Chương 17: Chapter 16: A Way Forward

Steam filled the bathroom. I stood under the hot water longer than I should have, letting it run over my shoulders and down my back. The heat was a luxury I couldn't afford indefinitely — the water heater wasn't going to last forever — but after waking from my usual nightmare, and after three days of freezing inside my own house, I needed it. When I finally stepped out, the mirror was completely fogged. I wiped a streak across it and stared at myself. Same face. Same tired eyes.

Same person who had walked into this world weeks ago and somehow hadn't died yet. I got dressed and went downstairs. The house was quiet. Not the creaking, groaning quiet of the storm. Not the kind of silence that made me expect something to break. Just normal quiet. The wind had stopped sometime during the night, leaving only stillness behind. I opened the front door. The light was blinding. Not sunlight — the suns were still hidden behind the remaining clouds. But the snow had transformed everything.

The world was white in a way I had never seen before. Not a surface covered in white. A world made of it. Where the tree line used to stand, there was only a flat white plain stretching toward the distant mountain. Beautiful. Silent. Empty. The clearing was gone. The porch steps disappeared beneath a smooth expanse of snow that reached my knees where I stood. Beyond that, it was deeper. Much deeper. The air was still. Cold. Sharp. I stood there for a long time, just breathing. Everything looked different.

Stepping outside was a mistake I made twice. The first time, the snow swallowed my boots almost immediately. Cold seeped through the fabric before I had taken three steps. I retreated. I put on a second pair of socks. Then tried again. The second attempt lasted longer — long enough to circle the house and test the depth. Most of the clearing was gone beneath a uniform layer of snow. Deep. Impassable. Near the walls except on one side, the garage side, the snow was shallower.

The roof had shed its load during the storm, creating slopes of compacted snow drifting away from the foundation. Beyond that, the same endless white. I was turning back to get back inside when something caught my eye. A line. About a hundred meters away. Running across the snow in both directions. At first glance, it looked like a trench. Something had carved through the white. Something too straight to be accidental. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent.

Report any sightings. Like the path of something enormous dragging itself across the ground. The creature I had killed had been large, but this was larger. Much larger. Longer. Heavier. I stood there for a while, weighing the risk. The cold was already working through my second pair of socks. Going back inside was the smart choice. I walked toward it anyway. The snow became deeper as I moved away from the house. Waist-high in places. Every step was a fight.

But the line was impossible to miss now — a dark scar through the white that grew clearer with every meter. When I reached it, the fear disappeared. It wasn't a trench. Not carved. Not dug. Not dragged. The snow was simply thinner here. Patchy. Even gone entirely in places. Short blades of grass pushed through the gaps. Alive. Wrong season. Wrong everything. Whatever had happened here wasn't about force. The snow hadn't been pushed away. It had melted. I knelt and pressed my hand against the ground.

The cold around me was real. My breath still clouded the air. My fingers still numbed quickly. But the ground beneath this strip wasn't participating. It was warmer. Not warm enough to feel pleasant. Just enough to refuse winter. I dug into the soft moist ground with my bare hands. My fingers quickly hit something hard. Flat. Smooth. Not a root. A stone, but definitely not one shaped by nature. I cleared more away. A surface appeared beneath the soil. Cut stone. Continuous. The grass came away easily.

Its roots had never properly taken hold. It had been growing over something else. Something that had been there first. A road? I sat back and looked at it. The stone was ancient. Lichen had claimed the seams. Dirt had filled the gaps where plants hadn't broken through. But the surface wasn't destroyed. Not the way things usually broke after centuries. It was intact. And it was warm. Not hot. Just above freezing. Just enough that snow touching it couldn't remain forever.

Just enough that whatever system had been built into it was still doing its job after all this time. I placed my palm against the stone. Someone had built this. That much was obvious. The warmth was harder to explain. A road that didn't freeze. A road that had waited beneath centuries of dirt and grass until winter returned. I didn't know how it worked. I didn't know who had built it. I only knew it didn't feel like it was supposed to be here. The road curved away from me, disappearing into the distance.

Toward the river. Toward the mountain. And maybe... Toward the village from my photographs. Far away, I could just make out another line crossing it. A junction. Then another. Not a path. A network. Someone had built roads here. Before the forest. Before the silence. Before everything that had left this place empty. And somehow, they had survived. I walked back toward the house. The snow was deep. The cold was real. My socks were wet again. But my mind was already somewhere else. The garage door was blocked.

A drift had piled against it during the storm. The wind had packed the snow hard against the metal until a simple entrance had become a wall of white nearly reaching the top. The car was inside. The road was only about a hundred meters away, maybe a little more than that. If I could get the car there... I had a path. A real path. I entered the garage through the interior door at the end of the corridor and grabbed the shovel from the trunk. It had been there since my first expedition.

Somehow, I had never needed it. Not once. Not until today. Most of the day disappeared into the work. The drift was dense. Wind-compacted. Heavy. Every shovelful was a fight. The garage door came first — just enough clearance to open it. The metal groaned when I pulled it upward, but it moved. Then came the real problem. Between the garage and the road was a field of snow. Waist-deep in places. The road itself was visible now, a thin dark line through the white. Waiting. Shovel. Lift. Throw. Shovel. Lift. Throw.

The rhythm became automatic. My arms burned. My back ached. My breath came in steady clouds. I didn't stop because stopping meant looking at how much remained. By midday, I had cleared maybe fifty meters. A narrow path. Barely wide enough for the car. A line connecting my house to something that had been waiting here long before I arrived. By late afternoon, I reached the road. I stood there, breathing hard, and looked back. The house was a dark shape at the end of the trench I had carved through the snow.

Smaller than I remembered. I looked forward. The road stretched ahead. Clear. Waiting for someone to finally use it again. And the village was somewhere beyond it. The ruins. The answers. By nothing short of a miracle they no longer felt unreachable. The evening was preparation. The car's battery was fine. I swapped the regular tires for the winter set still stacked against the garage wall. Food. Water. First-aid kit. Rope. Flashlight. Notebook.

The same supplies I had carried on every expedition before winter had shut everything down. This time, I added the fish trap. The village was near the river. If I could reach it, the trap wouldn't be theoretical anymore. I sat down. Outside, the road was visible in the fading light. If weather was gentle, tomorrow... I would follow it.