The snow does not fall — it howls. Rotkov lies half-buried in white, windows shuttered, radios crackling with broken signals. Somewhere in the distance a siren cuts through the blizzard, then dies, leaving only the sound of the storm...and something else, breathing inside it.

Boots crunch over glass and frost. Ahead, a fissure splits the street like a wound in the world, light bleeding upward as if the sky itself were torn. The air tastes of iron, whispering words that rearrange themselves when you blink. The Book is near. Or maybe it is already inside you.

A figure raises a flare through the snow — a soldier’s silhouette, rifle slung. His voice stumbles: "That’s impossible...but the base went into a rift three years ago....you were gone three years ago." His disbelief is drowned as the rift pulses, sending cracks spidering through ice and asphalt.