The night was too dark to see anything, it was worse than in the day with the fog. The flame wasn’t strong at all. But though it wasn’t strong, Seth could easily find his way around. They were already close to the crystal Nathanael found before, the small crystal pieces were seen coming from the snow.

Crackling flame, the crunching of the snow, their breathing. Everything else, a silent peace. The winter forest that never changes, welcoming anyone who enters. Though thought to be peaceful, the forest does have some ill inside.

The crystal shard, decayed, long dead. Its roots connected to the primary crystal, shattered. A broken fragment.

“This is the crystal Nathanael was supposed to find. Someone has already taken what is inside the crate. Perhaps it wasn’t the boy, and he decided to follow the now hidden tracks. Dammit.”

Etta’s eyes glowed as she saw it. The entity that seemed oh so familiar. She felt for something inside her to appear, a ripped page that was once lost, but now found and put back to its correct place.

The lost girl managed to slide off Seth’s back, but lost her footing and collapsed to the ground.

“…Cold,” she said and stood back up with difficulty.

“What are you doing, kid?”

She stumbled towards the crystal. Memories began to flare again. That awful familiar feeling of dread.

A black void that came from the skies, much bigger than the decayed entity, crashing the earth, causing the quakes, and creating the endless. Tendrils of the abyss, coming closer, surrounding her own soul. The eyes as well, going in circles and ever following.

Her brother was there, but his existence was still abstract, completely unknown when it shouldn’t be. But father was nowhere to be seen.

Etta lost her grip on her brother. She didn’t know what happened to him, that scene, still empty. Alone and afraid. She struggled away from the ever-nearing abyss.

Crystal. That is what it was. Much bigger than the one here. And it glowed in colors of blue. They vented out their toxic air through open slits. The tendrils were only the roots. Yet the other beings coming out of it were still a blur. The eyes, still unknown.

“…Brother.” Her voice came out weak. Brother couldn’t hear. He wasn’t here. “…Brother. Brother. Br-”

A hand grabbed Etta, covering her mouth. The old man took her towards one of the trees and hid behind it, looking away from the crystal.

“Don’t make a sound,” he said in a low tone.

Her thoughts of her broken past faded. The confusion began to rise. Etta didn’t listen, she tried to struggle, to get free from his grasp.

“…Mmmm!” Her voice was muffled. She thought of screaming, but she only needed to make him irritated to be freed.

“I’m serious! People are close, and I can’t let them find us!”

She continued to fight, but when she connected his words to her mind a moment later, she hesitated. Etta waited to see what he was talking about.

Seth threw down his torch, it extinguished within the snow, and it sizzled. The cold already worsened, making Etta shudder.

Voices. People that Etta has never heard the voices of. Those strangers were coming towards the crystal, the opposite side of where they hid.

“Is this it? I thought it would be bigger,” one of the two men said, his voice low and rough.

“I told you I would find it. The trees, they’re like a compass, it was simple,” the other said with a slight high and smug tone. “This is only a crystal shard, meaning the primary crystal should be there where the root goes. Anyway, we’re here for the chest, it should be around here…”

The new duo began moving around the crystal. Seth made sure they couldn’t be seen, he didn’t try to take a glance at them.

“Ah! There it is. Wait, there is nothing inside! Rodney, why is there nothing here!?”

“As if I would know… I guess we just weren’t the first.”

“Fuck,” the smug-sounding man cursed. “Huh? There are still some footprints from them.”

Etta felt Seth’s sudden slight tension. He let her down and grabbed a sharp knife from his hidden holster. That hand that held the blade shook. It didn’t shake from fear, he didn’t look scared at all. It was unnatural, his left eye twitched, his mouth curving slightly and creepily. While his hand shook, his other hand was placed on his chest. He managed to quiet his irregular breathing, so as not to be heard.

“?!” She was startled and had no idea what was going on. But she wasn’t going to run. There was a feeling she needed to hide behind him. And that feeling is what she trusted. Though Etta wanted to run away from this changing man, she didn’t.

