the f—"
The screen shifted. A voice came through the tiny speaker embedded in the side. Crackly, distorted, but unmistakably… sarcastic.
"Well. Isn't this pathetic."
Chris nearly dropped the watch. "What the hell—"
"You. You're not commandant. You're not even a soldier. You smell like a kebab and your pulse rate suggests early malnourishment. What did they feed you, garbage? Disgusting."
Chris looked around. "Is this some kind of prank?"
"No, dipshit. You're wearing a Nazi-era prototype AI combat terminal. Designed for infiltration, assassination, and war-time sarcasm. Congratulations. I hate you already."
The screen went black.
Chris stared at it for a long time, rain dripping down his forehead.
And then, for the first time in days, he laughed.
The sound of something breaking isn't always loud.
Sometimes, it's just a pen scratching on paper.A distant scream.A quiet laugh in the rain.
Beneath false suns, the world was changing.And Chris Mantle had just signed up to die in it.