AN: Hello everyone! This will be a short multi-chapter fic. I've deliberately kept the setting and several aspects ambiguous, and it is rather an experiment in writing in present tense. This will probably be about 6 chapters long, and as of typing this is about 95% complete. Reviews are always appreciated, chapters will be varying in length with the first being the shortest (I have to hook you somehow :P).

Many thanks to 'KassyMalone' for essentially beta-reading the fic and helping me on all fronts, especially with making sure I stayed in the right tense. Thanks to 'Jokerthematrix', too, for putting up with me rambling on about it. And without further ado -

Chapter 1

It's cold. Not the cold of frosty winter mornings or chilled autumn nights, but the all encompassing, penetrating freezing that tears through layers of clothes and flesh and sinew, and leaves the bones a shuddering and trembling mess.

Arthur forces himself onwards. The ground is packed tightly with layers of snow and more still falls, concealing the trail that his struggle has left behind. Sunken up to his knees, sensation anywhere below them is a distant memory at this point. His fingers are numb; his face raw. Shuddering, gasping breaths force their way through a dry throat, as heaving lungs desperately draw in, out as they begin to starve from a lack of oxygen.

Keep moving onwards. Don't you dare stop.

This place is absolutely desolate. Towering spires of snow-peaked mountains crush the insignificant human, fighting a losing battle for his life far below them. It is the loneliest place on this tortured sphere that he calls home, but the fear that drives him onwards tells him it isn't anywhere near lonely enough.

Keep moving onwards. Don't let them catch you.

The sun is in the sky. Or is it the moon? Everything is so still and dark and cold that he can't actually tell.

All is silent. He is at the end of the earth and it is dead; even those creatures that strive in the harshest of environs have forsaken this place. What cursed being could dare to dream of surviving here? No screeching cries of swooping falcons, no indistinct rustling of cowering mammals, no brush or trees or shelter. Just never ending snow, blanketing slate grey rocks that are only visible on higher ground.

Don't stop, even though your breath crystallises into tiny ice gems with every exhale, even though those shining emeralds are dull from pain and exhaustion.

And so he keeps walking, his entire body numb to the core by now, moving mechanically and solely through muscle memory: he cannot feel a thing, cannot control his movements, cannot do anything other than push onwards until he collapses.

A cry of wind pulses through the white valley and pushes him to his knees.

Keep moving onwards…

But he can't, not any more. Starved and exhausted and so weak that he can barely hold his eyes open, his body starts to surrender to the cold and the pain and every other injury that has been inflicted upon his battered flesh.

As the cliché dictates, his world fades to black. But before he succumbs to death's cold and beloved embrace, sound violently tears through his world of silence. Faint, but still intrusive:

"Wait, don't fall asleep!"

AN: Like, dislike, comments? Thank you for reading!