The crunch of the snow became louder after every step. Seth carefully made sure nothing of himself would be shown, and he was thankful for the tree’s thickness to hide him and Etta. But their footprints on the snow… He held the knife firmly through his quivers.

“Fox, the tracks lead there. It’s faint, but I think I could track them if we want to.”

The person who was coming closer halted for a second. He turned to face the rough-sounding man.

“Those tracks are old. But look here, someone is already close by!”

“What do you mean? Are you mixing with our steps?”

“Huh?” He made a sharp turn back at the trees. “Eh? But the tracks were right here!”

Confusion arose between the two men. While they were questioning one another, Etta noticed another odd change. Seth still shook, but he was staring somewhere in the distance, not in the direction of where the two would possibly come from. He didn’t look ready for a fight. Whatever he was thinking, Etta couldn’t possibly know.

“Just stop it, man, we were told this forest could cause you to hallucinate, but how that could happen is still a mystery to us, just like everything else we encounter. Let’s just keep moving until more people suddenly show up and cause Ferth’s rule to activate. You don’t want that happening again, do you?”

“Of course not! That incident in the Industrial Sector has already passed me. Though I still have some grudges against that girl, that bitch,” the smugged man said.

“Let’s just keep moving, there isn’t anyone here. Let’s find the next crystal, find an unopened crate, and finally, make our way above that cliff. But before that, we should start a campfire, it’s too cold right now, and these torches are doing nothing.”

“I know you are slightly, just slightly, smarter than me, but that doesn’t mean you can tell the leader what to do!”

“I was just… Ah, never mind. And I still don’t see you as my lord or whatever. We are only companions, you sly fox.”

“You are only still sticking with me because we woke up together, right? And when I saved you, right? And when you saved me, right? And…”

The two were heard speaking a while longer, but soon their voices faded as they kept moving to their next crystal shard. The discussion of the hidden footprints faded as if nothing was there in the first place.

Seth gave away all his breath, sweat came running from his forehead.

“Thank god the man loses attention so quickly, otherwise he would be dead right now.”

Etta was oblivious of what just happened. But that didn’t matter. She just wanted to sleep right here and then, but the cold was still harsh and painful. Her mind didn’t awaken those memories again once the two people went away.

“…Sleepy.”

Seth made a new torch. They still had some time before the severe cold emerged. And Seth was going to use that time.

The old man did some odd gesture with his hand and looked in a particular direction.

“This way. Come on, kid.”

“…Mm…”

Seth sighed deeply. “You want me to carry you?”

She nodded.

He huddled in his dark space. The gas mask still held, the straps not on. His eyes were closed. All he could hear was his own breathing. Though the cold was there, he didn’t feel it. There was nothing to feel.

His heart still raised. Blood pumped through his veins at an unnecessary rate. He wasn’t running away from something, because there wasn’t anything there. But he saw the creatures, standing tall, naked with gore all over, emerging from the ground which wasn’t snow. He could still hear the lingering sounds of high-pitched, ear-shattering tones. Or perhaps it was just ringing in his ears from his nausea.

Nathanael didn’t know the time. Didn’t know how much he had left until it would be too dark to save the two. He needed to open his eyes and see. Was it still day? Was the light still there? Were they still there? Waiting for him to stare at a sight, which would make anyone recoil.

The cold wasn’t there, he actually felt warm. It was odd, he knew. He was inside a forest. A forest of hell, but a hell not depicting fire and lava, but ice and snow. Where was this warmth coming from? All he needed to do, was to open his eyes.

A final breath from the filters. A muster of a sliver of courage. He opened his sight and looked through the gas mask.

“W-What?”

Though the goggles of his mask were scratched and barely visible to see through, he could most definitely distinguish what he saw. It was the crystal, but not broken or shattered, it was… alive.

It glowed in all colors of blue, pulsating its inner source out towards its roots. Its minerals surrounded him, all glowing. It was bright, he couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Some of its tendrils entered the trees, creating crystal branches and leaves, the bark glimmered in some places. And the crystal itself was much bigger now than earlier, twice as big as Seth’s house, or even larger than that.

