The Fimbul Winter (working title)

What is to come after a winter so rough that every man and woman and child died? A civilization that was so powerful that thought it would destroy its planet due to heat, but destroyed because of cold.
Who knows who survived…
Did we survive?
Leiff did not think he would survive.

“Boris, what are you looking at?” a woman asked.
“Oh I’m sorry, I heard a noise… I was startled” he responded.
“But there is nothing there Boris… These lands are empty… No animals and no people.” the woman said.
“I know… But this darkness… It gets to me.” Boris said with great fear.
The growing dark was indeed noticeable. It wouldn’t be long now before it became dark enough that they couldn’t see each other, let alone where they where going.
“We have to keep moving, the caves are only 700 meters north from here!” the woman shouted.
“I know Katherina,” Boris replied instantly, thus revealing the woman’s’ name. “but face it… We will never make it!”
Boris was shivering greatly, the cold had got to him, and he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. Their camp inside the great mountain ring, which name has long been forgotten was one of the few places on the planet that still had some amount of warmth.
“If we don’t keep moving, we will die here, you won’t see your children again! Now lets GO!” Katherina ordered.
Boris looked up, the snow was covering his beard and his eyes where almost frozen shut.
“Guide me Katherina! Lead me to my resting place in the mountains.” He said.
Katherina grabbed Boris’ hand, which was tucked away in a combination of gloves and animal hides, and they both started running as best they could through the snow. Boris didn’t know how, but the feeling in his legs came back. Somehow, they now knew that they would get back to their caves safely. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but even if it was, they where right.

Beyond the sea of the north, in the land which was once called Ice, Leiff started his journey. He had not seen anyone for days, except his own complexion in the frozen waters that surrounded the land.
He might have very well been the last man alive, for he was the last man that lived on his island.
What was to come? Where was he to go? He knew no answer to these questions. He did not even know what happened, where everyone went… A virus? No, he would have heard it on the news. Monsters came in and destroyed the world? Too unlikely and unrealistic. No, he didn’t know anything. And he wasn’t going to know it either. The mystery of what happened to the once called land of Ice, and the rest of the world, was a mystery to Leiff, and all the rest who had suffered the same faith, and did not die.

“We are almost there Boris! Hang in there.” Katherina shouted, but the wind was blowing too hard and Boris couldn’t make out a word she was saying.
Katherina wasn’t lying, the entrance to their caves was very close, the only problem was that neither of them could see it. The snow that fell had covered it up once again.
“I think we are here Boris…” she shouted in his ear.
“But… Where is the entrance Katherina? Where is it!” he desperately said with his teeth shivering.
Suddenly he saw a faint light in the distance, it couldn’t be true, he must have been hallucinating… But for what it was, it was enough. Boris grabbed Katherina, who started digging in the snow, and dragged her towards the light. A light that she didn’t see, but guided Boris to the entrance of the caves.
“What are you doing Boris! Let me go! The entrance has to be here somewhere.” She shouted, while trying to get lose from Boris’ grip.
“No Katherina, it is here… I know it is.”
Katherina did not know what he saw, but he heard Boris mumble something, something that he used to say as a child.
“Where the winds of darkness blow,” he uttered, “where the light guides me through the nightfall…”
He repeated that sentence over and over again, until they both reached the entrance to the caves, the point of origin of the so called light that Boris saw. The same light that disappeared once Katherina opened the heavy metal doors. Once both entered the caves, Boris fell onto the ground and the last words he whispered that night where the same he had just repeated over and over again… Where the winds of darkness blow, where the light guides me through the nightfall.

Leiff started digging his way up. He was stranded in the basement of his company, where he worked as manager of the IT department. The only thing he remembered from this whole ordeal was that he needed to check the server status, who where locked away safely in one of the lowest floors, underground. After some sort of earthquake he was knocked out and who knows how long he has been unconscious there.
When Leiff woke up, everyone was gone. He was able to go up two floors, until he reached the ground level, but then everything was shut. The combination of automatic lockdowns and rubble blocking the doorways was something that could hold out any man. Especially someone from the IT department.
After he reached the ground level, he knew he still had to go up one more floor. The door was frozen shut, and opening the windows would only mean that snow would fall inside at high speed.
Leiff knew that if he wanted to get out, he’d have to jump from the first floor. But he knew that he couldn’t just walk around the city, when it was snowing, in just a sweater, shirt, tie, some brown trousers and a pair of sneakers. He didn’t even know how many degrees it was out there, but judging from the amount of snow, he knew it could be quite cold indeed.