It feels like I’ve been moving for years, but I have no idea where I began.

The last thing I remember was an intensely bright white light. I feel the cold, frozen leaves underneath my booted feet. I feel the harsh icy wind infecting my skin with frost. Where am I? Why am I moving forward? What’s happening?

The forest ends, and I come to a road. A road that hasn’t been used since the snow fell. The road runs adjacent to a cliff edge. And beyond that cliff edge is a vast forest; a forest of only dead trees. I can smell the death from here. Beyond the forest in the distance, I can see the orange glow of flames.

I remember so little of everything before the cold.

I start my move, and head up the road. The interesting fact of freezing to death, is you assume that you’d freeze all at once, but I can feel my veins throbbing, and a crushing sensation, like they are becoming nothing but ice.

I start to move faster.

Through the sleet and the mist, I see something up ahead. My only thought is that there must be someone who can help me survive up here. However, as I approach what looks like a castle, there appears to be no light coming from within.

“Hello?!”

I call out for somebody, anybody within earshot. There is no response.

“Help!”

As I move closer I see a large wooden door with huge windows on either side, some of which are smashed. I reach the door, but before I can raise my frozen hand to knock, I notice that the door is already ajar. I push the door open.

“Help...”

I move inside.

“Help me....”

The wind pulls the door behind me and it slams shut with a loud bang.

“Hello?”

The room in front of me is pitch black, but the moon shines through the broken windows beside me, and I notice a table with a flashlight on it. The flashlight still works.

“Can anyone help me?”

The first thing I notice, is the floor. A checkered floor of blue and gold, and as I move forward, the room grows larger and larger. The light of the torch barely penetrates a few meters around me. I keep walking straight. Moments later, I reach a small table, on which are two switches. One of them has a card next to it, on which are the numbers 8-2-8-8. The other has no marking. Better play it safe....

I switch the unmarked switch.

Suddenly, the room is illuminated with light like I’ve never seen before. I don’t understand it. Lights too bright for even the most powerful diodes to emit, however I look around and I realize that these lights are not the natural lights. The torches that are on the wall remain unlit. The lights that are on have these...lines running between them, these glowing runes of some sort.

I don’t understand it, there are so many of them.

I bring my eyes down to the floor. I notice that the floor is covered in dust and leaves; I’m assuming because of the broken window. The room is a large hall with a grand staircase that splits in the middle, and with two hallways that lead around the atrium above me. The stairs, however, are blocked off with some sort of barricade. What happened here?

Around me, there appears to be small furniture covered in grimy white blankets, and beyond that, standing along the walls are a large array of bookcases. I look to the ceiling and imagine a chandelier, however, there is none. Instead, there is some....mechanism. A rotating granite mechanism with five arms on which are held five stone balls.

I feel my bones quake, I am still not warm. The broken windows have allowed this once beautiful castle to become a mausoleum of cold. I look down at the table in front of me again. My eyes glance to the second switch, and I switch it.

I hear a sound erupt around me, the lights change. The lights that were previously on desist, and the old torches that were behind them are brought to life, flickering with a soft, blue glow. The grinding sounds of stone above me are deafening and I feel every bone in my body shudder.

“Can anybody hear me?”

I am almost paralyzed with fear. And then I hear it. The metallic clicks. The whirring. The ticking. And then, the white sheets that I thought were furniture begin to move.

The sheets shudder, and then begin to move towards me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what this is, and I look around me for an escape but there is none, and they move closer and closer to me. I scream at them to desist, I scream at the house to desist, but it does not and they keep coming.

“W-what is this? Who’s doing this?!”

I look around me for something, anything, to push them back but I find nothing. Suddenly my eyes are drawn to a broken window where a branch has broken through. I briefly wonder if I can dislodge the branch; I try and I try but I cannot, but then I see it. On the floor.

A gun.

A freezing metal gun grasped in the long dead hand of a cold withered skeletal arm. I pick the gun up, but I can’t stop shaking. I aim it at the sheets and I pull the trigger. Again and again I shoot, and one by one they stop. My gun runs out of bullets, but one sheet is still moving towards me. It moves slowly, I have time to watch it. All I can hear is the metallic clicks of its heavy steps all around me. From under the sheet, from above me, cogs whirring everywhere.