What caused him to press harder on his mask, was the sight of the slivers spewing out its air.

“Wasn’t it broken? A-a-and what happened to everything else?” Nathanael asked himself.

As he continued to look around the crystal, thoughts began emerging from somewhere he didn’t know. Words appeared in his mind, either by his own doing or by itself.

The Primary Crystal, find it.

"Huh? Primary… Crystal?"

Something appeared. Abstracted and blurry. He thought of the figures being the horrendous beings from before, and they seem to run towards him. A void that made the noise of shattered glass and icicles breaking apart. And there were all around him, coming closer.

Nathanael still felt stuck. And it became colder. Much colder. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He wanted to yell for help, but couldn’t. He could only stare at the ever-closing abstractions and the crystal.

The scene began to shift. The glow of the minerals began to fade, their smooth surfaces shattered and dissolved. The roots broke and disconnected from the crystal. And the crystal itself shrunk, pieces fell off and cracks began to form. The air from the slivers stopped venting out, its pulse was no more, and it became lifeless.

It all became what it looked like when he first encountered it. And the trees also became normal. Yet the abstracted figures still ran at him, their broken sounds echoing all around. They raced, the snow cascaded around as the beings moved. Nathanael was helpless, he couldn’t move.

He felt a touch. Not the type he thought he would feel. Something held his shoulders, he didn’t see as he had his eyes closed, and he didn’t find the bravery to open them. It wasn’t violent in the slightest, the being didn’t run at him with the intent of hurting. Yet it shook him back and forth, and there was something audible besides their broken voices. It started to become clearer in the seconds.

“-ael! Boy! Come on now, don’t start sleeping for god’s sake!”

The abstracted beings faded away. Yet two remained. Nathanael opened his eyes and saw them. It was the two he wanted to save, they were right in front of him. He saw how dark it became, and the real temperature he was supposed to feel at the moment became clear, and damn was it cold.

“Oh, was I too late?”

“Yes, you were! What did I tell you about the crystals!?” the figure, Nathanael believed to be Seth, said.

“So you two died? I’m already seeing ghosts? I guess that is what that blue glow does…”

“What? No, kid, we’re quite alive. But we wouldn’t be if we didn’t get so lucky!” Seth said, his tone rather furious.

Etta slowly walked up to him and, surprisingly, gave him a pat on his head.

“…Nat…” Etta began, “…Is your head… okay?”

“Eh?”

Wait… they are actually here? How? Nathanael thought. The touch was quite real. He felt the comfort coming from Etta, it really was her. Seth as well, they were both still alive.

The thoughts of the gruesome scene, which made him cower and freeze, suddenly shrunk. Etta’s touch made it go away, but only for the moment. It would still linger, still would make him remember what he saw. They would appear in his mind without warning, causing his stomach to churn, to feel that disgust and fear.

His eyes became wet. And he cried.

“Kid…” Seth said, his voice oddly sincere. “You really should have listened to me. At least you managed to put on the mask before the air would kill you.”

“What… is it. What is that crystal? What was it doing to me?”

Seth took his time. The seconds ticked by, and the cold only kept dropping.

“The air inside them causes people to hallucinate if they are still alive.”

“Hallucinate?”

The old man knocked on the crystal, it didn’t react.

“Yes, but how did you get affected when this one was dead?”

“It… uh… there was a flicker. It still pulsated slightly. And… and I got curious and walked closer to it. The mask… um… it was hard to see… so I didn’t use it,” Nat managed to say through his state. The tears didn’t seem to go away. Etta suddenly hugged him from his back, either to comfort him or to use him as heat because it was still cold…

“See? Curiosity. That is what will kill you. You didn’t prioritize saving us, you stopped your process to know more about the crystal. That was a near-fatal mistake if it weren’t for us coming to you.”

“I’m… sorry…”

Nathanael felt regret. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again. He could barely look up to face Seth after his blunder.

“Right. I’m going to make a campfire, but first, we walk away from the crystal, then there you can cry as much as you want. I don’t want people encountering us at night. That would be too bothersome.”