CHAPTER 19: THE FROZEN LAKE

Seraphina didn’t plan on waking.

One minute she was asleep, curled beneath thick blankets and a woodstove’s steady hum—and the next, she was upright. Barefoot. Standing in the cabin doorway with frost biting at her skin and breath ghosting into the dark.

The moonlight shimmered off the snow like a sheet of glass. Silver, unbroken, and wrong. Because she wasn’t cold. Not really. Not in the way she should’ve been.

The air burned in her lungs, sharp and clean. She should’ve turned back. Should’ve shut the door, crawled into bed, and blamed it on a bad dream or insomnia. But she didn’t. Because the creature raging inside of her refused to let her have control over her own body. It wasn’t hungry, or at least, not the kind of hunger that clawed at her gut. And it wasn’t angry and wanted to rip people to shreds. Instead, it was almost... curious.

It pulled Sera forward, tugging at her, drawing her forward like a fish caught on a hook.

Her feet moved before she could stop them, and each step broke the surface of the untouched snow. It should have been painful, but the cold never sank in. She should’ve been shivering. Her fingers should’ve been blue. But she wasn’t even numb.

Sera was awake. More awake than she had ever been.

She walked around to the front of the cabin, where the driveway and only road was. She could already hear the sound of the water of the lake hitting the shore, the ice quietly breaking up with each wave.

Without looking right or left, Sera simply crossed the road, going forward until the tips of her toes were being kissed by the freezing water.

The creature inside her stirred, but not with violence. This wasn’t about blood. It wasn’t about hunger or territory.

This was about home.

She stepped into the ice water without thinking, pushing forward even as sheets of ice pressed against her fleece pajamas. No one was ever dumb enough to want to swim in the waters of the Atlantic without proper gear, but to her, the water was warm and soothing, just like bath water.

Taking a deep breath, she dove under the next sheet of ice getting ready to meet the shore.

For a second, everything went black, and that was when she realized that she had closed her eyes when she went under. Forcing her eyes open, she was surprised to see that everything was completely clear. While it wasn’t as bright as if it was the middle of the day, she could still see the fish swimming around her, the rocks under her feet, and the darker shadows just outside of her vision.

She didn’t move; she didn’t need to. The creature inside her stretched in the silence, uncoiling like a muscle long unused. She kicked once, twice, and dove deeper. Time seemed to slow, or maybe it just stopped altogether.

Her skin should’ve been screaming. But instead, it tingled. Her lungs didn’t burn, her muscles didn’t cramp. She moved like she belonged there.

Like the water had been waiting for her all this time to welcome her home.

Seraphina didn’t know how long she swam—five minutes, maybe ten. It should’ve been impossible. And yet, her body felt looser the deeper she went. Her strokes became more fluid, and even her pulse slowed down the more she relaxed.

Bringing her head up to the surface to take in a breath of air that she didn’t really need, Sera saw it.

An island.

Small and cragged, half-frozen, rising out of the lake like a drowned memory. Trees curled toward the sky in twisted shapes, roots draped in ice. Snow clung to every surface, softening the jagged rock beneath. But it wasn’t the island itself that held her still.

It was the structure.

Barely visible from shore, nestled between two trees, half-covered in snow and vines. Concrete walls. A collapsed metal roof. Broken windows long since eaten by time.

She pulled herself from the water, climbing onto the ice-rimmed edge. Her wet clothes clung to her for a moment, but she shook it off. Her breath still came out evenly, even as the frost kissed her skin like a greeting, not a threat.

It took effort to push through the snow, which came up to her thighs in some places, thanks to a snow drift. But she didn’t stop, she didn’t hesitate. The closer she got to the structure, the more the air around it seemed to shift. Like it wasn’t abandoned.

Like it was waiting for someone to rediscover it.

Sera reached the outer wall and ran her fingers along the concrete that had long been chipped and eroded. It was easy to see that it had been abandoned for years, but she still couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know what had been here.

There was a metal plaque bolted to the side of the building. Covered in frost. She scraped it clean with the edge of her hand, revealing rusted letters beneath.

PROJECT LAZARUS: SITE 7

Her stomach twisted, but not in fear or panic, but more like recognition.

The creature inside her rose sharply, brushing against the back of her throat. Her vision sharpened to a pinpoint as she picked up the sound of a heart beating deep inside the building. The noise echoed from within softly, barely audible to anyone outside of her creature. But now that they could hear it, they couldn’t unhear it.

She crouched low, pressing her hand to the snow-covered ground. Listening.

There it was again. A scraping shuffle, followed by the creak of a hinge.

Something was moving inside the walls of the building, and it defiantly wasn’t human.

Sera’s legs tensed, ready to spring, but she didn’t move. Not yet. Whatever it was... it didn’t know she was here yet, and that was just the way she liked it.

The door creaked open further as the thing inside the building made its way outside. Snow flurried in through the door. She could see a massive shape emerging from the darkness. Hulking. Hunched over as one of its back legs dragged across the floor. A shadow that looked more animal than man.

But it still hadn’t noticed her yet. Instead, it was sniffing the air, seemingly looking for something.

She took a slow step forward toward the massive beast, and the creature inside her surged.

She couldn’t hold back the smile of pure joy that flashed across her face. Because whatever was in that building—whatever experiment had been left behind, forgotten, buried under snow and rust—she wasn’t afraid of it.

Not even a little.

It should have been afraid of her.

But before she could take another step forward, the thing turned its head sharply. And then came out of the back of the structure, crashing through the far wall like paper, straight into the trees beyond. In less than two seconds, it was completely gone, vanishing into thin air like she had imaged the entire thing.

She stood for a long moment, almost disappointed that it hadn’t confronted her before disappearing into the darkness. But it seemed like she had celebrated too early. Before she could take her next breath, the beast slammed into her from behind, sending Sera flying into the decrepit building it had just come out of.