Dan hadn’t been okay recently.
Not the kind of cold you shrug off or laugh about—not a passing chill or a forgotten draft sneaking through a window. This was wrong. Deep. Ancient in a way that made no sense, because he was the ancient thing. He wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Not after everything. Not after millennia of existing beyond things as small and fragile as temperature.
He dropped from the sky like something that had finally given up pretending it could still stay afloat. His feet hit the ground unevenly, knees buckling as he sank down hard, the impact barely registering. Flying had always been effortless. Thoughtless. Now it felt like trying to hold himself together in a storm.
The silence pressed in immediately. No wind rushing past his ears, no hum of motion—just stillness, thick and suffocating.
He lifted a hand to his face, brushing at his cheek, and froze. His fingers didn’t come away wet like they should have. They didn’t come away anything like they should have.
He winced, a soft, broken sound slipping out of him as he touched the place again, more carefully this time. There was something there—something solid. Thin, jagged. It clung to his skin like it belonged there.
His voice trembled, barely more than a whisper. That wasn’t right. None of this was right.
Dan dragged his hand across his cheek, trying to wipe it away, but it didn’t smear or melt. It cracked. A faint, brittle sound, like glass under pressure. The sensation shot through him, sharp and wrong, and he let out a quiet whine, recoiling as if he’d hurt himself.
“Stop—” he muttered to no one, to himself, to whatever was happening. His breath hit the air in front of him and fogged.
That had never happened before.
Panic crept in slowly, insidiously, threading through his chest in a way he wasn’t used to feeling anymore. He’d outlived fear. Outgrown it. Forgotten it. But now it curled back into him like something that had been waiting for an opportunity to return.
“I’m not—” he started, then faltered.
Not human? Not fragile? Not something that could freeze?
Another shiver wracked through him, more violent this time. It didn’t feel like his body reacting—it felt like something deeper, something fundamental, was failing.
Dan hunched in on himself, arms wrapping tight around his torso as if he could hold the cold in place, keep it from spreading further. But it was already everywhere. In his lungs, in his bones, in the spaces between thoughts.
The words sounded hollow. Uncertain. Like even he didn’t believe them anymore.
Another fragile crack echoed softly as a thin layer of frost crept along the back of his hand.
And for the first time in longer than he could remember—
Dan didn’t know what was happening to him.
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