Suddenly I find myself charging at the sheet and these hands, these hands that feel like they’re made of glass are punching and jabbing and pushing and shoving, until suddenly, the sheet falls and I fall with it.

As I hit the ground, I no longer hear the whirring; the mechanics around me have stopped. I notice that the lights have changed back to the strange lights. Above me I hear a clink. I look up, and I see one of the stone balls rolling down a track which appears to lead into the room next to me. The ball is slow, it looks heavy.

I don’t understand.

I look to the door to that room. It’s open, however I remember it being closed. Every sense in my being is telling me not to follow the ball above me, however I follow it to the threshold of the door and I peer through. My flashlight is weak, however it appears to lead to a long hallway with pictures on either side. I cannot see the end of the hallway from here. I decide not to give in to my curiosity, and draw myself towards the stairs in the grand hall. I move towards the barricade, and piece by piece I start dismantling the jury-rigged fortification in front of me until I can clear some space to walk.

Suddenly, I hear something.

A song, playing in the distance. A song I’ve never heard before, however I can’t tell which room it is coming from, so I start to move up the stairs. The stairs are made of stone with ancient wooden banisters. This castle obviously belonged to someone extremely wealthy. At the top of the stairs there is a large window. I peer out. Through the darkness its hard to make out what I see, but I think there’s a garden of sorts. At the end of the garden I see a tree with what looks like-

A door slams to my right, so I turn around, yet I see nothing. Every door on the upper floor is shut, and I never noticed one open.

“Who's there? Answer me!”

At this point I’m not sure if I’m inquisitive or just terrified, but I start to move down the stairs, back to the long hallway. I stand at the entrance to the door, and I notice that the song is coming from down the hall. I move forward. The song is soft, and repetitive. The same ascending and descending pattern repeating endlessly, played on a deep string and chanted aloud by some unknown person. Entering the hallway, other instruments join the song, and a second singer throws their voice to the hauntingly melodic song.

The hallway becomes incredibly narrow; two people could not pass. I turn my body to the side to allow easier passage, and then I hear the music just stop.

"What the-"

The entire hallway is a trapdoor, and the floor splits. I fall.

I hit the ground after some time. I lie, motionless on the cold ground below. The fall winded me, and despite my legs being cracked and torn apart, I feel no pain. In fact, I feel....warm. Everywhere. Then I hear it.

Click.

Click,

Click.

Click,

Click.

As I stand up, I realize I am in an enormous chasm with six doors spread evenly throughout the room. Each door has a colored light and symbol hanging overhead. Then I hear the noises. I hear distinctly non-human groaning. I smell the sickly stench of death is all around me. I have no idea what to do, so I run. I run for the door in front of me; it has a glowing blue diamond above it. I run, and I run, but I’m too late.

Through the darkness, I see the withered, corpse-like bodies of gangly demonic equines running at me. Thick black ichor drips from their mouths and eyes as they snort and stamp their way closer. They are fast. They are many, and they are on me. I feel them, they crush and rip my flesh under their rotten, broken hooves; I can feel them stabbing and tearing away at me, and the cold returns worse than before. As I feel them rip my broken legs from my body, they suddenly stop.

There’s a blue-eyed giant standing over me, bathing the area in a warm glow. The creatures retreat from the light, and fade back into the shadows with a hiss and a roar. The giant looks down at me. It speaks in a harsh voice but I cannot make out its words. It slowly brings a massive segmented finger down on me, and carefully makes contact, nudging me as one would a small sleeping pet.
COMPONENT ERROR

Despite its continued prodding and warmth, I feel myself drifting closer and closer into the darkness. It picks me up in its hand, and I feel a small pain in my back. Warmth spreads throughout my body, and the fog is lifted from my mind. I look up at the machine and it shouts.

WHAT HIDES IN YOUR MIND, the machine asks.
ALERT!

“Why are you doing this?”

WHY DO YOU HATE
ALERT!

“Just fucking end it already....”

YOU ARE ILL. WE JUST WANT TO FIX YOU
WAKE UP

“Come off it! Just let me-”

I wake up to a blinding white light.

Author's Note

Haha cliffhanger

Ain't that a kick in the pants.

I was gonna have Elliot have a nightmare about being a horse, but I felt that would be dumb, so he's gonna have the 'spooky cold castle in the middle of the night with monster horses' nightmare

Awesome