[14th Yanvar (Jan) 2019]
Arthur took in a deep breath and placed his hand on the door handle. Home, he wanted to go home to the palace. Maybe the promenade first to take a walk through the camp. It had been such a long time since he left Korovka that his heart beat heavier just thinking about doing this. He missed the city greatly but what would they think? He ran away like, like a- no- there was no need to think like this. He tightened his grip on the handle and pulled it down, opened the door, and walked through.
The doorway did not lead Arthur to another room of the house like it should, but instead to the top of the promenade at Korovka Palace. This did not surprise him but he was still surprised. Burning embers floated by his face, the sky filled with smoke and blood red, and ahead of him were the corpses of camp refugees. He tried to look around but could scarcely even see the palace domes over the raging fires. What had happened? Who had done this? And… why? Korova was a cold island of death but this was unparalleled. Arthur paused suddenly and listened closer, in the distance a scream cut off by gunfire.
He knew it now.
His city was under siege.
But instead of finding courage and strength to fight back this realisation, he simply dropped to his knees and cried. The tears streamed past his hands and down the sides of his face. Again and again everything seemed to be robbed from him, stolen and crushed into the ground. His entire society, his family, his new family in the Palace, and the one chance to save Korova. It seemed that whatever gods existed had a vendetta towards the Cold Isle, towards him, towards any chance of peace. These gods weren’t content with simply killing Arthur, they wanted to pin him down and break him, to watch the last ounce of life leave him. That’s what they wanted. That’s what it had gotten to now.
Someone on the other side of the promenade shouted at him, a besieger screaming abuse and insults, but when they finally caught Arthur’s attention they were faced with something inhuman. His eyes and mouth glowed a depthless, blinding white. The besieger could only step back slowly while Arthur lifted himself from the ground but this expression of fear wasn't enough. Arthur outstretched his hand and, without touching them, threw them into the ground with unimaginable force. This wasn’t it though, the besiegers flesh was torn off almost immaculately with only small strips and blood on the ground suggesting this wasn't an aged skeleton.
Something greater had happened though. In the same moment the besieger had been killed, the city of Korovka was brought to a halt, a perfect, frozen stasis. The birds in the sky were unmoving, the flames blocking the Palace frozen, and the ocean winds simply paused in their movement. Silence had befallen Korovka, only Arthur’s footsteps could be heard as the inhuman spectre he was set off to find who had started this invasion.
The only other movement was that of a wall, a freezing blizzard of unknowable strength perfectly circling the city’s perimeter.
Korovka was a prisoner of its own ruler now.
